Towards the Sustainable City-20!8!10

8/2/2019 Towards the Sustainable City-20!8!10

1/17

Towards the Sustainable City Rev 1 20.08.2010Thoughts in Progress, Tony Rigg

As I see it, Environmental Sustainability is the basis of all sustainability without this, social, cultural, economicsustainability etc. have no future basis: if the environmental context collapses, so does our whole context of life.

As I think it is generally accepted, our way of life, based on exploitation and consumption of natural andenvironmental resources on a vast scale, is now dangerously impacting the whole global ecosystem, on whichall life, including our own, depends for existence.

The major generators of this ecological imbalance, where the vast majority of resource and materialconsumption takes place, are the cities that we are developing ever faster and larger. This urban context, as wehave developed it, is threatening to destroy the very tree on which we grow & live, and is not sustainable in itspresent form. We need to change the environmental basis of the urban phenomenon.

However, we have now arrived at the Age of Homo Urbanus, where 50% of us now live in Cities, and while wedo so for many advantageous reasons, the quality of life for the majority of city dwellers is far from a desirableoptimum, and the cities themselves, as they develop, become beset with serious functional and logistical

problems. However, if Cities are the basis of life for the majority of mankind, the urban environment in which welive should be fashioned as the optimum basis for human life and existence, and thus needs to be sustainablein every aspect.

Fig. 1: Global Population Trend

Rural population

Urban population

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

1900 1950 2000 2050

billions

On the face of it, the seemingly unstoppable increasing development of large cities, the need to search for anoptimum living environment, and the increasing impact of human activity on the global environment andecosystems, seem to be in direct and dangerous conflict with one another.However, I believe that this is not necessarily or inevitably so, if the right (and very different) directions aretaken, for the majority of changes necessary to turn The City into the optimum basis for human life are also theones necessary to make the urban context an environmentally sustainable one.

Firstly, let us look at the process by which we came to our present situation:

In The Beginning, when fossil fuel based energy was not easily and cheaply available, all was Green:

Isolated buildings, & small village groupings, were designed in sympathetic response to local climate,otherwise the occupants suffered inferior conditions.They were constructed of locally or regionally available materials, which could not be transported longdistances.

Light was basically daylight, with candles & oil lamps as limited supplements for nighttime.Water was a local system - locally collected, stored, & used according to availability.Re-use and recycling of available resources was the norm, with absolute waste as a minorphenomenon.

Villages grew, into smaller & then larger towns, but mostly the above parameters held true. Horse

drawn transport could cope with larger distances, but this still remained largely a local, sustainablesituation, for many hundreds of years.


2/17

2

Village scene, Denmark

With arrival of the era of Cheap and Available Energy, and with it Mechanised Transport, things began tochange:

The average householder was able to improve his comfort, first with heating from burning coal, oil, and

gas, and more recently cooling with electricity.

He could light his house whenever he pleased, first with gas, & then with electricity.Building materials could be moved with increasing ease over ever extending distances, and normaldaily personal movement ceased to be limited to walking, horse riding, or cycling distances.

Water could be pumped in large quantities over long distances.Waste, as recycling became less of a necessity or norm, could be transported away & dumped out ofsight.

And the Towns became Cities, that Grewand Grew

They grew on the basis of an older reality, in an ad-hoc process of largely un-planned, piece-meal expansion,

layer upon layer. They became headless, directionless creatures, creating ever more problems, with more &more fixes required to keep them functional.

With this situation, urban planning and building design became divorced from environmental considerations andresponsibility:

Buildings ceased to be designed on the basis of form & orientation in relation to climate, and it becamethe norm for thermal comfort & functionality of buildings to depend entirely on mechanical importedenergy systems.

Daylight ceased to be considered as the main source of daytime illumination.

Use of locally available materials ceased to be a factor in building design.

Mechanised transport, in the form of the private car, became the generating force in the planning anddevelopment of cities, and in the creation of urban sprawl.

Water came out of the pipe, in any quantity demanded.

Liner process patterns, of production, consumption, & disposal became the norm, and disposal of solidand liquid waste became a major factor of urban development and management.

Positive development and visionary planning control were pushed to one side or forgotten, and thepiecemeal actions of private development initiatives became the driving force behind the headless,directionless, city monster.


