Urban Heat Island Effect and Urban life

Under the background of global warming, a concept named urban heat island effect attracts more discussion. University of Sussex found that urban heat island could double the effect that is caused by other climate issues. Urban heat island leaves  a series of  negative influences on urban life. It mainly affects us in three parts: urban climate, health and energy consumption.

UHI raises the risk of the floodings in urban areas. Temperature in urban area becomes warmer than the surrounding area due to human activities, hot air will rise because of its low density and cold air will flow into the city, thunderstorms and additional showers could occur when they meet around cities, which result in more rainfall in urban areas than before, and leave an extra burden on city sewerage systems. Cities would suffer the disaster of floodings once sewerage could not satisfy the need of discharge.
UHI also affects human health on both physical and mental parts. Firstly, more frequency of hot days could leave negative influences on the human body especially heart and blooding. It could lead to heat stroke, heat exhaustion and some permanent damages to organ systems. On the other hand, UHI could result in more irritable and aggressive behaviors, studies show that violent crimes increase 0.05% when a temperature increase in 10 ℃.
Finally, UHI makes it more difficult to achieve a sustainable life in cities, especially in the aspect of energy consumption. Hot days drive to more use of air conditioner, and finally result in more energy consumption. In addition, UHI leaves more energy waste in the process of power transmission.

Green Infrastructure and Urban Environment

The World Bank forecast that the area covered by the planet’s urban realm, as measured in 2000, would double by the 2030s, with 90% of urban growth occurring in the developing world (Suzuki 2010). To avoid problems of resource depletion, pollution, poor human health, associated with past urbanism, new cities should consider the concept of Natural Capital and Ecosystem Services that are provided by comprehensive, interconnected green infrastructure.

Vegetative land cover modifies regional and neighbourhood microclimate.

Greenways have been shown to modify the urban heat island generally, and research in Singapore found that greenways had a cooling effect of 4˚C at a macro scale (Wong & Yu). A study indicates that urban area is 2˚C warmer than the surrounding rural areas (Henninger 2009); in recognition of this, the Kigali State of the Environment Report 2013 notes that even small urban green spaces can help tackle the heat island effect.

Greenways also play a significant role in an urban economic. For example, street trees, as a part of urban forest system, have positive influence on house rental rates or property value (Lavrene, Kimberly 2003); they also promote health improvement, and reduce the investment on medicine. As for the aspect of urban pollution, green walls could mitigate air pollution and refresh urban air.

The social Function of Green Infrastructure

Green infrastructure becomes one of the essential elements in the process of urban design, it provides a series of functions that makes a better future of city life, such as ecological reconstruction and resistance to climate change. However, green infrastructure also plays an important role in social function, vegetations could improve living conditions  through two main routes.
Firstly, green infrastructure provides spaces for citizens to recreate. As for enhancing the connection between green spaces and streets, infrastructure like parks and other kind of landscape often uses the combination of trees, grasses and water body that follows aesthetic principles, thus creates enough room to invite people to join in the green spaces, and communicate with others. Vegetations with the scientific arrangement under aesthetic principles could provide the space for releasing pressure, getting exercise and having fun. So that it is necessary to design a proper amount of green parks in cities.
Additionally, green infrastructures also provide functions like defining culture. Sustainable development tells the story that urban design without the idea of sustainability could not exist for a long period because it could not be accepted by natural environmental system, and green infrastructure design that follows the natural energy flow could not only achieve its original goal--ecological reconstruction, but also provide a social function like public education. People who join in green space and communicate with natural environment could easily find that the importance of protecting natural systems. Vegetations in green area could acknowledge citizens that what kind of plants could survive in their neighborhood, which could prevent ecological disasters like biological invasion.

Smart City and energy efficiency

 Since the world warⅡ，growing number of urban population and increasing frequency of economic activities has led to a high energy consumption urban life, which finally results in a significant amount of environment problems, such climate change, urban ecological decline. As an answer to those problems, urban designers implement some technological methods to mitigate the effect caused by environmental problems and redevelop the cities in a sustainable way.

 Smart city usually achieve the goal of efficient energy consumption in two ways: green transportation and energy-efficient building. Smart city improves the road condition and creates more road for green transportation to invite citizens to travel by feet or bicycling. Electrical cars are suggested to solve the energy problems on road. In China, government established many financial movement to encourage people to drive electrical cars on road，for example, people who buy a new electrical car could get a about 50% discount supported by local government. More power banks will be built on streets in order to meet the charging needs of electrical cars.

