Cities and Sustainability: Is Intensification Good Policy?

Evidence on urbanisation and conservation from New South Wales ...

Squeezing up to save the environment
This post examines the idea that we can promote sustainability by increasing the densities of large cities around their centres.  This compact city paradigm presumes that we can reshape the consumption of citizens in environmentally benign ways by reshaping the cities they live in. 

The sustainability challenge is the challenge of consumption: how much and what we consume drives our impact on the planet.  But presuming that by enforcing urban intensification we will transform ingrained patterns of consumption in favour of the environment may be a step too far.  Will obliging more citizens to live at higher densities in smaller dwellings around city centres really pave the way to environmental salvation?

Some evidence of urban impacts

The Australian Conservation Foundation is committed to ecological sustainability, tackling the social and economic causes of environmental problems.  Among other things, the Foundation publishes the online Australian Consumption Atlas. This is a useful source for addressing the role of urbanisation and urban form.

The Atlas is based on methodology which traces the direct and indirect demands on the environment of different goods and services.  Consumption patterns from Household Expenditure Surveys are related to household size and type, members’ age structure, incomes and education, and the statistical areas they live in. Using this information the environmental impacts of individuals living in different areas can be mapped. 

Three indicators of impact are displayed in the atlas: tonnes of greenhouse gas emitted, litres of water consumed, and ecological footprint.  The latter estimates the area of resources required to support a person’s lifestyle.  You can read more about the methodology here.

The data underlying the atlas is dated – based on the 2001 Census and 1999 Household Expenditure Survey, among other things.  But I do not expect the relativities it demonstrates, or the conclusions it supports, to have changed much.

Cities don’t consume; people do

Here is the authors' key conclusion. Our urban planners, designers, and politicians should consider carefully:

despite the lower environmental impacts associated with less car use, inner city households outstrip the rest of Australia in every other category of consumption. Even in the area of housing, the opportunities for relatively efficient, compact living appear to be overwhelmed by the energy and water demands of modern urban living, such as air conditioning, spa baths, down lighting and luxury electronics and appliances, as well as by a higher proportion of individuals living alone or in small households.

In each state and territory, the centre of the capital city is the area with the highest environmental impacts, followed by the inner suburban areas. Rural and regional areas tend to have noticeably lower levels of consumption.

(Consuming Australia: Main Findings, 2007, Australian Conservation Foundation, p.10)

Looking inside Sydney

I explored the indicators for different parts of Sydney.  Here are some results.



Indicators of Environmental Impacts: Sydney Centre and Suburbs

People in Inner Sydney generate 92% more greenhouse gas than the New South Wales Average, and well over twice as much as people in the lower income western suburbs, like Penrith and Blacktown. The levels are a bit higher for people in the more prosperous northern suburbs. Despite proximity to major employment centres, and an efficient commuter rail service, the consumption patterns of Willoughby and Ku-ring-gai residents generate high levels of air pollution.


Looking East to Sydney CBD
(Source: www:freeaussiestock.com)

A similar pattern is evident for water consumption – residents of the hot, dry, western suburbs account for the least consumption, Inner and North Sydney residents the most.  They also have the biggest ecological footprint.

 

So what does this tell us?
The lesson is not necessarily that location in the CBD is less sustainable; but that the lifestyle associated with it is.

I have discussed the potential inefficiency of small, multi-unit dwellings elsewhere.  Over and above that, the high cost of redevelopment in central locations calls for housing construction strategies that add little to sustainability. 

One strategy is to build to modest standards.  This keeps the price down and rental yield up for investors; or creates opportunities for ownership by low income earners.  Another strategy is to adopt high standards of fit-out and install luxury appliances in favoured locations to make multi-unit dwellings attractive to wealthier households. 

Neither option is particularly environmentally sympathetic. 

Smaller is still better

I also reviewed the indicators for smaller cities and towns in New South Wales.  (In some cases these included surrounding rural settlement). 


