Download Economic growth, urban development and environ

Economic growth, urban development and environmental sustainability
Petter Næss1
Forthcoming in Berutti, G. (ed.) (2011): Inhabiting the Future. Naples: University of
Frederico II.
1. Introduction
Nearly 25 years have passed since the UN World Commission on Environment and
Development put the issue of sustainable development on the international agenda as a
common challenge for all nations. According to the Commission, the key tenet of a
sustainable development is to meet basic human needs – especially the needs among the
world’s poor – in a way that sustains the possibilities for future generations to meet their
own needs (WCED, 1987:43). Based on this understanding of the concept, important
challenges of a sustainable urban development in wealthy nations are to mitigate climate
change, limit energy consumption, reduce pollution, protect natural areas and arable land,
and provide a safe and healthy environment for its citizens, in particular the most
vulnerable groups. There is, however, a clear tension between these concerns and the
widespread goals of city authorities of enhancing economic growth.
Cities – and the urban regions to which they are related – are large spatial concentrations
of dwellings, other buildings, and infrastructure. Contemporary economic growth of
cities is closely associated with growth in the volume of all these elements. The growth
entails a process of urbanization (migration to major urban regions, where the most
growth-generating businesses usually prefer to locate) as well as per capita growth in the
size of the built environment. Urban growth has been a precondition for many of the
artifacts, opportunities and cultural amenities that inhabitants of affluent European
countries enjoy and take for granted. In the poor countries of the world, urban economic
growth may still play such a progressive role (although the ways in which the benefits are
distributed is often highly skewed). However, with increasing affluence levels, the costs
of growth have become more and more evident, compared to its benefits (Mishan, 1967;
Jackson, 2009). In the 1970s, the report Limits to Growth published by the Club of Rome
(Meadows et al., 1972) triggered a wave of skepticism and criticism against growth. In
the 1980s, this growth criticism receded while a belief in green technological inventions
as the key to sustainable economic growth won through, supported by the theory of
ecological modernization (Huber, 1985; Mol & Spargaaren, 2000). In the recent few
years, the assumptions of the ecological modernization paradigm have, however, been
increasingly challenged by critics who from different perspectives argue that the quest for
economic growth in affluent countries should be replaced by policies aiming at zerogrowth or even de-growth (Jackson, 2009; Spangenberg, 2009; Martinez-Alier et al.,
2010). This literature has, however, generally not paid much attention to the relationships
between economic growth, urban development and environmental sustainability.
1
Professor of Urban Planning, Dr. Ing., Architect, Aalborg University, Department of Development and
Planning, Fibigerstraede 13, DK-9220 Aalborg East, Denmark. [email protected]
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The environmentally most problematic traits of urban development are closely tied to the
economic growth and the policies pursued by businesses and governments in order to
promote it. Urban development is a societal process where economic growth – the
strategies to create and sustain it as well as the increased consumption it facilitates –
leaves its highly visible traces in the physical environment. Today, these traces can be
observed in the form of increasing consumption of energy and natural resources, loss and
fragmentation of natural areas and farmland, reduced biodiversity, and high emissions of
pollutants. It is therefore important to include a profound understanding of the role of
economic growth in conditioning urban development, in strategies for urban
environmental sustainability as well as in the development of visions for an alternative
society based on zero-growth or de-growth.
In 2007, a majority of the global population for the first time in history lived in cities and
towns. Sixty years earlier the share was less than 30%. Alongside with this rapid
urbanization, the world’s total population has increased from 1.7 billion in 1900 to 2.5
billion in 1950, 6.1 billion in 2000 and 6.9 billion in 2010. Needless to say, the increasing
share of urban dwellers and the rising global population imply that there has been a huge
growth in the urban population. Globally, the number of urban residents has grown from
230 million in 1900, more than 740 million in 1950, and 2.9 billion in 2000 to 3.5 billion
in 2010. Most of this growth has occurred in developing countries. In Europe, urban
population growth has been much more moderate during recent decades.
2. Buildings and dwellings
According to the European Environmental Agency (2006), the urban population in
Europe grew by 33% between the mid-1950s and 2000. During the same period, the
increase in the size of the urban building stock was substantially higher. The area covered
by European cities thus grew by 78%, corresponding to an increase in urbanized land per
capita of 34% on average. In other words, there was a clear reduction in urban population
density. Alongside with this, there has been a densification of the building stock
(measured in plot utilization ratios) within the existing urban districts of many cities. The
size of the building stock (measured in square meters of floor area) has increased
considerably in all European countries, and in most cities the growth in the volume of the
building stock has been higher than the growth in the area covered by the city. This
reflects two tendencies: first, higher buildings have replaced lower ones, and second, infill development has taken place on vacant sites within existing urban area demarcations.
