Environmental scientist PETER NEWMAN argues that urban villages near transit centres would lower car dependence and curb urban sprawl.
Ecological thinking is not just being aware of nature, it requires a way of thinking which is more organic, holistic or systems-based rather than reductionist or mono-cultural. In the urban context this requires looking at how the city sprawls like a cancer and builds in car dependence like an addiction.
The density of urban activity is crucial to lowering car dependence. There is a significant increase in car dependence under around 30 people per hectare of urban land.
This process of adding new houses to an area can be done sensitively, but more often than not is leading to community resistance. Rather than abandoning the need for density increases, some communities have found ways of influencing their local council through the development of design guidelines for density increases (for example, the City of Bayswater in Perth). These can bring out heritage qualities and other local values.
The most productive way of achieving density increases is by building urban villages which are larger scale sites — 10 to 20 ha minimum. They can take an integrated high density mixed land use development, which is a central design concept for sustainability as it facilitates greater local self-sufficiency, and thus shorter trips with more walking and biking.
The urban villages developed so far may not go as far as the innovative fully integrated theoretical concepts of Ecopolis or EcoCity [cities designed from scratch, or cities designed to restore the ecological balance], but they are a start in providing something that is more holistic, less car-dependent and more oriented to the urban commons than standard low density, privatised suburbia.
They reach back to the roots of how cities first began with a mutual cooperation and sharing that enables diversity to be achieved in human activity. They provide a model for cities which have lost their way ecologically and socially because of a total orientation toward optimising life for private needs and neglecting the public good or urban commons. Urban villages have been built mostly in European cities but are increasingly on the agenda in the US, Canada and Australia.
In Australia the urban village concept has received a large boost through the Better Cities program which, in response to communities demanding fewer car-based options, has produced some innovative designs such as:
Sydney — the award winning Greenpeace design for the Pyrmont redevelopment is a model urban village with light rail link to the t Mary's area (old defence land) has an integrated urban village concept together with a new transit link.
Perth — a new light rail (public-private venture) for the Fremantle to Mandurah corridor is based around a series of urban villages; urban villages planned for the Victoria Quay site in Fremantle and on redevelopment areas adjacent to the newly electrified heavy railway service to Armadale; the East Perth redevelopment is also being planned as an urban village.
Canberra — building on the Sustainable Canberra report, the ACF-based model, there is a large urban village concept for the Gunghalin corridor complete with a light rail. This is the most sophisticated large scale concept yet developed for an urban village in Australia.
[Peter Newman is associate professor in environmental science at Murdoch University and the director of the Institute for Science and Technology Policy. This article is extracted from an article in Chain Reaction #66.]