Under the increasing pressures of the climate emergency and population growth, it is crucial to address sustainable urban development and water security. Urban growth impacts environmental management in several complex ways, making it challenging to evaluate. Moreover, there is a disconnection between policy and decision-making processes in urban planning and design. To address these issues holistically, this thesis develops CityPlan, a systems-based infrastructure ecology framework for integrated urban planning.
CityPlan incorporates sustainability evaluation, simulation tools, and a portfolio of design options to enable improved assessment and decision-making for multi-stakeholder urban development projects. The framework focuses on the planning system process of the UK. It presents three proof-of-concept applications: CityPlan-Ecos, which assesses urban ecosystem services at the urban development scale; CityPlan-Water, which focuses on integrated water management and the novel concept of water neutrality at the city scale; and CityPlan-Place, which develops a data-driven approach to test potential allocation and design for water-neutral interventions.
CityPlan-Ecos confirms the need for pre-planning design to evaluate the number of urban ecosystem services provided. CityPlan-Water suggests that almost the same number of existing houses must be retrofitted with water-neutral design options to offset the negative impact of new urban developments on the water cycle. Finally, CityPlan-Place evaluates the level of water neutrality targets achieved by systemic design options across different urban scales.
This thesis has three main research contributions. First, it demonstrates the need for integrated urban planning across different scales; second, it shows the potential of multi-purpose evaluation towards improving urban sustainability and integrated water management; and third, it enables a more comprehensive decision-making process with the combination of design and evaluation inside the UK planning system. The results of this work could be essential for strategic planning of sustainable and water-neutral design in urban environments.