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Compact Cities

 Today I would like to share some thoughts on city planning, which in many parts of the world, including my home town of Johannesburg, is in the process of a shift in mindset. This is in response to the urgent need for a more environmentally responsible approach, as cities are some of the largest contributors of greenhouse gases, consumers of energy, producers of waste and disrupters of ecological processes, such as the water cycle.

This new thinking is associated with the Compact City approach, which aims to reduce a city's greenhouse gases, reduce energy consumption, reduce private car use and at the same time reduce travel time especially for day-to-day activities. In this philosophy, there is a drive to protect green space and manage stormwater in a more sustainable way. A city that has made great strides in many of these objectives is Curatiba in Brazil, famous as one of the first cities to introduce a bus rapid transit system, and with some very creative approaches to waste and stormwater management.

Curatiba's BRT
Creative commons licensed: https://www.flickr.com/photos/whltravel/4370520506

Through intensive modelling by engineering firms such as ARUP, planners working closely with engineers have come up with three main strategies that are used in combination: intensification of economic activity; densification; and diversification through mixed-use. The idea is to get all our day-to-day activities to be closer together: one of the legacies of the planning of the last 70 years is that zoning into separate land uses has pushed residential, commercial, retail and recreation activities far apart, forcing us to use private transport to access work, shopping and entertainment and encouraging urban sprawl.

In a Compact City, mixed use activities are encouraged, providing employment, retail, educational, medical and recreational spaces close together, and near to densified residential accommodation. In the City of Johannesburg, this is being conceptualised through densifying existing nodes of economic activity with medium-rise accommodation, bringing people's living spaces closer to work and other activities. At the same time, areas of relatively dense housing are planned to have intensified economic activity, new nodes of shops and offices, along with public facilities.

An example of mixed-use development in Joburg is Rosebank, an area earmarked for densification with new residential and office accommodation around the existing retail and tourism infrastructure. This area is very well served by public transport, on a number of bus routes and with its own rapid-rail station linking the suburb to the inner city, the international airport and the neighbouring cities of Tshwane and Ekurhuleni.

New offices in Rosebank
Creative Commons licensed: https://www.flickr.com/photos/charles79/52716172965/in/photostream/

But this leads us on to one of the main challenges of the Compact City approach: as an area densifies, the property prices increase, making the accommodation unaffordable for those who most need the benefits of mixed-use by bringing their workplace and other day-to-day activities close to where they live.

The City has tried to address this process of gentrification by putting a requirement for a percentage of accommodation to be in the "affordable housing" range, but this is a very nominal number of rental units in each development, not enough to make a real difference. A more promising strategy is that of economic intensification in areas where there is already fairly dense low-income housing, such as Soweto and Diepsloot. This is very slow on the uptake, as these areas do not have the same appeal for private-sector developers.

The Compact City has many great features: not only does it aim to minimise the carbon and water footprint of its inhabitants, but it looks to improving people's lives, through reducing travel time and providing closer access to green space (a strategy often combined with a more sustainable management of urban stormwater). But one has to question whether this delivers on its promises in cities of high economic inequality. Is it really the panacaea for cities of the global south, or do we need to come up with a different approach?


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