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Managing to achieve sustainable and successful urban areas

Quality urban planning and design

Quality urban planning and design creates places that work and places that have use and value. Urban design and urban planning have economic, environmental, cultural and social dimensions. The quality of infrastructure and quality of life are important factors in creating successful towns and cities. Quality urban planning and design can have significant positive effects on both of these by creating well connected, inclusive and accessible places. Creating quality urban outcomes requires action across a wide range of sectors and on a number of scales from regional, city, town, suburban, streets, open spaces and buildings.

The New Zealand Urban Design Protocol vision is 'making New Zealand towns and cities more successful through quality urban design'. It identifies seven essential design qualities:

• Context: Seeing that buildings, places and spaces are part of the whole town or city
• Character: Reflecting and enhancing the distinctive character, heritage and identity of our urban environment
• Choice: Ensuring diversity and choice for people
• Connections: Enhancing how different networks link together for people
• Creativity: Encouraging innovative and imaginative solutions
• Custodianship: Ensuring design is environmentally sustainable, safe and healthy
• Collaboration: Communicating and sharing knowledge across sectors, professions and with communities.

The Ministry for the Environment plays a role in improving urban design in New Zealand through the New Zealand Urban Design Protocol¹⁴.

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Focussing on large scale sustainable ‘urban form’

Many cities that are recognised internationally for their sustainability often exhibit:

• A compact form, as opposed to a sprawling form
• A high level of connectivity within their transport networks
• A Land use pattern that is well integrated with public transport and options for walking and cycling
• Defined areas of growth, or ‘town centres’ that contain a mix of residential, commercial and recreational land uses.

Internationally, there is a resurgence for a more compact urban form. This is being driven by spatial strategies or growth management strategies at the state, regional level or sub-regional level¹⁵.  

This type of development is attributed, among other things, with reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Ewing et al (2007)¹⁶ suggest that a compact urban form can result in 20 to 40 percent less individual car use and associated air emissions when compared to traditional (sprawled) development.  A more compact urban form also optimises the capacity of existing infrastructure and reduces the need for costly extensions to networks beyond the urban area.

A more recent study in California found that “increasing a community or development’s density and accessibility to job centres are the two most significant factors for reducing vehicle miles travelled through design“ (Barkalow et al, 2007).¹⁷

The potential to achieve this may be smaller in New Zealand given that public transport use is already higher than in most parts of the USA (Chapman, 2007) ¹⁸. However, more compact towns and cities offer the density of population required to make investment in public transport more viable.

A specific strategy often used for improving the urban form of a city is with transit oriented development (TOD). Transit oriented development seeks to intensify development around public transport nodes. It uses urban design principles to ensure intensification of urban centres is pedestrian oriented, safe, efficient, has high public amenity and is attractive to live in. TOD helps improve the accessibility and uptake of public transport by increasing the modes of public transport that are available, concentrating patronage, and encouraging shorter “local” trip lengths. Good design of public space in these areas is also prioritised. This design includes providing green-space that enhances local natural features (Dunphy et al, 2003)¹⁹.

The Auckland Regional Growth Strategy is a New Zealand example of a strategy that focuses on the shape, through location and provision, of urban form as a way of improving regional sustainability.

A community focus

Urban planning and design determines the nature of the spaces where people interact within an urban form.  Successful cities place high value on attractive, liveable and vibrant communities, developed with the following considerations:

• Urban form that properly accommodates pedestrians
• Provision of affordable housing that includes a variety of different groups in the community
• Ensuring employment provision when creating more intense, mixed use urban development. This maximises the potential for an urban  centre to provide options for residents to “live, work and play” in one location.
• Ensuring an attractive public realm. This recognises roads represent the majority of public space, and includes provision of accessible parks, town squares, and communal spaces (Ministry for the Environment, 2005)²⁰.
• Utilising, protecting and enhancing the natural assets of an area – high value landscapes and geological features, local waterways, topography and native vegetation
• Taking into account the natural and physical heritage of the region – in New Zealand in particular, the story of tangata whenua provides a distinct cultural and historical context for development
• Engaging communities in developing a future vision and detailed design of their community.

Planning and designing to achieve multiple benefits

The advantage of planning and designing for a compact urban form is the wide range of benefits that can be achieved from a single solution.
Well designed, urban centres with a compact urban form have been shown to:

• Improve economic development by concentrating a wide variety of high value, knowledge intensive, and service orientated economic activity
• Increase physical activity through creating more walkable environments. Studies have shown that walkable cities can help reduce obesity and provide other health benefits (Frank et al, 2006)²¹
• Improve urban liveability (including individual safety and reduced crime) through the careful design of public spaces.  This includes designing safer street environments that are also community places
• Build stronger “communities” with easier access to social services and facilities
• Improve social cohesion and creativity within the community by providing good public spaces
• Accommodate changing housing preferences e.g. providing a wider variety of housing types to accommodate demographic needs
• Improve energy efficiency through easier access to alternative modes of travel (public transport, walking and cycling). Such modes also achieve other benefits including reduced household transport-related costs.
• Move goods and provide services more efficiently
• Reduce greenhouse gas emissions (Ewing et al, 2007)²², lower pollution levels and reduce noise
• Optimise national, state and local government investment in transport and other infrastructure (including social infrastructure such as schools).

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Managing the way people travel

The New Zealand Transport Strategy has a strong focus on reducing CO2 emissions from domestic transport (Ministry of Transport, 2008)²³.

Travel demand management is a widely used tool to shift people’s behaviour towards more sustainable forms of transport (Davis et al, 2007)²⁴. The measures used to do this are commonly divided into two types, ‘hard’ measures, such as high occupancy vehicle and bus-only lanes, tolls, road pricing, congestion charging, parking pricing and fuel taxes. ‘Soft’ measures include things such as land use planning, parking policies, travel marketing, and organisational travel planning (Ministry of Transport, 2008)²⁵. The two sorts of measures work together – one is less effective without the other.

There is evidence that, for short distance journeys, travel behaviour change can reduce private car travel more effectively than making changes to the physical environment (Davis et al, 2007)²⁶.

Because of the way individual urban areas vary in shape, and the varying cost and effectiveness of different measures, an integrated range of measures can be tailored to the region or city concerned.  These measures can include:

• Behaviour change programmes; e.g. school and workplace travel planning, car sharing, and focussed information provision
• Land use planning; e.g. zoning policies that encourage compact, mixed use, and connected settlement patterns; road pricing to better reflect true modal costs; and development fees designed to support essential infrastructure
• Managing peak time congestion; e.g. congestion charging and increased inner city parking fees
• Economic measures; e.g. carbon taxes, and tax policies that encourage the use of alternative modes of public transport
• Infrastructure development for alternative transport modes; e.g. integrated ticketing and investment in quality, efficient public transport, cycleways and pavements.

Integrated planning and long term vision across the whole of government

Sustainable urban areas are often the result of long-term and integrated decision-making. Isolated agency decisions can conflict with each other, and in turn result in unnecessary costs and time delays. This can result in less than optimal economic, social, cultural and environmental outcomes.

Integrated solutions emphasise a long term, strategic, multi-sector and multi-disciplinary approach to decision-making for urban planning, investment and development. This usually involves all sectors involved in urban development agreeing on a clear strategic vision to guide their individual and collective decisions, and aligning planning and budgetary processes.   

Decisions are primarily based around planning and investment. In an urban environment, important elements affected by these decisions include transport, land use, economic development, housing, education, health, and culture. The aim of integrated planning is that each agency involved in these areas is able to make decisions that take account of the other areas. The decisions are aligned to achieve common aims and goals. Working in a collaborative way can also result in ‘synergy’ or additional, unforeseen benefits as a result.

For example, transport planning decisions affect land use options of home owners, and the commercial and retail sectors.  As land-use and transport planning affect each other, much better outcomes can be achieved if the planning processes are integrated. Similarly, decisions around provision of public infrastructure such as medical facilities, and schools, often have better outcomes when undertaken in conjunction with transport and land use planning.

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Prioritising public investment

Achieving more compact, mixed use urban development often requires a shift in infrastructure investment. Local governing bodies also tend to change the requirements in their planning. This shift often includes prioritising transport funding for public transport, walking and cycling, and quality, higher density, mixed use urban centres.

Proper integrated planning is typically best supported by similarly integrated funding packages. A transit orientated development, for example, is likely to work well if funding is provided to develop the transport infrastructure, public space landscaping, private housing, community services, and commercial elements of the area.

Focusing public investment into a local, integrated development can increase the value of the land and properties involved. This increase in land values resulting from public investment can often attract private development investment. As well as increasing the economic value of an area, focussed public investment can also improve local economic activity and amenity value for the community as a whole.

Mechanisms used internationally to achieve increased land values from public investment include the use of urban development agencies (UDAs) and planning agreements²⁷. Planning agreements can help to ensure private developers meet required qualitative development standards in areas tagged for more intense mixed use development. 

The Sustainable Urban Development Unit at the Department of Internal affairs is investigating a range of tools and powers that could assist local government to undertake sustainable urban development in selected areas. The proposed package of tools and powers would enable public investment to be better integrated within the delivery of urban development. The discussion document for the proposed measures, ‘Building Sustainable Urban Communities’.

National leadership and regional planning

Effective national leadership in urban development often involves:

• Effective governance across national departments
• Encouraging the sharing of information across different disciplines and agencies – through avenues such as project teams and secondments
• Providing national guidelines, policy integration processes, best practice case studies and urban research (CityScope Consultants, 2006)²⁸  
• Supporting professional training through conferences, mentoring and professional development
• Ensuring national coordination of urban information. This can include funding urban research, establishing dedicated urban agencies and/or websites for the urban ‘community’.  Other countries have already adopted and demonstrated the benefits of this approach, an example being the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment in Britain. 
• Providing a model of best practice in undertaking its own activities (e.g. procurement practices).

Another way that national governments can provide leadership for urban development is by getting involved in regional scale planning, in partnership with local and regional councils. Regional planning or strategic spatial planning often involves producing development strategies for city/regions. These plans often focus specifically on integrating transport, land use, and infrastructure planning. Regional planning can:

• Help local government, private sector and the wider community to establish regional priorities for growth
• Provide greater certainty about the future growth patterns of urban areas. This helps guide planning policy and investment at the local level as well as providing some certainty for developers and infrastructure providers.
• Provide clarity and agreement on the links between economic, social and environmental aims for the towns, cities and regions.

An example of this type of national leadership is the Queensland Government’s Office of Urban Management (OUM)²⁹. The Government Urban & Economic Development Office (GUEDO) in Auckland provides a fledgling regional example in New Zealand. GUEDO serves as an Auckland base for the Ministry for the Environment, Ministry of Economic Development, Ministry of Transport and the Department of Labour. These departments work together with the stakeholders, including councils, of the region to manage Auckland’s growth and develop it as a world class city.   An example of recent regional collaborative activity is “One Plan’ for the Auckland Region.   The ambition of One Plan is to promote a single strategic framework and plan of action for the Auckland region. In the short-term it is about delivering better on existing decisions and commitments, and setting a clear direction for how the region plans to achieve its aspirations for sustainable development, with a focus on infrastructure.  Partners are involved in seven key programmes of action have been tested and identified to achieve that aspiration.Longer-term it is about making and implementing better decisions, guided by the Auckland Sustainability Framework’s visions of a resilient region that can adapt to change.  www.aucklandoneplan.org.nz 

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