Browsing by Author "Duvenhage, Hein-Pierre"
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- ItemQualitative evaluation of key sectors of a future city(Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2022-04) Duvenhage, Hein-Pierre; Wium, Jan; Jurgens, Chris; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Engineering. Dept. of Civil Engineering.ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Cities are experiencing exponential growth and, at the same time, increasingly more problems are arising. Cities have dated infrastructure and depend on dated solutions that may have been appropriate in the past but do not align with future trends. The rate of innovation and degradation in today’s cities seem to run parallel. If cities are not urgently redesigned to reverse the trend of dated infrastructure, then innovation and economic growth could be hampered. Furthermore, cities are the most influential areas where economic growth and development occur, but more importantly, cities determine by orders of magnitude, whether the tipping point of climate change will be reached or not. Ensuring that cities of the future are prosperous bio-regions while safeguarding economic growth, is the primary goal. The global strive for sustainability and proliferating growth is compelling cities to adapt. However, cities of today are not designed to be flexible and some are not embracing the change fast enough. This study identifies and discusses three main sectors of a future city namely, energy, transport and layout. Critical problems within each sector were exposed and the aim of the study was to present a baseline framework containing proposed solutions to the identified problems. The collated holistic framework from which urban developers, governments and project sponsors can start the city design from, was also qualitatively modelled in a financial model to estimate possible viability of adoption. The framework is sufficiently flexible to adapt to market changes, new innovations and global affairs. The framework design is called the Ripple City framework and the model was benchmarked against the City of Cape Town in South Africa. Some key solutions addressed in this study include but are not limited to, electric vehicles, the Hyperloop system, green space, urban tunnels, renewable energy, microgrids and energy storage. The study proposes a new future orientated framework containing these key solutions with the reasoning that a new agile approach is required when envisioning how cities should be built. The study concludes that instead of overhauling current dating cities, this framework should first be used as the starting baseline for a new city built from the ground up. The results of the evaluated scenarios suggest that by building this Ripple City framework from the ground up could potentially reduce Green House Gas emission by 124 222 000 tons per annum. The results indicate possible Benefit Cost Ratio (BCR) of 6.3 for the Hyperloop system, a BCR of 13.9 for adopting non-motorised transport, a BCR of 9.5 for adopting green space and a 2.8 BCR for adopting autonomous electric vehicles. Furthermore, just over 1.9 million jobs could be generated, more than R32 trillion NPV (Nett Present Value) benefit could be realised from the layout proposals over 60 years and over R 1.4 trillion NPV in transport benefits over 20 years.