Looking forwards… but thinking backwards
Ian Munro
BPlan(Hons) MPlan(Hons) MArch(Hons) MNZPI
Senior Associate
Urbanismplus Ltd
Transport investment has a profound impact on urban form1. Initiatives across the country are now being routinely labelled as ‘integrated’ and ‘sustainable’.
The results are too often investments that promise something new, but which only deliver the same expansion-biased settlement patterns of the past. Re-thinking the indicators we use to evaluate network performance to better relate to urban sustainability may help change this.
Sustainability mandate
In 1987, the UN report Our Common Future made its famous call for sustainable development2. It made a number of criticisms of the way developed countries such as New Zealand had approached the use of resources to date. Notably was an acknowledgement, which has since been expanded upon, that attitudes toward energy consumption and car-based settlement patterns were not delivering sustainability3.
The role of cities and infrastructure in contributing to sustainability was thus set out. The New Zealand Sustainable Development Action Plan, 2003, sets out an unambiguous responsibility4:
“Cities are essential places to achieve sustainable development because most people live there. People are at the centre of concerns for sustainable development – they are entitled to a healthy and productive life in harmony with nature.”
Not only do most people live in towns and cities, but transport needs now account for approximately 50 per cent of our total energy consumption5.
Cities and infrastructure (especially transport) therefore need to be planned well, and planned right if we are to make progress towards sustainability. To help this come about, the Local Government Act 2002, Resource Management Act 1991, and Land Transport Management Act 2003, (amongst others) all call for urban sustainability in some form.
Urban sustainability
But when can we tell if settlements have been planned well, or planned right? Considerable theoretical and empirical work has been undertaken to better understand how urban settlement patterns may be more, or less, sustainable. Newman and Kenworthy, 19996, have succinctly described the challenge:
“It is possible to define the goal of sustainability in a city as the reduction of the city’s use of natural resources and production of wastes, while simultaneously improving its livability [sic], so that it can better fit within the capacities of local, regional, and global ecosystems.”
The result of this international dialogue has been identification of numerous spatial elements. These can be broadly summarised as:
1). Minimised use of energy and environmental services (pollution) – including an emphasis on improved human health
2). A compact, dense, and mixed ‘walkable’ pattern
3). Minimised need for transport between activities and exchange
4). Maximised diversity and choice
5). Resilient, adaptable, and long term networks that can be easily used and re-used in changing circumstances
6). Clear local identity and character, place-making and cultural celebration
7). Public investments configured to maximise use returns
8). Public burdens allocated to internalise the impacts and costs of individual choices
9). Democratic decisions made by those affected by them
Domestically, the Ministry for the Environment has provided further specific guidance on how these principles relate to ideal ‘on the ground’ configurations of land use and density. This has been adapted from the Ministry for the Environment, 2002, as Figure 1.
These elements and ideal patterns underpin all of the regional and district growth strategies completed to date, and also many District Plan provisions relating to towns and cities.
A Report Card: Great Enthusiasm, But More Attention to Detail Needed
In 1998 the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment observed that urban sustainability was being “largely ignored” in New Zealand9. Bosselmann, 2008, suggests a critical reason why this may have occurred:
“… since 1992, the concept of sustainability seems to have lost its contours. Its popularization [sic]… created an invitation to use it for all sorts of objectives purported to be desirable….”
It seems that there has been a disconnection between enthusiastically stated aspirations for sustainable urban outcomes, and the actual methods, tools, and approaches employed to deliver them. It may help explain why the Auckland Regional Growth Forum, 200711 when reviewing the Auckland Regional Growth Strategy, 1999, concluded that:
“Even though there are a number of strategies and policies now in existence that say the right things, delivering an urban form that translates the Growth Concept ‘on the ground’ has proven to be particularly challenging.”
Urban expansion and transport investment
Transport indicators developed since 1940 have tended to emphasise level of service ideals around the importance of:
- avoiding congestion and maximising free-flow capacity at all times including peak where possible;
- the greatest distance that can be travelled in the shortest amount of time;
- road conditions that require the least active on-going concentration and care by drivers, in the name of safety.
These indicators have surreptitiously become ends in themselves; with the pursuit of increased capacity and reduced congestion dominating concepts of current urban transport planning. They have also had clear impacts on settlement patterns.