3/17

3

In short, we created urban mega-complexes, based on multiple, unresolved problems that we tried to overcomewith ever increasing consumption, waste and pollution sub-optimum urban chaos at best, environmentaldisasters at worst.

What is significant in this is the processby which this development pattern took place:

In the past, when the context of development was small in scale, the impact of any development or change onthe whole local context was fairly easy to see & appreciate, and facilitated the taking of intelligent action tomaintain & sustain the local environment & ecology, which were then very much the basis of everyday life.

As the scale of the urban environment grew larger, on one hand the environmental & ecological context grewmore and more distant, and on the other, the impact of local, individual developments and changes on thewhole became less & less obvious, as the scale of the whole increased. So we came to make decisions, thathad important long term developmental impact on the whole urban entity, on very local, ad-hoc bases, without avision of the whole in the process of time, without an understanding of long term consequences. What startedas misguided decision making at an individual level, continued as dangerous action on the part of blindinstitutional & commercial interests, on a local scale, a creeping degradation process, slowly & continuouslymoving the whole urban development in unsustainable directions.

At various points in history, the in-balance of the urban situation was recognized, and drastic remedial actiontaken, creating massive disruption to the fabric and function of the cities as, for example, in Haussmanns re-planning of Paris (1852-1870+), or the construction of the first cut and cover underground transport systems inLondon (1860-1870+).

Where do we go from here?

One of the few instances of a visionary, long term planned development process has been in Curitiba, Brazil.Here, a planning process initiated in 1968 has succeeded, to a large extent, in directing and channeling thecommercial development initiatives into a much more sustainable overall urban framework, for the benefit of allsides, private, public and commercial alike.

Model of high-density development along express bus way route, Curitiba


4/17

4

Here, intensive development has been concentrated around and along primary transport routes, which arededicated express bus-ways. This bus system accounts for 80% of all in-city journeys, even though Curitibahas the highest per-capita car ownership in Brazil. The interstitial urban spaces provide 52 m2 per capita ofpublic open space within the city, of all different types, one of the highest in the world for a city of this scale,with close to 2 million inhabitants. In general, the resulting quality of life in Curitiba is considered very high, anda city-wide survey showed that over 80% of the population would not prefer to live anywhere else, even thoughCuritiba is situated, relatively speaking, at the end of the world.

Curitiba high-density development and large public green areas

However, Curitiba is just one example, and when discussing the sustainable city, we come up against aproblem of definitions: it is far easier to define what isnotsustainable, than to say what a sustainable cityshould be. By now, we have many definitions of urban sustainability, conceptual scenarios, and wish lists ofhow a sustainable city could work, but we have very little hard experience on the ground. We have almost noexisting models to look to, and we have no collective image of the sustainable city.

In searching for solutions for the sustainable city, we should be careful to avoid the type of mistakes made inthe 70s, looking for low-energy buildings.Then, engineering researchers proposed technological fixes in the form of complex & expensive solar-drivenmechanical heating & cooling systems, to supply the demand loads of energy wasteful structures. The resultswere highly un-economic white elephants with high maintenance costs and generally poor performance.

Once this became clear, researchers realised the necessity of firstreducing the building energy loads throughconceptually sensitive climatic design and high quality construction, and then applying passive designtechniques to achieve optimal building thermal performance. This then reduced the need for mechanicallysupplied energy to an absolute minimum.

Today, in searching for sustainable urban solutions, we should not look for technical fixes to existingenvironmental problems. We must search at the conceptual level for major source reductions ofenvironmental problems, urban stress factors, urban scale energy loads, waste & pollution generation, and thenintegrate these new urban concepts, to synthesise & create the sustainable city.

This is not a dream it is achievable with the understanding and knowledge we have today but it does meanthat we must change our basic approaches to urban planning, shift our perceptions.


5/17

5

It is impossible to go beyond the present urban environmental crisis with the same kind of thinking thatcreated it we have to learn to integrate new, multiple and seemingly paradoxical ways of thinking, perceivingand acting into the planning processes in order to achieve urban sustainability.

The problems we have today cannot be solved by thinking the way we thought when we created them.

Albert Einstein

In search of the Sustainable City

If The City is to become the optimum basis for human life, we must first understand the Essence of the City weaspire to.

Beyond the dry, technical definitions of The City size, population, economy, functions, infrastructure,services, movement systems, etc. we need to understand the intricate, complex interactions, the meaning &soul of The City, something much greater than the simple sum of its parts.

