Density and Urban Sprawl – new housing in South-east of England

I came across this article on the RICS (Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors) website on the subject of urban density – How to stop the urban sprawl, RICS website, 12 October 2004, Alan Dobie. This is very relevant to the current debate about increasing the rate of house building in the south-east of England.  Yesterday’s (28th August 2007) Financial Times had much about this.  In “Setback for Brown’s housing targets” by Jim Pickard wrote “Plans for 3m new homes in the UK will be dealt a blow on Wednesday by an official report recommending a lower rate of housebuilding growth for the south-east, the region at the heart of Gordon Brown’s plans to increase home ownership.  The prime minister is keen to see swaths of new estates, not only in “regeneration” areas such as the Thames Gateway and Milton Keynes, but right across the Home Counties.”

I’m concerned that the current system for achieving new dwellings will result in yet more characterless, low-quality, low-density housing already so common on the outskirts of most towns in the region. The RICS article reminds us that “Low-density housing is not just wasteful in terms of land use. It also poses other problems, such as the size of the local population being insufficient for local shops, transport and other services to be financially viable. This in turn leads to increased traffic and pollution as people become more dependent on using the car for short local trips.”  The article discusses the benefits of higher densities and why it has proved so hard to achieve them in the south of England.  One of the key problems is the perception of much of the British public, taken into account by developers when planning new dwellings, is that higher density means poor quality.  

In many cities on the continent relatively high densities are the norm and are associated with high quality, spacious living with excellent facilities around such as cafes, restaurants, shops and parks.  Good quality public transport is also the norm.  This photo shows a typical area in the south of Brussels, Belgium, about 4 km from the centre of the city:

Bogotá – ‘a healthier and happier city’

Two items about Bogotá have excited me, both about the policies of Enrique Peñalosa, former mayor of Bogotá, and both passed on by friend and keen cyclist here at Oxford Brookes, Tim Jones. Colombia on the whole does not enjoy good press in the UK, and South America generally (and generalisations are always false, of course!) is said to combine wealth and influence for the few side by side with much poverty, so it’s especially good to hear of policies being introduced which are designed for general good, and which, in the short time appear unlikely to be popular for the wealthy.

The city’s vision

The first item is an article by Peñalosa describing their policies, which appeared in Environment Matters (in 2005) a World Bank publication, freely available by email, though this paricular copy is hosted by a Netherlands cycling organisation. Here are a few items from the article: “We want dynamic organised communities, with a sense of belonging. We want a city that will not increase road space in response to traffic jams, but rather will further restrict private car use. We want a city that clearly devotes more space and resources to children than to motor vehicles”.

In the UK, European Car Free Day, called I believe “In Town without My Car” (sounds like the title of a children’s story) is barely noticeable. In Brussels, no private cars are allowed an the streets on certain Sundays, and the streets are alive with people strolling, cycling, roller-blading etc. But in Bogotá every Sunday, “120 km of main arteries are closed to motor vehicles for a period of seven hours … more than 1.5 million people, from upper- to lower- income classes come out to bicycle, jog, walk and socialise”.

Bus-based transit system

“The single project that most contributed to improved quality of life was a bus-based transit system called TransMilenio … inspired by the Curitiba system in Brazil.” From a project management point of view the speed with which this project was completed “We were able to design, build the infrastructure, create the private partners that would operate it, get out the thousands of buses that previously operated there, and put the system into operation in three years.” In 2005 with then “only 66 km the system moves more than 1 million people every day, with a public investment of $270 million.”

Promoting cycling

I’m also inspired by the efforts to develop cycling as a means of transport. “While carse tend to be means of social differentiation, bicycles integrate. In dutch and danish cites, more than 35 percent of the population uses the bicycle for transport, while the percentages are insignificant in cities in the developing world …. The main reason is that developing -world cities are designed and built for the wealthier minorities. Costly elevated highways are built for the benefit of a few, while bikewayas and even sidewalks are frequently absent. In Bogotá, we built more than 300 kilometers of physically isolated bicycle paths in less than three years. From nearly none, more than 4.5 percent of the population now use a bicycle for daily transport needs. And many more use it sporadically.”

A message for other large cities around the world – cycling can work

It’s been depressing to see that large cities in China, often with a history of mass cycle use have been rapidly developing car use and associated infrastructure, and sometimes closing certain routes to cycle use. All the problems of noise, severance – both physical and social, and very noticeably pollution have been the result. I had become concerned that the European model of the city which is pedestrian and cycle friendly might not be appropriate in the massive new cities of the developing world, but Bogotá, with a population of some 7 million, provides an encouraging message.

The video

Much of this can be seen on a short video about Bogotá, also featuring Enrique Peñalosa, which can be downloaded, or played, from http://www.nycsr.org/nyc/video-view.php?id=20
The video needs the Quicktime plug-in (free download) to play.
The only thing I have reservations about, in the European context, is having segregated cycle routes. If they’re not busy, and are kept away from car routes there’s danger that they can be quite threatening – like those in Milton Keynes. One of Peñalosa’s comments I particularly like is that if a cycleway isn’t safe for an 8-year-old, it’s not a cycleway, spoken as a New York taxi’s door opens into a cycleway and a cyclist is forced out into fast traffic.