What does a natural ecosystem do differently than the man-made world that surrounds us?
It is becoming increasingly clear that the consumption of resources now enjoyed in the developed nations will be impossible to be sustained worldwide. This paper is regarding the Urban Built Environment and how our day to day life impacts the surroundings. The vision of our research is to reduce environmental impact and mitigate resource depletion by closing resource cycles and achieving a circular (urban) metabolism. The research focuses on the integrati of technologies for sustainable urban water, materials and energy cycles. We evaluate new concepts for collection, transport, treatment, supply and use of energy, water and materials, which we consider as valuable resources and which qualities have to be preserved. The research includes small urban areas for which we aim at an optimal, sustainable and highly effective balance between supply and demand of water, energy and resources. We have tried to highlight the methods.
