Abstract
The actual contribution of neighborhood sustainability assessment (NSA) tools to mitigate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in urban precincts is still unclear. This paper discusses the limitations and potentialities in the use of an NSA tool, Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design for Neighborhood Development (LEED-ND), in the context of São Paulo, a developing country’s megalopolis. It describes a multistep study that involves understanding and analyzing how the tool responds to (1) the sectors of GHG emission of a community-scale carbon footprint tool, Global Protocol for Community-Scale Greenhouse Gas Emission Inventories (GPC); (2) the GHG emissions of the municipality; (3) the strategies of the Municipal Climate Change Policy; and (4) the climate change related strategies of a local LEED-ND-certified precinct. Results show that although LEED-ND addresses the GPC’s main sources of GHG emissions and the strategies of São Paulo’s climate change policy, there is still a need to either improve or better integrate NSA with other tools in a systemic and contextualized approach that does not apply them in isolation.
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Data Availability Statement
Some or all data, models, or code generated or used during the study are available from the corresponding author by request: detailed categorization of NSA tools grouped per geographic scale and focus.
Acknowledgments
This paper draws upon a mix of two different, but complementary, research studies: The first, conducted and concluded at the Urban Engineering Program of the Polytechnic School of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ); the second, at the Faculty of Built Environment of The University of New South Wales (UNSW). The lead author acknowledges the support of a University International Postgraduate Award from UNSW. The authors sincerely thank the anonymous reviewers for their valuable suggestions and comments.
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Journal of Urban Planning and Development
Volume 146 • Issue 1 • March 2020
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©2019 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Feb 24, 2017
Accepted: Jun 4, 2019
Published online: Dec 5, 2019
Published in print: Mar 1, 2020
Discussion open until: May 5, 2020
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