However, in most cities, there has also been considerable outward urban expansion where
previously undeveloped land in the surroundings of the city has been converted into sites
for urban development.
The stronger growth in the volume of the urban building stock than in the number of
inhabitants is partly due to a substantial reduction in the average household size. For
example, in Denmark, the average number of household members was nearly 3.5 in the
1950s, dropping to 2.51 in 1981 and further down to 2.16 in 2009. Thus, today there are
considerably more households – and hence also dwellings – per 1000 inhabitants than
there used to be ‘in the old days’. This splitting of the population into more and smaller
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households contributes to increased housing consumption. All dwellings need some basic
installations like bathroom and kitchen, and the size of these rooms does not vary to the
same extent as the number of residents per dwelling. Instead of becoming on average
smaller, as one might expect from the decreasing number of household members, the
average dwelling size has grown. Thus, there has been a substantial increase in the per
capita housing consumption, measured in floor area. This growth has to a very limited
extent been problematized in the debates on sustainable consumption.
Figure 1 shows the growth in residential floor area per capita in Denmark and Norway
during the latest half century. During this period, floor area per capita has increased to
nearly twice and a half times as much as in 1960 (second homes not included). A similar
development has been seen in many other European countries. Today, the growth in
residential floor area per capita is in particular high in Chinese cities, especially along the
affluent Eastern coast. Among European countries, Luxemburg, Norway and Denmark
have the highest average consumption of residential floor area. We will take a closer look
at the two Scandinavian countries – Norway and Denmark.
Figure 1: Changes in residential floor area per inhabitant since 1960 in Denmark (red)
and Norway (blue)2
The growth in the total building stock has – at least in Denmark – been even higher than
the growth in residential floor area. While the latter grew by 15% during the period 19862009, the total floor area per inhabitant (including all types of buildings) increased by
18% over the same years. In particular, there has been a strong growth within the
category of ‘buildings for offices, retail, warehousing, public administration, etc.’ (as
much as 60% from 1986 to 2009) and for factories, workshops and other production
buildings (38%). In 2009, the total building stock in Denmark amounted to 118 m2 per
inhabitant. Dwellings accounted for approximately half of this.
2
Sources: Røpke (2000), Statistics Denmark (2010) and Statistics Norway (2010c).
3
In Europe, most urban development during the latest sixty years has taken place as
outward expansion. The population density in most European cities has therefore been
reduced during most of the period since World War II (European Environmental Agency,
2006). To an even higher extent, urban development in North America and Australia has
been characterized by outward dispersal, often referred to as urban sprawl (Bruegmann,
2005). Important trends behind this development include a massive development of
single-family homes, increasing demand for low-rise commercial buildings with ample
parking opportunities, and urban planning ideals emphasizing open space between
buildings as an important quality. During the recent 15-20 years, urban sprawl has
stagnated in many West European countries (Kasanko, 2006). This has not been the case
in Eastern Europe, where urban sprawl has been extensive all since the fall of the
communist regimes. Distinct from that, some North European countries, notably Norway
and Sweden, have witnessed a clear change from urban sprawl to urban densification
during the most recent decades (Statistics Norway, 2010a; Statistics Sweden, 2009). It
should be noted that urban densities were at the outset not very high in these countries, so
the physical opportunities for densification have therefore been larger than in the more
compact south European cities.
3. Sprawl and car dependency
In most countries, urban sprawl has included extensive construction of transport
infrastructure (roads, metros, urban rail etc.). In particular, road construction has been
substantial, facilitating increasing amounts of car traffic. The expansion of the
transportation system is partly related to the fact that the inhabitants of urban regions
increasingly expect (and are expected) to be able to choose among a large number of
workplaces, shops, leisure facilities, etc. Increased possibilities for choice are widely held
to be favorable to economic growth,
However, the combination of urban sprawl and the requirement for increased
accessibility has rendered it necessary to travel more in order to be able to reach (at least)
the same number of facilities as earlier. As already mentioned, urban sprawl has caused
an increase in the distances between dwellings, jobs, shops etc. Whereas accessibility was
earlier obtained through proximity, there is now an increasing requirement for mobility.
Moreover, there has been an individualization of transportation, with an increasing share
of trips carried out as private motoring instead of by public transit.
All these factors – the demand for increased availability of options, the distanceincreasing urban sprawl, and the individualization of transportation – have rendered it
‘necessary’ to construct more and wider roads in order to accommodate a continually
more space-demanding car traffic. New, large roads and parking facilities have
themselves contributed significantly to the growth in urban area, thus enforcing the
outward expansion of cities.
