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Abstract
Walking, urban sprawl and innovative measures
Anne Faure
Many technician and elected people have been thinking for a long time that it is sufficient to
design some special equipment in the public open space, fitting pedestrians and cyclistsÕ
needs, to enhance and promote alternative practices. They forgot that nobody is interested in
walking when distances increase between housing and shops, jobs, public transport or public
facilities. Form of cities and location of different functions have been adapted towards
extensive car practice; urbanisation has been spreading out for fifty years, without planning in
many cases.
The objective of our research is to describe policies allowing to control urban sprawl in five
countries of northern Europe. We had to choose the more significant reports and regulation
texts and analyse measures. The goal is to identify innovative measures. The five countries
are : Switzerland, the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark and the United Kingdom.
In terms of planning, the same pattern is common to the five countries: the Òcompact cityÓ,
Dutch concept developed by German researchers into a Òcompact city in a polycentric urban
regionÓ. It means both making existing urban centres more dense and organising new
urbanisation around the public transport network only.
These principles are well known by specialists in many countries; some specific tools, useful
to implement the concept, less well known, have been found in literature coming from the five
countries of the sample. The paper will focus on:
- new concepts for car-poor or car-free neighborhoods,
- location policies for shops and supermarkets according to the type of goods,
- observatories of urban sprawl and criteria chosen to describe the evolution.
This research was made in the frame of the French inter-ministerial research program on
transports (PREDIT) and financed by the Energy Saving French Agency.
Anne FAURE, city and transport planner,
Lecturer (Master of Environmental Psychology) at the University of Paris V
manager of ARCHÕURBA consulting firm,
8 rue Primatice Ð 75013 PARIS Ð France
TelÊ: 33 1 47 07 09 72 Ð FaxÊ: 33 1 43 36 76 32 Ð emailÊ: archurba@free.fr

Walking, urban sprawl and innovative measures
Anne Faure
Many technician and elected people have been thinking for a long time that it is sufficient to
design some special equipment in the public open space, fitting pedestrians and cyclistsÕ
needs, to enhance and promote alternative practices. They forgot that nobody is interested in
walking when distances increase between housing and shops, jobs, public transport or public
facilities. The form of cities, the location of different functions have been adapted towards an
extensive car practice; urbanisation has been spreading out for fifty years, without planning in
many cases.
The objective of our research is to describe policies allowing to control urban sprawl in five
countries of northern Europe. We had to choose the more significant reports and regulation
texts and to analyse the measures. The goal is to identify innovative measures. The five
countries are : Switzerland, the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark and the United Kingdom.
This research was made in the frame of the French inter-ministerial research program on
transports (PREDIT) and financed by the Energy Saving French Agency.
Method
Available information is presented, first by five case-studies which described policies lead in
the different countries, second, by thematic analyses concerning the different types of
measures:
- densification strategies,
- regulation and institutional tools,
- economical tools,
- infrastructure policies.
In some cases, innovative measures have been chosen and analysed in more detail.
General results
In terms of planning, the same pattern is common to the five countries : the Òcompact cityÓ,
Dutch concept developed by German researchers into a Òcompact city in a polycentric urban
regionÓ. It means both making existing urban centres more dense and organising new
urbanisation around the public transport network only.
The efficiency level produced by adopted strategies seems to be facilitated by long term
policies and the coherence with measures in every field: housing, public facilities, activities...
The part played by economy tools is regarded by many authors as a priority.

Available evaluations are not really optimistic. However, except in Switzerland, the policies
are too recent to have a significant influence on urban morphology. The principal obstacle
seems to be the lacking awareness of the consequences of urban sprawl among citizens and
elected people. Arguments found in literature coming from the five countries of the sample
could be helpful to make people understand better the relationship between walking and the
result of urban policies.
The principles of Òthe compact-city in a polycentric urban regionÓ are well known, but some
specific tools are useful to implement the concept.
The paper will focus on :
- new concepts for car-poor or car-free neighborhoods,
- location policies for shops and supermarkets according to the type of goods,
- observatories of urban sprawl and criteria chosen to describe the evolution.
Building car-poor or car-free neighborhoods
In 1992, in Amsterdam, local authorities decided to create an ecological district in
Westerpark, not far from the city centre. The program, supported by the government, had to
reach the density of 100 apartments per hectare, which is relatively high. The solution found
to deal with the constraint and propose a high quality of life was to adopt 0,3 as parking rate
(one parking space for three apartments, for guests and delivery). This made possible an
organisation where every apartment could benefit of a terrace or a private garden. This
experiment opened a large range of programs where walking is facilitated.
The objectives to build car-poor neighborhoods are:
- to propose a new way of life in urban districts,
- to take advantage of the observed low car-ownership of the inhabitants,
- to save the price of the land corresponding to parking spaces,
- to reduce costs and propose better services,
- to increase quality of life and security.
Two types of programs can be sorted out according to the parking rate ( 0 to 0, 5 ): car free or
dense neighborhoods. Different solutions have been implemented within the two categories.
In the case of new buildings, like for old houses refurbished, the design aims to take
advantage of the absence of car and make the inhabitants profit by it. The reduced cost of land
allows to produce less expensive housing and to offer more facilities.
A study lead by ISL in Dortmund (Gout and Kron), concerning the numerous German
experiments, observes that the location of such neighborhoods is the main point: walking is
more enjoyable when shops and services can be reached at a short distance. These new
neighborhoods are located in peripheral area and close to an interchange station of public
transport. Existing car-sharing organization, pedestrians and cycle paths, home delivery
services, are important criteria for the success of the project.
Many programs are developing in the Netherlands, Germany, Austria or United Kingdom. In
some German LŠnder, planning regulation and laws have been changed to make less rigid the
obligations in parking rate. These new neighborhoods show that density and quality of life are
compatible.