Firstly, we can look at comparative advantages / disadvantages of life between The City, & rural and

small town entities.

Secondly, we can look at those subtle, nebulous themes & nuances, generators of urban lifeexperience (passive) & creativity (active).

Thirdly, we can look at those concrete contexts of the built environment that encourage or discouragethe positive & negative aspects of city experience & life.

Then, from here, we can start to search for a basic understanding of the Essence of the City the optimumbasis for human life, that exists in sustainable and symbiotic balance with the environment & the ecology itimpacts.

What does The City have that rural villages, small towns & suburbia do not?

Positively: Scale of population & density with potential for a rich intensity of human interaction.Variety of specialized commerce & employment opportunities.Variety of accessible educational facilities.Variety of accessible cultural & sport activities.Full spectrum of health facilities.Variety of cultural communities cultural complexity and diversity.Scale of publicopen space & parks.

Negatively: High levels of noise pollution, with negative impact psychologically &physiologically.High air pollution levels, sometimes reaching dangerously unhealthy levels.Lack of natural wilderness areas for informal recreation, meditation, and connection with

nature etc.Little private garden/ yard space for the majority of population for enjoyment orgrowing own food etc.Often does not have that local sense of place where the individual can feel at homeOften, the city does not foster a sense of community, accessibility, and involvementOften, there is little or no visual contact with trees & natural vegetation in the home orwork environment, with physiological and psychological impact on well-being of the

inhabitants.

Generators of urban life experience & creativity


6/17

6

Some of the major pluses of urban life are the wide & varied opportunities for cultural development that cannotdevelop in small, mono-culturally homogeneous environments.

The City, through the scale of numbers, socio-economic mix, and variety of social & physical contexts, givesopportunities for cultural interaction & diversity, from micro to macro levels, that do not easily flourish in smalltown urban contexts. The involved interaction of ethnic & social mix is a vital factor in cultural development.

This cultural complexity is in turn a major generator of economic development & prosperity. This multi-layerinvolvement & interaction of social status, cultural variety, & intellectual diversity creates a power-house ofinvention, entrepreneurial initiative & opportunity, that can only freely develop in The City.

Contexts of the built environment

So, if we understand the raison detre of The City, the basis of its socio-economic sustainability, we can startto look at the physical, built framework in which it develops, grows and thrives.

This we need to do in two different contexts: In the development of existing, established cities, we need to analyse those aspects of The City that

have developed over time to support this socio-economic sustainability, and carefully build on &enhance this hidden, but essential fabric of the life and soul of the city.

In the planning & development of new, or very fast growing Cities, we have to design-in the basis ofthis nebulous context which is much harder! We need to plan to support this diversity of culturalinteraction, with a wide variety of accessible, flexible-use built contexts & facilities, and also the space &opportunity for further ad-hoc development of contexts & facilities in response to future needs, trends &initiatives, that grow with the development of the city over time.

The built environment of The City has contexts at different scales Public, Local, & Private which betweenthem create frameworks for graded social life, and determine the quality of environmental, psychologicalsecurity and sense of belonging & involvement.

The City Public the scale of public spaces, facilities & networks of the city, into which the individualcan enter, interact with, participate, and then withdraw from, when he so desires.

The City Local the scale of the home base area, the neighborhood, the local area with its own,smaller scale diversity of facilities, where the individual can develop self esteem, local identity andsense of community, interact informally with neighbors, acquaintances and passers-by, and feel athome in his own familiar local context.

The City Private the scale the individuals home, place of work, local pub or restaurant, where he canidentify personally, with a private sense of belonging, pride & committment.

The Sustainable City the optimum basis for human existence

So how does The City need to function in order to be the sustainable, optimum basis for human existence?

It needs to provide for all the aspects of life & living: personal, group & social interaction; residential,educational, occupational, commercial, cultural, recreational, health-care, etc. facilities. And it needs to integrateall within a framework of inter-connected accessibility. In order to make this accessibility efficiently available toall, it has to be based on a public, not private, transport network, within walking distance. It needs anintermediate level of connectivity with bicycles.

And it needs to do this within a physical, built context that is sustainable, preserving the physical environment,ecology and non-renewable resources for present and future generations.

Movement & Transport

Access to the facilities of the city, and thus movement to and between them, is fundamental to both the

functioning of the city, and the experiencing of it.


