Relating the Metrics and Indicators of the Living Building Challenge and Urban Ecosystem Services for Regenerative Design

Abstract

Design has great potential in city transformations for human well-being and balanced ecological systems. The urban ecosystem services approach is a benchmark for the highest levels of ecological performance, and the Living Building Challenge is the most demanding architecture certification system. Indeed, these approaches may be a way to integrate ecological processes in cities through regenerative design. Therefore, this chapter aims to quantify environmental strategies and define metrics and indicators to achieve the regenerative pattern for transforming cities. A literature review has been made to identify the state of the art of the urban ecosystem services indicators. In the meantime, the requirements of the Living Building Challenge 4.0 for architectural design were considered. Thereby, an analysis has been made to assess the Living Building Challenge criteria in relation to the urban ecosystem services indicators. The two approaches were correlated in order to identify the urban ecosystem services that are addressed by the Living Building Challenge and how they are quantified. From the synergies among these approaches, eight urban ecosystem services categories were created as a design framework. The proposed framework may support and facilitate the design process as it reduces the number of variables without diminishing the requirements for the provision of ecosystem services. The analysis reveals that both approaches can facilitate the implementation of actions aimed at regenerative design when considered together. The environmental metrics and indicators defined for regenerative projects propose a solution to quantify strategies to improve the human-nature relation in cities.