Yaakov Garb

Post-Occupancy Evaluation: An Inevitable Step Toward Sustainability

Abstract Post-occupancy evaluation (POE) is a platform for the systematic study of buildings once occupied, so that lessons may be learned that will improve their current conditions and guide the design of future buildings. Various aspects of the occupied buildings’ functioning and performance can be assessed in a POE, both chemo-physical (indoor environment quality (IEQ), indoor air quality (IAQ) and thermal performance) as well as more subjective and interactional (space use, user satisfaction, etc.). POE draws on an extensive quantitative and qualitative toolkit: measurements and monitoring, on the one hand, and methods such as walk-throughs, observations and user satisfaction questionnaires on the other. POE may seem a necessary, indeed, axiomatic phase of the design and construction process, and exactly the kind of integrated assessment essential for the design of more sustainable buildings. Yet POE researchers have often been regarded with suspicion and even hostility, since their work may cause friction between different stakeholders. This chapter reviews material published in recent years in an attempt to trace the emergence of POE, describe its conceptual and methodological backdrop, its interaction with other issues related to sustainable design, and its increasing ‘canonization’ as a method. We argue that POE offers the potential to integrate a range of fragmented aspects of the construction process and of the relations of buildings to their environment and users. We propose that the acceptance of POE as a mandatory step in the design and commissioning of buildings, whose results are habitually fed backward and forward to other stages of the design and construction processes, is an important and probably inevitable step toward making buildings more sustainable.

Evaluating the Environmental Literacy of Israeli Elementary and High School Students

The authors conducted a national survey of 6th- and 12th-grade students in Israel to evaluate their environmental literacy, including the dimensions of environmental knowledge, attitudes, and behavior. In this article, the authors present the results of the survey, the correlations between these different dimensions, and their associations with demographic and experiential data. The authors did not find a significant correlation between knowledge and behavior. Ethnic and socioeconomic characteristics were moderately associated with environmental literacy, whereas the presence of an adult who mediated childrens relation to nature was strongly related to environmental attitudes and behavior and weakly related to knowledge. The results suggest that the intended objectives of environmental education in Israel have not been achieved. The authors call for additional research to identify ways to improve environmental education in the Israeli public schools.

An assessment of regional constraints, needs and trends

This article briefly reviews regional constraints and trends, among them environmental climatic and social ones, existing and developing in the regions of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and which should affect planning, design and construction policies and practices. It reviews the current state of legislation regarding energy and other green building issues, as well as the various voluntary tools which are being promoted in the region. This paper concludes that the pace of building practices adaptations is far from meeting the pace of needs and constraints. The repercussions on the livability of buildings and settlements, and the survivability and resilience potential of communities in the arid regions of MENA, may well be at risk. Thus, for many countries in the region, green building (and the standards that encourage this) is not a luxury of developed countries, which they might adopt in the future once more pressing constraints are eased, but, rather, a critical development goal to lessen these constraints and allow a viable path into such a future.

Environmental Problems, Causes, and Solutions: An Open Question.

In a national evaluation of environmental literacy in Israel, (Negev, Sagy, Garb, Salzberg, & Tal, 2008), the authors included both multiple choice questions and open questions. In this article the authors describe the qualitative analysis of the answers to an open question regarding a local environmental problem. Most participants specified solid waste, open spaces, or air pollution as the main issues. The perceived solutions were generally at the governmental level, including planning, infrastructure, legislation, and enforcement. The authors describe relations in these responses between the problems, their causes and solutions, and between the quality of these answers and the general environmental literacy of the participants. The authors end with a discussion of the special contributions and potential of open-ended questions for environmental education research.

Contradictions in end-of-life decisions for self and other, expressed by relatives of chronically ventilated patients

OBJECTIVES In certain populations, social, legal, and religious factors may influence end-of-life decisions in ventilator-dependent patients. This study aims to evaluate attitudes of first-degree relatives of chronically ventilated patients in Israel, toward end-of-life decisions regarding their loved ones, themselves, and unrelated others. MATERIALS AND METHODS The study was conducted in a chronic ventilation unit. First-degree family members of chronically ventilated patients were interviewed about their end-of-life attitudes for patients with end-stage diseases. Distinctions were made between attitudes in the case of their ventilated relatives, themselves, and unrelated others; between conscious and unconscious patients; and between a variety of interventions. RESULTS Thirty-one family members of 25 patients were interviewed. Median length of ventilation at the time of the interview was 13.4 months. Most interviewees wanted further interventions for their ventilated relatives, yet, for themselves, only 21% and 18% supported chronic ventilation and resuscitation, respectively, and 48% would want to be disconnected from the ventilator. Interventions were more likely to be endorsed for others (vs self), for the conscious self (vs unconscious self), and for artificial feeding (vs chronic ventilation and resuscitation). Interviewees were reluctant to disconnect patients from a ventilator. CONCLUSIONS Family members often want escalation of treatment for their ventilated relatives; however, most would not wish to be chronically ventilated or resuscitated under similar circumstances. Advance directives may reconcile peoples wishes at the end of their own lives with their reticence to make decisions regarding others.

