Environmental performance of universities: Proposal for implementing campus urban morphology as an evaluation parameter in Green Metric

Over the last years, various sustainability evaluation tools for universities have been developed and have gained a certain diffusion. This paper reviews the applications of the most widespread university ranking index, Green Metric (GM) index, focusing on the analysis of its characteristics and its capability to assess how the campus urban morphology can affect the universities sustainability issues. Firstly, a new approach to classify University campuses, concerning urban morphology, was proposed by defining the Urban Morphology Index (UMI), which aims at classifying University campuses in homogeneous and comparable categories (compact campus VS diffuse campus). Then, an analysis of the 2016 GM index, supported by a comparison among data from literature and by analysing and comparing five case studies (Roma Tre University, Polytechnic of Turin, Aix Marseille University, Anglia Ruskin University and University of Nottingham), was carried out, showing how GM tool could penalize in terms of sustainability the diffuse campuses respect the compact ones. Finally, starting from a literature review of similar tools, in order to better evaluate the urban morphology effects in terms of sustainability rating, five new parameters (related to soil consumption, reuse of existing buildings, presence of existing public transport, public green areas and other services close to the universities) were proposed to be integrated in the GM tool.