Environmental and econonomic Life Cycle Assessment of street in residential areas in Mendoza, (Argentina) buil whit different paving materials

PABLO ARENA; ERICA CORREA; CARLOS DE ROSA

Toulouse, Francia

Conferencia; PLEA 2002. The 19th Conference on Passive and Low Energy Architecture; 2002

“The construction and use of streets is an activity which requires huge amounts of materials with heavy environmental impacts, like bitumen and concrete, together with the use of heavy machinery for the preparation of the base, the transportation, movement and placing of materials. The incidence of this activity in the urban area is very high, and will continue to grow as the urbanization phenomenon will do. Today, the streets occupy 15,9 % of the urban area with traditional gridiron, while in typical social dwelling areas the total area occupied by streets rise up to 22,6 %. In developing countries, where the urban areas are growing much faster than in the rest of the world, there is an urgent need for identifying the best alternatives for street constructions from the sustainability viewpoint, that is, taking care of the environment while keeping the cost as low as possible. In this work, two different paving materials widely used in the region are compared from the environmental point of view, using Life Cycle Assessment as a tool. The alternative materials are Hot Mix Asphalt and concrete. To assess the economic aspects, a Life Cycle Costing approach has been used”. Key words: paving materials, bitumen, concrete, Life Cycle Assessment, Life Cycle Cost.