Duurzame vernieuwing in naoorlogse wijken

The majority of human activities, including consumption, take place in urban areas. These activities are possible through the input and output of streams like energy, water, materials, goods and waste. Due to human activities citizens are often confronted with local environmental problems like air pollution, disturbing noise and odours and soil contamination. These experiences and influential reports uch as "The limits to growth" (1972), ''A World Conservation Strategy" (1980), "A Strategy for Sustainable Living'' (1991) and the " Rio declaration on Environment and Developmen''t (1992) have strengthened the idea that urban metabolism is growing out of proportion. In an attempt to focus the attention on the need to reduce global environmental pollution, the World Commission on Environment and Developmen (WCED) introduced the strategic concept of 'sustainable de elopment'. The WCED describes sustainable development as 'development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs'. Considering the amount of attention in the international literature, sustainable development is a successful concept. However, all this attention did not result in unanimous answers to questions such as: At what degree of pollutions should limits be set in order to avoid a irreversible degradation of the environment; which desires and aspirations are important; and who decides these matters. More important is that countries that committed themselves to sustainable development have paid attention to the question: How can we realise a substantial improvement of the environment? In the search for answers attention is also paid to the physical design of urban areas. At the start of this research it became clear that the majority of environmental efforts are taken during the development of new neighbourhoods. However most households live and work in urban areas designed in a period when environmental aspects, which today are considered as important, hardly received attention. To reduce the environmental load, it is also useful to analyse the possibilities, which arise in these urban areas.