SUSTAINABLE URBAN FORM
In recent years , the concepts of sustainable urban development
and sustainable urban forms gained wide popularity in the field
of urban planning and provoked discussion about the form of cities.
SUSTAINABILITY
Sustainability..Implies that the overall level of diversity
and overall productivity of components and relations in
system are maintained and enhanced'' R.Norgaard,1988
Sustainability equals conservation plus stewardship
plus restoration ( Sim Van der Ryan,1994 )
Sustainability requires at least a constant stock of
natural capital,construed as the set of all enviromental
assets.
"three pillars" of sustainability is the reconciliation of environmental, social and economic demands
Urban environmental sustainability
The long term balance of human activities in urban systems with their environmental resource base."(Ravetz,1999)
The evolution and restructuring of physical and
human urban systems in their global context." (Ravetz,1999)
Development that improves the long-term social and
ecological health of cities and towns, which steer
urban development towards the moving goals of
environmental sustainability. "(Ravetz,1999)
Sustainable urban form:
1. Compactness
Compactness refers to urban contiguity and connectivity. It means that future urban development should take place closer to existing urban structures (Wheeler 2002). Compactness of urban space can minimize transport of energy, water, materials, products, and people (Elkin, McLaren, and Hillman 1991).
Dumreicher et al. (2000): a sustainable city : compact, dense, diverse, and highly integrated.
“Sustainable transportation” is defined as “transportation services that reflect the full social and environmental costs of their provision; that respect carrying capacity; and that balance the needs for mobility and safety with the needs for access, environmental quality, and neighborhood livability” (Jordan and Horan 1997, 72).
Elkin, McLaren, and Hillman (1991, 12) argue that sustainable urban form must be a form and scale appropriate to walking, cycling, and efficient public transport and must have a compactness that encourages social interaction. It must enable access to the facilities and services of the city while minimizing the resulting external costs.
It is the ratio of people or dwelling units to land area. Density and dwelling type affect sustainability through differences in the consumption of energy; materials; and land for housing, transportation, and urban infrastructure (Walker and Rees 1997). High density and integrated land use not only conserve resources but provide for compactness that encourages social interaction.
Mixed-use or heterogeneous zoning allows compatible land uses to locate in close proximity to one another and thereby decrease the travel distances between activities (Parker 1994). Mixed land use indicates the diversity of functional land uses such as residential, commercial, industrial, institutional, and those related to transportation.
Diversity represents the social and cultural context of the urban form, including greater variety of housing types, building densities, household sizes, ages, cultures,and incomes.
The idea of this design is to reduce the demand for energy and to provide the best use of passive energy in sustainable ways through specific design measures. It is assumed that design, siting, orientation, layout, and landscaping can make the optimum use of solar gain and microclimatic conditions to minimize the need for space heating or cooling of buildings by conventional energy sources (Owens 1992).
Greening seeks to embrace nature as integral to the city itself and to bring
nature into the life of city dwellers through a diversity of open landscapes
(Elkin, McLaren, and Hillman 1991, 116).
Up until now we talked about even design concepts that are related to
sustainable urban forms. Different combinations of these concepts create
different urban forms. I'll be talking about four models of sustainable urban
forms.
FOUR MODELS OF SUSTAINABLE URBAN FORMS
The new urbanism is the best known among the neotraditional approaches
to planning. New urbanism advocates design-based strategies based on
traditional urban forms to help arrest suburban sprawl and inner-city decline
and to build and rebuild neighborhoods and cities.
2. Sustainable Transport
5. Diversity
6 Passive Solar Design
3. Density
7. Greening
4. Mixed Land Uses
"The pyhsical and spatial forms which are both cause and effect of sustainable urban development."( Ravetz,1999)
Urban sustainable development necessitated scholars to look for certain urban forms that meet the requirements of sustainability such as lowering energy consumption and lowering pollution levels. (Breheny 1992, 138). This challenge has led scholars, planners, local and, civil societies, and governments to propose new frameworks for the redesigning and restructuring of urban places to achieve sustainability.