In much of the literature on urban development, urban sprawl is considered to be an
almost inevitable consequence of economic growth (see, e.g., Gordon & Richardson,
1997; Bruegmann, 2005). In particular, literature from the USA and the United Kingdom
has often claimed that as affluence levels increase, higher shares of the population will
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prefer to live in single-family homes and drive their own cars. In other words: affluence
makes people choose the most individualized forms of residence and transport. In USA,
this has been the case since the 1920s (Fishman, 1996) and still seems to be a dominating
trend. However, considerable differences exist between countries in this matter. For
example, in many cities in Central and Southern Europe it is considered to be just as
fashionable to live close to the urban center as in a suburb, and in European large cities,
public transport users (especially those traveling by rail-based services) often belong to
the middle class.
4. Environmental impacts of urban development
In many parts of the world, contemporary urban development implies a high conversion
of natural areas and farmland into urbanized land, with serious negative effects on food
security as well as on ecosystems and biodiversity as a result. According to Beatley
(2000), loss of habitats is a main cause of extinction of species, and habitat loss and
fragmentation are to an increasing extent caused by urban development. Although some
sprawl protagonists like Gordon & Richardson (1997) have claimed the opposite, a
number of studies have shown empirically that low-density suburban development
increases the need for motorized travel (Newman & Kenworthy, 1999; Næss, 1993b;
Næss, Sandberg & Røe, 1996; Næss, 2006). It is difficult and expensive to provide highclass public transport services in low density urban districts. Combined with road
construction in the advent of future demands for road capacity, urban sprawl has
contributed to the creation of highly car-dependent cities.
Urban sprawl thus results in high energy consumption for transport and renders it
difficult to realize greenhouse gas reduction targets. Although technology improvements
may in the future offer more environmentally friendly vehicles, growth in urban traffic
ties up (possibly renewable) energy resources that could have been used with higher
benefits in other sectors of society. Moreover, life-cycle studies of alternative vehicle and
fuel technologies have shown that technologies which, seen in isolation, appear to offer
reduced greenhouse gas emissions are not necessarily climate- and environmentally
friendly when all chains in the production and consumption cycle are taken into
consideration (Holden, 2007). Anyway, urban car traffic causes a number of social and
environmental problems in addition to energy use and emissions, such as traffic
accidents, barrier effects, congestion, noise, and the encroachments of transport
infrastructure on green areas and existing built environments. These problems, which
gave rise to urban environmental debates in the decades prior to the rise of climate
change mitigation as a top-agenda issue, will not be solved through the introduction of
‘clean cars’.
In the dominating debates on sustainable development, decoupling economic growth
from negative environmental impacts has been highlighted as a main avenue to achieve
environmental sustainability. The need for such decoupling was a key message of the
report Our Common Future by the World Commission on Environment and Development
(1987) and in subsequent recommendations by the United Nations’ General Assembly in
1997. For urban development, a main challenge of decoupling is to find ways of
accommodating growth in the building stock and ensuring accessibility to facilities while
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reducing negative environmental impacts resulting from the construction and use of
buildings and infrastructure. However, as will be shown later in this chapter, it is hardly
possible to achieve a 100% decoupling between growth and ecological degradation. If we
want environmental sustainability, it is also necessary to question the desirability of
continual growth in the building stock as well as in the economy as a whole.
5. The compact city ideal
Fighting against urban sprawl has for a long time been high on the agenda of
sustainability-oriented urban planners and researchers. In 1990, the European
Commission recommended the “compact city” as the most sustainable and livable model
for urban development (Commission of European Communities, 1990). Compared to
urban sprawl, densification can bring important benefits in terms of the protection of
natural landscapes, arable land and biodiversity, in particular if the densification can be
channeled to ‘brownfield’ sites such as derelict or under-utilized industrial areas, obsolete
harbor areas and parking space. Concentration of urban development in order to save
nature, farmland and energy was a main message from case studies of three Norwegian
cities carried out in the interdisciplinary research project ‘Environmentally Sound Urban
Development’ (NAMIT) twenty years ago (Næss, 1993a; Høyer, 2002). Multifamily
houses require less energy for space heating and cooling per square meter than detached
single-family houses (Høyer & Holden, 2001; Mark & Wolfe, 2007), and less material
for the construction of the buildings themselves, sewers, cables and access roads
(Burchell et al., 1998). Moreover, a compact urban development can provide accessibility
to facilities through proximity instead of by means of a high mobility, thus combining
important environmental and social aspects of sustainability.
The above-mentioned relationships between urban form and transport have also been
found in Scandinavian urban regions (Næss, Røe & Larsen, 1995; Næss & Sandberg,
1996; Hartoft-Nielsen, 1997; Hjorthol, 1998; Røe, 2001; Næss, 2006; Holden, 2007;
Næss, 2009). Controlling for a number of socioeconomic variables, energy consumption
for transport within the metropolitan areas of Oslo and Copenhagen has been found to be
nearly four times as high among residents of the most peripheral suburbs as among innercity dwellers (Næss, Røe & Larsen, 1995; Næss, 2009). The proportion of travel to and
from the workplace carried out by car is considerably lower among employees at
workplaces located close to the city centers of Oslo and Copenhagen than among
employees at suburban workplaces (Næss & Sandberg, 1996; Hartoft-Nielsen, 1997). The
inner city is the part of the metropolitan area where accessibility by public transport is the
highest while accessibility by car is at its lowest. In the inner city, congested streets and
scarcity of parking are typical, whereas in the outer parts of the metropolitan area driving
speeds are usually higher, accessibility by public transit poorer and parking more ample.
Therefore, among six investigated workplaces in Greater Oslo, the proportion of car
commuters to the inner-city workplaces was only 10-15%, compared to 70-90% in outer
suburbs (Næss & Sandberg, 1996).
Some planners have believed that decentralization of jobs to the suburbs would reduce
commuting distances, since suburbanites could then be employed at workplaces close to
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their residential neighborhood. However, in contemporary specialized and high-mobility
societies, people do not choose jobs (or recruit workers) mainly from within their local
district. In the above-mentioned study in Oslo, employees at the most peripheral
workplaces had the longest mean commuting distances among the whole sample.
Together with the influence of workplace location on travel modes, energy consumption
for journeys to work was therefore found to be on average three times as high among
employees of the most peripheral than among the most central workplaces (Næss &
Sandberg, 1996).
6. Oslo as a case: Actual spatial development, and the environmental and
climate change mitigation performance
The urban development of the Norwegian capital Oslo may serve as an illustration of the
possibilities and limitations of obtaining a decoupling between growth in the building
stock and negative environmental consequences (Næss, Næss & Strand, 2011; Næss et
al., 2011). Oslo received the European Sustainable City Award in 2003 and was ranked
third among 30 cities evaluated for the European Green City Index in 2009. Oslo thus has
a reputation for being among the forerunners on the path toward urban sustainability.
In Norway, the political attention to sustainable development has been strong since the
late 1980s. Professionals and decision-makers at that time formed strong discourse
coalitions promoting a more space-efficient and less transport-demanding urban
development. A long-lasting period of spatial expansion in Norwegian cities came to a
halt in the 1990s, particularly in the largest urban regions. In Oslo, the reurbanization
trend began even earlier. As can be seen in Figure 2, the population density3 within the
continuous urban area of Greater Oslo4 increased by as much as 24% over the period
1985-2009.
3
Urban population density is here and elsewhere in the chapter understood as the number of inhabitants per area unit of
urbanized land. Urbanized land is defined as areas within the demarcations of urban settlements. The term urban
settlement as used in this chapter is based on a common Nordic definition of urban settlements, described, among
others, by Statistics Norway (1992, 2009d).
4
The term ‘the continuous urban area of Greater Oslo’ refers to what Statistics Norway defines as ‘Oslo tettsted’.
7
Figure 2: Changes in population density within the continuous urban area of Oslo during the
period from 1955 to 2009. Sources: Statistics Norway, 2010a and b; Riksrevisjonen, 2007.
During recent decades, the population density increase has been formidable in the central
parts of Oslo Metropolitan Area5. Within the so-called Inner Zone6 of the municipality of
Oslo, the number of inhabitants grew from 132,700 in 1989 to 180,400 in 2009, with no
increase in the urbanized land (Municipality of Oslo, 2009). The population density of
Oslo’s Inner Zone thus grew by 36% over these two decades. There has also been an
overall population density increase for all urban settlements of Oslo Metropolitan Area
seen together, although the peripheral settlements have combined densification with some
development of dwellings and workplaces on previously undeveloped land. In spite of the
latter, the number of inhabitants per hectare of urbanized land within the region as a
whole (including 1.1 million urban inhabitants in 2009) grew by 5.3 % over the years
2000-2009. Figure 3 shows how the urban population density has developed within the
inner zone of Oslo, the municipality of Oslo, the continuous urban area and within the
entire Oslo region since 1999/2000.
5
The term ‘Oslo Metropolitan Area’ refers to what Statistics Norway defines as ‘Osloregionen’.
The Inner Zone, as defined by Municipality of Oslo (2009), corresponds to the most central parts of the districts
referred to later in this chapter as the ‘inner city’. In 2009, these districts included 20,200 inhabitants apart from those
of the Inner Zone.
6
8
Figure 3: Changes in population density within the inner zone of Oslo, the municipality of Oslo,
the continuous urban area and within the entire Oslo region since 1999/2000. Sources: Statistics
Norway, 2010a and Municipality of Oslo, 2009.
For Oslo Metropolitan Area as a whole, most of the employment growth during recent
years has taken place in the counties outside the municipality of Oslo, usually close to
main public transport lines. However, for jobs occupied by employees with university
education of at least four years, 70% of the job growth since 2000 has occurred within the
municipality of Oslo, especially in the inner districts. According to the Dutch “ABCprinciple” for environmentally sound location of employment (Verroen et al., 1990), it is
especially this type of jobs that should be located centrally in order to reduce car
commuting.
7. A partial decoupling
Compared to current urban development in most European cities and to its own
development in the postwar period until the mid-1980s, Oslo has managed to combine
high growth in population and building stock and low encroachments on natural and
cultivated areas. Traffic growth has also been moderate, especially since the turn of the
century. During the twelve years from 1996 and 2008, road traffic within Oslo
Metropolitan Area increased by 24.5%, with a growth of 11.5% in the period 1996-2002
and 8.5% from 2002 to 2008. These figures may not seem very impressive unless the
rapid population growth is taken into consideration. Adjusted for population growth,
traffic increased by 1.2% annually from 1996-2002, while there was a weak negative
growth (-0.03% annually) over the years 2002-2008. (Statens vegvesen region øst, 2010.)
Figure 4 illustrates how regional GDP, traffic growth and the size of urbanized land in
Oslo Metropolitan Area have developed since the mid-1990s (Riksrevisjonen, 2007;
Statistics Norway, 2010b and d; Statens vegvesen region øst, 2010). The size of the
urbanized area has increased at a considerably lower rate than the regional GDP,
indicating a clear tendency of decoupling between economic growth and land
consumption. Especially the extension of the continuous urban area has been decoupled
from economic growth, but also land consumption measured at a metropolitan scale.
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Traffic has also increased more slowly than regional GDP during the whole period, and
in particular since 2003 there is a clear gap in the growth rates of these two parameters.
However, slowing down the growth in car traffic is not sufficient to bring about
environmentally sustainable mobility. In Oslo, continual road capacity increase has
worked against the fulfillment of the sustainability targets. While a new Metro ring has
been opened, streetcar services have been improved and new express bus lines have been
established, new multi-lane roads have also been constructed. Partly, road building has
been motivated by a wish to lead traffic through tunnels away from city centers and
housing. But most of the new tunnels have had more lanes than the surface roads they
replaced. The purpose of this road capacity increase has been to combat congestion. Such
‘predict and provide’ infrastructure development will hardly contribute to reducing
greenhouse gas emissions and other negative impacts of urban road traffic (Næss et al.,
2001; Strand et al., 2009).
8. Negative side-effects of densification
Compared to urban sprawl, high-density urban development reduces the conversion of
natural areas into building sites, in particular when locating a high proportion of the
construction to ‘brownfield’ sites (cf. above). Oslo’s urban densification has still had its
negative impacts on intra-urban vegetation and ecosystems. Over the five-year period
1999 – 2004, there was a 5% reduction of the open-access areas within the continuous
urban area of Greater Oslo (i.e. areas not including buildings, roads, railroads, quays,
farmland, churchyards, sea or major rivers). Partly, this was a result of transport
infrastructure construction, but green areas also had to yield to new kindergartens or
schools in districts where densification caused population growth beyond the capacity of
existing social infrastructure. Together with the rapid inner-city population growth (cf.
Figure 3), this has diminished the availability of open-access land per resident in these
districts. The opportunities for physical exercise, relaxation and experiencing nature close
to the dwelling have gradually become poorer. Seen from the perspective of public
health, this is not a desirable development.
Protecting the city’s green structure is also important in order to counteract negative
environmental and health impacts of the climate changes that we are likely to face during
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the present century. While some of the possible measures to adapt cities to climate
change may go well together with strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, other
adaptation measures may conflict with mitigation measures or at least require very
careful planning in order to avoid such conflicts (Perrow, 2007). Apart from generally
rising temperatures the weather in the Nordic countries is expected to become wetter and
wilder, with more frequent storms, winter floods and incidents of heavy precipitation.
Unless measures to retain a higher proportion of the precipitation in the soil are
implemented, this may cause overload of sewage systems resulting in contamination of
water. Such measures will normally require that the green areas inside the city be
increased rather than reduced. Urban densification in old harbor or industrial waterfront
areas may conflict with the need to avoid flood-prone building sites – at least if the
densification is not accompanied with measures to protect the new buildings from floods.
Global warming is also likely to increase the problems caused by the urban heat island
effect – and in the absence of compensatory measures these problems are likely to be
aggravated by urban densification.
Moreover, inner-city residential densification will, other things being equal, increase the
number of inhabitants exposed to the higher levels of noise and concentrations of air
pollution typically found in the inner parts of metropolitan areas. In Oslo, levels of
mortality and coronary infarcts are higher among inner-city dwellers than among
suburbanites, and this difference is also present when controlling for age, income,
education, and unemployment (Statistics Norway, 2005 a and b; Municipality of Oslo,
2009; Næss, 2011).
9. Environmental justice
The above-mentioned conditions raise important questions about the impacts of Oslo’s
urban planning and transport policies in terms of quality of life, health and a just
distribution of burdens and benefits. The higher levels of mortality and coronary infarcts
among inner-city dwellers in Oslo present some important dilemmas in urban planning
aiming at sustainable development. On the one hand, a car-dependent and sprawling
urban development is obviously not in line with environmental sustainability. On the
other hand, urban densification runs the risk of making more inhabitants exposed to
living conditions that seem to be unfavorable to their health.
Regarding traffic accidents (Røe & Jones, 1997), noise (Kolbenstvedt & Hjorthol, 1987),
as well as local pollution, the location of developmental areas has its impacts on the
distribution of burdens and benefits between the city’s own inhabitants. Metaphorically,
as illustrated by Krier (1996), the suburbs are ‘bombarding’ the inner city with cars and
their associated environmental problems. If the construction of new residences takes
place in the outer parts of the urban area, those who move into the new suburban
dwellings will benefit from a local neighborhood less polluted and less exposed to traffic
accidents than the urban average, while themselves contributing to an increased overall
amount of transport burdening residents living closer to the city center with more through
traffic, noise, air pollution and a higher risk of accidents. Conversely, those who move
into new dwellings made available through inner-city densification typically generate
only a small amount of traffic and pollution but will be exposed to the negative impacts
11
of car traffic originating mostly in the suburbs (Røe & Jones, ibid.).
Low-density suburban development thus leads to increased polarization by aggravating
the local environmental problems facing those inhabitants who are at the outset exposed
to the least satisfactory local traffic situations, while providing a sheltered situation for
those who move into the new suburban residences. On the other hand, densification in the
inner districts contributes to a less unequal distribution of traffic-related environmental
nuisances, since the suburbs will then ‘bombard’ the city center with fewer cars.
An early measure to reduce air pollution in industrial cities was the construction of taller
chimneys. Dilution was considered the solution to (industrial) pollution. Today, traffic
has replaced industry as the main source of pollution, noise and other environmental
nuisances in most European cities, and the increasing awareness about non-local
environmental impacts of local activities (in particular climate change) have shown the
belief in dilution as a solution to pollution to be an illusion. Compared to a more
dispersed urban structure, high urban density decreases the city’s overall amount of
traffic and its contribution to air pollution. On the other hand, high density concentrates
the (although reduced) traffic volume and its related local environmental impacts. The
concentration of local air pollution and noise in inner-city areas shows that there is a need
for additional policy measures that can lower the amount of local traffic more radically
than what is attainable solely through urban containment. Stronger measures to regulate
urban motoring than the ones seen so far in Oslo and other Scandinavian cities will be
required in order to protect inner-city residents from a high environmental load from
traffic and improve the quality of outdoor areas in their neighborhoods.
10. Limits to densification
As the densification process goes on in areas where the construction of new buildings can
take place with small negative environmental impacts, such area reserves will gradually
be exhausted. Subsequent growth in the building stock must then be located to areas
where the construction requires the conversion of natural areas or agricultural land.
Importantly, many of the sites where densification has taken place without
encroachments on natural areas or farmland have become available because
manufacturing industries have moved from Oslo (like most other cities in wealthy
countries) to developing countries with lower labor costs and less restrictive
environmental regulations. Global-scale relocation processes resulting in large
encroachments on nature in newly industrialized developing countries have thus been a
precondition for the partial decoupling between growth in the building stock and negative
environmental impacts achieved in some European cities.
Densification on sites made vacant due to the moving of manufacturing industries to
countries with lower wages is an example of picking the ‘low-hanging fruits’, where it is
relatively easy to obtain a reduction of environmental impacts per unit produced (e.g.,
dwellings or office space). The (spatially delimited) decoupling resulting from such
picking of ‘low-hanging fruits’ and export of polluting, energy-intensive and landconsuming industries to poor countries is, however, temporary. After some decades, no
12
more polluting industries will be left to out-locate, and the technologically and socially
easiest achievable efficiency gains will already have been made.
A high rate of growth in the building stock and technical infrastructure may also make it
an even more challenging task to combine climate change mitigation and adaptation
strategies in urban land use. As mentioned above, measures for precipitation retainment
and protection against floods and sea level rise reduce the possibilities for urban
densification. The same applies to some measures for reducing vulnerability to the urban
heat island effect. Although it is possible to design adaptation measures as well as urban
densification strategies in ways minimizing such conflicts, the difficulty in setting aside
sufficient intra-urban pervious surfaces while containing new construction of buildings
within the existing urban area demarcations will of course be higher, the larger is the
increase in the building stock.
11. Limits to building stock growth
Buildings are seldom, if ever, constructed with environmental protection as a main
purpose. Instead, construction takes place to accommodate growth in the number of
households, jobs etc. and in the floor space per resident or employee. As noted by Høyer
& Holden (2001), larger dwellings are also associated with higher consumption of other
items like furniture, electronic appliances etc. Increase in the building stock can at best be
made environmentally friendly in relative terms (by choosing resource-efficient
solutions), not in absolute terms (Høyer & Næss, 2001). In order to make omelet, you
have to crack eggs. As already mentioned, fewer environmental ‘eggs’ will normally be
cracked by densification than by urban sprawl. Densification still has its negative
environmental and health impacts.
According to the theory of ecological modernization, environmental problems can be
solved within the context of existing political and economic institutions by decoupling
economic growth from environmental degradation (Barry & Paterson, 2003). Oslo’s
densification and public transport improvements are examples of ecological
modernization strategies within the field of urban development. However, the Oslo case
shows that economic growth has only been partly decoupled from traffic growth and land
take for urban development. If economic growth without negative environmental
consequences were to be possible anywhere, this would most likely be in societies with a
high level of prosperity, a high degree of economic freedom of action, as well as a high
level of knowledge among the citizens. Oslo metropolitan area has a higher score than
most other metropolitan areas worldwide on all these criteria. In this respect, Oslo might
be considered a “critical case” where the thesis that a non-environmentally-harmful
economic growth is feasible could be tested. So far, however, it looks as if no city region
- neither in Scandinavia nor elsewhere in the world – wishes, or is able, to implement
more than a partial decoupling between growth and negative environmental impacts.
In the Nordic as well as other European countries, studies have been conducted to
investigate the potential for reducing the energy consumption and environmental load per
unit produced by ‘factor four’, ‘factor ten’ and even ‘factor twenty’, i.e. down to 25%,
10% and 5%, respectively, of present levels. When the resource to be economized on is
13
undeveloped land, such rates of reduction will only be possible if it is accepted that
important characteristics of the ‘products’ are changed. Among other things, it would
require a complete halt in the construction of detached single-family houses in urban
areas. Replacing all development of new single-family home neighborhoods with the
construction of apartment buildings in the inner cities would, however, be highly
controversial. In the long run, it is also dubious whether this would be sufficient to make
continual growth in the housing stock environmentally sustainable.
Similar lines of thought could be pursued regarding the construction of other elements of
the physical urban development, such as the construction of transport infrastructure,
energy supply systems, and sewage systems. Especially investments in transport
infrastructure usually give large direct intrusions into the natural environment. Moreover,
infrastructure can of course not be recycled in the same way as the products we throw
away as consumers. According to Høyer (1997), the decisive ecological limits for a
further growth in the global mobility are therefore set by the tying-up of resources that
must take place in the infrastructure.
This leads us to the question of whether it can at all be in accordance with an
environmentally sustainable and globally just development to increase the building stock
substantially beyond its present size in rich countries like Norway (and Italy). Population
growth (which is moderate in Norway and even negative in Italy), in-migration to the
largest urban regions, and changes in the composition of households imply that there will
still be a need to increase the number of dwellings. Moreover, despite the overall high
Norwegian housing standard, some people still live in substandard dwellings. If we want
to meet the need for improved housing standards among these groups while limiting the
overall growth in housing consumption per capita, a policy of ‘selective improvement’
will have to be pursued. Historically, the housing standard among low-income groups has
been substantially elevated as part of a general increase in housing consumption, e.g. as a
result of moderate-price dwellings becoming vacant when people who can afford it move
into new high-standard dwellings.
As already mentioned, such a continuous, general increase in consumption is problematic
in an environmental and natural resources perspective. It is also an inefficient way of
improving the residential standard among the population groups experiencing the poorest
housing conditions (Bysveen & Knutsen, 1987).
As can be seen above, growth in the urban building stock inevitably tends to increase the
environmental load, although the environmental pressure can be reduced significantly by
means of environmentally friendly urban planning principles and building design. At the
same time it is difficult to envisage a society where there is general economic growth but
no growth in the building stock. In Norway, the category ‘dwellings, lightning and
heating’ accounted for 29% of household expenditures in 2007 (Statistics Norway,
2009b). If we want general economic growth, non-growth within the building sector
would require even higher growth within other sectors. Such a shift of growth from
buildings to other sectors of society would, however, not necessarily lead to reduced
environmental impacts. In many of the other sectors there are similar difficulties in
14
decoupling growth from negative impacts as in the building sector. Not the least, this
applies to the transportation sector, where CO2 emissions and other environmental
impacts have increased steadily in all European countries, despite the fact that climate
change mitigation has been high on the agenda (Tapio, 2005).