As for the energy-efficient buildings, the main purpose of sustainable buildings are to reduce the energy consumption and try to collect and reuse the waste heat in the buildings. Taking central park in Sydney as an example, green walls prevent the broadcast of waste and provide shadows during sunny days in summer. On the other hand, hot water is kept warm by the heat produced by the operating of machines like lift.

With limited resources and growing population around world, it is necessary to popularise the sustainable smart city. Without enough attention on the energy efficient society, our environment could be no longer be suitable for the next generation in the future.

Smart city ，IOT and Online Security

According from one of the most accepted definition established by IBM (2010), the term of ‘Smart City’ could be assumed as the technological innovation applied in order to sense, analyze and integrate the key information of core systems in running cities. As for meet the need for scientific management of urban system, the concept of ‘Internet of Things’ has been introduced into urban design in order to grasp information and solve challenges in urban systematically.

  At present, IOT has played an important role in the process of smart city practice. Firstly, it provides one of the most efficient way to collect information in big urban scale. For example, the application of red light camera and speed camera makes it possible for policemen to control the transport condition and react quickly. Secondly, IOT gives access to collect information that is difficult to measure and manage the energy consumption scientifically. Some buildings in Sydney now applied smart city strategies to manage the electricity consumption, thermal sensers are placed in the every corner of the building to collect the temperature information and control the air conditioners, heaters and even lights according the data collected by sensers.

  However, the application of IOT in smart city could leave some potential problems in the aspect of internet security. It could result in a domination role in the urban system once someone get control of internet. A game made by Ubi Soft Entertainment Software named Watching dog gives a brief view of what will happen once hacker control the urban system operation, the main hero could control the red light on street and even monitor other phone call, creating chaos to achieve his own wish. As a suggestion to future smart city, digital management should pay more attention on the online security. 

Different recycling pattern in China and Australia

Waste problem is one of the major challenges that human society could hardly get rid completely. Due to the repaid development of urbanism, the scale of cities become more and more big, crowds flow into cities everyday and produce more wastes during their daily activities. Household garbage accounts over 60% of the amount of wastes in total, so that most countries that are willing to improving the urban environment thorough recycling pay more attention on the aspect of household wastes.
The fact of recycling in China requires more scientific management at present. For example, the existing method to collect wastes relies heavily on the leading role of economic. The majority of wastes that could be recycled is collected by the people who have financial problem but not who might be interested in protecting the urban environment，because plastical stuffs, hardboard, metal cans and other recycling matericals could be slod in recycling center. However, the concept of recycling was introduced into China for many years, and garage bins that are sorted into different use are placed along the streets, but seldom citizens could be seen to follow the instruction on bins, and the same rate of citizens know the distination of sorted wastes.
China has a long way in the process of recycling practice. As of one the countires that carries out a complete recycling system, Australia has a lot for China to learn. Firstly, government should play a more important role in the popularism of recycling. More rules and legal provision should be established in the field of recycling, and more social campiaigns should be raised to anknowledge public of the importance of recycling. Public would be invited to join in the recycling movement since they know how the recycling system works. Secondly, parents and schools should educate the next generation about the meaning of recycing. A new generation with recycling knowledge could do more in the future.

Recycling & Inefficient Human life

 

   Wastes,defined as unwanted or unusable materials, are produced during every daily life in human society. If we could take away all these adjective words and think deeply to the real of these stuffs, we can see that the majority of these watses remind the same materials as what we use before. 

    As the traditional belief in the industry of architecture,  one thousand ton of structural watses could take possession of over 660 ㎡ land, and over three tons of watses will be prodeced during the process of 10 ㎡ construction. In China, the generation between new buildings and old buildings could leave around 1.5 billion to 2.4 billion tongs of rubbishes each year, and only 5% of those materials could be recycled by all ways. Most of these urban architectural wastes will finally be pile up into a mountain at surburbs. In 2016, a serious accident occurred in Guangdong China, a mountain of rubbishes with over 70 meters in hight fell down because of long period of rain,it burried over 90 people and attracted the public sight into wates recycling. 

     Compera with China,Australian governments paid highly attention to the recycling progrom. Social campiagns run by city councils encourage people to build a socitey that everyone could live in a recycled life and do somethings better to the future earth.