Urban Design: Green Dimensions

Peter Shirley, J. C. Moughtin

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2006
• ISBN:
  9781136350542
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Urban Planning & Landscaping

In Green Dimensions, Cliff Moughtin relates sustainable development and green design to the realm of urban design and development. Examining regional and local frameworks for design and planning, this book shows how sustainable urban design can be implemented on every scale.Working from a strong theoretical base, the author uses case studies and discusses policy developments, in order to challenge the conventional wisdom on
sustainable design. The book provides a rounded discussion of the application and suitability of current practice, and predicts future design needs.
Updating the reader on topics such as energy efficiency, sustainable city forms and the culture of new urbanism, this completely revised and restructured second edition also includes brand new chapters on the Urban Park and Bio-diversity.

THE ENVIRONMENTAL CRISIS AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

1

INTRODUCTION

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The subject matter of this book is the planning and design of ecologically sustainable cities. It is concerned with the process of structuring public space in the city at a time when the global environment appears increasingly fragile. Any discussion of city planning and urban design, which does not address environmental issues, has little meaning at a time of increasing population pressures on a declining natural resource base, widespread ecological destruction, increasing pollution, ozone layer depletion and climate change. The long-term survival of the planet as a vehicle for sustained human occupation in anything other than a degraded lifestyle is in some doubt: in these circumstances any discussion of the aesthetics of city planning in a pure or abstract form unrelated to environmental concerns could be described as superficial. Architecture and its sister art, urban design, are said to consist of ‘Commodotie, Firmness and Delight’ (Wotton, 1969). One aspect of ‘Commodotie’ in any urban development is sustainability – that is, a development which is non-damaging to the environment and which contributes to the city’s ability to sustain its social and economic structures. The pursuit of sustainable city structures presupposes also the development of a built environment of quality: one that ‘Delights’. Environmental quality in the city is, in part, determined by aesthetic values. This book aims to explore the problem of defining quality, the poetry of civic design, but seen against a backcloth of the current concerns about the environment and the imperative of achieving ecologically sound development.

The theme of this book is the ‘Green Dimensions’ of urban design: the second half of its title was chosen with care. Nothing, as far as we know, in the physical universe is permanent; nothing lasts forever. All things have a beginning and an end, including vast cultures, their great empires and cities. Sustainable development is a concept with strict temporal limits: sustainable urban form a mere chimera, a mirage that disappears over the horizon on approach. A degree of sustainability is all that can be achieved in any set of circumstances. It seems appropriate, therefore, to limit a study of sustainability to its dimensions: those factors that, from time to time, appear relevant. Some forms of development will probably be more sustainable and long-lasting than others. There is no authorative research on sustainable urban forms, only informed speculation about the path to be taken. This is a further reason for the tentative title of the book.

It would appear that the Post Modern agenda of the ‘New Urbanists’ is compatible with much of the theory of sustainable development, particularly those theories of sustainable development of the paler green hue. The current preoccupations of many urban designers are with the vitality and identity of urban areas, the quality of urbanity and the compact city, urban forms of human scale, which are less dependent upon the use of finite resources while respecting and conserving the natural environment. While there is a general consensus on the features of a sustainable development agenda amongst many working in the field of urban design, nevertheless there are differences in emphasis, (Carmona et al., 2003). Over a decade ago, Calthorpe (1993) in the USA outlined his principles for the Transit-Oriented-Development: an agenda that many in this country could still accept as a general guide. In summary, the principles of Transit-Orientated Development are:

(1) Organize growth on a regional level so that it is compact and transit-supportive.

(2) Locate commercial, housing, jobs, parks, and civic uses within walking distance of transit stops.

(3) Design pedestrian-friendly street networks which directly connect local destinations.

(4) Housing should be a mix of densities, tenure and cost.

(5) Sensitive habitat, riparian zones, and high-quality open space should be preserved.

(6) Public spaces should be the focus of building orientation and neighbourhood activity.

(7) Encourage infill and redevelopment along transit corridors within existing neighbourhoods.

This then, is the basic urban design agenda, compatible with sustainable development ideas, but is it sufficient for achieving that aim?

