ANALYSIS AND RECOMMENDATION

It is a reality that Europe is leading towards a shared and common vision of urban development. Despite the clear potential of urban areas for assisting the EU's economic, social and cultural development, the EU policy response has been slow and with a holistic approach. Cities and urban environments should have a more important part in the design and execution of EU policies and that decision making should reflect in a better way the urban reality. With around two thirds of all EU sectoral policies having an impact on Europe's towns and cities, the EU is dependent on them for their successful implementation and for achieving the Europe 2020 objectives of smart, sustainable and economic growth. Thus, it is impossible to meet the Europe 2020 objectives if sectors like environment or transport are put in isolation. In order to deliver the best result, should be ensured more effective coordination and collaboration between the decisions and policies referred to urban areas. Additionally, all the efforts including local, national and EU levels of governance should meet with the goal to deliver the best results. This can be achieved by developing a common framework of action an EU urban agenda. (C. van Lierop, EU 2015)

However, despite discussions for decades at intergovernmental level on coordination of urban related topics, progress remains limited. Cities have increasing difficulties in dealing with the effects of climate change (heat, heavy rainfall, etc.), congestion and air quality in cities is often deteriorating, urban poverty remains an issue, etc. To address these challenges, the city level needs to be better taken into account when designing and implementing EU policies.

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This chapter aims at proposing and offering a practical guideline with reference to urbanistic design approach, based on a comparison with other energy policies around Europe. The list of sectors analysed and proposed are based on the results and the hypothetical scenarios of this research that can be implemented in various urban complexes in the Mediterranean area which have similar climatic and geometrical characteristics as the two case studies presented in the urban complex of Athens, Greece.

In the urban environment it is extremely important to design outdoor spaces in a unified approach that interferes with the building surface. In cases where exist urban constraints due to dense built urban areas, the intervention is reduced to the level of the envelope of the buildings, (with green façade components or shading devices).Also the a the use of natural components have been regarded as key means to improve urban conditions in relation to both microclimate and reduction of pollutants.

Improvement of the ambient microclimate can be achieved and is proved on this research in the urban environment by the use of more appropriate materials, increased use of green areas, use of cool sinks for heat dissipation, appropriate layout

of urban canopies, etc., to counterbalance the effects of energy consumption’s

increase in the urban areas. Construction of new generating plants may help solving the energy generation to achieve nearly zero energy buildings but cannot consist in the sole options as far as it concerns the outdoor climatic issues. Adoption of measures to decrease the energy demand in the urban areas, like the use of more appropriate materials, increased plantation, use of sinks, etc., seems to be a much more reasonable option44_.

44_{Such a strategy, adopted by the Sacramento Municipal Utility District, (SMUD), has proved to be very effective and economically}

profitable, (Flavin and Lenssen, 1995). It has been calculated that a megawatt of capacity is actually eight times more expensive to produce than to save it. This because energy saving measures has low capital and no running cost, while construction of new power plants involves high capital and running costs.

As it was mentioned in previous chapter measurements developed by the Group Building Environmental Studies, have shown a dramatic higher temperature in the Central Athens area than in the Suburban areas by 10-15 °C. In the same research frame, research works developed within the frame of the Research Project POLIS in Athens (Ferrante et al., 1998) have showed some appropriate procedures to design the use of natural components such as green roofs and pedestrian permeable surfaces in the streets- within urban canyons. It is evident that microclimatic enhancements in urban scale involving water systems, planting of trees and lightening of colours in urban surfaces may be able to decrease pollution loads and save huge amounts of energy, improving consequently both indoor and outdoor comfort conditions. In such dense urban environment, where open free spaces among buildings or large courtyards are not always available the possible use of passive natural elements are necessary/. An urban energy concept has to address these problems investigating, at a smaller scale, the building envelope and the potential of selected passive techniques such as building materials and components, shading devices (including green ones such as pergola), low albedo surfaces, in order to minimize thermal discomfort both in the open spaces and into the buildings. Although it was showed in previous chapter, by analysing the results of the improvement of the microclimate that with the use of passive natural elements on the courtyards of Evripidou area, that locally there was demonstrated a reduction of temperature up to 5 C degrees.

This outcome should be under consideration for decision makers and planners that using new energy legislations, i.e. Law 4067/2012 art.10, analysed on previous paragraph on how unifying the courtyards and exploit it by the public could also increase the plot ratio and it could actually create a new urban reality if they are exploited and used thoroughly and properly.

In the dynamic scheme below it is shown a conceptual connection and the steps between the levels of interaction for a holistic approach on urban and building sustainability. The results of this research verify that by improving the microclimate of an urban area there is a significant decrease on the building energy demand on cooling during summer period.

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There is a big list of proposals on how to decrease the energy consumption of buildings in a city level. However, and according to this research perspective, the main concerns and technological ideas that may be well highlighted in priority are: