An assessment of the national green building certificate in the context of urban renewal: The case of Fikirtepe

The design and construction of sustainable buildings has been the subject of debates in recent years. As buildings account for a very significant proportion of energy consumption, many countries, including the US, the UK and Germany, have taken action and as a result, concepts such as energy efficiency, building energy performance and environment friendly, sustainable buildings have become significant topics of building design and construction. In this context, building assessment (certification) systems, developed by each country according to their own specific conditions, for the efficient use of energy and other resources in buildings, are very important. Previous studies have discussed the necessity for adapting international assessment systems and creating a local system; one that corresponds to Turkey's own physical, economic and sociocultural conditions. Currently, a number of local assessment systems have been established for Turkey. When the building stock, which has been growing rapidly in line with recent urbanization policies, is considered in this context, it becomes clear that a common ground needs to be found between urban renewal and environmental sustainability principles, in order to realize Turkey's 2023 objectives, as specified in the report on the building sector entitled Climate change National Action Plan. By considering the mentioned issues the objective of this study is to focus on sites, such as urban renewal sites, where building construction tends to be concentrated and provide an environmental sustainability evaluation. It is planned that the assessments will be performed on housing buildings. The reason for this is that the share of housing buildings in Turkey in the construction sector has reached a share of 80% as of 2011. It is therefore believed that an improvement in energy performance in housing buildings will become rapidly visible in the industry in general. In the first part of the study, the concepts of environment and energy are discussed, and the concept of sustainability is reviewed in a historical context. Subsequently, the measures taken by various countries for improving the energy performance of buildings, which were given the large share of buildings, in terms of their energy consumption and national and international building certification systems, are discussed. The most well-known of these are the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED), the American system for evaluating green buildings the Building Research Establishment's Environmental Assessment Method (BREEAM), the United Kingdom's green building evaluation system; and the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Nachhaltiges Bauen e.V. (DGNB), the German green building evaluation system. Following these, we discussed the evaluation systems Turkey has developed specifically for its spesific conditions. These include the ÇEDBİK Housing Certificate, SEEB-TR and the Safe Green Building Certificate. In the ensuing process, we focused on the ÇEDBİK Residential Certificate, one of the assessment systems created in line with Turkey's spesific conditions, specifically selecting the Integrated Green Project Management, Energy Use and the Material and Resource Use sustainability criteria, in order to evaluate these criteria within the context of the nine main sections described in the certificate. Detailed information was then provided for these criteria. The reasons for selecting these three evaluation criteria in particular for this field study can be listed as follows: •To be able to make deductions regarding the energy consumption of the building industry in Turkey, it is first necessary to evaluate the design and construction processes. In this respect, criteria that include both of these processes have been taken into consideration. •The scoring system of the certificate also played a determining role in this respect. The category of energy use is the criterion that can receive the maximum rating in the certificate. The second criterion is the use of materials and resources. •In order to meet the requirements indicated in every sub-criterion, it is important to ensure the accessibility of the data that needs to be collected during the study. The second section of the study describes the definition, purpose and historical process of urban renewal. The environmental aspect of urban renewal is taken up, and its relationship with the concept of sustainability is consolidated. In this respect, it was explained that urban renewal should be seen as an opportunity and that, if applied by taking the local conditions of the region into account, the negative impact buildings have on the environment can be minimized. Following this, information was presented on the planning principles and objectives of the Kadıköy Fikirtepe Urban Renewal Project, which was the subject selected for examination in this study. The results of the observations made of the 134 hectare Fikirtepe planning area revealed that the area, which previously had a grid plan type with typically two to three storey buildings, was transformed into an area with multi-storey, luxurious residential buildings of up to 80 meters in height, called residences. However, even though construction of these buildings only began recently, there is no data regarding the environmental impact of the design and construction processes of these buildings. The third part of this study is the assessment of the current situation in Fikirtepe, where multi-storey residential buildings are planned, with regards to the incorporation of the environmental aspects of renewal into the design and construction processes, by using the national green building assessment system. In this context, ten projects in the area, all in the construction phase, were selected for examination using the three sustainability criteria specified in the certificate. As the selected projects are current as of the year 2016, the main contractors carrying out their construction requested that information, including the project name, identification number, are not disclosed. For this reason, the projects were mentioned as "MSH 1, 2, 3 ...", where MSH is an abbreviation of multi-story housing. Interviews were performed with the stakeholders of the design and construction processes for the data acqusition During the interviews, two separate questionnaires were used for the project teams and contractor companies.The first step in developing the survey forms involved an examination of the scope and requirements of the subject defined in the certificate. In this context, In this context, we established to which design and construction process or processes each criterion was related. An assessment was made to determine which questions should be asked to which stakeholders, after which the survey forms were finalized. Closed-ended and multiple-choice questions were preferred for the surveys whenever possible. This facilitated the evaluation process. By using the colleceted data, an assessment was made on the basis of whether the projects met the conditions of the certificate at the level of the individual criteria, and the results were presented using graphs and tables. It was found that the ten projects under examination had shortcomings in terms of environmental sustainability. The results are given under the three relevant main sections (or headings) of the certificate. With regards to the integrated green project management: •It was observed that the stakeholders carrying out the design and construction processes generally adopted and embraced the integrated project activity. This can be understood from the differences in the responses given by both stakeholders to the same project. •It was observed that there was no plan prepared or implemented with regards to environmental management and waste management, especially in the construction processes of the projects. •There were difficulties in adapting and applying some of the criteria defined in the certificate to the region. In this respect, it was seen that the certificate did not fully comply with the local conditions. With regards to energy use: •It was determined that in the projects examined, no dynamic simulation programs were being used to measure the performance of the heating, cooling and lighting systems. •The Ministry's incentives and sanctions aimed to encourage the use of renewable energy systems and the purchase of green energy from outside the area were largely insufficient. With regards to the use of materials and resources: •It was observed that recycled materials are generally not preferred for the buildings' construction. This leads to the unnecessary consumption of resources and adversely affects the environment. •The service life of the structural components used in the building envelope were found to be inadequate. •It was observed that the criteria of "benefitting from existing building components" defined in this section of the certificate was not being adapted or implemented in the Fikirtepe region. Due to the stock of low-quality buildings in the area, it is widely believed that there are no suitable materials available in the region that could be used in the construction of new buildings. Based on the results of the assessment, it was concluded that the renewal and regeneration activities in the region suffer from many problems and is characterized by various issues and shortcomings in their implementation. The proposals in order to overcome these shortcomings are listed as follows: •stakeholders in design and construction processes should adopt integrated project management, •relevant ministry inspections regarding energy efficiency and material and use of resources should be improved, •state incentives for renewable energy sources should be increased, •in urban renewal sites, which would serve as pilot sites, the national certificate should be mandatory and the widespread use of the certificate should be implemented, •in the context of housing sales, a low-credit system should be developed specifically for environmentally-friendly buildings, and the use of these buildings should be encouraged, •In addition to obtaining the Energy Performance Certificate that is already requested during the licensing process of large-scale projects, dynamic simulation methods that enable a more detailed analysis of building energy performances should be used, •environmental awareness should be increased among the users of buildings, starting with the private sector. For future studies, the sustainability criteria of the ÇEDBİK Residential Certificate can be reconsidered within the context of "suitability for local conditions." In addition, to be able to perform a comprehensive assessment regarding the life-cycle of buildings, it will be preferable to also examine the sections/headings of the certificate other than the three examined in this study.