Indicators of Environmental Impacts: New South Wales Towns and Small Cities

This suggests that smaller towns hold the key to environmentally sustainable lifestyles, even more than city suburbs.  For example,  Coffs Harbour's 73,000 residents generate greenhouse emissions at 88% of the state average, and just 46% of inner Sydney residents.  They consume water at 81% of the State rate (and 60% of North Sydney), and have an ecological footprint just 60% of their inner Sydney counterparts.  Similar patterns are evident in coastal settlements like Byron Bay (33,000 residents), Ballina (42,000), and Port Macquarie (77,000) and inland towns such as Griffith (26,000), Tamworth (60,000), and Wagga Wagga (64,000).

What does it all add up to?

A simple overview can be derived by summing the percentage deviations of each area from the New South Wales average across the three measures. Admittedly this is a course approach: it weights each indicator equally, and ignores differences in how much centres vary across each individually.  Nevertheless, it provides a sufficiently meaningful overview to confirm that towns and small cities are generally more sustainable than a large city, and that the suburbs perform better than the inner city.


Summary Index of the Environmental Impact of Urbanisation
 

Explaining the sustainability dividend of small towns
There can be any number of explanations for this, the obvious one being that it is all about income.  Perhaps the advantages of lifestyles outside Sydney simply reflect lower average incomes in smaller cities and towns.  As people become more affluent or seek more income, they migrate into the main cities taking their high consumption expectations with them; or by living in large cities they are more likely to earn - and consume - more.

Conversely, living in smaller cities and settlements may reflect lifestyle preferences which are intrinsically less environmentally intrusive.  At the same time. small settlements make less travel demands given the greater proximity to work, shopping, service, and recreation opportunities.  In addition, lower density housing may provide more opportunities for passive energy efficiency, directly reducing resource consumption for comparable activities.  

Flawed policy

Until we know more, however, we need to avoid the trap of determinism.  It would be short-sighted simply to invert the current paradigm, for example, and decide that policies to encourage people to live outside large cities and city centres will somehow enhance sustainability.

Ultimately, how we live is more important than where we live.  What the evidence here confirms, though, is that under current patterns of consumption promoting large scale urban consolidation is flawed as environmental as well as urban policy. 

Upping the Ante - Where can we Afford to Live?

Auckland fiddles, Sydney makes its move

The Auckland Council has released a Housing Action Plan that will be an addendum to its encyclopaedic Draft Unitary Plan.  It contains seven objectives, 12 priority areas, and 32 actions.  The Housing Action Plan will now be subject to the submissions and appeal process  associated with the Unitary Plan, whatever form it takes, and presumably also subject to the red tape associated with trying to implement it.

Compare this non-action with what is happening in Sydney, where the State government has just announced the   planned release of greenfield and brownfield land for up to  171,000 new homes across 31 new and existing suburbs. Alongside that will be land for new jobs, shops, schools, and transport. 

By moving on a variety of sites and promoting real volume construction, and by providing for diverse housing types the State is hoping to make housing affordable once more with a mix of multi-unit and detached housing.

Which city will be more liveable?

In Auckland, we are not sure if we have even 2,000 sites ready to build and maybe 15,000 in the pipeline.  And by the time we get the grab-bag of policies in the Housing Action Plan sorted and refined into something workable, it's not clear that we will have many more.

Certainly the Sydney plan will take some time to get traction, but with this announcement it is underway.  And that may create even more grounds for New Zealanders who cannot afford a house in Auckland to head west to Sydney and beyond.  Abstract notions of liveability - and comparisons of liveability rankings - may be irrelevant if you cannot buy the house you want in one city but can in another.

The Auckland challenge 

The New Zealand Productivity Commission and the Government have challenged Auckland to cut the red tape and introduce substantial new capacity to the market as a means of increasing the affordability of housing.  The Council is resisting. It has, after all,  produced many documents on the issue - but not much else.

The time is over-ripe for bold action in Auckland.  Allowing this issue to get caught up in the red tape surrounding the Draft Unitary Plan means going backwards. We knew at the time of the original Auckland Regional Growth Strategy in 1998 that we were facing a significant shortage of housing capacity. Yet we wasted the following decade writing reports that estimated theoretical capacity, projected theoretical demand, and  proposed impractical responses. 

