What is the answer to making cities more sustainable? Is there one urban design that can solve the car dependence of Canadian cities and get people walking, biking and using public transit? Will we ever be able to find the solution to the design disaster of suburbia? These questions are being asked by urban designers and engineers all over the globe.
There is no one answer to creating sustainable cities as the design of each city is dependent on place and time. In fact, most solutions are not relevant to all areas of the globe or in the vast diversity of regions in Canada. In my blog addressing the UN’s Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, I suggested the need for focus on community solutions in combination with globalization. The natural diversity of the globe requires different designs for different regions. I also addressed that the focus on sustainable communities will increase diversity making the globe more resilient to socioeconomic fluctuations, climate change and natural disasters. Last week, many different designs to create the sustainable city were presented to me such as: New Urbanism (transit orientated developments), the Living Forest Communities in B.C. and the Ecocity.
I recently watched a great TED talk by James Howard Kunstler addressing the “Tragedy of the Suburbs” which I encourage you to watch. Kunstler presents a humourous lecture on his idea of the disaster he calls “the national automobile slum”. I think Kunstler is right on the mark here as he addresses the dismal cities poor urban designs. He suggests our current design does not incorporate nature, but instead tries to put on a “nature bandaid”. Nature makes people feel good, but trying to encorporate the rural into the urban areas was ultimately an urban design failure. It lead to the creation of suburbia and urban sprawl as people had a need to become reconnected with the land and nature. Kunstler presents a solution that he believes will be increasingly important as we approach the end of oil and vehicle reliance. He suggests downscaling drastically, growing food closer, living closer to one another and our work, reconstructing cities, smart development and the creation of “meaningful places”.
The following video is a trailer for the film "The end of Suburbia". The full video if you are interested can be found on Amazon for $1.99 and is also available in parts on youtube.com. The trailer provides the basic premise behind the creators opinion on the future of suburbia.
Yet, there are still some people who believe that suburbia will live on, just in another form. This video was created to contrast the opinion showcased in "The End of Suburbia". It explains the change that can occur in the suburbs to ensure they flourish as a radically retrofitted, food producing suburbia.
New Urbanism focuses on constructing cities similar to how they were constructed traditionally. I think they had it right as older cities created a great sense of community, increased the social interaction between residents, the sense of safety and of place. New urbanism focuses on compact building, range of housing opportunities, decreasing car dependence, incorporating pleasant walkable neighbourhoods and a variety of transportation choices. They also focus on making distinct communities, mixed land use and preserving open space. The design below shows an example of New Urbanism design that could be coupled to a rapid transit link resulting in a transit oriented development (TOD):
One example of new urbanism is Copenhagen, Denmark. In Copenhagen, they have created a new influx of residents living in the downtown core by creating a community with many of the aspects of new urbanism. They have tried to increase the aesthetics of downtown, increase walkability and bike riding and restrict a large amount of automobile traffic by creating pedestrian only streets, heated bus stops, bike rentals and vegetation. To learn more about Copenhagen’s attempts to create a more sustainable downtown core visit the Community Research Connections’ website by clicking this link.
Living Forest Communities have been erected to save the forests from intensive logging by turning to sustainable selective logging. These communities focus on increasing the benefits of logging while protecting the integrity of the forests. The picture below is of the living forest community called Everwoods on Cortes Island near Vancouver Island, B.C. where 15 home sites are placed on 150 acres of forested land.
This method may not be able to be used in places of the world where it is needed the most as it is very site specific. Some countries may not have the slow pace of growth that the living forest communities require and must use other methods. The Ecocity is a feasible design to insure sustainability in rapidly growing populations for example, the Tanjin Ecocity in China. They invision the city running 100% on solar and geothermal power with 90% of the population using public transit for their primary source of transportation. Wetlands will be implemented to help treat wastewater and runoff and increase the biodiversity of the area. China needs to implement the development of sustainable cities as they are experiencing great stress caused by rapid population growth and a recent influx of people into the inner cities. The Ecocity design hopes to prevent slums from occurring in the inner cities in China.
The following video showcases William McDonough, a world-renowned architect and designer on Ecocities in China:
There is ongoing research into how city planning will solve the disaster of urban sprawl and the reliance of the automobile. It is increasingly important to note that time and place are of importance when designing sustainable cities and communities. If we can start the sustainable community trend and decrease our reliance on the automobile, the impact of the end of oil will be less devastating. The influx of people into the inner cities must be managed to insure there are a variety of housing types and communities to provide socially equitable development. These ideas presented above are only a few of the sustainable city designs, some which are waiting to be discovered. As the demand for environmental and urban planning and innovation increases, we can expect the future to hold a multitude of solutions for a variety of places across the globe.
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