Urban Design

Some urban commuters have no choice but to take their car

An EPFL study shows that suburban commuters do not necessarily take environmental concerns into account when deciding whether to use their car. Many car commuters – especially those with hectic schedules – feel they have no other choice. That’s especially true when it comes to working mothers.

Better planning can reduce the urban heat island effect

In his PhD thesis, EPFL researcher Martí Bosch proposes a method for spatially quantifying the impact of mitigation measures – planting green spaces and using different building materials – on the urban heat island effect.

Attractive locations work like large planets

Using large-scale mobility data from diverse cities around the globe, researchers from ETH Zurich, MIT and the Santa Fe Institute discover a powerful yet surprisingly simple travel law that governs the number of visitors to any location in a city.

Pioneers of sustainable architecture

ETH Professor Emeritus Anne Lacaton and her partner Jean-Philippe Vassal have received this year’s Pritzker Prize for their social and sustainable architecture. The prize is regarded as the Nobel Prize of the architecture world. ETH celebrated this success on Wednesday with a virtual event of honour, which was attended by ETH President Joël Mesot as well as the two prize winners.

Rising energy demand for cooling

Climate-related temperature rises will further increase the cooling demand of buildings. A projection by Empa researchers based on data from the NEST building and future climate scenarios for Switzerland shows that this increase in energy demand for cooling is likely to be substantial and could have a strong impact on our future – electrified – energy system.

3D models to explore the future of urban digitization

A multidisciplinary Swiss team explored the future of urban digitization in its theoretical, technical, and legal dimensions by modeling the city of Sion with an innovative ScanVan.

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