THE ENVIRONMENTAL MOVEMENT

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It has been suggested that the publication of Silent Spring by Rachel Carson in 1962 was the start of the modern environmental movement (Dobson, 1991). However, the roots of environmentalism may be much deeper. Farmer (1996) has traced the development of ‘Green Sensibility’ in architecture back to folk buildings and the cult of the cottage through the nineteenth century in the writings of Ruskin, the work of the Arts and Crafts movement to the twentieth century and the organic ideas in Modern Architecture. The planning profession could also cite its list of planners with green credentials. Amongst these father figures of the planning world would be Geddes (1949), Howard and the Garden City Movement (1965), and Mumford (1938) with his analysis of the ‘Rise and Fall of Megalopolis’. No doubt other disciplines could legitimately cite their own lists of people with deep concerns for the environment, many of them working long before the term ‘sustainable development’ was coined. While it is not the intention to downgrade these fine scholarly traditions, nevertheless, for the purpose of this study, and for convenience, the beginnings of the modern environmental movement will be placed in the 1960s. The mood of environmentalism quickened with Rachel Carson’s analysis of the inevitable damage caused by large-scale and indiscriminate use of chemical pesticides, fungicides and herbicides. Carson’s influence was widespread, affecting pressure groups such as Friends of the Earth, in addition to the stimulus she gave to the development of green politics and philosophy.

From the USA, Ian McHarg, the Scottish émigré, published his seminal work Design with Nature in 1969, seven years after Carson’s warning cry. McHarg’s ecological thesis spans the disciplines of landscape, architecture and planning: he is one of the founding fathers of sustainable development. McHarg argued that human development should be planned in a manner that took full account of nature and natural processes. Design with Nature in addition to articulating a philosophical position also provided a technique for landscape analysis and design using overlays, a technique which now forms the basis of GIS, Geographic Information Systems, an important tool for current planning and design. While McHarg was writing in the 1960s, the thrust of his argument still applies today in the twenty-first century. ‘It is their (the merchant’s) ethos, with our consent, that sustains the slumlord and the land rapist, the polluters of rivers and atmosphere. In the name of profit they pre-empt the seashore and sterilise the landscape, fell the great forests, fill protective marshes, build cynically in the flood plain. It is the claim of convenience – or – its illusion – that drives the expressway through neighbourhoods, homes and priceless parks, a taximeter of indifferent greed’.

Small is Beautiful by Schumacher (1974) is another milestone in the analysis of the causes of environmental problems and in the development of green principles. One cause of environmental problems according to Schumacher is the notion that we can continue to produce and consume at ever-increasing rates in a finite planet. Schumacher warned that the planet which is our stock of capital is being threatened by overproduction: in effect, the human race is consuming its capital at an alarming rate, endangering the tolerance margins of nature, and so threatening the life support systems that nurture humankind. A further landmark in green analysis was ‘The Tragedy of the Commons’ (Hardin, 1977). Hardin argued that if everyone maximized his or her own gain from commonly held property, whether land, sea or air (the commons), the result would be the destruction of those commons. Where populations are comparatively small the ‘commons’ are not under great threat. With rising world populations, the commons now under threat include the air we breathe, the ozone layer that protects us from the sun’s rays, and the ecological systems that deal with the waste we cause. How far The Limits to Growth (Meadows et al., 1972) for the Club of Rome’s Project on ‘The Predicament of Mankind’ progressed the aims of the environmental movement is problematical. It attempted to plot the depletion of resources and to warn of the danger of exponential growth, to the ultimate destruction of a global environment fit for human occupation. The book has been described as mechanistic and non-scientific. It has also been criticized for overstating the case, therefore damaging the environmental or green cause. To some extent these criticisms have been addressed in Beyond the Limits (Meadows et al., 1992). The Limits to Growth did attempt, however, to study some aspects of the global environment holistically, concentrating on linkages and adopting a systems approach to environmental analysis, all being common features of a ‘green method’.

THE ‘SKEPTICAL
ENVIRONMENTALIST’

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The publication by Lomborg, in Danish, of his book, Verdens Sande Tilstand (1998) – later translated into English as The Skeptical Environmentalist (2001) – was a further landmark in the environmental debate. According to Lomborg’s assessment, conditions on earth are generally improving for human welfare: furthermore, future prospects are not nearly as gloomy as environmental scientists predict. Those working in the field of sustainable development cannot ignore Lomborg’s thought-provoking analysis, even though most reputable environmental scientists have rebutted his complacent view of the global environment (see Bongaarts, Holdren, Lovejoy and Schneidr in Scientific American, January, 2002). Like Meadows in his Limits to Growth, Lomborg may have overstated his case. Unfortunately, his thesis has given credence to the views of those advocating an environmental ‘free for all’, particularly those to the right of American politics (see ‘Bush bending science to his political needs’; Guardian, 19th February, 2004).