As illustrated indicatively in Figures 2, 3, and 4 (below) the net effect of perceiving transportation as a passive ‘derived demand’ without accounting for the opportunity costs and induced travel of resultant infrastructure outcomes has been clear.
A consistent and typically unacknowledged amenity transfer has been established whereby those looking to intensify and live in centres and along corridors – what our growth strategies are calling for as more sustainable – are rewarded with diminished amenity as a consequence of widening and capacity upgrades that serve the through movement desires of others. The amenity loss can include:
- greater street intensity and noise leading to less pedestrian quality and perceptions of less safety;
- loss of on-street parking and land use access;
- loss of front yards and separation from busy roads;
- loss of local economic activity (especially if tied to on-street parking or an edge amenity, such as outdoor dining is);
- greater community severance especially if widening is combined with roundabouts or delayed pedestrian crossing phasing;
- significant air quality and personal health issues.
This amenity is transferred to those developing at the outer periphery – what growth strategies are not calling for. Those choosing to live ever remotely from their daily needs are being given significant travel time savings and otherwise unachievable levels of transport amenity (convenience).
The nature of ongoing investment in peak transport network capacity from the general public sector makes new areas of peripheral land superficially viable for development.
This can only be seen as a subsidy towards the true costs of peripheral development relative to intensification. This expansion-bias is additionally reflected in all development contribution policies adopted by the major towns and cities to date.12
The over-standardised household equivalent requires more sustainable developments such as town centre apartments – which can generate as little as 3 to 4 vehicle trips per day13 – to pay the same share of transport infrastructure costs as a detached house generating up to 10 vehicle trips per day14, despite being two to three times as efficient.
Furthermore and by virtue of spatial relationships, apartments in centres create demands on transport networks in a far different manner than typical detached houses.
One critical aspect is that apartment-based car travel is much less likely to occur in peak time at peak direction than that from a detached house in a suburb. This peak-pressure is one most significant generators of demand for new capital expenditure in existing road networks. It is new capital expenditure, rather than just new travel, that is the lawful focus of development contributions.
The consequence of these biases has been to systematically reward the least sustainable development outcomes at almost every turn in terms of amenity, convenience, and subsidised lifestyle costs.
It may be unfair to blame market participants for ‘making the poor choice’, when they are faced with such cumulative market distortions and mixed messages from public authorities15.
So it is perhaps unsurprising that we continue to romanticise the detached house, and drive more than ever in New Zealand.
The Ministry for the Environment, 200916, has confirmed that in 2007 40.2 billion kilometres were travelled on New Zealand roads. This reflects a 3 per cent per capita VKT increase between 2001 and 2007, and a 55 per cent total VKT increase from 1990.
This freedom brought with it 362 deaths on New Zealand roads in the year to November 2008, with a further 16,121 injured17.
New regime of indicators?
It ultimately seems clear that real urban sustainability will not come about on its own or by accident – or through some revelation that old practices are suddenly somehow much better than we ever realised.
This has been previously stated18, but is now increasingly supported by clear local evidence and facts. Entering the second decade of the 21st century, it may be time for a more open dialogue around exactly what we are trying to achieve when we use the word sustainable, and how we manage both our transport networks and land use investments to deliver it.
We may ask, for example, whether congestion and constrained network capacity, rather than always being an ill to be cured, has a legitimate role in promoting urban sustainability.
Careful congestion management and network equilibrium planning may help communities begin to understand the reality of their lifestyle choices – that actions have a cost to be met, a cost that cannot always be written off in the era of sustainability by either the environment or the increasingly constrained public sector.
It is proposed that the adoption of a new set of indicators with which to evaluate the performance of transport networks is essential to better entwine sustainability issues into decision making.
Some suggested ones to think about are:
- Whether developments or network investments will result in lower than average VKT per capita by users?
- Whether network interventions will decrease total VKT per dollar of GDP earned?
- Comparing the quantity and quality of a given type of exchange to the amount of time or CO2 emissions required in transport to meet that exchange?
- Looking for the shortest possible distance and travel necessary to meet all daily needs?
- Setting minimum mode-share requirements to be met by new developments?
- Designing streets around perceptions of safety by vulnerable users rather than around the perceived limitations of car drivers?
