Urban Sprawl – Political Issue?

We are incredibly lucky in the UK. Our suburban expansion happened mainly between the wars and was driven by the train. After 1947 we had Green Belts and avoided some of the worst excesses of urban sprawl (until Nick Ridley).

Countries like Australia and the US and even European countries like Italy were less fortunate and now face some huge challenges. These were spelled out some years ago in films like The End of Suburbia (which I remember showing some years ago to one of our professional teams – who were expecting a deal celebration party – no such thing as a free drink but I’m not sure they have ever forgiven me) which posits that as oil demand increases oil prices will increase even faster due to supply constraints and costs and this will hit the cost of private motoring and heating and air conditioning in US suburbs.

I have been interested to hear recently that urban sprawl is a political issue in Australia and at the moment the sprawlers seem to be in the ascendance. Australia has some of the largest new homes in the world (around three times larger than the UK), an apparently deeply ingrained culture of owning a detached house on a quarter acre plot and a lack of subsidised housing which drives policy toward making land as cheap as possible.

This has a couple of impacts. The cheapest houses are furthest away from jobs, services and public transport and also have the highest running costs and costs for public infrastructure (roads and utilities). So the poorest people are put in the highest cost of living locations (this is beautifully illustrated in a piece of research dubbed the Vampire index) and the public purse picks up much of the cost. And this doesn’t seem to impact average house prices which continue to rise rapidly, particularly in the central cities and inner suburbs. 

It’s an interesting example of why Barker’s second, policy based evidence making, report on the UK housing market was so off target. You can build as much as you like on green belts but you won’t achieve housing affordability in most places (house prices are very localised with limited spillover) and you will get negative externalities that vastly outweigh any positives.

So what, I wonder, will neighbourhood planning do for this system? The New Homes Bonus does not attempt to internalise negative externalities (like increased greenhouse gases – Nick Stern described climate change as the greatest ever market failure) and it seems likely that the Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) won’t do this either (unless local authorities are very sophisticated in their CIL policies). Let’s hope that NIMBYism in the right places continues to do the job of the Green Belts (which should continue in the National Planning Policy Guidance) and that it doesn’t constrain investment into our inner urban areas.

Melbourne presents an interesting example of a political comprise as a policy response to this topic. There they are planning to focus development in activity centres throughout the metropolitan area and in very narrow zones along tram and bus routes. The option of investing from the centre outwards, espoused by great urban thinkers like Richard Rogers, was not adopted. The multi centre approach seems likely to do less to reduce private transport but be a much better solution than continued urban sprawl. 

I suspect there are a couple of big trends that might impact this type of urban planning over the next few critical decades for climate change. First, as we are seeing in countries like the UK and US, the young will continue to adopt urban apartment living and may even stay central if cities can deliver good schools and safe and pleasant environments for children. Second, there is the possibility that power grids will go green and private transport will too. In which case, countries with lower levels of household and population growth may find suburbs a good option again.

When predicting the future it is wise to hedge one’s bets.