Green Economy Journal Issue 61

THOUGHT LEADERSHIP
INFRASTRUCTURE
It’s a question of scale
efficiency and reduction of travel demand is at the core of the compact
city’s conceptualisation.
Yao, notes in the study that the compact city concept can provide
twofold contributions to higher land efficiency namely, it reduces
low-efficiency consumption of land resources while, simultaneously,
promoting agglomeration economies by encouraging high-density
development. Yao found that higher population density and compact
urban form are beneficial to the urban economic efficiencies of large
cities. However, Yao proposed “tailor-made policy suggestions regarding
compactness and economic efficiencies for cities of different sizes”
which concurs with the finding made in earlier pieces for strategic
investment decision-making.
Westerink found that “compact cities excelled in efficient land
consumption, more flexible land use patterns, cost efficiency of
development and maintenance [the emphasis is mine], and reduced
reliance on fossil fuels and motor vehicles.” Numerous other researchers
have come to the same conclusion, including Dempsey (2010), Kain
et al (2022) and Ghisleni (2022).
Marcotullio introduced wastewater treatment as one of the essential
conditions. Marcotullio argues that a further innovation required
to enhance the sustainability of compact cities is the adoption of
sustainable systems, which include “infrastructure to naturally process
sewage waste, grey water and storm runoff on site”. This reference to
natural processes begins to address the application of nature-based
solutions (NbS) in development to, inter alia, deal with climate change
adaption and mitigation.
THOUGHT LEADERSHIP
NATURE-BASED SOLUTIONS
The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)
promotes nature-based solutions that leverage nature and the
power of healthy ecosystems to protect, optimise infrastructure
[the emphasis is mine], and safeguard a stable and biodiverse
future. It is the optimisation of infrastructure specifically that is
of interest to this think piece. It notes that nature-based solutions
can help cities realise an emerging opportunity to reimagine the
built environment, and by extension, our civilisation.
Nature-based solutions are defined as the sustainable
management and use of natural features and processes to tackle
socio-environmental issues. The European Union’s definition of
nature-based solutions states that nature-based these solutions are
inspired and supported by nature, are cost-effective, simultaneously
provide environmental, social and economic benefits and help
build resilience. Such solutions bring more, and more diverse,
nature and natural features and processes into cities, landscapes
and seascapes, through locally adapted, resource-efficient and
systematic interventions.
South African households and
businesses have installed 4 400MW of
rooftop solar PV, an increase from 983MW
in March 2022 to 4 412MW in June 2023.
Previously*, I asserted that the underlying causes for the poor standard and performance of
infrastructure services worldwide had more to do with scale and complexity than funding or
skills shortages, which are contributory albeit secondary causes. This raises a need for further
investigation of compact cities and decentralised management approaches.
BY LLEWELLYN VAN WYK, B. ARCH; MSC (APPLIED), URBAN ANALYST
I
argued, based on a limited case study of three countries, that
scale – both physical and financial – would appear to be the
primary issue and that it required a compact infrastructure
network coupled to strategic decision-making in terms of scale,
complexity and location.
From the albeit limited evidence shown in that think piece, a
correlation was drawn between population density, GDP per capita and
global infrastructure ranking. I noted that more research is required
to make a definitive statement on this hypothesis. Nonetheless,
compactness and strategic investment decision-making are key factors
in Taiwan and Singapore’s success. This raises issues that need to be
investigated regarding the original proposition. One of these is the
compact city and the other is the use of innovative engineering
and decentralised management approaches. The latter speaks to
microgrids and distributed grids.
THE COMPACT CITY
The compact city, despite the recent press attention given to comparable
ideas such as the 10-minute or 15-minute city, is not a new concept.
The term was first invented by Dantzig and Saaty in 1973 in their
publication Compact City: Plan for a Liveable Urban Environment (WH
Freeman, San Francisco) although credit should also go to Jane Jacobs
and her book The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961). Jacobs
identified four essential conditions for urban renewal namely, mixed
uses, small walkable blocks, mingling of building ages and types as
well as a denser concentration of people.
Similarly related concepts include smart growth although critics,
such as Kaid, argue that it differs in principle since it suggests that
growth is necessary and good; new urbanism; green urbanism, with
its 15 core principles as set out by Lehmann; and eco-districts. Central
to all these concepts is the notion of a compact city.
A compact city as originally promoted is one that is predicated
on relatively high residential density, mixed land uses, an efficient
public transport system and, critically, the ability to walk to most
destinations of choice.
Notably absent from these conditions was the provision of
infrastructure apart from transport and personal mobility. Infrastructure
only emerged as an essential condition when the focus of compact
cities began to include self-sustainability, meaning that the city
has access to all the services it needs within the community. Apart
from the typically included services such as stores, employment and
service providers, it began to include infrastructure services previously
provided at a regional, provincial and national level. These are typically
energy generation, waste disposal and processing as well as smallscale
agricultural production such as community gardens and/or
vertical gardening. Lehmann extended these essential conditions
by including water infrastructure. Still absent was sanitation.
From an infrastructure development perspective, the argument
made for compact cities is that they are more sustainable than the
conventional model of urban sprawl as they reduce car dependency
and require less and cheaper per capita infrastructure provision. As
noted by improving land efficiency through improvements of resource
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