Compact, Decentralised or What? The Sustainable City Debate
2.3 Conclusions
Up to this point in the discussion the exact forms and structures that—in conjunction with, or as a result of, all the properties listed above—would render the city more sustainable remain elusive. It has become painfully evident that many of the claims in support of one or the other urban structure are not substantiated. There is no unimpaired evidence that one or the other city model would have a significantly higher or lower level of energy consumption, and investigations of the relationship between transport systems, densities and energy consumption are also largely inconclusive.
In view of the growing awareness of alternative sources of clean and renewable energy it seems only a matter of time until such sources become available on a viable economic scale. One has therefore to ask the question whether the search for a most energy-efficient city is in the long term not somewhat misguided. Reduction if not elimination of the use of fossil fuel for the generation of energy is essential not so much because this will preserve resources for future generations but because of the massive pollution that results from their use. For exactly this reason, future generations may actually not want to use these resources.
Sooner or later the quantity of energy consumed will become less relevant—
on the one hand because it is clean, on the other because it is available in abundance. The major problem with car-dependent transport will then no longer be pollution but congestion, which is not solved by clean energy. Even with an abundance of clean energy, a form of urban transport is needed that uses less space; and this can be achieved by people sharing vehicles or vehicles forming trains or by efficient public transport systems. Accordingly, it is much more relevant to search for an urban form that responds to the sustainability criteria listed above, a city that is people-friendly, works efficiently and has a sustainable relationship with the regional and global hinterland. Further investigation concentrates therefore on the search for a structure that enables a high degree of mobility and access to a large variety of different services and facilities without causing congestion, a structure that allows a symbiotic relationship between city and country, a structure that enables social mix, a degree of autonomy of communities and a degree of self-sufficiency, and a structure that generates highly legible and imageable settlement forms. The following chapter will investigate models of the city that may partly or completely achieve the goal of bringing about a more sustainable city.
Needless to say, within the framework of this book it will not be possible to investigate exhaustively, and come up with empirical data for, the interdependence between demands for access to services and facilities by foot and their location; between population densities and viable local services and facilities; between public transport networks, access to them within walking distance, and population densities that render public transport viable. Such research will have to be carried out elsewhere, or is already being carried out.
Nevertheless, these interdependencies will in principle be taken into
consideration when studying alternative urban forms and structures. What it is hoped to achieve here is to bring about a clearer understanding of structures and forms of the city that per se achieve a considerable improvement in the city’s quality and environmental impact even though the actual values of achievements are not yet accurately known and depend upon further, and case- and place- specific, research.
The investigation that follows focuses first and foremost on the city’s micro- structure, which promises to support the case of a more sustainable city, and will then study alternative forms and macro-structures of the city and city region which provide some or all of the sustainability properties listed above.
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