POPULATION

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An important contributory factor affecting the deterioration of the environment is population growth. According to Bongaarts (2002), Lomborg’s assertion that the number of people on this planet is not ‘the problem’, is simply wrong. The population of the planet was approximately 0.5 billion in the mid-seventeenth century. It was then growing at approximately 0.3 per cent per annum, which represented a doubling of population every 250 years. By the beginning of the twentieth century, the population was 1.6 billion but growing at 0.5 per cent per annum, which corresponds to a doubling time of 140 years. In 1970, the global population was 3.6 billion, with a growth rate of 2.1 per cent per annum. Not only was the population growing exponentially but the rate of growth was increasing. From 1971 to 2000 the population grew to about 6 billion, but the growth rate fell to 1.5 per cent per annum. This change in population growth rate is a significant improvement and means a reduction in the rate at which total world population grows. The population growth rate is expected to fall further to about 0.8 per cent per annum by 2030. Despite this fall in population growth rate, the absolute growth will remain nearly as high as levels in the last decades of the twentieth century, simply because the population base rate keeps expanding: the global population is expected to be about 8 billion by 2030 and to reach about 10 billion by 2050.

These global figures mask details of unprecedented demographic change, which are highly significant for the impact they may have on the environment. The world’s poorest nations of Africa, Asia and Latin America have rapidly growing and young populations, while in the wealthy nations of Europe, North America and Japan, population growth is zero or in some cases negative. By 2030, over 85 per cent of the world’s population will live in these poorer nations of the developing world. Three-quarters of global population growth occurs in the urban centres of these poorer nations, and half of this increase is by natural growth within cities. This urban growth in, and rural-urban migration to, the cities of the poor ‘South’ is occurring in a context of far higher absolute population growth, at extremely low income levels, very little institutional and financial capacity, and few opportunities to expand into new frontiers, foreign or domestic. ‘While urban poverty exists and is indeed growing in all cities of the world, it characterizes aspects of the rapidly growing cities of the developing countries. There, urban poverty disproportionately affects women and children; fuels ethnic and racial tensions; and condemns large sections, and sometimes the majority of urban dwellers to a downward spiral of marginalization, social and economic exclusion and unhealthy living environments’ (United Nations, Habitat, 2001). Over 1 billion people live in absolute poverty, living on less than $1 per day. A total of 420 million people live in countries that no longer have enough cropland on which to grow their own food, and 500 million people live in regions prone to chronic drought: by 2025, this number is likely to be 2.4 to 3.5 billion people. Clearly, population pressures will induce migratory movements throughout the world, so that in Europe – including Britain – we can expect to see a continuing influx of economic migrants: some – but not all – in this country would see this immigration of young economically active people as essential to sustain our aging population (Observer, 25 January, 2004). Such population movements will not be without conflict.

‘Poverty and environmental degradation are closely interrelated. While poverty results in environmental stress, the major cause of environmental deterioration is an unsustainable pattern of consumption and production, particularly in the industrialised countries, which aggravates poverty and imbalances’ (UN, 1992b). The cause of the problem does not lie in the poor South, but in the ‘over-consumption’ in the rich North: over-consumption being a euphemism for the much shorter and more accurate word ‘greed’, as used by McHarg. Nevertheless, a reduction in population growth rates through education and family planning is of great importance in establishing a sustainable future for humankind: alone, however, it is insufficient. It is worth noting that one child born in Europe or the USA will use the same resources and be responsible for using the same energy and producing the same waste as perhaps thirty or forty born in less advantaged countries. The problems are ‘increasingly international, global and potentially more life-threatening than in the past’ (Pearce, 1989). Fifteen years on from the time when Pearce wrote those words, global conditions have, if anything, deteriorated. The development of a global environment of quality, in addition to the reduction in population growth in the Developing World, is dependent upon establishing sustainable patterns of consumption and production in the Developed World, which in part is related to the way in which we build and use cities.

FOOD PRODUCTION

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Barring catastrophe, the global population over the next thirty years will grow from 6 billion to 8 billion people. Most of this growth will be in cities of the Developing World. Bongaarts (2002) believes that the demand for feeding this extra population, will be a great challenge: ‘The ability of agriculturists to meet this challenge remains uncertain’. He goes on to say that, ‘…the technological optimists are probably correct in claiming that the overall food production can be increased substantially over the next few decades’. This agricultural expansion will be costly. The expansion will probably take place on soils of poor quality, located in places less favourable for irrigation, than existing intensively farmed land. Water – as we read constantly in our daily newspapers – is in increasingly short supply, while its demand grows not ...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• CONTENTS
• PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION
• PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• 1 THE ENVIRONMENTAL CRISIS AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
• 2 ENERGY, BUILDINGS AND POLLUTION
• 3 ENERGY, TRANSPORT AND POLLUTION
• 4 THE REGION AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
• 5 THE URBAN PARK
• 6 CITY METAPHOR
• 7 CITY FORM
• 8 THE CITY QUARTER
• 9 THE URBAN STREET BLOCK
• 10 CONCLUSION
• BIBLIOGRAPHY
• FIGURE SOURCES
• INDEX