- Sustainable urban planning in Toledo: A case study through a holistic energy approach    1007 kb by    Barreiro, Eneritz & Perea, Eugenio & Romero, Ander | aromero@labein.es    Short Outline A methodology for the design of sustainable and energy efficient communities is presented. This methodology is applied in the different stages of the urban planning process in a real case study. The case study is a community placed in Toledo (Spain). Abstract In Europe, the residential-institutional-commercial sector is responsible for almost 41% of the total final energy consumption. Though there are many initiatives towards the reduction of energy consumption in buildings many of them are inefficient due to a lack of a holistic approach in the planning, design, and building stages. In this context, this study reports a new methodology to achieve more sustainable neighbourhoods and communities. The aim is to minimize final energy demand and optimize the energy generation in cost-effective and environmental terms. The proposed integrated methodology evaluates energy efficiency and sustainable solutions at different stages, during the planning and building processes of both neighbourhood and buildings. The evaluation process enables on its´ first phase the selection of the best alternatives to minimize the community energy demand. In a second phase, the energy generation and management system facilities are dimensioned according to different uses patterns. In order to validate the methodology, it is applied in a real case study. The case study is a community of 46-hectare located in Toledo (Spain). Keywords Urban Planning, sustainability, enegy efficiency, ecocommunity, microgrids Case Study presented on the ISOCARP Congress 2009: Low Carbon Cities   Click to open the full paper as pdf document   Click to send an email to the author(s) of this paper