The Urban Land Use Planning Laboratory explores ways to address issues such as climate change, disaster prevention and mitigation, population decline, and super-aging society through the formation and maintenance of living spaces that extend beyond cities and towns. One of the research themes that we have been focusing on recently is the study of climate change mitigation and adaptation measures in the field of urban planning.
With regard to mitigation measures, the Mitsui Fudosan UTokyo Lab is engaged in the study and development of a “sustainability evaluation system focused on the carbon neutralization of districts” as part of its research. This system utilizes the “carbon mapping” method, which visualizes the source and status of carbon emissions in a district based on data related to buildings and transportation. It aims to perform simulations to help reduce operational carbon dioxide emissions through energy conservation, energy creation, energy storage in urban development strategies, including building and public space renewal, introduction of local transportation measures, and improvement of urban infrastructure. In addition, the lab works on evaluating the district from a sustainability perspective not just from the perspective of carbon emissions and explores its challenges and possibilities.
Regarding adaptation measures, the lab is working on the prediction of climate change impacts on local land use and urban environments as well as a study and evaluation of sustainable rehabilitation policies as a sub-theme of its comprehensive research on climate change impact prediction and adaptation assessment. As a result, this will help establish methods to develop future climate change and socioeconomic scenarios for municipal land use planning and urban environmental improvement on a district level. Impact forecasts and adaptation measures for heat, flood, sediment, wind, energy consumption, biodiversity, and infectious diseases will also be examined and evaluated.
This lab will continue to research how municipal land use planning and district urban environmental development should respond to the global challenge of climate change.
