Londrina towards an eco-city future : a renewable energy and smart mobility symbiosis

As of 2008 more than fifty percent of the world’s population have been living in urbanised areas. Since this growth is expected to continue and once urban environments are bulk consumers of energy, water, land and materials, the dark path we witness today concerning problems of pollution, resource scarcity and climate change only tend to get worse. Following the research line of Ecosystem Approaches on Sustainable Urban Development, this work had, firstly, the overall objective of analysing the city of Londrina, Brasil, through the Eco-city spectrum under five main themes: People, Urban Form, Environment, Mobility and Energy, proposing strategies for a "greener" and "less tragic" future, such as: Polycentrism, Controlled Densification, Mixed-Use Walkable Neighbourhoods, Grey Water and Waste Recycling and Green Network of Parks, Community Gardens, Green Roofs and Eco-corridors. Secondly, going beyond that, its punctual aim was to assess the energy consumption - at a municipal scale - of its residential buildings "today" (using a top-down methodology to discover the consumption by each defined typology) and their consumption "tomorrow" (utilising a bottom-up approach of today’s consumption on the future typologies defined by the current Zoning City Plan), and, finally, counterbalancing those results with the appraisal of these buildings’ potential to adopt a massive Local Renewable Energy Production to sustain themselves and a new Smart Mobility Transportation System in two different future scenarios, 2020 and 2050. As a result, an Energy & Smart Mobility Master-plan was developed expressing its main guidelines for Distributed Generation of Renewable Energy Sources, Intermodal Efficient Public Transportation, Walkable streets and Slow mobility promotion. In conclusion the work permitted to identify that Londrina holds a huge potential for Solar Photovoltaic Generation and many additional eco strategies, however, economic and social problems seen in developing countries like Brazil, such as poverty and safety, are in the foundation of the change towards an eco-city future and need to be addressed at the center of the problem.