STEPS TOWARDS THE SUSTAINABLE FUTURE CITY

BY PETER NEWMAN
Professor of City Policy, and Director, Institute for Science and Technology Policy, Murdoch University

Introduction
Automobile technology: cleaning up the car
Economic instruments: getting the prices right
Planning mechanisms: reducing the need for cars
The 'Future' Nodal/Information City

The first step...
The second step...
The third step...
The fourth step...

References

Introduction

Three general approaches are taken generally to managing the automobile - technological improvements, economic instruments and planning mechanisms. These will be briefly analysed before showing how we can take steps toward planning a sustainable city.

Automobile technology: cleaning up the car

Many of the problems outlined earlier are amenable to some technological improvements. For example much of the investment in improving urban air quality in the world has been in reducing car emissions. US approaches to the problems of the automobile have concentrated on the technology (e.g. Altshuler et al., 1979, 1984; MacKenzie, 1994). Civilising the car through technological advances is part of the solution but increasingly it has been seen as insufficient as the sheer volume of cars overwhelms cities.

Despite doubling in fuel efficiency for new cars between 1973 and 1988 the US increased oil consumption by 20% and by 1995 was 35% dependent on oil imports. In Australia despite 35 years of rhetoric that vehicle efficiency would solve the problems of the car, there has been no gain in fleet average fuel efficiency. Figure 1 below shows the trend.

As outlined, heavy oil dependence is a significant threat to the sustainability of many cities as we move to the end of the 'golden century of oil' (Campbell, 1991). And now we must face up to planning for reduced greenhouse gases, which in a time of continuing urban population growth and the need for the very poor to be given some chance to develop, does not seem possible to achieve by technology alone.

The sheer space consumption of cars is not dealt with by better technologies. For example, it has been estimated that for every car added to a US city, about 8 parking spaces are required (Hart, 1990). This will be the same for electric vehicles as gas guzzlers, except that parking spaces may be a little smaller.

Engineers will need to do their bit for sustainability but the problem with over emphasising this solution is that so little conscience is directed to the myriad other problems (Sperling, 1995).

The problem with technological solutions is that they invariably forget the Jevons principle. This principle was first enunciated by the economist Jevons in 1865 who predicted that making coal burning more efficient would lead to more coal use as the efficiencies would lead to more economic uses of coal. In transportation, it is not sustainable if new super efficient motor vehicles are merely used to travel more. It really should be no surprise that people use cars more when they are made more efficient. From this perspective it is only feeding the bigger problem of automobile dependence.

Economic instruments: getting the prices right

Policy makers everywhere are attempting to reduce car use and dependence by ensuring that users pay properly for its use (Kageson, 1993; Moffet, 1991). Many studies in different parts of the world as outlined in chapter 2 have found that the subsidy provided to the car is around US$4,000 per vehicle per year for the roads, parking, health costs, pollution costs and so on. From this perspective it is clear that the 'car is on welfare'. Even people as involved in the industry as the ex Vice President of General Motors have recognised that car users do not pay their way (Johnson, 1994).

It is good economics to ensure that people pay for these costs but it is very difficult politics. Whilst an essential part of any long term strategy, large increases in fuel cost or parking charges are not easily introduced and have immediate equity impacts. In an automobile dependent city many people and firms will just pay more causing inflation and hardship. So in general, taxing the car is rarely on the political agenda.

Sustainability cant wait long enough for brave politicians. Those advocating that the car pay its way need to adopt a more appealing and positive strategy. Other choices for travel need to be provided along with a phasing in of true costs. Singapore is a good example of a handful of places which have simultaneously introduced severe economic restrictions on car ownership and use, whilst dramatically improving transit and more recently, good walking environments.

The Scandinavian countries are also doing more about pricing vehicle usage more effectively but they again have other options to provide people who drive and may be induced by prices to change their patterns of behaviour (OECD/ECMT, 1996).

The problem with commentators like Elmer Johnson and other US economists is that they do not offer anything else to go with their economic solution. It is therefore easily interpreted to mean 'get the poor people off our roads'. With no other options provided the increased cost of driving can only be punitive and regressive. It sometimes seems like they are suggesting this option because they can be seen to be addressing the issue and hence are showing good corporate citizenship. But perhaps they know that it will never be implemented and hence car dominance will continue.

