Climate Design: strategies to combat and cope with climate change

Climate Design: design and planning for the age of climate change is a new book in which AECOM experts collaborate with Professor Peter Droege and other academics to explore the forefront of techniques to mitigate and adapt to climate change in the built environment. The book is available through publisher ORO editions and will be available in bookstores worldwide.

"This book brings together powerful new practices and innovative thinking in urban planning and landscape design, soils and water engineering, energy and transport infrastructure, and socioeconomic change," explains Professor Droege, who is a widely acknowledged expert in the field of renewable and sustainable design. "Uninformed planning and urban design choices contribute to the climate conundrum in direct ways: primarily through inefficiency and dependency on fossil fuels," warns Droege.

"The only way we can make a real difference in our impact on the global environment and climate is through a holistic approach to policy, planning, engineering, and design wherein all work collaboratively toward the common goal," says Joe Brown, chief executive of planning, design + development at AECOM. Brown calls for a return to the natural world as equally important to the development of technology and cities in securing our future.

Climate Design contains a wealth of insights on a range of specific topics. Sections of the book include "The emerging direction," "Productive places," "Applications," and "Climate: designing a new future."

The book underscores the need for performance-based design, closely examining ways in which the design of urban communities must relate to resource supply, consumption and renewal in the areas of energy, water and food.

"Simple urban design initiatives can have extraordinarily powerful and positive consequences," says Chris Choa, AECOM architect and urban designer. "Great cities are environmental machines because their density, mixed-uses, and transit options allow people to live in very close and productive proximity to work, amenities, and cultural assets."

Design interventions that may appear as mere amenities have measurable affects. Ecologist and environmentalist Gary Grant explains, "The practical effect of roof greening is to delay by several hours the time that people on upper floors feel the need to switch on their air conditioning."

The interplay of the built and natural environments is a necessity constantly reinforced. AECOM landscape architect James Rosenwax says that "In the context of natural systems, a designer's response to climate change is not necessarily through new technology: suitable design solutions and technologies already exist in nature."

Conventional engineering often works against natural processes. Cities and ecosystems alike benefit from a more cooperative paradigm. "Designing projects that use land to collect, treat, and reuse water helps protect and conserve one of the world's most precious resources," says Stephane Asselin, AECOM water resources planner and coastal engineer.

Aimed as a tool to help those in both policy and practice advance their thinking and spread their knowledge, Climate Design is also a call to action. "The best way of dealing with climate change," says Jason Prior, leader of AECOM's Design + Planning practice, "is to embrace the facts and start working on the future now."

Jake Herson