Going by the increasing press and social media comment, people are finally realising that we are now faced with a housing (ownership and rental) crisis and that this will have significant long-term economic and social consequences.

Let's not waste another decade

Here are some simple if challenging  actions:

• Identify sufficient land in green and brown sites for, say, 60,000 new dwellings immediately. This is not so difficult.
• Some of that land will be available in and around satellite centres including but not confined to existing  rural centres and townships. Plan today for the necessary transport corridors. 
• Some of the land might be developed by pushing out the urban limits on the edge of the city, but this somewhat conventional response promotes sprawl, diminishing the quality of the metropolitan environment. 
• And some of it will be brownfield sites around town centres, some close to the harbours and Gulf, and some close to -- but not right on -- transport corridors.  The secret is to have multiple sites on the go at a time to create diversity and to avoid disrupting any one sector of the market.
• If necessary create a community controlled organisation (or expand the mandate of and resources of the council controlled Auckland  Council Property Ltd) to consolidate ownership in land parcels large enough to sustain efficient development.  Such an agency would work with the private sector and central government to achieve packages and put to tender such sites or the right to build on them .
• Streamline the regulatory processes through which the quality of development can be managed and maintained.
• Ensure that adequate provision is made for community amenities and services, including medical centres, education , retailing and commerce, recreation areas and green space.
• Zone and develop accessible and well-connected employment centres in association with new housing areas.
• Ensure that we are realistic  in our infrastructure prescriptions, that we do not over-specify, overbuild, or overcharge.

Moving ahead

Developing new capacity need not destroy Auckland's green and blue image.  In fact, done right it will enhance it and enable more people to enjoy it. 

The figures show that the expansion of Auckland in the past has not devastated the output of the rural sector in the way many people seem to think.  Nor need it do so in the future.  Indeed, the figures suggest that it may even increase rural productivity.  In any case, efficient urban form is important to sustain economic development. In contrast, inefficient, ad hoc, incremental development that offers too little too late may add more costs than benefits,
 
We need to move quickly, with due sensitivity to Auckland's diverse living environments, and provide flexibility if the city is to grow in the way this Council thinks it will, or should. This does not mean development at any cost.  But it does mean moving away from the piecemeal and ponderous approach to the City's future that is constricting housing at the moment.

 A bold vision is needed to replace the report-ridden,  incremental, abstract, and partial policies developed to date if we want to protect the quality of the Auckland environment and develop the housing that enables more Aucklanders to enjoy it.

 

Flat Out - Reflections on Apartment Living

The writing on the walls
The debate about intensification is hotting up just as Auckland Council is about to unveil its Unitary Plan. The New Zealand Herald has just run four articles together, two advocating a high density city and two pointing to its flaws.

The Deputy Mayor suggests that the Unitary Plan will give us good urban design, “through the mix of apartment living, terrace houses and some land release and development around the edges of Auckland”.  She makes the point that “a lot of young people and a lot of retired people want to live where they can give up their car, live close to public transport, and live in town.” 

Of course, there are a lot more people in the city who are not young or retired and cannot afford to reduce their mobility.  If we fail to cater for their needs and respond to their aspirations for where they might live, then there may be fewer of them in the future as they fuel the exodus to Australia.  And as they tend to be in the young family cohorts the population predictions on which the plan is based will be even less likely to come to fruition.

Can we mandate good design?
The Deputy Mayor’s assertion that the plan will enshrine “good urban design” is a worry.  Good urban design for whom?  And by whom?   Because the recent rejection by the community and planning commissioners of an apartment above the Milford shopping mall in one of Auckland’s coastal suburbs suggests once more that the planned lift in density may not be seen as good design by the communities affected.  And simply rejecting their concerns as nimbyism is a failure to engage in the issues. 