7/17

7

High density development along the lines & around the nodes of the transport network the very basis offunctional sustainability is also the basis of optimum city life.

Whereas in rural and village contexts, the private car is the most convenient, and maybe the most efficientmeans of transport, when you have large urban concentrations of dwellings and facilities, it fast becomes aproblem that actually destroys many of the advantages that city life offers.

So if a communal, public transport system is the answer to urban movement, it should be separate, dedicated,and highly effective, and THIS should be the primary organising network of The City.The majority of homes and workplaces should be within walking distance, or easy cycling distance, of thisnetwork. The common facilities of the city (educational, cultural, institutional, and commercial) should be ONthis network, preferably at the interconnection junctions for maximum accessibility.

We should build at high density on and beside this network, and create open areas in the interstitial spaces inbetween, for parks, sports facilities, urban agriculture, forest, wetland, and wilderness habitats.

What should this network be like? As the primary movement net of The City, it should be the attractive, front-of-house of the city theatre, where you see the city, and are seen, through park strips, squares, pedestrianstreets, grand avenues etc., bringing the attractive public face of the city back into the primary theatre of

movement clean, pollution free, uncluttered by cars parked or moving - The Place to Be.

Urban Density and Energy Consumption

In the cities we have developed, there is a direct relationship between population density and per-capita energyconsumption: this diagram says it all.

Diagram of Urban Energy Consumption / Urban Population Density

Climate & Urban Comfort

In our Optimum Sustainable City, we want conviviality and comfort at all scales of the urban experience,including that of the public realm in the outside spaces, places and environment of the city.Achieving physical urban comfort requires very different means and urban planning in different climates. Toillustrate this, let us look at some examples of climatic adaption at the urban scale.


8/17

8

Jaisalmer, India, is a desert city in an area where the average monthly temperature is in excess of 30 deg C,but with high diurnal temperature variation. By building 3-4 storey massive dwellings with extremely narrowstreets in a very dense urban pattern, the impact of solar radiation on the city is mostly at roof level, with verylittle ever reaching street level, where the daytime air temperature is usually about 8 deg C lower that thesurrounding desert shade temperature. The temperature in the lower floors of the buildings themselves, builtback-to-back around small, tall internal courtyards, is even lower, maintaining a fairly static comfortabletemperature, due to the massive sandstone construction.

Jaisalmer, India street scene


9/17

9

Seville in southern Spain, also experiences very hot dry summers (average max temp July & August 34 deg C),but winters are cool (average min temp January & February 6 deg C). Here the old city centre has relativelynarrow streets, with moveable canvas shades covering entire streets, shading the street in summer, butwithdrawn in winter to allow the sun in. Apart from providing shade to the pedestrians, this effectively eliminatesthe absorption of solar radiation in the building facades and street surfaces, and thus prevents build-up of anurban heat-island effect.

Seville summer shaded street

Heat Island effects happen for two reasons, from the absorption of solar radiation in streets, paving andbuildings, without diffusion of the heat back into the atmosphere, and from spent imported energy, used inheating, cooling, lighting and transport. In hot climates this can be very problematical, where in Athens forexample, the city centre shade temperature can reach 17 deg C more than the surrounding suburban areas insummer, when the average July and August temperatures there are around 27 deg C, i.e. reaching around 44deg C. This has enormous impact on cooling loads of buildings, and thus energy consumption, but also onhuman health and well-being. In cool climates however, a heat island effect from trapping solar radiation in theurban fabric can, within limits, be beneficial.


10/17

10

In more moderate Mediterranean climates, such as Bologna in northern Italy, arcaded streets are sufficient tomoderate the thermal environment in summer, and provide protection from the rain as well.

Bologna arcaded street

In Istanbul, the covered markets, such as the Grand Bazaar covering 30 hectares and containing over 3,000shops (pre-cursor of the modern shopping mall), are also very good climate modifiers, equally effective in winterand summer, although their original purpose was more determined by security of the merchants and theirgoods.


11/17

11

Street in the Grand Bazaar, Istanbul

Map of the Grand Bazaar, Istanbul

In cool temperate climates (i.e. UK and Ireland), the sun is generally welcomed, and urban sun-traps, with localshade for seating areas, are a positive phenomena. Here protection from the rain is a desirable urban feature,with covered galleria streets and modern shopping malls being practical examples of urban scale climaticadaptation.


