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some. London’s typical form of development – the suburb in the city, celebrated sixty years ago by
Steen Eiler Rasmussen – allows more everyday contact with green spaces, a more open and human,
less monumental, urban environment. It is rejected by a latter-day generation of architects and
planners as ‘not urban enough’, but it is far from clear that they represent the interests and tastes of
ordinary Londoners, who will express their preferences in the market.
Despite the lack of agreement among experts, recent work in the UK and the USA strongly suggests
that the optimum combination of policies, in terms of environmental sustainability and public
acceptability, would consist not of a single solution but of what has been called a portfolio approach
(Hall and Ward, 1998, p. 120): within the cities, medium-density urban brownfield redevelopment,
combining residential and other uses, around public transport interchanges (‘urban villages’),
combined with similar greenfield small mixed-use units, all typically housing 20-30,000 people
(‘garden cities’), in linear clusters of up to about 200,000 people along public transport lines. The
effect will be to create a highly polycentric pattern of development, both within and outside the city,
allowing the city to grow progressively into a polycentric city region within which each part has a
high degree of self-containment but each is highly networked to all the others through efficient public
transport and high-quality ICT links. But the effects on traffic have not been rigorously tested, and
there is vigorous debate as to key elements of such a policy, including the right proportions of
greenfield and brownfield development, and the precise scale of decentralization, short- versus long-
distance.
Clearly, within this broad rubric, different solutions are technically and economically viable. But they
are quite different in their resulting atmosphere and lifestyle. They reflect cultural preferences and
may not be readily transferable from one city to another: high-density apartment living in Paris, Berlin
or Hong Kong may be suitable for those who care to live in those cities, but Los Angeles-type sprawl
is equally acceptable to those who place a high premium on space in and around the home, even
though it increases commuting costs and restricts public open space. The choice depends on historical
traditions, on the surroundings and the quality of the landscape. It is a matter not only of the
opportunity costs of different options, but also of different local preferences.
This is important, because in a democracy the planning system can only go so far to try to affect
people’s market preferences. It can and should do so wherever there are manifest and unambiguous
negative externalities, and where it is clear that these are unacceptable. (Long commute times are an
externality, but should be ignored if people are evidently willing to pay for them.) The most important
imperative is the environmental one; but we must be quite clear about the effects, and of the results of
policy changes (e.g. densification), before we embark on them.
Perhaps the best answer was the one given above: planners will not determine these questions; people
and their preferences, expressed through markets and through political processes, will decide. This
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will not be easy, because politics may run up against markets: NIMBY politics will tend to set barriers
against developments that change people’s established and comfortable lifestyles, whether they are
country or city people. The risk in developed countries is a kind of urban paralysis, in which it
becomes almost impossible to change anything: BANANA (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere
Near Anyone). In economies and societies characterized by rapid change, the resulting pressures may
become almost impossible to manage.
Given all this, it becomes a delicate and difficult point as to how far, and in what ways, planning should
intervene. Architects argue that it should seek to raise the quality of development. That is fine, as long as
it does not become a device for forcing on people designs, including densities, that they do not want. In
high-quality (meaning high-price) developments, the private sector will probably produce good design
because people are willing to pay for it. But experience in the United Kingdom suggests that public
intervention, through design guides, may be effective in the middle and lower ranges of the market.
Rules for Design
The key is to find ways of producing good quality urban environments, that people will be attracted to
and will enjoy living in. Allan Jacobs and Donald Appleyard have suggested some of the qualities of
such places: they should be liveable places, where everyone can live in relative comfort and security;
they should have identity and control, in that people feel that they have some ownership and want to be
involved; they should offer access to opportunity, imagination and excitement; they should give people a
sense of authenticity and meaning, but not in too obvious a way; they should encourage a sense of
community and participation; they should be as sustainable as possible; and they should offer a good
level of environment to all (Jacobs and Appleyard, 1987, pp. 115-116). Jacobs and Appleyard go on to
suggest what kind of an urban environment would meet those demands. They say there are five physical
characteristics, all of which must be present:
The first is liveable streets and neighbourhoods with adequate sunshine, clean air, trees and vegetation
and gardens and open space, pleasantly scaled and designed buildings, without offensive noise, and with
cleanliness and physical safety. They stress that these qualities must be ‘reasonable, though not
excessive’: sunlight standards must not result in buildings placed too far apart, or traffic safety must not
produce over-wide streets and wide curves.
