Designing the Ecological Urban Quarter and Shaping the Sustainable Form

The chapter shows how sustainable design principles can generate urbanity and how important to design sustainable urban quarters is to consider local historical, spatial and environmental parameters. In this chapter it is explored how sustainability can respond to any transformation of the urban environment. Furthermore, it is tackled sustainability about finding appropriate solutions at every scale of intervention from the context to the neighbourhood to the urban block. Sustainability needs to look to a wider urban environment understanding in order to create walkable communities and reinforcing public transport movement. Sustainability that needs to aspire to every natural element as Earth, Air, Fire and Water in order to create the design process, to solve complexity and to make the Urban Form. However, it can be helpful to develop a way of thinking and to create a coherent strategy to improve and exploit site opportunities by reducing the “environmental footprint of the site” and increasing the use of ambient energy sources. This is the way of thinking and it seems essential to provide a new inspiration for the challenge of sustainable urban quarters.