Green building standards as socio-technical actors in municipal environmental policy

ABSTRACT Methods for the environmental assessment and certification of ‘green’ buildings are increasingly being adopted by local governments and other entities as a means of meeting environmental, and often energy-related, goals. Literature on building environmental assessment has examined how these tools are interpreted by stakeholders in design and construction, but less attention has been paid to their interpretation and usage as objects of policy – despite this being a channel through which they have a potentially huge impact. Based on a case study of the emergence of green building in Israel, and drawing on socio-technical literatures, this paper explores the meanings attributed to building environmental assessment in the policy context. It finds that these meanings include a platform for divergent environmental goals and a proxy measure for greenhouse gas abatement. The analysis suggests that for policy-makers, the significance of green building lies not in its constituting a set of environmental benchmarks but as a standard that gains currency as a black-boxed policy object. An open discussion is needed on the various logics driving the use of green building tools in public policy, and what they hope to achieve.

Green Building Standards in MENA: An assessment of regional constraints, needs and trends

The paper reviews briefly regional constraints and trends in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), among them environmental climatic and social ones, which should affect planning, design and construction policies and practices. It reviews the current state of legislation regarding energy and other green building issues, as well as the various voluntary tools which are being promoted in the region. Covering 20 countries (from Turkey to Yemen, from Morocco to Iran), and based on over 150 documents in Arabic, English, French, Turkish and Hebrew, the paper concludes that the pace of building practices adaptations is far from meeting the pace of needs and constraints. The repercussions on the liveability of buildings and settlements, and the survivability and resilience potential of communities in the arid regions of MENA, may well be at risk. Thus, for many countries in the region, green building (and the standards that encourage this) are not a luxury of developed countries, which they might adopt in the future once more pressing constraints are eased, but, rather, a critical development goal to lessen these constraints and allow a viable path into such a future.

Environmental Hazards of Waste Disposal Patterns—A Multimethod Study in an Unrecognized Bedouin Village in the Negev Area of Israel

ABSTRACT The Bedouin of the Negev region of Israel are a formerly nomadic, indigenous, ethnic minority, of which 40% currently live in unrecognized villages without organized, solid waste disposal. This study, using both quantitative and qualitative methods, explored the transition from traditional rubbish production and disposal to current uses, the current composition of rubbish, methods of waste disposal, and the extent of exposure to waste-related environmental hazards in the village of Um Batim. The modern, consumer lifestyle produced both residential and construction waste that was dumped very close to households. Waste was tended to by women who predominantly used backyard burning for disposal, exposing villagers to corrosive, poisonous, and dangerously flammable items at these burn sites. Village residents expressed a high level of concern over environmental hazards, yet no organized waste disposal or environmental hazards reduction was implemented.

The Environment in Successive Regional Development Plans for Israel's Periphery

The Negev, Israels southern region, is mostly an arid desert and constitutes more than 60% of the countrys territory. As in other dryland regions, population size is relatively small, comprising only 9% of Israels total population. Planning policies in Israel for the past 60 years rarely express a bottom-up approach, but rather a centralized approach to development, derived from national ideology and the needs of a nascent state. This paper describes the place of the environment and sustainability criteria over three eras of planning the development of the Negev region. This region is one of the most challenging areas in Israel in terms of socio-economic conditions, its multi-cultural population, as well as its geographically and ecologically diverse environments. Here we illustrate a transition in relation to the planning bureaucracy to the environment: from obliviousness to rational planning to pseudo-sustainability. Thus, there is a clear tendency of the official planning institutions as well as the out-sourced governmental initiatives to increasingly pursue a more sustainable approach that seeks to integrate environmental consideration within planning processes. At the same time, however, we show the degree to which these processes are still deficient in their lack of a coherent environmental strategy and implementation by the government and its agents, and in the lack of conceptual and material resources for an integrated treatment of the Negevs social, economic and environmental problems.

The impact of retail deconcentration on travel to hypermarkets in Prague

This chapter provides the first comprehensive examination of the impact of retail decentralization on shopping travel and visitation patterns in post-communist Prague. Based on surveys of the current and prior shopping patterns reported in 2001 by shoppers in four recently opened hypermarket malls, the analysis shows how the transition to hypermarkets has affected shopping behaviour, and provides a detailed picture of current shopping trips, including an estimate of their contribution to total travel, and a multivariate analysis of the factors shaping trip length, mode, and frequency. The policy implications of these findings within the broader Central-European context are discussed