On the other hand, they may simply be presenting the economic approach because they know of no other policy options. This policy vacuum has begun to be filled by those advocating planning mechanisms (OECD/ECMT, 1996).[1]

Planning mechanisms: reducing the need for cars

Despite widespread cynicism that you cannot control the car there is a growing awareness of the need for non automobile dependent planning (Newman, Kenworthy and Vintila, 1995). The rest of this chapter is mostly based on the key approaches for planning a more sustainable city with inherently reduced automobile dependence.

As will be seen in the Case Studies (chapter 5) and planning principles in this chapter, there are many cities implementing plans to reduce automobile dependence. They are not usually labelled by any generic planning philosophy although they invariably relate to ‘sustainability’ in the titles of their plans. However in the US the New
Urbanism has become the title around which a lot of new urban planning to reduce automobile dependence has developed.

The New Urbanism is a movement that incorporates the need to expose car dependent assumptions in town planning rules and fashions; it orients instead around a transit system and attempts to create walking environments through denser, more mixed land use, car-free street facades and other design qualities (Katz, 1994; Calthorpe, 1993; Duany and Plater-Zyberk, 1991). There is a long way for these developments to go as nearly all examples of New Urbanism in the US have been on the urban fringe and have no transit option. They are often criticised as their idealism does not match their outcomes. But New Urbanism is rediscovering how planning and design can better incorporate less automobile dependent land use, particularly the layout of streets and the orientation of buildings to the street as well as density and mix (see more in 4.3.3) and there is little doubt that if transit systems are built and reurbanisation on a large scale emerges, then it will be New Urbanism guidelines and practices that will be used to create less car dependent options in US cities. Even on the urban fringe New Urbanist developments which are denser and incorporate mixed land use (with a focussed town centre) can significantly reduce car use compared to normal scattered suburbia. This occurs because the journey to work is only 30% of travel so that if local services can be provided then local trips can replace many cross city trips.

The political imperative to overcome the negative aspects of automobile dependence as a part of the sustainability agenda is now appearing in all cities including those in the developing world (Laquian,1993). The OECD, the ECE , the UN and the World Bank have all begun to recognise this and are stressing how transportation funding needs to be more critically evaluated (Kreimer et al 1993, Serageldin and Barrett, 1993). This is particularly poignant in the cities of developing countries where traffic issues are so obvious. But in a globally connected world the reduction of auto dependence (and its associated energy, greenhouse and air pollution) is also an issue of international agreements where the major responsibility is on the developed world to set a lead. As shown before, this is where the majority of automobile dependence can be found, and where (particularly in the US) the largest growth in absolute terms is still occurring.

There is little that can be hoped for in achieving sustainability in cities unless there is a renewed belief in the value of city planning and urban design. But planning professionals must earn this new respect by showing that they can not only understand how cities work, but how to involve people in the new agenda and how to implement policies that truly lead to sustainability. This requires first a vision of how the overall city can be shaped to produce lower resource flows and higher livability through reducing automobile dependence, then it needs a professional praxis and community process to show how to do it. This chapter and chapter 5 will help to set the vision and chapter 6 and 7 will suggest some of the how.

The 'Future' Nodal/Information City

This section brings together the various ideas for how the Auto City needs to change to become the “Future” Nodal/Information City where automobile dependence is overcome.

The key characteristics of how land use patterns need to be changed so they are more sustainable and less auto-dependent, are expressed visually in Figure 4.3 for a city that was once highly automobile dependent but changed. The figure will be outlined through different steps that are required to move from the Auto City to the Future City.

Figure 4.3 A conceptual outline of the Future Nodal/Information City

The first step in creating a more sustainable city is to revitalise the inner city.

In the inner city there are already transit-oriented and walking-oriented characteristics. Here there are dense, mixed land uses with urban design conducive to face-to-face activity. So here it is possible to reach destinations with short trips and without a car if you choose not to and to create walkable communities. In reurbanising such areas a city is extending the city into space that is not automobile dependent.

Reurbanisation of essentially abandoned inner city areas has occurred in many cities around the world. Invariably such successful revitalisation is closely associated with community processes that have developed a new vision for their area; it is thus associated with processes such as historic building and streetscape preservation, street festivals and other community arts, social housing to retain a mix of incomes, and investment by innovative entrepreneurs in new businesses. Finding the right spark for regeneration of some areas often requires great creativity and commitment by urban managers but is always involving significant community involvement (see chapter 7).

