Panel Contribution - Sustainability

In our future scenario, sustainability is a crucial facet, though it is more in a social sense than environmental. By focusing on the accommodation of a large number of pedestrians, social sustainability is a forefront in our set scenario as well as architectural opportunities. In this way of thinking, the term sustainability is brought back to its root definition of 'allowing something to continue,' which in this case is the fluid circulation of people despite the potential for massive influxes in population.

My individual architectural opportunity of vertical circulation (which will be described later in more detail) falls primarily under the category of social sustainability, as it provides an ongoing infrastructural requirement that aids in the necessary movement of large numbers of people, which will become an increasing concern as the population continues to rise. By supporting foot traffic rather than motorised vehicles, this can also be categorised as environmental sustainability due to the dis-encouragement of polluting methods of travel.

My research into the use of maglev trains can also be perceived as environmental sustainability for reasons mentioned in the previous post about their features. As these trains have much less of an impact on the environment as other commonly used methods of public transportation, they are establishing a move in the direction of sustainable thinking at a metropolitan scale. There is also, of course, the obvious point of the total ban of cars in the CBD that directly contributes to environmental sustainability as it results in a transition to more eco-friendly modes of transport.