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A. Mahdavi, R. Ries, K. P. Lam:
"Enviromental Implications of Alternative Settlement Patterns";
Planews, The Journal of the Singapore Institute of Planners, 16 (1998), 65 - 71.

A comprehensive evaluation of the environmental implicatons building construction and operation cannot be carried out as long as the analysis domain is limited to individual buildings. Rather, the region and context in which buildings are to be located must be considered. To demonstrate this point, we specifically compare in this paper two distinct patterns of settlement in view of their environmental implications. The first pattern involves a suburban residential component, with offices, retail, and entertainment located in downtown as well as in suburban malls and office parks. The dominant mode of transportation is in this case private and individual. The second pattern involves a mix-use compact urban setting with a predominantly public mode of transportation. To capture environmental impact, we focus on land use, as well as energy consumption and loads to water and air resources due to construction and operation of buildings and infrastructures. The comparison is performed using an original computational tool (ECOLOGUE).