Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
of overcrowding, noise, dirt, crime, poverty, disease and so forth [39-41].
The high density existing in cities during the early period of the Industrial
Revolution was seen as one of the major culprits of poverty and disease.
As a result, planning controls (in Canada and Great Britain, for example)
usually specified maximum densities. The planning reaction was a strong
movement towards lower density housing outside of the city. In the United
States and Canada, this took the form of a move to the suburbs, but in Great
Britain and Sweden, it resulted in garden cities [41,42]. Radberg describes
the garden city movement as representing decentralised urban growth [39].
The assumption was that these relatively low-density residential areas would
not suffer from the ills found in high-density cities and would offer a higher
quality of life to residents [43].
More recently, there have been many second thoughts on, and strong criti-
cisms of, these trends. Environmentalists express concern about the environ-
mental implications of low density [44], and urbanists are concerned about
the decline of the city [19,40] or of the community [45,46]. Questions about low
densities also have been posed by those who are concerned about the efficient
use of land and public services [40]; by feminists and researchers who argue
that low-density suburbs are hostile to women's lives—especially employed
women with children and single parents [47] and by sociologists who criticise
the social homogeneity and the social segregation in these low-density areas
[46,48]. There are some, of course, who mention all of these problems [43,49].
In 1994, a detailed set of principles were set out in
Sustainable Development:
The UK Strategy
(Department of the Environment 1994a), which was subject to
further revision in 1999 (
UK Government's Strategy for Sustainable Development
1999). In this strategy, the land-use planning system was targeted for specific
treatment and the foundations laid for more recent policy statements on car
usage and urban layouts [50]:
(24.20) Urban growth should be encouraged in the most sustainable
settlement form. The density of towns is important. More compact urban
development uses less land …
The scope for reducing travel, especially by car, is dependent on the
size, density of development, and range of services on offer …
(24.26) Town and city centres must incorporate the best principles of
urban design …
Indeed, the commission recommended that planning guidance should
increasingly reflect the growing sustainable agenda and should become much
more integrated with other public policy areas, notably economic policy [49].
Hitchcock [51] and Orchard [52] direct attention to the fact that, on the
whole, the discussion about increasing density and reducing urban land con-
sumption concentrates almost totally on residential densities. It neglects all
of the other land uses that make up a city, even though these land uses repre-
sent a significant proportion of a city's total land area. If these non-residential
land uses are not taken into account, the reduction in land consumption
