Applicability and Ecological Benefit Assessment of the Arcology Concept in Contemporary Urban Renewal

摘要

Contemporary urban renewal in high-density cities faces intertwined constraints including land scarcity, ecological degradation, and declining community vitality. Existing studies often focus on isolated technologies and lack an integrated evaluation approach that jointly considers ecological, spatial, and social outcomes. This study reframes Paolo Soleri’s Arcology concept and proposes an “Applicability–Benefit” assessment framework for high-density renewal scenarios. The framework integrates Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), building energy simulation, Space Syntax, POI-based functional mix analysis, and social perception mining. A simulation-based case study is conducted for a representative high-density historic district in China (the Zhangyuan area in Shanghai). Two alternative renewal scenarios are constructed: (i) a conventional incremental renovation scheme and (ii) an Arcology-inspired vertical integration scheme. Multi-source inputs (typical meteorological year data for energy simulation, planned POI program data, and publicly available social media texts) are used to evaluate the comparative performance under clearly stated assumptions. Results suggest that, relative to the conventional scheme, the Arcology-inspired scenario may achieve lower life-cycle carbon emissions (≈35% in this case setting) and higher land-saving potential (≈70% released ground area), while improving spatial integration and accessibility (≈25% in Space Syntax indicators). The study highlights the conditions and trade-offs under which Arcology-style renewal could provide ecological and socio-spatial benefits, and offers a quantifiable evaluation workflow to support scenario comparison in future high-density renewal projects.