Anyway, how do we enshrine such a subjective, time-bound notion as good design in a statutory city plan?  Urban design reflects setting, culture, and circumstance. How can all that be locked down in a rule book?  That seems to be the antithesis of good design.

Getting personal
The impending plan and the emotions it is raising led me to reflect on my own experience of apartment living, which most recently covers Sydney and Singapore – each time at a point of transition in my own life.

The Ups and Downs of City Living
When moving to Sydney in 1999 I spent a couple of months in the West Tower of The Forum development at St Leonards, above the North Shore Line and 10 minutes by train from the CBD.  I was on the 15th of 38 floors, in one of 440 apartments. 

The Forum, St Leonards, North Sydney

The apartment had a great (but narrow) view.  With only one external wall façade it didn’t see a lot of sun. Consequently, natural air flow and temperature regulation didn’t work so well, meaning comfort depended on running air-conditioning for prolonged periods.

You could turn the aircon off and open the sliding door onto the small balcony if you did want fresh air.  Unfortunately, it wasn’t that fresh.   If you hung washing on the deck it would come back dusted with the grime of busy city streets. 

Fortunately, there was a clothes dryer in the cupboard by the kitchen.

Unfortunately, the kitchen was central to the apartment.  The clothes dryer had to compete with the air conditioning.  Still, the rumble of the dryer was generally preferable to the rumble, squealing brakes, and sirens of busy city streets.

Of course, cooking smells lingered long in the small apartment with the window closed.  Fortunately, there was a selection of fast food places in the foyer between the escalator from the station and the lifts to the apartment.  Great for the waistline.

The complex had a pool for exercise.   Unfortunately, it was usually crowded with young people who I think also lived in the complex.  Fortunately I had television as an alternative. 

I tried to maintain my jogging routine but heavily trafficked main roads and pedestrian barriers on one side and the broken down paving of the ageing suburban streets in the shadow of the towers on the other were discouraging. 

So I got my routine established – toast in the apartment in the morning, lift down to the foyer, coffee to go, train to the city, lift up to the office, work, lift down and two  minute walk back to the station, train home, fast food in the foyer, lift up to the apartment, washing in the dryer, television, bed.  

(Unfortunately – or perhaps fortunately - I did not know people to hang out with in nearby pubs and cafes, the other obvious form of recreation for city apartment living).

Fortunately, family joined me so we moved on to a 20 storey block close to the harbour and further from the CBD, and three months later a nine storey block, and 12 months later a six apartment block, each one more liveable than the one before it. 

Another Singapore Success
And then there was time spent living in  high rise Regent Heights apartments in Singapore for several months, three towers with 645 apartments.  This worked well, perhaps because in Singapore there are few choices.  There is a pride in design, and a willingness to allow it to flourish, and a solidity in construction all-too-often absent in some of the apartments in central Auckland.  In Singapore apartments built in the last twenty years or so are also generous in grounds, gardens and amenities.


Region Heights Apartments, Bukit Batok, Singapore

Regent Heights had a driving range and putting greens, tennis courts, its own gym, swimming pools, restaurant, and barbecues.  And I was assured that this level of design and appointment was not unusual.  Slightly older complexes nearby had open food courts at their base - important community meeting places -- gardens and children’s’ play areas.

Regent Heights - Ground Level

 Apartments are not built as add-ons to old town centres or to exploit airspace above commercial premises.  They are central to achieving the high levels of open space and greenery which is a mark of the confined and crowded city-state, providing areas of ambience and respite from commercial activity.  They are not imposed on an existing, low rise fabric, or part of a plan that see open space as houses in waiting, or “mixed” with non-residential uses. 

Quality not quantity
We don't need to copy Singapore, but the experience suggests that apartment living can be done well – provided it’s not a matter of retrofitting and sacrificing the quality of existing city spaces.  And providing some freedom is given to design apartments that add to the quality of life.  So far in Auckland our experience has been decidedly mixed.  Let’s hope that the Unitary Plan pushes us towards the quality rather than quantity end of the medium density spectrum.

 

Apartment Living, Hobson St, Auckland