Although there are now strong market forces pushing the reurbanisation process, little hope for regenerating the inner city will be found if there is a mood of fear on the streets produced by crime, or if the schools in the area are not adequate. These problems have been the major cause of 'white flight' in US inner cities and followed by the 'black flight' of middle class Afro-Americans. Coping with this mood of fear is essential before urban regeneration can occur.

One of the most important policies to generate investment and create a better environment for the community in the inner city is traffic calming and pedestrianisation with reduced parking. This process can help to begin the kind of upgrading to an area that reverses the sense of decline as it gives people who live and work in the area a more hopeful approach to their neighbourhoods. If traffic calming and street improvement is imposed on a demoralised community it will do nothing but once a community has a new sense of its regeneration potential then improving the public environment can be the signal for broader revitalisation processes. The most obvious places to start traffic calming are where the most intensive urban activity exists. Here there is the greatest need to manage the automobile. The process will always be political as motorists don’t like any impedance, but it is critical if any area is to gain a new lease of life. For this reason there is no choice but to make traffic calming a community process to reclaim the city’s streets. It is also necessary to make traffic calming area-wide and to make it a part of a general approach of reducing travel and shifting to other modes (see section 4.3.1).

Regeneration will only proceed if people begin to invest in houses and businesses in the area. This process can occur quite rapidly once it starts but such market approaches require the necessary social infrastructure for an area to be considered safe for an investment (see chapter 7 and Newman 19??). Once the inner city is regenerating, a city can then begin to take its 'inner city' qualities to the suburbs. This can include traffic calming of neighbourhoods, but needs also to include a process of beginning to provide sub-centers that have 'inner city' characteristics, linking them up with good transit.

The second step in creating a more sustainable city is to focus development around the present rail system.

If an Auto city has a rail system it is quite possible that they have done nothing to facilitate the market for higher density, mixed use development around its station areas wherever they are, in the CBD, inner city or outer suburbs. This is a common failing in Auto Cities where zoning, inappropriate government land uses and lack of creativity are often preventing such development. Cervero (1992, 1994) has shown that good rail transit will create such markets, but they can also be prevented by the planning system.

Joint development between public and private interests are the best way to optimise the use of land within a short walk of stations. Park 'n Ride areas are not a good use of station environments, and were deliberately prohibited by BC Transit in Vancouver, Burnaby and New Westminster in order to maximise development potential. Park 'n Rides do not promote better land use and can be dangerous environments for transit patrons at night. They can however be converted to urban villages later so they may be an interim solution as a transit system is developing. Bike'n Ride facilities are more compatible with stations; they mean that the radius of those who can easily reach the train extends from 800 metres on foot to 5kms, and yet bicycle facilities do not interfere with the basically pedestrian qualities of the station precinct. There is also usually space for a bus interchange point at a station; if bus timetables are integrated with rail services and feed in from both sides of a corridor, it is possible to provide cross-suburb transit. This extra activity makes it even more important that the station sub-center or urban village offer an attractive walking environment with mixed uses.

Bernick and Cervero (1996) have outlined examples from around the world of such transit villages, including a growing list in the US. Calthorpe (1990) drew up guidelines for transit-oriented design and has provided a number of examples (Calthorpe, 1993), together with other New Urbanists (Katz, 1994).

In California there is a set of initiatives which establishes the legal basis of transit-oriented development - the Transit Village Development Act of 1994 establishes all land within a quarter mile of rail transit stations as transit-village development districts if applied for by a local authority. The area is then given the powers of a redevelopment agency and staffed to facilitate its transition into a mixed use, high density, pedestrian scale urban environment. The district has first priority for funding from State and Federal innovative transportation-land use programs. The Bill came in response to the growing transit investment in California and is aimed at ensuring there is a better link between transit and land use on systems such as BART which has large Park 'n Ride areas around many of its stations.

As mentioned previously, in Melbourne a plan has been drawn up called The Urban Villages Project where over 500 sites are located adjacent to tram stops and rail stations. The sites are all significantly under-developed and hence have been given special status for redevelopment. The local community is involved in the drawing up of plans to upgrade the areas. Calculations showed that development in such areas would save up to 40% of transportation and household energy/greenhouse emissions (denser developments use less heating as well as requiring less transportation). They would be less expensive to build and would create opportunities for the local community through the shops, jobs, child minding facilities etc that would be built there (Energy Victoria et al, 1996). Perhaps of most significance, up to 25 years of potential greenfields urban growth in Melbourne could be accommodated on such sites. This approach provides the basis, therefore, of stopping urban sprawl.