The second is a certain minimum density, which they say is about 15 dwelling units per acre (37 units
per hectare) which translates to 30-60 people per acre (74-148/ha), typified by generous town houses.
But, they point out, San Francisco achieves superb urban quality with 3-storey row houses above garages
at densities as high as 48 units per acre (119/ha), translating to 96-192 people per acre (237-474/ha), yet
offering separate entrances with direct access to the ground and either private or public open space at
hand. Such densities are also characteristic of much of inner London, which also achieves great urban
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quality and liveability. But, they warn, at densities much more than 200 people per net residential acre –
the highest planned density in Abercrombie’s famous London plan – ‘the concessions to less desirable
living environments mount rapidly’. As well as density, there must be a certain intensity of use on the
streets, and this is related to the density: both will be higher in central urban districts than in outer
suburban areas.
The third necessary attribute is integration of activities – living, working, shopping, public and spiritual
and recreational activities – reasonably near each other, though not necessarily all together everywhere.
They say there is a lot to be said for ‘living sanctuaries, consisting almost entirely of housing’, but these
should be fairly small, a few street blocks, and close to meeting places which should normally have
housing in them.
Fourth, they say that ‘buildings (and other objects that people place in the environment) should be
arranged in such a way as to define and even enclose public space, rather than sit in space’. Buildings
along a street will do this so long as the street is not too wide in relation to them. The critical point is that
the spaces, whether streets or squares, must not become too large. The spaces must also be primarily
pedestrian spaces and they must be under public control.
Finally, they argue, ‘many different buildings and spaces with complex arrangements and relationships
are required’. By this they mean a rather broken pattern of ownership, with small parcel sizes, producing
a more public and lively city. Of course, there will need to be larger buildings, too; but these should be
the exception, not the rule.
These principles, we would argue, provide an excellent guide to the design of good built urban
environments. Of course, they do not cover the entire range of legitimate designs within cities; some
parts, especially in the very centre and the very edge, will depart from them., and it should be no aim of
the planner or urban designer to produce total uniformity across the city. But it is at least interesting, for
instance, that though Jacobs and Appleyard question the Garden City ideal, their principles seem to
conform pretty closely to Howard’s original concept of 1898 – including his suggested density, which
was right in the middle of their suggested density range. The key point is that the urban forms they
recommend are not merely liveable; they are also sustainable. They provide the critical building blocks,
which can then be combined into urban villages and country towns to constitute a sustainable city region.
These qualities will not come through market forces alone. As Jacobs and Appleyard argue, the problem
is that commercial considerations will often suggest different arrangements – including large,
monofunctional blocks or very low densities. Therefore, the planner will have to intervene on the basis
that superior urban designs will be highly attractive once people can see them working. (San Francisco
and inner London, cities which offer very high quality of urban life and are extremely fashionable living
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places with buoyant real estate markets, are examples.) This will require that planners are much better
educated in urban design than many of them are today.
9.2.5 The Challenge in the Developing World
The Limits of Planning
All these problems are compounded, of course, in conditions of rapid growth and especially in the
world’s biggest cities. Half a century ago, a city like London placed draconian restrictions on its own
growth, by means of a green belt and a series of new towns outside it, in order to reduce and hold its
population to under 8 million. Today, the United Nations analysis suggests that there are already more
than twenty cities in excess of that figure, and most of them are growing very much faster than
London was then (see table I.2). This combination of huge size and rapid growth is the distinctively
new feature, unprecedented in world history.
