Design for Rethinking Resources

For architects and urban designers working on sustainable urban projects and aiming to integrate UN SDG frameworks, a broader set of methods and practices is required than those that have traditionally been part of the discipline. To apprehend and evaluate sustainable development project goals and impacts, a collaborative and systems-oriented design approach is required to situate design within its broader complex of networks and processes and to expand project priorities and interventions to operate in multiscalar and integrated ways.  RVTR's contribution, Sustainable (Re) Development In Post Industrial City Regions: Centering circular systems of Food, Energy, Water, and Waste, a case for Detroit describes a framework that evaluates the Food Energy Water (FEW) Nexus across scales from Region (Great Lakes Megaregion), to State (Michigan), to the City of Detroit to illuminate issues of equity and access across FEW domains while aiming to leverage circular systems towards more just and sustainable urban futures. Working with stakeholders in Detroit, the project illustrates a design-based methodology and strategies to enhance circular synergies, reduce waste flows, and evaluate proposal impacts based on C02e per capita in the resulting urban design schemes. Quantification of systemic impacts alongside visualizations of resulting building and urban configurations, engineering components, and public space design are presented. Lessons from Detroit offer portable strategies for other post-industrial cities and urban centers where issues of equity and access to food systems are pressurized.

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