What are the effects of urbanization towards local climate?

The recent drastic jeopardies caused by flooding, storms, hurricanes, etc., strongly suggests that human actions may be a huge influence towards the so called Global Warming. If we analyze the global economy development from 1950 to 2000, whose output increased from US$ 6 trillion to US$ 43 trillion and also establish a comparison to the CO2 released into the atmosphere, we will undoubtedly find some strong relations; in 1950 the carbon emissions reached 1.6 billion tons per year, whilst in totaled astonishing 6.3 billion tons in 2000. Not by coincidence, according to Lester Brown, the average air temperature has risen from 13.99℃ in 1969-71 to 14.43℃ in 1998-2000.

It is quintessentially obvious that something must be rethought or changed in our daily activities, however, how can we start a major change becomes a great issue. Under the definition of sustainable development, if for one hand we cannot deplenish the available resources for the coming generations, on the other hand we should also be able to satisfy our current needs.

It poses as a great challenge, because, if for one hand we must carefully consider ecological assets and how to better manage them and decrease the burden towards the environment, we must also provide means to sustain a responsible economical development which carefully considers environmental issues.

The prominent british architect Richard Rogers pointed out that buildings are responsible for 50% of world generation of CO2. It is a data that cannot be neglected and strongly suggests that architecture and also urban planning guidelines should be engendered in order to compell buildings to achieve a better efficiency performance.