This dissertation argues that the pursuit of global environmental justice requires having a benchmark for achieving a self-sufficient urban sustainable design solution albeit with the understanding that such a benchmark may never be attained by urban designers fully. The past decade has seen a motivation to develop, apply and assess sustainable solutions through a comprehensive method for designing cities and their future. However, little has been done to focus on the needs of practicing designers. Regenerative design (RD) provides a strategic thinking for urban designers and a holistic view toward the self-sufficient cities, which shows a method to bridge the theory and conceptual basis with urban design practice. Urban regenerative design (URD) is an application of RD concept in urban design, defined as a process-oriented system method for urban designers to improve metabolic system and shape urban form of the city through (re)designing urban space. This dissertation proposes a framework of a design method based on find the best possible means of urban design to support the decision making via improving metabolic system and shaping urban form toward the self-sufficient cities to addresses two principal research questions:

1. How does URD contribute to the sustainability of the cities in the urban design process?
2. How can the framework be applied to achieve sustainable cities of the future?

The first part of this dissertation contextualizes two key concepts self-sufficient city and regenerative design (RD) in theory and existing literature. According to examining the routines to self-sufficient city, three resource-based design approaches have been listed to discuss the possible solutions of this research, which are designing the circular urban system to improve metabolic system, shaping sustainable urban form, creating sufficient urban space. Later, the state quo of methods and tools especially design-decision making support tools has been reviewed to examine the feasibility of application to the research.

The framework has been demonstrated in the transitional stages to address the challenges of design-decision support in practice the framework being generally presented contains four parts: Design scenario, Spatial prototype, Design alterative and Measurement. The key research methods applied in the framework are: 1) the improved UHA adopted to design self-sufficient metabolic system; 2) scenario analysis used to simulation and predict the orientation of urban design solutions; 3) prototyped-based modelling applied to represent the complexity of urban form; 4) Scenario modelling to evaluate the environmental performance of design solutions and orientations. After that, three focus of the framework have been discussed. Firstly, considering the scale of self-sufficiency, walking distance and scale of urban block, the scale of 1.5 km × 1.5 km is adopted as the research scale. Secondly, the indictors- water, organic waste, food, energy and GHG emission- are selected as the indictors to assess the metabolic flow of the framework. Thirdly, utilization of urban vacant space (UVS) acts a link to connect the benchmark of self-sufficiency with RD task under the complexity of urban context.

Using the improved Urban harvest approach (UHA), the dissertation attempts to close the metabolic loop by presenting scenarios of the sustainable future based on the indictors. Ultimately, the central aim of the scenarios is to allow design decision-makers to observe the simulation of the design potentials. Investigating the performance potential of design alternatives forms the next step of the dissertation. This entails looking into projects and practices of various design strategies and technologies, which influence sustainability performance directly. Specific urban contexts including climate, population, and living habits are considered to aid in the identification of the design alternatives that significantly influence urban performance based on specific design results.

This research seeks to convert information about an existing urban region into an editable and quantifiable prototype that can be visualized and represented using a typical, urban form of a specific city. The spatial prototype is developed to simulate the proposition of an edible environment measured through a quantitative analysis that can represent a local urban form. Various urban prototypes developed into rectangle grid systems using CAD software and visualized through three-dimensional representations are used for this research. This helps to extract information on the building scales, infrastructure, built forms and urban density involved.

Next, a “scenario modelling” method is chosen to implement, explore and evaluate a range of concrete possibilities based on a balance of broader criteria instead of a single criterion. Scenario modelling offers designers an opportunity to explore a range of distinctive design decisions and their possible results while having the appropriate knowledge to judge their professional preference.

This dissertation also incorporates case studies to provide empirical information, raise discussions on built and un-built projects and list and analyse the output and input of various strategies. Specifically, a practical case is selected – an eco-city which is known as Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-City (SSTEC) – to test the feasibility of the proposed model. The city of Beijing is also exclusively used as a case study and analysed based on five specific prototypes that are applied to the design scenarios explored earlier. The rationale for reviewing these cities is to provide a basis for discussing the exploration of future cities through the framework. This section of the dissertation culminates in the proposal of a design proposal of a future city. It also presents an in-depth discussion about potential urban growth, metabolic loop, decentralization, density, corridor development, public transport, and appropriate technology. The primary expectation is that the proposal of future cities provides one possible routine to improve the urban environment.

Resolving the first main research question leads to five inferences. Firstly, spatial prototyping of cities can help designers to face complex urban contexts. Secondly, urban metabolism can convert the irregular impacts of design alternative into qualifiable factors. Thirdly, (Re)designing UVS that improves urban resource flow can create better urban environment. Fourthly, the assessment of environmental performance parameters in scenario modelling can test their application of designs. The implementation of the framework in response to the second question will help designers to represent the spatial and visualized urban contexts. It will also provide designers with insights about the potential application of a series of design alternatives. With this, designers can better understand the opportunities for sustainable design and support the design scheme in a practical process. This would enable them to envision a new, future city model.