Developing new types of urban housing
Walkable neighborhoods have to provide a good quality in housing and in design of public
open space to be a realistic alternative.
A research lead in France recently (CERTU Ð Kaufmann, Jemelin, Guidez- 2000) showed that
the reasons which decide many people to live in the suburbs are not a choice but the result of
financial constraints. It seems that the offer in housing of French city centers is not fitting
with the demand, specially for families with children.
People cannot imagine life without a car in any country. In many cases, the high cost of a big
apartment well served by public transport makes low income inhabitants live far from shops,
services and facilities: they become dependent on car. Low cost dwellings are generally
located at a large distance from a bus or a railway station. However, the evolution of
demography brings a new context to design the city of the future.
The increasing number of aging population, of people living alone, of people bringing up
children alone characterize the evolution of demography. But the context is also changed by
new technologies, which organize working rhythm differently. Flexibility produces times of
unemployment which can be used for home education. Part time jobs are developing. It seems
that the time spent at home will be longer. The Ò short distance cityÓ is a good environment
for this future way of life.
Living in a small city center or a neighborhood center, without the daily use of a private car,
is possible when the level of the rent decreases and the quality of life and services increase.
Families need large surface apartments, private open space (garden or terrace), well
maintained public open space, schools and kindergarten close to their houses. Existing public
transport is one of the conditions to convince the inhabitants to live in a walkable community,
but not sufficient.
In the suburbs, the inhabitants can enjoy free spaces, green spaces and feel closer to nature. It
is important that they can reach a public garden at a small distance from home when they
think about moving to urban districts. If city design includes green spaces, pedestrian paths,
trees in the public open spaceÉ, a small private garden or terrace is more acceptable.
A walkable community is a global concept where city-planning, city-design and housing -
design are linked. Row houses with small gardens, low condominiums with terraces or private
gardens for the ground floor need few surface of land. The density of these architectural forms
can be relatively important, though the height of buildings is not, and the green environment
is enjoyable for pedestrians.
New forms of land saving dwellings with gardens are still to imagine with the intention to
propose homes for families at a short distance from public transport and shops. The challenge
is to reduce the attraction of suburbs by increasing the interest of urban housing.
Urban sprawl is generally considered as unavoidable. Private car ownership, country housing
for people working in cities are not only influenced by a global change but also by political
decisions. Road policies, tax policies, railways policies contribute to urban sprawl. Planning
regulation, which plays a large part in the process, can evolve.

Implementing location policies for shops and supermarkets
The location of supermarkets, of shops and leisure centres evolved according to the same
pattern in many developed countries. Supermarkets and leisure centres establish in the
suburbs far from urban centres to profit of low cost land and to build huge car parks : the
systematic use of the private car to go and shop or practice a sport is considered as obvious.
Supermarkets and service decentralization creates an important number of week-end and daily
trips, with consequences in terms of pollution and noise. In some European cities, like
Freiburg im Brisgau in Germany for example, at the level of urban regions, like Bern or
Lucern in Switzerland, or a whole country, like in the Netherlands, local authorities decided to
organise the location of new shops and supermarkets according to the type of goods and
services offered.
Some principles inspired the rules adopted by the different governments :
- shops for daily or week-end purchases must be close to residential areas, within a radius
of _ kilometre, to be reached by foot, by bicycle or with public transports,
- monthly or uncommon shopping must be possible in city centres, in small towns, and in
neighbourhood centres, in big cities,
- goods which size, weight or nature need the use of a car must be on sale in specialised
shopping centres, accessible by highways and defined by land use plans.
This kind of organisation, relevant for sustainable development, needs a change in shop
supply (more often, with small lorriesÉ) and other measures like free home delivery or better
use of Internet.
In large cities, where public transport is efficient, the rents are more expensive in residential
areas than in industrial estates, but the density of population and the vicinity of other shops
create more customers and more benefit.
In small cities, local authorities have to launch global politics of urban regeneration to
enhance shopping, including housing, traffic calming programs, pedestrian streetsÉ
Urban neighbourhoods are a good scale to organise urban centres bringing together public
facilities and shops. Schools focus city life. Walking is enjoyable and contributes to develop
social life.
In Freiburg-im-Brisgau, between 1984 and 1990, neighborhood centres were loosing their role
of supply, their interest and dynamics, while sale surfaces was increasing in industrial estates
in the suburbs. A study of IREC/EPFL in Lausanne (Bonanomi and Thalmann) reports how
local authorities reacted. They feared that, if shops were disappearing, other services, doctors
or cultural facilities could disappear and social and cultural life could decline.
Local authorities took measures to facilitate and change the projects of new commercial
surfaces towards city and neighborhood centres so that supplies in daily needs could be
available and to stimulate competition between shopkeepers. In addition, a list of goods which
could not be sold in suburban shopping centres has been established. This program was called
Ò Markets and centres conceptÓ.

