IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v11y2019i14p3815-d247699.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Urban Form Compaction and Energy Use Intensity in New Social Housing Neighborhoods in the UAE

Author

Listed:
  • Khaled Galal Ahmed

    (Emirates Center of Energy and Environment Research, United Arab Emirates University, Al Ain 15551, UAE)

  • S. M. Hossein Alipour

    (Architecture Engineering Department, College of Engineering, United Arab Emirates University, Al Ain 15551, UAE)

Abstract

With increasing global awareness of sustainable development, federal and local authorities in the UAE have developed agendas for energy efficiency in all development sectors, especially for buildings and urban development. With the belief that urban form is integral to urban sustainability, several recently developed single-family social housing neighborhoods in the UAE have shifted from conventional sprawling urban forms to more compact ones. Unfortunately, the impact of this shift on operational and cooling energy use intensities (EUIs) is unknown. Adopting a comparative computational method, this study investigates the effect of compact urban morphologies on EUIs. In addition to a case study representing conventional urban sprawls, six recently designed housing neighborhoods in Abu Dhabi, Dubai, and Al Ain were selected to represent new compact urban forms. This study uncovered an inconsistent relationship between floor area ratio (FAR) and average housing operational and cooling EUIs. To justify these results, the effects of increased lot coverage area, street grid patterns, building configurations, and climate zone on operational and cooling EUIs were studied, and all except climate zone were proven effective. This study concludes that the current design philosophy of compacting the urban form has not successfully met the Emirates Green Building Council’s (GBC) sustainable operational EUI benchmark of 90 kWh/m 2 /y. While further urban compactness (i.e., increased FARs) is needed, the other urban morphological measures examined in this study should be considered for achieving a more sustainable urban form for social housing.

Suggested Citation

  • Khaled Galal Ahmed & S. M. Hossein Alipour, 2019. "Urban Form Compaction and Energy Use Intensity in New Social Housing Neighborhoods in the UAE," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(14), pages 1-24, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:11:y:2019:i:14:p:3815-:d:247699
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/14/3815/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/14/3815/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Yu Sun & Elisabete A. Silva & Wei Tian & Ruchi Choudhary & Hong Leng, 2018. "An Integrated Spatial Analysis Computer Environment for Urban-Building Energy in Cities," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(11), pages 1-19, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.

      Corrections

      All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:11:y:2019:i:14:p:3815-:d:247699. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

      If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

      If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

      If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

      For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

      Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

      IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.