Why Compact Cities Make Sense: Interview with Philip Rode

Compact cities are not just dense but also human-oriented and served by a good public transport system, says Philipp Rode. Over a phone interview with CLC researcher Lee Li Fang, the executive director of LSE Cities at the London School of Economics and Political Science outlines the benefits and challenges of achieving compactness, and says this does not have to come at the expense of the economy.

LF:

What is the definition of a compact city?

PR:

For us, the core characteristics of a compact city are public transport, human-scale-oriented city with relatively high densities, mixed-use, and considerable design quality. But what is really important is the city is oriented towards public transport: accessibility, walking, cycling. This broader definition is not only about density—a whole range of factors need to come along too. The easiest way to describe a compact city is it’s the antidote to very excessive urban sprawl, mono-functional suburban housing, and big estates on the periphery for business parks.

LF:

What are the benefits of a compact city?

PR:

The most prominent debates are related to environmental concerns. A more public transport-oriented city has a whole range of efficiencies related to energy consumption. Distances are shorter but equally important is the greater opportunity to travel with motorized modes which are less energy-consuming. Taking buses, trams, metro systems, instead of the personal car—is enabled at a certain threshold by densities.

There’s also a big plus in terms of energy demand related to buildings, and the most important issue here is still cooling and heating. In heating, we have seen a factor difference of up to six between buildings being denser compared to lower density. That’s a six-fold difference in energy demand. When it comes to cooling, we’re just about to release a study that suggests the factor is three-fold. These are very big numbers.

If you want to use grid-based systems that combine heat and power, you require threshold densities. Denser urban environments have a higher utilization of your infrastructure: the roads, the grid systems, the sewage, all the underground pipes and cables—all of that is more efficiently used.

Recently, there’s also an argument that a compact city may enable us to advance towards a more sharing-oriented economy where we don’t have to each individually own the goods we use but we can share them across the neighbourhood or amongst our fellow citizens. That is also an environmental issue.

There’s an equal discussion going on in economics around the benefits of a compact city in terms of economic development. A long-standing argument is that agglomeration effects are a key for growth for innovation and there are relatively high correlations between compactness and productivity, and the efficiency of labour markets. It seems to be quite positive.

And then you have a range of social issues, and this is maybe where the evidence is a bit more mixed. There’s certainly massive social advantages for cities which are less car-oriented as neighbours know each other more, and there is more human interaction and exchange. You could say health and pollution is also a social issue, so if you have a higher percentage of public transport—ideally electrified—then local air pollution goes down. That has major health benefits. If people live in more compact cities, they are more active as they walk and cycle more.

LF:

What are the challenges of a compact city?

PR:

If you don’t manage the transition towards compactness properly, there are a range of issues related to affordability. Many cities that have successfully become more compact have also seen a considerable increase in real estate prices. Cities really need to think about housing affordability. That’s not to say that compactness means unaffordability, but it’s to say that compact city policies need to consider how to ensure that the city remains an inclusive environment.

There are other benefits which goes a bit back to the environment, such as the urban heat island effect. Singapore has lots of green spaces, but if you don’t manage this properly, you may have higher temperatures in more compact, dense, urban environments.

There are a whole range of more normative issues too. Some people would argue, “Well my house, my personal garden, my personal car is a very important part of my life. And therefore, I’m not willing to get rid of this,” or “This is a very desirable thing.” This is a question of aspiration, of what people want. We are seeing globally that humans are quite flexible when it comes to what quality of life means. People in Barcelona and Singapore may have even higher levels of quality of life than in many Australian or American cities which are more sprawling, and are more oriented towards private property and wealth.

LF:

Should more cities aspire to become compact?

PR:

We need to be absolutely clear that, particularly in Asia, there are many cities which are already hyper dense. And here, it’s much more a question of if they expand, and they need to expand, cities like Mumbai will have to expand into their hinterlands ideally along rapid rail corridors, and with some of the key logic of compact urban growth attached, but then in new areas. So the idea of containment would be problematic in that context. But there are many cities in Europe, or sort of the broader OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) context where the existing urban footprint of the city allows for—at least for the foreseeable future—accommodating most of the urban growth within the existing city.

The New Age of Public Transport and Car-free Housing

LF:

What was effective about the London Plan 2014?

PR:

Now to stick slightly to the compact story, there’s a couple of important things to acknowledge. The first thing is that London, for the years prior to the London Plan, didn’t have any strategic plan for 15 years. This new instrument was absolutely important to have a strategic idea of what should happen. Secondly, there were a couple of instruments within the London Plan which really helped to shape the thinking and also the practice of the individual boroughs which ultimately gave planning permission to different proposals.

LF:

How do we enhance public transport in a developed city like London?

PR:

Very central is the plan’s synchronisation with transport. There is a very important metric about understanding the level of public transport accessibility across the city. Staying in areas where there is high public transport accessibility, you want to have very high or higher densities. You also want to focus the growth exactly on those areas where currently there may be high public transport accessibility, but the land isn’t yet utilised to that extent where it now could be used. So the plan’s PTAL measures (Public Transport Accessibility Levels) are an important feature as the city is defined not only by density levels, which is broadly suggested in the strategic plan. It offers flexibility, creating a framework that the boroughs will then have to respond and understand: “Okay, well what is actually appropriate?”

You also want to focus the growth exactly on those areas where currently there may be high public transport accessibility, but the land isn’t yet utilised to that extent where it now could be used.