The third step required in creating a more sustainable city is to discourage further urban sprawl.

Stopping sprawl requires a simultaneous process of changing the investment in highways that take people out of the city to greenfield sites, and in zoning processes that protect rural land on the urban fringe. Both steps are necessary. It is almost impossible to stop new sprawl through zoning alone if high speed roads are still being built. They are like a loaded gun pointed at rural land in their vicinity. At the same time people need to know the strategic goals for a city and to have them expressed in zoning ordinances. The goal of managing growth at the urban fringe can become accepted if it is seen to be both a goal of sustainability and to be a market-based process.

A summary of approaches to urban growth management is set out in Appendix 3.

The market for development of land in the inner city and around transit stations needs to be underway if the third step of stopping sprawl is to be managed. Cities such as Vancouver and Portland, with active growth management greenbelt strategies, could not hope to achieve their goals without a program of reurbanising around transit stations. The same is the case in European cities.

The fourth stage of creating a more sustainable city is to extend the transit system into poorly-served suburbs, including cross suburban and orbital rail lines, and to build new urban villages around them.

As shown in Figure 4.3, there are large areas of suburban development in most Auto cities with no real transit service. It is possible (particularly with joint development) to build state-of-the art electric rail transit systems into these areas at reasonable cost - but as a rule, only if it can involve land development at stations to help pay for it. In this way, not only is it possible to develop the transit service, but it also becomes more feasible to create the sub-centers or urban villages which these single-use suburbs generally lack. It ensures that many more local services can be provided and it becomes possible to reach other cross-city destinations by good transit directly from the sub-center, eliminating the need for a car.

This process is the basis of reclaiming the Auto City. It means that the many low density suburbs in existence do not have to be rebuilt, but can be given a less automobile-dependent form or structure. They would all have a nearby urban village as their focal point. They would, however, also need to be laced with bike facilities and could be provided with other state-of-the-art local transit, such as demand-responsive mini-buses for local services. Traffic calming would also play a key role in making such areas safer, more human in scale and suitable for walking and cycling.

If such transit-based sub-centers are built around or adjacent to current suburban shopping malls, then they can slowly begin to reclaim the acres of asphalt car park as they begin to diminish the need for car access.[2] There are few examples of this kind of development so far, but they are beginning to happen. One has occurred in Mountain View, California where a sixties shopping mall has been replaced by a transit-oriented, mixed use urban village (Center for Livable Communities, 1996). An even more impressive example has been built in Addison in Dallas, Texas where a classic American ‘edge city’ surrounded by parking lots, freeways and collector roads has been transformed into a new town center with “a finely woven grid of narrow streets, with pedestrian-friendly sidewalks and public seating areas, shaded by trees.” The Addison Circle Master Plan provides buildings oriented to the street, 10 acres of pocket parks, outdoor spaces for public events, a mix of housing forms in a four-storey configuration around semi-private courtyards. The redevelopment will include a new light rail station by 2005 (Livable Places Update, November, 1997).

In the US there are attempts to try to implement such concepts by organisations other than the New Urbanists. A US Department of Transportation publication called "The New Suburb" (Rabinowitz et al, 1991) outlines 34 innovative designs from recent US developments and a number from an international design competition (Beimborn et al, 1991), promoting transit corridor developments. Critical to all the designs is that, not only are they dense and mixed to allow pedestrian activity (and to be viable for transit), they are also rediscovering the virtues of narrow streets where people enjoy walking and where buildings are organically linked. The cul-de-sac housing estate, where buildings hide from each other, and the large undifferentiated open spaces typical of high rise housing estates, have little place in a New Urbanism design. Nor have they had much favour in European urban design (Gehl, 1987).

Others have tried to introduce the principles through Planned Unit Developments or PUD's (Kaufmann, 1991). Mostly these new developments (designed to reduce car dependence), are known as Transit Oriented Developments or TODs.

The role of sub-centers with a strong commitment to information-oriented services is universally recognized to be a feature of the Future City (Castells, 1989; Brotchie, 1993). However, not all cities are moving to link these nodal/information centres with good transit systems or to traffic calm them so that they are pedestrian-friendly. Very few cities are as committed as Stockholm and other Nordic cities to using the new technological imperatives to help create or maintain a connected city of communities. Rather they are using these new technologies to maintain a disconnected city of individual households, as in Auto cities (Cervero, 1995; Naess, 1993).

