How can sustainable cities thrive as urbanization increases?
With a growing population and rising climate issues, urban areas pose significant challenges and opportunities for sustainable development.
The United Nations defined a Sustainable Development Goal which dedicated "to make cities inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable" because according to them:
,
68% urban population by 2050
75% global CO2 emissions are created by cities
Additional 2 billion people to feed by 2050
As urbanization continues, it is more vital than ever to leverage the collective intelligence of citizens, businesses and governments to make cities sustainable, creating:
These are among the key drivers for more sustainable and healthy living that supports the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
To work and develop those aspects, data-driven, collaborative and sustainable urban development planning is crucial.
Virtual twin experiences of cities provided by Dassault Systèmes' solutions enable modeling, simulating, visualizing and experimenting with individual buildings, specific infrastructures and entire cities to make real-world improvements.
Urban sustainability has the objective and challenge of improving the quality of life in sustainable cities, reducing the environmental impact, promoting innovative sustainable solutions while maximizing economic and social urbanization.
Energy plays a major part in cities, for mobility, cooling, heating, lighting, and other generic usages. Two-thirds of the world’s energy is consumed within cities; it is therefore essential to re-think our energy systems to make them more sustainable by:
With a growing urbanization comes a new mobility:
Dassault Systèmes’ solutions enable stakeholders to improve city planning through efficient project management and simulations, to create right-first-time strategies to enable the next generation of urban mobility.
As urban environment evolves, infrastructures and buildings do too. Architects are now expected to create unique buildings that are also sustainable, while reducing costs and respecting increasingly complex specifications.
To meet these constraints, buildings must be conceived and designed to enable variations of a common base.
Virtual twin experiences can help design the building of tomorrow. As with cars and other manufactured products, it is possible to reduce costs and optimize materials, building time and durability by re-using and adapting the same structure to multiple buildings, a strategy enabled by virtual twin experiences and generative design.
Materials account for 80% to 90% of the emissions generated by construction.
Moreover, the recent supply chain crisis, which is contributing to the rapidlyrising cost of materials, is forcing builders to be more adaptable and creative in the materials they choose, based on what they can source – an additional challenge in building the city of tomorrow.
It is now urgent to rethink our material choice and application, with circularity as a new core principle.
Builders can avoid material waste and reduce costs by conducting precise scientific simulations of how the building will withstand the test of time, depending on the material and quantity used.
Dassault Systèmes’ Sustainable Information Intelligence also helps designers understand the GHG impact of the choices they make, to select more sustainable options.
As resources are depleting and we become more mindful about CO2 emissions, “repurpose, reuse, recycle” must become a common motto for all builders.
As the world population keeps growing, cities grow too. However, agricultural land cannot be further reduced, and production needs to answer a rapidly growing global population’s rising demand for food. Agriculture needs to evolve, and several solutions are available:
Virtual twin experiences can help design the best environment for plants to grow, and simulate farm operations without having to go through time-consuming real-life tests, thus improving overall efficiency.
With a growing population comes rising demand for a good quality of life. City environment must ensure a safe and nurturing environment for citizens by:
The city of tomorrow needs to be resilient to be durable, and can benefit from a virtual twin to experiment with new solutions before imposing them on the population.
Stakeholder engagement is a key element of sustainability in cities.
Cities need to find more efficient and effective ways to call on their inhabitants to participate in the definition of the city of tomorrow, to make sure that projects are optimized and to obtain citizen support.
Through student challenges, call for projects, collaborative participation and more, the improvement of our urban territories lies in the involvement of those who will benefit from it.
All around the world, companies uses Dassault Systèmes' solutions to improve sustainability in the cities. Find Urban sustainability examples below:
As part of its smart city blueprint, Hong Kong, China government wanted to establish a Common Spatial Data Infrastructure (CSDI).
Arup and Dassault Systèmes jointly proposed the 3DEXPERIENCE platform to optimize smart city operation and management.
Wanxiang Green Bus needed to manage product information, collect real-time battery cell data, exchange information with the national battery management platform for compliance, and closely monitor the status of the full production process.
The government of Singapore used Dassault Systèmes’ smart city offer called 3DEXPERIENCity® to create a dynamic, 3D digital model of the city and connect all stakeholders in a secure, controlled environment.
Sustainable cities are defined as urban centers shaped to improve our environmental impact and our quality of life and habitation within cities. Green urban planning and management enables smart cities to evolve to create greener and more sustainable urban ecosystems. To give just a few examples a resilient city and urban development are defined by: