[sustran] fwd: Sustainability & Cities--Newman & Kenworthy

[SUSTRAN Network Secretariat]

(this initially bounced because the sender is not a member of the list, so
i am resending,  Paul.)
--------------------

TO:PERSONS INTERESTED IN SUSTAINABLE CITIES AND TRANSPORTATION:
FROM: Preston L. Schiller (preston at cc.wwu.edu or tele. 360-758-2051)

Attached below in the text of this message is a review I published in
Urban Transport International (Paris), No. 26, Nov-Dec. 1999. For
permission to reprint the whole of this review please contact UTI
editor, John Maryon, e-mail; urban.transport at free.fr, or tele. 33 (01)
42 47 48 35. If you are affiliated with a publication that might be
interested in publishing an expanded version of this interview, or one
which addresses the urban design side of the book more than this review
does, please contact me.

(NOTE: there is a companion book to Sustainability and Cities which I
have not yet reviewed but plan to do so in the future:
Kenworthy/Laube; An International Sourcebook for Automobile Dependence
in Cities,1960 - 1990  ($125), UNIVERSITY PRESS OF COLORADO, C/O
UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA PRESS, 4100 28TH AVE NW, NORMAN, OK 73069-8218)

===================== Review ===========

Sustainability and Cities: Overcoming Automobile Dependence
  
by Peter Newman and Jeffrey Kenworthy  

Washington, DC; Island Press*, 1999. 
442pp incl. appendices, index and biblio. US$40
*(1718 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 300, Washington, DC 20009, U.S.A.)

Reviewed by Preston L. Schiller, Ph.D. (Adjunct Faculty, Western
Washington University Center for Canadian-American Studies, Bellingham,
WA, 98225, USA; e-mail; preston at cc.wwu.edu; tele. 360-758-2051)

The Dynamic Duo from Down Under have done it again! Peter Newman and
Jeffrey Kenworthy in Sustainability and Cities: Overcoming Automobile
Dependence  have followed their groundbreaking Cities and Automobile
Dependence: An International Sourcebook  (Brookfield, VT; Gower; 1989)
with a work which furthers our empirical, theoretical, ecological and
ethical understanding of urban form, transportation systems and civic
responsibility.

The territory covered by Newman and Kenworthy over the years is vast and
varied. It spans highly technical and methodologically clever studies
such as "Does free flowing traffic save energy and lower emissions in
cities?" (with T.J. Lyons in Search  19, nos. 5/6, pp. 267-272)--whose
answer is an impressively documented "No," to an attractive booklet
explaining traffic calming, improved public transport, and urban
villages to a popular audience (with Les Robinson, Winning Back the
Cities,  Australian Consumers' Association, Marrickville, NSW, 1992).
Not comfortable with academic cloisters, Newman and Kenworthy have been
involved in projects such as saving a railway and stopping a major
highway in Fremantle, shaping urban environmental issues throughout
Australia, and working with citizens groups, governments, and agencies
such as the UN, OECD, APEC, and the World Bank.

It was Cities and Automobile Dependence  which laid the basis for
challenging the traffic engineer's and automobile-oriented
transportation planners mythology that expanding roads and keeping
traffic flowing freely was the solution to urban transportation
problems. It also laid the basis, through a detailed comparison of 32
major world cities, for understanding the linkages between urban form
and transportation which made for the difference between automobile
dependency and a city whose transportation was balanced between cars,
transit, walking, and bicycling. Now Cities and Sustainability 
completes these tasks and offers guidance on how to move from automobile
dependency to sustainability.

There is far too much meaty substance in Cities and Sustainability  for
one brief review to digest. Justice can only be done to this work when
fully read and put to use in one's work; professional or civic.
Nevertheless, several of the major points and themes can be described
and discussed.

There are three major themes in Cities:  firstly that we must seriously
and quickly apply the principles of sustainable development to urban
planning in order to avoid environmental catastrophe, secondly we must
reduce and counteract the debilitating effects of automobile dependency,
and, thirdly, there is a moral and ethical imperative to do so.

For Newman and Kenworthy, expanding upon the rather broad Brundtland
definition ("sustainable development is development that meets the needs
of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to
meet their own needs"), sustainability means "simply achievement of
global environmental gains along with any economic or social
development." While their definition still begs for greater precision,
there is ample evidence in the corpus of Cities  of what the authors
have in mind.

Applying sustainability criteria to cities means reducing automobile
dependency, fostering moderate to high densities along with a balanced
mix of uses (residential, retail-services, and employment), street
design which promotes walking and bicycling, the creation of nodal
centers and urban villages, and the ubiquity of quality public
transport--especially rail. Quality public transport is defined as
all-day multi-directional systems, generally consisting of rail (or in
some cases express bus) trunks with frequent headways fed by bus routes
also of frequent headways. Weekend and night services should also be
provided and public transport services should be well connected to other
other modes offered in the region, such as ferry and inter-city train
and air services.

But public transport is not seen as a thing in itself. It should serve
urban planning as well as reducing automobile dependency. Automobile
dependency is defined by the authors as  "a situation in which a city
develops on the assumption that automobile use will predominate so that
it is given priority in infrastructure and in the form of urban
development."

There are many fascinating ideas and findings in Cities.  One is the
documentation of the economic drain of automobile dependency: that the
most automobile dependent cities in developed countries spend more of
their wealth than the least automobile dependent; Perth, Adelaide,
Phoenix, Detroit, and Denver spend between 15 and 17 per cent of their
wealth on transport, while European and wealthy Asian cities spend only
between 5 and 8 per cent--clearly a refutation of Madam Thatcher's
extolling of the "great car economy." Another is the finding that the
synergy between transit and compact land use in European cities results
in less travel and shorter trips so that "(I)f all the transit travel in
European Cities were transferred to cars, the cities would still have
..... half the total level of motorized mobility" when compared to the
U.S.

One of the great strengths of Cities  is the data-rich comparison of
cities around the globe. Especially interesting are the differences
between Canadian and US cities--sharing a continent but not a similar
commitment to urban planning and public transport provision. While
urbanized Americans own only slightly more automobiles per capita than
Canadians, they use 1.6 times the transport energy of their Canadian
counterparts and they they drive almost twice as many kilometres per
year while travelling by transit less than half as much as their
northerly neighbors.

Sustainability and Cities  ranges over an amazing breadth of global
territory, from valuable data compilations and analyses to rich
historical and urban ecological explorations, from discussions of
ethical and moral implications of urban planning to visions which might
guide cities to reducing automobile dependence. Readers of UTI  will
find their discussion of "transit leverage," how each km travelled by
transit replaces 5-7 travelled by car, very rewarding and their
"Appendix 6: A Guide to the Provision of Better Transit and Land Use
Integration in Auto Cities" quite helpful. 

Readers spirits should be buoyed by their documentation that many major
cities, and several cities as small as Boulder (Colorado, US) and
Freiburg (Germany) have achieved dramatic transit improvements and modal
shifts through a combination of strategic investment, political will,
and improved planning. The authors stress over and over their belief
that good planning will lead to urban sustainability. Yet one has to
wonder how many cities, regions, or nations will be able to introduce or
maintain strongly independent planning regimens in an increasingly
globalizing and anti-regulatory political environment? Newman and
Kenworthy have faith that urban sustainability and the overcoming of
automobile dependence can be accomplished. Let us hope so.