12/17

12

Very cold winter climates (which often have quite warm summers) require protection from exposure to wind firstof all, and access to winter sun when available. However, in this extreme climate it is difficult to create acomfortable external winter-time environment, and in Montreal, for instance, a whole underground city hasbeen developed, where all the facilities and buildings in a large area of the city centre are connected under thestreets, protected from the extremes of winter weather.

Map of Montral Underground Pedestrian city

These examples are purposely somewhat extreme, to illustrate the principles of different solutions for differentclimates. Every City has its own local climatic context, which needs careful analysis to find the optimum urbanplanning ideas and solutions for its own unique context. We should expect that a city, developed in sympathywith its climate, will be different from other cities in different contexts with different climates. There is no onesize fits all, and many lessons and indicative ideas can be learnt from studying successful local vernacular

tradition.

Climate & Building Energy Demands

Urban planning has a strong impact on building energy demands for heating, cooling and lighting, throughdensity of development, urban form/ topology, site size, shape and orientation. It impacts on solar access andshading of buildings, exposure and shelter from dominant winds and rain, and access to day lighting.

As with public realm urban comfort, different climates have different requirements for building energy efficiency.This is a complex urban design puzzle, but a few examples will give some idea of what is involved.


13/17

13

In a hot humid climate, with very small variation of temperature throughout the year, buildings need shadingfrom diffuse radiation from all directions (from light cloudy or hazy skies), and access to wind for throughventilation whenever available planning for urban wind flow.

Hot arid climates, with clear skies and fierce solar radiation, planning should facilitate inter-building shading ofeast and west facades from low morning and afternoon sun, but maintain solar access for winter sun onsouthern facades, as usually winter heating is necessary.

Urban plans in cool climates should aim to minimise building exposure to strong winds and driving rain, whileensuring access to southern winter sun. In very cold climates avoidance of snow drift build-up around access tobuildings can be an important planning consideration.

In general size, form and orientation of urban planning lots should be designed to allow buildings to takeadvantage of local micro-climatic conditions. Land slope and orientation of slope impact solar exposure andaccess, and thus possible density of climatically responsive development, dramatically.

Urban Ecology

While cities have pretty heavy footprints, we should try and tread lightly upon the land, and interweave the citywith the natural ecology of the location, maintaining natural eco-systems of significant scale and diversity, anddeveloping the city around and between them. Waterways, wetlands, wilderness and woodland areas shouldbe woven into the urban fabric, connected with green corridors to each other and to city parks, urban agricultureareas, etc., as an interconnected green urban network, to allow wildlife commuting on the one hand, and agreen-lung network for the health and well-being of the city and its inhabitants on the other. This green network,when matured, should bring greenery, especially trees, into view from most, if not all, dwellings and workplaces.

Urban Cycles of Production, Consumption, Recycling & Re-use

In the Sustainable City we have to abandon the usual traditional linear system of consuming food, goods and

resources, and discarding whatever is left over as vast mountains of landfill waste, and rivers of pollutedsewage. We need to re-tool the system into a cyclic process, where every by-product and all waste matterfrom manufacturing processes and consumption, is used as a cyclic input into other processes.Such a system, eliminating most of the fiscal and environmental costs of landfill waste, and creating freesupplies of input resources to production processes, is of great economic benefit to the city and its businesses,once up and running.

Organic matter needs to be composted and recycled back into the cycle of growth, into the food production

chain. Food production needs to a part of the urban scene, in gardens, on rooftops, with fruit trees in publicparks and squares, and urban agriculture allotments in the low-density, interstitial areas. This way the quantity


14/17

14

of food that needs importing into the city is reduced, and the supply of super-fresh seasonal produce increased.Easy availability of compost is essential for such a cyclic system.

Industrial manufacturing needs a system of urban resource and product management at the urban scale, sothat each process supplies its by-products as material input to other manufacturing entities / processes.Waste disposal from manufacturing should be priced at a level that encourages recycling and re-use as themost economical scenario, thus reducing absolute waste to an absolute minimum. Ensuring this marketing ofindustrial by-products could be an integral part of a business licensing system.