[1]Transport Cooperative Research Program, 1999, Legal Research Digest number 12, ‘The Zoning and Real Estate Implications of Transit Oriented Development’, Washington: Transport Research Board of the National Academies, p 3.
[2]World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987, ‘Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development: Our Common Future’, New York: United Nations, Chapter 1, Paragraph 27, p 25.
[3] Ibid., at Chapter 2, Paragraph 62, p 68; Transport Cooperative Research Program, 2003, Report 95, ‘Traveller Response to Transportation System Changes’, chapter 15: ‘Land Use and Site Design’, Washington: Transportation Research Board of the National Academies, p 15-5; P Newman, and J Kenworthy, 1999, ‘Sustainability and Cities: Overcoming Automobile Dependence’, Washington: Island Press, Chapter 2, p 27 – 33; and P Calthorpe, 2003, ‘The Next American Metropolis: Energy, Community, and the American Dream’, New York: Princeton Architectural Press, p 15-16.
[4] Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, 2003, ‘Sustainable Development for New Zealand: Programme of Action’, Wellington: Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, p 19.
[5] Ministry of Economic Development, 2006, ‘New Zealand's Energy Outlook to 2030’, Wellington: Ministry of Economic Development.
[6] Newman and J Kenworthy, 1999, op. cit., p 7.
[7] Adapted from Carmona, M, Heath, T, Oc, T, and Tiesdell, S, 2003, ‘Public Places Urban Spaces: The Dimensions of Urban Design’, Oxford: Architectural Press; Smart Growth Network, 2008, Smart Growth Online web page, ‘Smart Growth Principles’, http://www.smartgrowth.org/about/principles/default.asp; NewUrbanism.org, 2008, New Urbanism web page, ‘New Urbanism: Principles of Urbanism’, http://www.newurbanism.org/newurbanism/principles.html; Calthorpe, P, 2003, ‘The Next American Metropolis: Energy, Community, and the American Dream’, New York: Princeton Architectural Press; English Partnerships, 2000, ‘Urban Design Compendium’, London: Llewelyn-Davies; and Ministry for the Environment, 2002, ‘People+Places+Spaces: A Design Guide for Urban New Zealand’, Wellington: Ministry for the Environment.
[8] Ministry for the Environment, 2002, op. cit., p 34.
[9]Office of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, 1998, ‘The Cities and Their People: New Zealand’s Urban Environment’, Wellington: Office of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, Executive Summary and Chapter 3.6, p 43.
[10] K Bosselmann, 2008, ‘The Principle of Sustainability: Transforming Law and Governance’, Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, p 40.
[11] Auckland Regional Growth Forum, 2007, ‘Growing Smarter: An Evaluation of the Auckland Regional Growth Strategy, 1999’, Auckland: Auckland Regional Growth Forum, p 56.
[12] For instance, refer to the adopted policies of Auckland City (2008), Hamilton City (2008), Wellington City (2007), and Christchurch City (2007).
[13] Institute of Transportation Engineers, 2003, ‘Trip Generation’, 7th Edition, Washington: Institute of Transportation Engineers; and City of San Diego, 2003, ‘Land Development Code: Trip Generation Manual’, San Diego: City of San Diego.
[14] Transfund New Zealand, 2001, Research Report 209, ‘Trips and Parking Related to Land Use: Volume 1’, Wellington: Transfund New Zealand; Roads and Traffic Authority, 2002, ‘Guide to Traffic Generating Developments’, Version 2.2, Sydney: Roads and Traffic Authority; and Institute of Transportation Engineers, 2003, ‘Trip Generation’, 7th Edition, Washington: Institute of Transportation Engineers.
[15] Please refer to S Donovan and J Genter, 2008, ‘Managing Transport Challenges when Oil Prices Rise: New Zealand Transport Agency Research Report 357’, Wellington: New Zealand Transport Agency, p 57-87 for further information on these distortions.
[16] Ministry for the Environment, 2009, ‘Environmental Report Card: Vehicle Kilometres Travelled by Road’, Wellington: Ministry for the Environment, p 6.
[18] European Commission Expert Group on the Urban Environment, 1996, ‘European Sustainable Cities’, Brussels, European Commission, and United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development, Thirteenth Session, 2005, ‘Human Settlements: Policy Options and Possible Actions to Expedite Implementation’, New York: United Nations, p 8.