As PTAL measures are also used to define parking standards—how many parking spaces per flat, per house are needed—the city actually shifted away from defining minimum standards to maximum standards. It says, ideally, we do not want more than two or three, or in some cases, we do not want parking spaces at all for this new development, because it’s highly accessible by public transport.

LF:

Is it possible to not provide parking spaces at all for new developments?

PR:

The flexibility of the plan was important. In many instances, it has over the recent period allowed us to take decisions where urban compaction was even much more than what was intended in the plan. Local authorities and developers realised we actually have great demand for car-free housing and high-density apartment living. So that is happening indeed.

LF:

What is driving the need for car-free housing?

PR:

That has a lot to do with the type of people who are coming to London and that want to live here. And most importantly, the realisation that owning a car and a vehicle is quite expensive. Also, you don’t use it that often, and it’s actually very inefficient to use it in London and there are many good alternatives. That’s a very rational sort of analysis of what is happening.

We’ve also seen around the world increasingly, a trend in certain areas of developed economies that people no longer follow the same desire of car ownership as previous generations. It’s a mix of things, but there are many young people who care more about their mobile phones than about owning a car, and who have alternatives to get around. The bicycle is an important story here.

Impacts of Fiscal Policy

LF:

Which fiscal policies make transportation more efficient in cities?

PR:

This is a very important issue as the responsibility typically lies more at the national level than at the city level.

There are broad fiscal frameworks which actually lead to, at the moment at least, quite sprawling car-oriented developments. Many countries still have fuel subsidies that artificially subsidise the use of private vehicles. Many countries also subsidise the buying of vehicles, which again, is state support to promote a kind of mobility that is not given to alternative modes of travel. There are a whole range of indirect fiscal support for car infrastructure—the way we build highways, the way we build local roads— rarely being properly charged for. So, there are these very big national questions.

Also quite important are the fiscal arrangements related to home ownership and to what extent national tax policies support a certain type of home. The purchase of large suburban homes is often an implicit advantage under current support.

On top of these are a couple of really interesting fiscal issues which are more urban and city. Parking fees and congestion charging, of course, are examples, where most cities still subsidise in some ways. Parking and the space being used by private vehicles for driving is rarely charged for at the level of the real cost of public space. This is where a few cities have changed their tax instruments. Congestion charging, road charging has been rolled out, of course first in Singapore, but also in London, Oslo, and Stockholm.

Although not directly fiscal, there’s a very important factor about how cities get access to finance in their countries. They are often indirect incentives to develop new land because this is the way cities can really make money for their own coffers. Literally, many Chinese cities up until recently were using land purchases and the selling of rural land as their main income source. The Chinese government is now putting a cap on that. In Germany, municipalities profit immensely by taxing local industries. As part of this bidding for companies to settle within the municipality, you often have a race to the bottom in terms of quickly developing quite vast expanses of land.

Strategic Urban Governance

LF:

What types of urban governance strategies should cities adopt?

PR:

From a city’s perspective, a mayor has limited power. Singapore is a real outlier because you have an enormous amount of political power concentrated at the city level because it equals to national powers. But that’s not the case in most cities.

What cities have is a great capacity to convene people together and become almost the host of initiatives, and this links directly to bringing together a whole range of far more diverse network actors. It’s the soft power of identifying a vision and overall strategy, and then creating an informal energy around it. “This is where we want to go. Who can help us? How can we bring stakeholders together?” This is an example this is not yet more properly incorporated in political science literature because most thinking is often attached to quite hard policy instruments that a mayor or a city does have.

Strategic planning with long-term planning efforts are very important because they partially generate this informal buzz around where the city is heading. But in many cities, these plans can also have key powers. They determine what can happen where, and at that level you can ensure that some of the most basics are synchronised. For example, where does your rail line go, where do you put the buildings and at what density.

This brings me to a key rule of more integrated planning: You need to prioritise, to ensure that you focus on the stuff that really matters. Trying to micromanage all sorts of different things, such as who can have a balcony or not, or whether a local shop is possible here or there at the metropolitan level—that’s a waste of time. Much more important is to go for the really big issues: where are the locations of strategic uses; how do you ensure greater mixed use; how do you roll out infrastructure and relate it to new urban development.

LF:

For issues with great impacts, should citizens be consulted or would experts be more well-placed to answer these?

PR:

There are initiatives which are clearly shifting those relationships. Many former government departments even have former activists involved in their sort of, formal bureaucracies. So we build bridges through personal contacts there. The internet and social media have also helped to open up conversations across a broader church of professionals working in a certain sector.

Strategic Urban Governance

LF:

What are some myths on the trade-offs between good and bad growth that have been disproved by cities, particularly in the area of environment and transport?

PR:

A very good question. The most important one is at the macro-level. Cities like Singapore, but also Stockholm, Copenhagen, and Portland have pursued relatively ambitious environmental targets and shown to perform at the same time, quite well, economically. We can already say, “Look, at least there’s not a contradiction.” Targeting better air quality, better water, more efficient transport and so on, really seems to be paying off also economically.

More sceptical people would say, “Well, but it’s all a question of time and how fast you do it.” And once again, those cities including Singapore have shown that relatively radical interventions, such as congestion charging, have paid off economically and not just environmentally.

Besides transport, another beautiful case is the greening of buildings such as Singapore’s green façade initiatives. These make buildings more costly initially in the design phase, and also slightly more expensive to maintain. But the overall impact on the micro-climate is an advantage which ecologists have always been highlighting. And we’re now seeing real added advantages to the image of the city, and the desirability to work or live in these buildings. All of a sudden, these investments actually also pay off financially.