Today, waste heat from electric power generation, waste-to-energy incineration plants, industrial productionprocesses, etc. is dissipated into the atmosphere, often on a vast scale. In some places some of this heatenergy has been re-directed into district heating schemes, but what are really needed are heat energymanagement systems at an urban scale. This is of course only feasible at high urban densities, but an urbanheat energy grid, with a 4-pipe metered distribution network could result in massive energy economies: a low-energy heat collection (cooling) flow & return circuit, and a high-energy heat delivery circuit, with (biomass CHPdriven?) heat-pump transfer of energy between the circuits, could be a feasible idea, in situations where thedensity of urban energy usage is sufficiently high. In any event, dissipating relative high-grade energy into theatmosphere, as we often do today, is not a very clever, desirable, or sustainable situation.

Water should be managed in cyclic ways, on different levels. Use of municipal clean, fresh water supply shouldbe restricted, where possible, to its primary function of water safe for human consumption. A secondarynetwork could be developed for non-portable and re-cycled grey water, where the urban density justifies such asystem.In climates where there is a reasonable annually distributed rainfall, rainwater harvesting for non-portable wateruse can be encouraged, though this becomes problematic in locations where there are several dry months inthe year, and where there are several months with snow and freezing conditions.In any case, rainwater should be a local commodity, attenuated and fed into the local aquifers first, and riverssecond, through on-site absorption (via permeable ground and paving), temporary flood areas in parks etc., andin temporary and permanent wet-land areas.

Sewage waste, reduced in volume through grey-water recycling, can be passed through anaerobic digesterstogether with some municipal organic waste, for methane production, and after some secondary treatment,

passed through controlled wet-lands purification marshes, where the climate and local ecological situationallows. There are several different tried and tested organic sewage processing systems in operation aroundthe world, all less energy consuming than conventional intensive mechanical sewage processing plants.Different systems are suitable for different climatic conditions for example, large deep purification ponds witha fast-growing duckweed cover, which is harvested by floating harvesters and then composted, is used inseveral locations in the hot climate of Texas, USA.

Waste equals food is a crucial urban principle because it allows us to conceive regenerative, closed-loop systems on multiple scales, from the community garden to the regional economy. Applied todesign, it translates first of all into safe, healthful material flows that generate no waste. Imagine ascenario in which textiles made with natural materials and safe chemicals are tossed into communitygardens to nourish the soil when they wear out, becoming food for biological systems; where high-

tech polymers and metals are designed for closed-loop systems that circulate valuable materials inperpetual cycles of production, recovery, and remanufacture. Safe manufacturing and cradle-to-cradle material flows not only ensure that the materials we build with are beneficial, they also providea clean, productive economic base for healthy urban growth. By eliminating the very concept ofwaste, human industry becomes a regenerative thread in the urban fabric.William McDonough


15/17

15

The Timeless way of Local Planning and Development

Historic Cities usually have urban qualities in their older core areas that we appreciate and relate to warmly.These special urban areas have a richness, diversity and complexity that delight, surprise and attract us, andare the result of a slow process of development, adaptation, and re-development over time. They were

(generally) not the result of formal planning or intentional urban design, and usually were not controlled in theirunfolding by individuals or planning teams. They happened, as a response to private, public and commercialinterests, through spans of time. And they happened mostly at a local scale.

Verona, Italy

This process is in a way similar to natural selection that which is successful, socially and economically,survives, that which is not decays, changes, and is re-placed. It is a slow, timeless way of development,created by and responsive to the physical, social and economic context in which it takes place. The result isappreciated and enjoyed by all, engendering civic pride and care for its preservation, and a sense of inclusion inthe value of place and in historical continuity.

The results of this historical process are very difficult, almost impossible to replicate through a controlled,professional planning process, and certainly impossible to create with economist and geographer led planningteams.

The level of vision, knowledge, and creative will necessary to develop, expedite and control a successful urbanplan in this sense are enormous, and we can in no way expect that the average planning team, with the bestwill and resources in the world, would be capable of doing this. In general, the average planning teams arevery pedestrian, dull, clerical entities, who see their role more as administration, rather than creative initiationand direction. Thus we cannot even expect the present planning institutions to create that quality of urbanentity that we all desire. We need a different way, a new vision of creative development, with the possibilities ofurban diversity and community initiative and involvement built-in to the process, where its raison dtre is toachieve urban excellence, the optimum (and sustainable) environment for Homo Urbanus.

