Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
housing, workplaces and shops [25]. This debate, where the supporters of
each growth pattern claim to attain sustainability in a more comprehensive
way, was discussed in Chapter 2. The supporters of the compact city theory
believe that the compact city has environmental and energy advantages as
well as social benefits. On the other hand, as stated by Næss, the supporters
of the dispersed city support the idea of the green city—that is, a more open
type of urban structure, where buildings, fields and other green areas form a
mosaic-like pattern [25,26]. However, dispersed development that embraces
nature into the urban context has other impacts that are not at all sustainable.
Sprawling land development has been consuming most of the American
countryside at an alarming rate. Sprawl is defined as development that is
dispersed, auto-dependent, single use, and where it is impossible to walk
to your daily needs. There is a growing general awareness that low-density
residential development threatens farmland and open space, raises public
service costs, encourages people and wealth to leave central cities, creates
serious traffic congestion, and degrades the environment and our QOL [27].
The disagreements between the compact city and dispersed city dis-
courses can, to a large extent, be summarised as a debate about two issues:
Which form affords the greater energy efficiency, and which aspects of
sustainable development are more important? [28].
As discussed in Chapter 2, a number of in-between ideas have emerged
that try to achieve energy efficiency and provide broader QOL. Examples
of such theories are the urban village, NU, the sustainable urban matrix,
TOD, smart growth, decentralised concentration and sustainable urbanism.
3.4.1 NU and Smart Growth
One of the strongest theories advocating for compactness and object-
ing to sprawling is that of NU. The CNU was founded by six architects:
Peter Calthorpe, Andres Duany, Elizabeth Moule, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk,
Stephanos Polyzoides and Daniel Solomon in 1993 and were assisted in the
coordination of their effort by Peter Katz, who became the first Executive
Director of CNU. The main goal of the movement and subsequent theory
and charters is to promote traditional urbanism as an antidote to conven-
tional sprawl and to write a charter that would rebut Congrès Internationaux
d'Architecture Moderne (CIAM) and its Athens Charter and would serve as
a governing document for this reform movement.
Farr states that the greatest strength of the CNU has been its design
excellence and rhetorical mastery in communicating the vocabulary of
urbanism as it related to clients' projects. It has excelled in creating mixed-
use neighbourhood developments and transit villages, featuring town
centres, fine-grained walkable street grids, and a highly diverse ensem-
ble of traditional buildings and architectural styles. He adds that the two
new urbanist innovations, the urban-rural transect and the smart code,
both developed by Andres Duany, have the potential to reshape the urban