12. A de-growth urban planning agenda
In the European environmental discourse, the perspective of de-growth has gained
increasing attention during later years. According to this perspective, the volume of
consumption in the EU countries and other wealthy nations is already higher than what
can be sustained in a long term if vital natural resources and environmental qualities are
to be maintained and people in poorer countries are to be allowed to reach the same
consumption level as in the wealthy North (Martinez-Alier, 2009; Spangenberg, 2010). In
the Scandinavian countries, residential floor area per capita is currently nearly three times
as high as it was sixty years ago, and there has also been a substantial growth in the stock
of non-residential buildings. Including dwellings as well as other types of buildings, on
average 1.3 m2 of floor area was constructed annually per capita in the Oslo region during
the period 1996-2008. A long-term continuation of such growth in the building stock will
put an increasing pressure on the natural environment.
In the Scandinavian countries there has actually been a tendency of reduced growth rates
in residential floor area per capita. As could be seen in Figure 1, the annual increase in
floor area per capita in the period 2000-2009 was only 60% of the average for the period
1960-1990. Measured in percentage annual growth, the declining growth rate is even
more evident. Partly, this reflects a strong increase in the cost of housing per m2 of floor
area. In Oslo, housing costs per m2 increased threefold from 1993 to 2005, reflecting
changes in the financing conditions and land values rather than technical standard
improvement. But the declining tendency may also indicate that the consumption of floor
area is approaching some saturation level. If so, further growth in households’ purchasing
power will be channeled to other items, for example holiday flights. Less money spent on
housing will then not contribute to reduced environmental load, but rather increase it.
As long as the purchasing power grows, reduced growth in the consumption of one
category (such as housing) tends to be compensated by increased growth in the
consumption of other items. Such ‘rebound effects’ have a tendency of reducing or
offsetting the environmental gains from energy- or material-saving technologies or
reduced consumption of one particular type of commodity, since the money thus saved
can be spent on other types of consumption that are not necessarily environmentally
neutral (Nørgaard, 2009).
A number of environmental, social and distribution-ethical reasons indicate that the per
capita size of the building stock and technical infrastructure in Scandinavian cities has
reached a level of sufficiency. Improved housing conditions for the small proportion of
the population who still live in substandard dwellings could be realized through selective
residential construction directed towards the housing needs among these groups. The rest
of the population – the large majority of Scandinavians – would hardly suffer any
hardship from continuing their present level of housing consumption. From a
15
sustainability perspective, we should instead of quantitative growth give priority to
qualitative improvements of the building stock, such as environmentally friendly
building-technological solutions, area-effective and flexible layout of the rooms, and a
high esthetic quality. Measures to enhance a better utilization of the existing building
stock in cities should also be high on the agenda, including policies to encourage a
subdivision of the largest residences into more units, and facilitation of co-housing
schemes (Lietart, 2010).
In a longer term, the question of reducing the volume of the building stock and the size of
the urbanized land may enter the agenda in cities in affluent countries. In particular, this
might be relevant in cities where the number of inhabitants is stable or declining. If the
total building stock is not to increase, the construction of new and more environmentally
friendly buildings through densification should be combined with the abolishment of
some of the environmentally least favorable built environments, such as the most cardependent single-family home areas and office parks. This could open up possibilities for
nature regeneration projects and a larger coherence of the natural areas and landscapes
surrounding the city. In a situation with a deliberate de-growth in the economy, a
dismantling of several of the most resource-consuming and unfavorably located built
structures might become relevant.
A decision to support de-growth strategies – a planned and voluntary reduction of
consumption levels, working hours and the general busy-ness – is far beyond the agenda
of the present society. However, if our cities are to become truly environmentally and
socially sustainable, such a trajectory would arguably be necessary. The environmental
load of the existing building stock, infrastructure and consumption in general exceeds the
ecological footprint that would be ecologically sustainable and in accordance with a just
distribution globally. Technological improvement can only to some extent reduce the
negative environmental impacts. The efforts to develop more environment- and humanfriendly cities should therefore not be limited to the creation of smarter building designs
and urban planning solutions for a growing building stock. We must also dare to raise our
view and ask which needs the construction of ever bigger dwellings, shops, offices, other
buildings, and roads actually serve to meet – and which changes the prioritization of
better built environments instead of bigger built environments would require.
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