However, these frameworks offered at the regional and metropolitan levels, city levels, the community level and the building level have a lack of agreement about the most desirable urban form in the context of sustainability. , there is a lack of theory that helps us to evaluate whether a given urban form contributes to sustainability or to compare different forms according to their contribution to the sustainable development objectives and agenda.
Although we do not have a common theory, we have some common design concepts and principles that urban forms share. (We always come across/see the same design concepts). There are seven repeated and significant themes of urban form.
DEFINITION OF SUSTAINABILITY
Urban development
Urban sustainable development
ENVIRONMENT
ECONOMY
SOCIETY
COMPACT CITY MODEL
3. Compact City
2. Urban containtment
At its heart, urban containment prevents the outward
expansion of the urban fieldand forces the development
market to look inward. Urban containment emphasizes
policies of compactness.
The distinctive concepts of the compact city are high density and compactness. It proposes mixed land uses like the approaches of new urbanism or neotraditional development. “Compact city” is comprehensive land planning to increase better accessibility by high density oriented land use. Generally, compactness proposes density of the built environment and intensification of its activities, efficient land planning, diverse and mixed land uses, and efficient transportation systems.
Experiences from many cities also show that high density land use planning
has impacts on maintaining low travel demand, higher transit share, and
urban quality.
1. Neotraditional Development
4. The Eco-City
INTEGRATED TRANSPORTATION SYSTEM IN COMPACT CITY (Wright, 2003)
Neotraditional development—emphasizes sustainable transportation, diversity (e.g., of housing types), compactness, mixed land uses, and greening. In addition, neotraditional development has much to do with style and design coding.
The eco-city is an umbrella metaphor that encompasses a wide range of urban-ecological proposals that aim to achieve. The distinctive concepts of the eco-city are greening and passive solar design.
It is remarkable that the core of many approaches is the management of the city, rather than the suggesting of any specific urban form; it is believed that not the physical shape of the city and its built environment that is important; it is how the urban society is organized and managed that counts most.
BERKAY ARIKAN-GÜRKAN GÜNEY
REFERENCES
Breheny, Michael. 1992a. The contradictions of the compact city: A review. In Sustainable development and urban form.
Dumreicher, Heidi, Richard S. Levine, and Ernest J. Yanarella. 2000. The appropriate scale for “low energy”: Theory and practice at the Westbahnhof. In Architecture, city, environment. Proceedings of PLEA 2000, ed. Steemers Koen and Simos Yannas, 359-63. London: James & James.
Elkin, Tim, Duncan McLaren, and Mayer Hillman. 1991. Reviving the city: Towards sustainable urban development. London: Friends of the Earth.
Jordan, Daniel, and Thomas Horan. 1997. Intelligent transportation systems and sustainable communities findings of a national study. Paper presented at the Transportation Research Board 76th annual meeting, Washington, DC, January 12-16.
Kaji, H.2004.‘Compact city and sustainable urban form: Is compact city approach appropriate as an urban development policy for cities in developing countries?’
Parker, Terry. 1994. The land use—air quality linkage: How land use and transportation affect air quality. Sacramento: California Air Resources Board.
Ravetz, J.1999. "Economy, Enviroment & the Sustainable City: Notes from Greater Manchester." In Integrating Environment and Economy: Local and Regional Strategies, London: Routledge.
Walker, Lyle, and William Rees. 1997. Urban density and ecological footprints—An analysis of Canadian households. In Eco-city dimensions: Healthy communities, healthy planet, ed. Mark Roseland Gabriola.
Wheeler, Stephen. M. 2000. Planning for metropolitan sustainability:Journal of Planning Education and Research 20:133-45.
http://www.envplan.com/abstract.cgi?id=a40265
http://www.griffith.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0008/81395/infrastructure-14-soltani.pdf