The change to the Future City can be seen in the summary table of characteristics of the four city types, set out below in Box 4.7.

Box 4.7 Characteristics of four city types

The Future City can be seen as incorporating a combination of forces. All of them, however, can be made part of the sustainability agenda and hence help to create the kind of city outlined above. These forces include:

• Transportation Priorities - a key to all sustainability in cities is the balanced provision of all transportation modes with the link to land uses through, in particular, the building of transit-based, walking-oriented urban villages. This means that sprawl can be curbed. It does not mean that all the low density car-based suburbs must somehow be bulldozed. With local, viable sub-centers nearby, it is possible to create greater self-sufficiency with local services reached by walking, biking or a short car ride. And directly reaching more distant places in the rest of the city, will be made much easier through a good transit service linking the sub-centers together. This is primarily an issue of public policy in cities and the data presented in chapter 3 show that it will benefit a city economically, socially and environmentally if it were to be more balanced in its transportation priorities.

• The Global Economy - the new information/services-oriented cities are globally competitive if they are good urban environments in which to live and work. This is primarily an issue of where the market place is taking cities, though public policy also has a role to play. The evidence from cities in Australia and from the global cities data presented earlier, is that the global, information-oriented city is likely to concentrate into central areas and nodal sub-centers. These favour the provision of transit and quality walking environments, ie the Future City. Some similar data have been found in US cities by Lucy and Phillips (1995) who conclude their paper on ‘Why Some Suburbs Thrive’ by saying:

“...it is those communities that have encouraged public transportation and a mixture of residential, commercial and industrial development; have higher enough density to nourish pedestrian life; and - most important - have maintained a sense of place.” (p.21)

• The Spatial Values of the Community - individuals can just try to optimise their own private space and not worry about other spatial values, but there is an awareness now that this individualism has destroyed community in cities; thus the 'communitarian' movement has begun to reclaim urban public spaces. In chapters 5, 6 and 7 it will be shown how important this movement is in making more sustainable local communities. The concept of urban ecology will be outlined in chapter 5. It will be used to reveal how in some places communities are taking control of and reducing local metabolic flows.

• The Environment Movement - the global environmental movement is now firmly involved in the city and although there are disputes about what is meant by a greener city (discussed in the next chapter), there is considerable support for the kind of Future City strategy outlined above. Environmentally, the city becomes low in resource use and low in waste outputs, as well as enjoying improved livability. One of the keys to this, is the move to more community- scale technologies that can be used to provide water, waste and energy services in local areas, including intensive community gardens to re-orient cities more towards nature.

References

Calthorpe, P. (1993) The next American metropolis: Ecology and urban form. Princeton Architectural Press, New Jersey.

Campbell, C. J. (1991) The golden century of oil 1950-2050: The depletion of a resource. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, The Netherlands.

Duany, A. and Plater-Zyberk, E. (1991) Towns and Town-Making Principles. Rizzoli, New York.

Hart, S. (1990) The real cost of operating an automobile in America. The Oregonian, 9 November.

Katz, P. (1994) The new urbanism: Toward an architecture of community. McGraw Hill, New York.

Kreimer, A. et al (1993) Towards a sustainable urban environment: The Rio de Janeiro study. World Bank Discussion Papers 195, Washington D.C.

Laquian, A. A. (1993) Planning and Development of Metropolitan Regions. Proceedings of Conference, Bangkok, June/July, Asian Urban Research Network, Centre for Human Settlements, School of Community & Regional Planning, UBC, Canada.

MacKenzie, J. J. (1994) The keys to the car: Electric and hydrogen vehicles for the 21st century. World Resources Institute, Baltimore.

Newman, P. W. G., Kenworthy, J. R. and Vintila, P. (1995) Can we overcome automobile dependence?: Physical planning in an age of urban cynicism. Cities, 12(1), 53-65.

OECD/EMT (1996) Urban travel and sustainable development. OECD, Paris.

Serageldin, I. and Barrett, R. (1993) Environmentally sustainable urban transport: Defining a global policy. World Bank, Washington D.C.

Sperling, D. (1995) Future drive: Electric vehicles and sustainable transportation. Island Press, Washington D.C.

[1] Those cities without the political ability to increase the price of automobile use to account for its true costs will need to do even more in the planning area to minimise car use expansion.

[2] The revival of delivery vans from supermarkets in the inner cities of the world has shown a car is not necessarily needed for shopping trips.