Further, as already seen in Chapter I, a new feature is that most of these cities – and many just below
them – are in developing countries, many of them relatively poor. They compare unfavourably in this
respect with the London or Paris or New York of 1900, let alone those cities in 1950.
This is significant, because it affects what planning can achieve. As already seen, some Latin American
middle-income cities (Mexico City, São Paulo, Lima) have permitted uncontrolled growth of informal
settlements; others in Eastern Asia (Seoul, Singapore, Hong Kong) have forbidden them, instead
developing high-density public and industry-financed housing. It is not immediately clear which pattern
has been optimal, and a pattern that is optimal at one stage (for instance where the majority of incomes
are low) may not be optimal at another. Further, as in the developed world, cultural preferences enter
into the equation: South East Asian people seem to have had a tradition of living at high densities,
though that might reflect their poverty, while poor Latin Americans spread out like richer Californians.
One important asset is flexibility: the ability of an urban settlement structure to adapt without too much
strain to rapidly changing circumstances.
In many middle-income and all low-income cities, however, lack of resources has at least three
consequences for the planning system.
First, planning is likely to command a low priority. Planning has to compete with a great many other
national and local objectives – not least, economic growth. Because good planning is to some degree
what the economist would call an income-elastic good, in early stages of development planning will
not be seen as a high priority. Thus, if a large multinational investor proposes a major factory or
office development, planning permission is likely to be forthcoming, however good the objections.
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Second, arising from this fact, the system is likely to be weak. It will not command the best
professionals, and in particular the routine administration of the system is not likely to work well.
Rules can be bent, and corruption of low-paid officials is an ever-present danger. One particular
problem is that, during the 1990s, decentralization policies often delegated functions to municipal
authorities – but without a corresponding transfer of financial resources, leading to difficulties in
supplying services to the poor, and compounded by a lack of know-how. In the worst cases, the lack
of municipal administration, or its inefficiency, can lead to a power vacuum, filled by organizations
that range from organized crime to fundamentalist terrorist groups, which force the urban poor into
dependency on them (Network of GTZ Consultants on Municipal and Urban Development, 1997, pp.
17-18).
Third, and even more basically, the system may become physically impossible to enforce: throughout
these poorer cities, a permanent feature is the illegal occupation of land by squatters, often living at
the margin of existence. It could hardly be otherwise: in the early 1980s in low-income developing
countries, nine new households were being formed for every permanent dwelling. The gap between
demand and supply is huge and widening, typically between 1 or 2 per cent in Thailand to 20 per cent
in Madras (Brennan, 1994, p. 240). So the authorities then have the unenviable choice of eliminating
informal settlements and rendering the inhabitants homeless, with the certain expectation that they
will go and settle somewhere else, or recognizing the reality and turning a blind eye to the illegality.
(And indeed, in many of these countries the courts have eventually recognized some legal rights for
squatters.)
The result, in many cases, is a system that generates elaborate paper plans that regularly get ignored
and are then revised to fit reality. Even when plans are implemented – for instance, developing new
satellite towns to rehouse the poor – all too often they do not work out as intended: they are occupied
by richer people, or by commercial uses, while the poor return to the slums. The key in most cases is
to help the people of the informal settlements to upgrade their own environment, using their own time
and energies which they have rather than money resources which they do not have; but this demands
some form of legalization of title as a prerequisite.
How Much Planning Can Poor Cities Afford?
This poses a very basic and drastic question: can poor cities afford effective planning? Though
comparisons are notoriously difficult, it appears that many cities in developing countries have per
capita incomes no higher than their equivalents in the developed world a century ago, at the point
when they were just tentatively beginning to accept the principle that planning could intervene in
market decisions. Further, rather remarkably, most of them have many more people living in informal
settlements than these cities did; the poor in 1900 mainly lived in overcrowded purpose-built
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