Planning Frameworks for Sustainable Urban Development

As we have seen, the blind, ad-hoc commercial led development process goes astray at the level of modernbig-city development, so what are we to do? It would seem that we should maybe divide the planning processinto two levels, urban structure planning and local development planning.

Urban Structure Planning would control the big picture, the overall strategies and city-wide planning oftransport, density, major functional distribution, city-scale zoning and ecological planning the aspects ofsustainable urban planning that needoverall vision and control. Obviously such plans need highly professionalplanning teams to develop them, but they should be led by Urban Designers of vision, with economists andgeographers etc. to assist and support them, and they should work in tandem with Steering Committees, made

up of public members representing all aspects of city life. Structure Plans would determine and control content,


16/17

16

scale and timing of city development, and would set out pattern language guidelinesfor Local DevelopmentPlans, and determine urban function and density goals and limits, strategy for phasing of development at theurban scale, but would not determine their implementation.

Local Development Planning would be the level at which actual physical development would be envisioned,planned and controlled, at the level of the local communities, bringing local involvement, concern and vision tothe development and planning process. The area of these local planning entities would be equivalent in scale tothe town, with a 20,000 to 50,000 population base. Here, local development initiatives can take place overtime, as a local process, and development plans would be proposed, presented, lobbied and discussed in aprocess of local Public Approval, not just limited by Public Objection.

In order to direct commercial interest and investment into the benefit of building development, and not into landvalue speculation, where planning decisions change the value of privately owned land upon which developmenttakes place, there should be a betterment levy, taken at the time of commencement of development, whichwould bring a considerable proportion of the change-of-use land value benefit, resulting from the public planningprocess, into the local area authoritys account, for the development of local infrastructure and the public realm.This would help the development process benefit all the stakeholders, commercial and local, and increasesvalue for all in an equitable way.Obviously such a system needs built-in safeguards against local petty corruption, influence buying etc., but this

is a legal, rather than urban sustainability issue, and requires a separate discussion.

The Process of Planning

All the above has to take place within a Process of Planning, which in its detail and framework will differentfrom place to place, but one fundamental aspect is universal the basis of planning is a Design Process, whichneeds to be lead from a visionary design standpoint to have any chance of success.

While geographers, economists, geophysicists, etc. should be members of a planning team, individuals withthese primary specializations are not trained to be Urban Designers, leaders of the planning design process.

An architectural technician, highly trained in building materials, construction techniques, building standards and

regulation, is not trained to take on the function of an architect. He is not trained to generate the aestheticvisions or functional concepts at the core of building design. He is not trained to lead a multidisciplinary team ofengineering and M&E consultants, integrating the work of the whole team into a successful design andconstruction project.

In the same way, only an urban designer with a broad based training, covering all aspects of urban design, cangenerate the vision and concepts of integrated, humane, sustainable urban planning and design with the inputof the whole team of specialists in a similar way that the architect orchestrates the whole building designteam.

Due to this lack of vision, and thus purpose, the planning system today, plagued by lack of concept, convictionand direction, has largely abdicated the role and responsibility of pro-active urban design and development.The system is mostly concerned with burocratic application of planning rules, attempting to regulate commercial

development interests and initiatives, which de-facto have become the driving forces in Urban Design!

However, as we know from experience, they do not usually act in the interest of the Community as a whole, andif we let them rule, everybody suffers as a result in the end including the developers themselves.Determination of the design and development of our cities through overall vision and pro-active planning mustbe the way forward. Laise faire burocratic management of rules and regulations is development administration

IT IS NOT PLANNING !!


17/17

17

Conclusions

In conclusion, this article is a summary of issues that need to be addressed in the development of aSustainable Urban Development Initiative. It does not pretend to be exhaustive, and there are surely otherswho can contribute ideas and concepts to the pot. It also does not address the issues of Rural and RegionalDevelopment, within which context The City sits, and upon which it exerts great impact and significance.

As place makers we cannot help projecting ourselves onto the landscape. The human species hasan image-making mind, and the city is always something of a dream. But as we dream of our idealcities, as we conjure the human weft on the geological warp of the land, we can begin to see moreclearly the lineaments of the place we inhabit, the true character of the territory, its genus loci. Andthen, as we shape the character of our cities, we will make places that celebrate both humancreativity and a rich, harmonious relationship with the living earth. We will create a new geography ofhope. William McDonough

Documents

Towards the Sustainable City-20!8!10