Energetic and Environmental Impacts of the Urban Sprawl on Productive Oasis Land Around Cities in Arid Zones. The Case of Mendoza’s Metropolitan Area, in Argentina

ALEJANDRO MESA, MARIELA ARBOIT AND CARLOS DE ROSA

Santiago, Chile

Congreso; SET2007 - 6th International Conference on Sustainable Energy Technologies; 2007

Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Universidad del Bío Bío; Universidad de Nottingham, Inglaterra, Red de Universidades Eficiencia Energética

Mendoza’s Province northern oasis, in central–western Argentina, presents environmental features that are the result of long period of investment and labour. Nowadays they are menaced by the uncontrolled sprawl of the urban area. The present expansion of the urban area, following the demand’s requirements, is the cause of major problems due to disperse growth and are already present in the area: excessive soil use, growing requirements for service networks, larger consumption of energy used in transportation and the segregation or functional zoning, all contributing to social disintegration. To modify the city’s tendency to grow in an anarchic mode, irrationally exploiting resources and generally occupying valuable productive fields would be a fundamental step towards establishing urban development guidelines that would progressively correct the present trends, establishing the necessary theoretical basis, in order to consolidate a model of sustainable city. The present study evaluates the different present configurations of soil appropriation and their incidence, direct or indirect, within the universe of intervening variables, (dimensions and orientation of the gridiron, building morphology, green spaces and public urban forest, soil’s sealing, the features of urban edges and the environmental degradation produced at the interface of the natural and the man-made environment, among others) on the energy efficiency of the building stock and the availability of renewable energy resources in each urban environment.