Creating observatories to survey urban sprawl
Some countries are trying to implement tools with the intention to measure urban sprawl and
to evaluate the effects on the environment.
In Switzerland in 1983, boards were created at different scales (local authorities and federal
government) to observe the evolution of territories with the contribution of both statistics and
maps. The goal is to understand the difference between what was planned and what exists.
The targets, set by the federal government, are:
- to study land use and organization of the territory,
- to solve concrete problems of urban development,
- to help decision-making in city and regional planning,
- to make a survey of the developing process.
The information is produced to be taken into account by political and economical decision -
makers, to be used as a basis for federal documents, and also, to be held at citizensÕ disposal
and proposed to the media.
In the ZŸrich area, the observatory was launched in the seventies, which now allows to make
interesting comparisons. More recently, local authorities of Vaud (Geneva and Lausanne) is
building an information system , Internet oriented, which is composed of maps, statistics and
analyses. These comments aim to explain the evolution revealed by different criteria.
The choice of criteria is discussed in many reports. According to many authors, land -
consumption is the best indication to measure urban sprawl. The studies made in Berlin by
DIFU (Deutsches Institut FŸr Urbanistik Ð Apel and al.) come to the conclusion that urban
sprawl can be measured by:
- general land-consumption of urban space and traffic (surface / number of inhabitant)
- detailed land-consumption of buildings and roads (surface / number of inhabitant)
- presence of transport network (rail and road) in free spaces ( km / km_)
- private car ownership rate (/ 1000 inhabitants)
- public transport supply, comfortable space for pedestrians and cyclists,
- surface of the public open space,
- density rate and mixed-uses in the neighborhoods.
The range of criteria is more open in ZŸrich than the German proposition:
- demography, sociological and cultural indicators,
- detailed description of land use,
- height of buildings, urbanization rate of future urban extensions,
- surface of agricultural land and forests, percentage of built surfaces in agricultural zones,
- transportation mode used for different kind of trips, by commuters;
The use of maps, made possible by computerization of data, is important as a pedagogical
tool: visual documents are generally more clear than statistic tables.

Lobbying for walkable-neighborhoods
In many countries, where people are aware of environmental issues for a long time, advocacy
organizations use to fight for ecological mobility, quality of life and road safety. Many of
them, however, do not identify the relationship existing between problems at the scale of the
neighborhood and global planning of the urban region. Lobbying against urban sprawl is
unusual.
But, the situation will not evolve if citizens do not put pressure on political bodies. Some
elected people are aware of the danger of environmental problems. They can act if their
population is ready to support them, because the car lobby is strong and efficient everywhere.
Concepts like Òshort distance citiesÓ, fight against urban sprawl and car poor-neighborhoods
or walkable-neighborhoods are not well known, partly because media are not interested in
such subjects. Sustainable development measures belong to a complex process, difficult to
explain and rejected by many people.
Dense neighborhoods are a response to the needs of the future: changes in demography and in
professional practices. One of the most important tasks is to convince people that walking
remains a transport mode.
References
ÇÊSzenarien und Potenziale einer nachhaltig flŠchensparenden und landschaftsschonenden
SiedlungsentwicklungÊÈÊ
DIFU - directed by Dieter Apel Ð Berlin 2000.
ÇÊTowards an Urban RenaissanceÓ
Final report of the ÒUrban Task ForceÓÊchaired by Lord Rogers of Riverside Ð Spon 1999.
ÒVers un urbanisme de la proximitŽÓ
Lydia Bonanomi (IREC/ EPF Lausanne), National Research Program 41Ê: Transport and
Environment, Swiss National Science Foundation Ð Bern 2000.