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Student capstone and applied projects from ASU's School of Sustainability.

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The Kosovo Sustainable Settlement Redevelopment Program

Description
South Africa, like many countries of the Global South, has witnessed explosive growth in urban population in recent decades. In a post-apartheid time, the majority of urban growth has accumulated in densely populated informal settlements. These areas delivered poorly planed and constructed single unit housing lacking adequate and necessary services,…

South Africa, like many countries of the Global South, has witnessed explosive growth in urban population in recent decades. In a post-apartheid time, the majority of urban growth has accumulated in densely populated informal settlements. These areas delivered poorly planed and constructed single unit housing lacking adequate and necessary services, leading to increased economic and social exclusion in urban sprawl, with a need for full scale settlement redevelopment. The Kosovo Informal Settlement is one of the oldest and densest in Cape Town, South Africa, with a population of more that 26,000 in an area of 28 hectares. Kosovo is facing many challenges with poverty, hunger, poor health and sanitation, violence, environmental degradation, and fire and flood risks amplifying the necessity to hold priority in the redevelopment process. How can you provide urban upgrading and redevelopment and meet the needs of the community sustainably? The design of the Kosovo informal settlement redevelopment used multiple planning principles, which include space and movement systems, appropriate building sizing, sustainable infrastructure design and planning, building efficiency, and effective land use. Health, safety and security, community education and opportunities, and sustainable resource use must also be considered. Settlement land use can be developed for mixed-use opportunities such as community gardening, education, and training advancements to optimize access for employment options. The Kosovo Informal Settlement is a community with multiple opportunities for advancement in sustainable planning if the proper leadership, community participation and redevelopment stages are introduced and carried out effectively.
ContributorsAnsara, Nicolas (Author) / Mpahlwa, Luyanda (Contributor) / Cook, Edward (Contributor)
Created2017-03-16
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Construction and Demolition Waste Impact, Policy and Diversion

Description
Humans, throughout the world, build houses to live in and raise their families. The construction of houses and other buildings produces a large quantity of waste during this process. This waste is not necessarily biodegradable or derived from environmentally friendly materials. They often damage the environment causing pollution and contributing…

Humans, throughout the world, build houses to live in and raise their families. The construction of houses and other buildings produces a large quantity of waste during this process. This waste is not necessarily biodegradable or derived from environmentally friendly materials. They often damage the environment causing pollution and contributing to greenhouse gas emissions (Tam, V. W., & Tam, C. M, 2012). This type of waste is categorized as Construction and Demolition(C&D) waste. My culminating experience focuses on C&D waste and this summary is divided into three parts. In the first part, the report covers the impact of the C&D waste in sustainability. Considering the three pillars of sustainability the effect of C&D waste on these three pillars are analyzed. The second part is the policy analysis surrounding current C&D waste in cities within the states of Arizona, Oregon and California. This section also covers the current practices and impact that the policies have had in diverting C&D waste from landfill. The report features application of conceptual mapping to explore the issues surrounding C&D waste in the circular economy, and intervention points for waste diversion. The third part of this project focuses on a selected intervention point: Community engagement, and education. The report also discusses the processes and strategies applied to organize an event to create art from salvaged building supplies. Stardust celebrated their 20th year anniversary in April 2017. In collaboration with them, the “Salvage This” event was organized to engage with artists, to exhibit arts created from salvaged building supplies, and promote reuse concept in the community.
ContributorsParthasarathy, Soumya (Author) / Breetz, Hanna (Contributor)
Created2017-04-28
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Doughnut Hedonism: Can We Use the Double Dividend of Alternative Hedonism to Get Us Into the "Safe and Just Space" of the Doughnut Model?

Description

Globally we are struggling to match the need for development with the available resources. Kate Raworth’s (2012) developed the idea of a “safe and just space” as a balance between the planetary boundary approach and ensuring a level of basic needs satisfaction for everyone. O’Neill et al. (2018) argue that…

Globally we are struggling to match the need for development with the available resources. Kate Raworth’s (2012) developed the idea of a “safe and just space” as a balance between the planetary boundary approach and ensuring a level of basic needs satisfaction for everyone. O’Neill et al. (2018) argue that countries are currently not able to provide their populations with basic needs without concurrently exceeding planetary boundary measures. While attempts have been made to get people to change their habits through moral self-sacrifice, this has not been successful. Kate Soper (2008) argues that a change towards sustainability will only be possible if an alternative to high consumption is offered, without trade-offs in well-being. Technological improvements are often thought to end up providing solutions to the problem of overconsumption, but as Jackson (2005) shows convincingly, this is highly unlikely due to the overwhelming scale of changes required.

‘Alternative hedonism’ (Soper 2008) is a philosophical approach that has been proposed to solve this dilemma. By changing what humanity pursues to be less focused on consumption and more linked to community interaction and living healthy, fulfilling lives, we would simultaneously reduce stress on the globally limited resources and sinks. By developing and understanding satiation points – the point beyond which well-being no longer increases because of increased consumption - affluence that wastes resources without improving well-being could be reduced. This paper explores how ‘alternative hedonism’ and the development of ‘satiation points’ could be helpful in getting humanity closer to the ‘safe and just space’. The paper concludes with a discussion of some of the challenges that taking up of ‘alternative hedonism’ would entail.
ContributorsLilje, Markus (Author) / Abson, David (Contributor) / DesRoches, Tyler (Contributor) / Aggarwal, Rimjhim (Contributor)
Created2018-07-04