Urban Form and Energy Resilient Strategies: A Case Study of the Manhattan Grid

The Manhattan grid is known as a testing ground of high-density urban development from the 19th century onward. Its urban form model and regulatory zoning mechanisms provide lessons for global cities in shaping their urban skylines. This chapter describes the physical form and processes that have established and characterize Manhattan’s grid, focusing on the grid as a generator and framework for growth. A performance-based urban energy model is used to examine the potential for energy self-sufficiency within the current urban form structure of the Manhattan grid. To make the city more energy resilient, a transformative approach is proposed that centers on the implementation of a performance-based model of urban design, which enhances urban resiliency at the neighborhood level. The concept of panarchy is applied to address complex systems problems such as energy resiliency in cities. To design an energy resilient urban system, it is important to define a community-level action and a medium-scale framework, which allow effective systems integration and coordination among stakeholders. The framework of urban design accommodates finer-scale, bottom-up eco-initiatives, which enable agile responses to unpredictable events, such as climate-induced disasters and environmental changes.