Urban Sustainable Development in the Mediterranean Area: The Case of Sestri Ponente, Genoa

In November 2014 a green façade was built in Sestri Ponente District, Genoa (Italy), on an office building owned by INPS. This area, which is characterized by a relatively high population density, faces important environmental issues, related to air pollution, stormwater management, urban heat island, etc.. The Department of Sciences for Architecture at the University of Genoa (Italy) is conducting a monitoring activity to evaluate the effectiveness of the green façade with regard to summer cooling, winter heating – in collaboration with RSE (Research on Energy System SpA) – air quality improvement, and economic and environmental sustainability. Starting from this fist pilot project a question arises: which would be the influence of vegetation at district scale? This article discusses the potentialities for urban sustainable development of the integration of green infrastructure. Simulations carried out with the software ENVI-Met demonstrate the potentialities of different amount of vegetation for the urban heat island mitigation. In addition also the possible stormwater runoff reduction was calculated. Such calculations are based on urban design projects developed for the area to evaluate the possible improvement of environmental quality due to the integration of green infrastructure