Main Challenges in Urban Design

MIGUEL SILVA BARRAL

Main challenges in Urban Design HOUSING AFFORDABILITY CRISIS

Table of contents I. Introduction

3

II. Main challenges in Urban Design

4

Global scale

4

National scale

6

Metropolitan and Urban scale

7

III. The challenge of housing affordability

2

8

Definition of the problem

8

Failed solutions

10

Proposed approaches

11

IV. Conclusion

14

A. Bibliography

16

B. Image sources

19

I. Introduction Cities are one of mankind’s greatest achievements, indispensable to our culture, prosperity, and innovation (Glaeser, 2011; United Nations Population Fund, 2016). However, they also host an array of problems, challenges and struggles.

The increasing worldwide urbanisation (United Nations Population Fund, 2016) and the growth of urban population (Burdett and Sudjic, 2011) mean that tackling these challenges is now more important than ever.

This rise of urbanisation is localised mostly in the so called ‘global south’: Asia, Africa, and South America. However, most research and ideas are still coming from the ‘global north’ (Lawhon et

al., 2016), what hinders our understanding of these challenges and leads to answers that are incomplete (Editorial Board and Editorial Collective, 2016) or outright wrong (Schindler and Silver, 2019). Still, the ‘global north’ is not short of urban problems, being the most urbanised area in the world (Center for International Earth Science Information Network-CIESIN - Columbia University, International Food Policy Research Institute - IFPRI, The World Bank, and Centro Internacional de Agricultura Tropical - CIAT, 2011). Next section offers an overview of the most relevant challenges that cities around the globe are facing at a variety of spatial and time scales.

Cover photo and background: Paris is one of the world’s most unaffordable cities.

3

II. Main challenges in Urban D Global scale CLIMATE CHANGE Cities are at the same time cause, victim, and solution to climate change (Giezen, 2016). Effects that are of special importance to urban regions include: rising sea levels in addition to subsidence that threaten coastal cities (Dolman and Ogunyoye, 2018), heat waves worsened because of the urban heat island effect, stormwater flooding aggravated by urban runoff, and water scarcity where hydrological cycles are already stressed. The poor are especially vulnerable to these events because they settle in lower quality hou4

sing and lack the means to protect themselves or flee from changing climate (OECD, 2010).

Solutions encompass mitigation and adaptation: the first means reducing CO2 emissions to slow climate change, and the second aims to create cities that can remain functional under extreme weather events (Giezen, 2016).

DEMOGRAPHIC CHANGE World population numbers are rising rapidly, especially in the developing countries (Cleland, 2013). While it may not drastically affect climate

From left to right: The aftermath of hurricane Katrina in New Orleans Tokyo, world’s biggest megacity

Design change because of the poverty of this population (Satterthwaite, 2009) it will impact significantly the need for water and food. This demographic transition is the root cause of the increased urbanisation (Dyson, 2011), which sparks the growth of megacities (cities over 10 million inhabitants) in the developing world (Singh, 2015). This challenges the provision of goods, services and living conditions in these densely populated areas, and threatens the local and global environment.

Abandoned industrial building in Germany A slum on stilts in Lagos, Nigeria

cities. This carries problems such as unemployment, brain drain, and poverty concentration (Kim, 2019; Martinez-Fernandez et al., 2012).

As societies evolve, they also age, and services in ageing populations are difficult to maintain and have special needs.

URBAN POVERTY AND INEQUALITY Said poverty concentration is more evident when urbanisation is faster than economic growth.

These concentrations of urban poor are often On the other hand, the ‘global north’ sees a de- poorer than their rural counterparts, as well as mographic stagnation, which coupled with globa- being more exposed to illness and inequality the lisation leads to deindustrialisation and shrinking greater the city size (Zhang, 2016).

5

National scale WAR AND MASS MIGRATION Cities have been central to warfare throughout history, due to their value as capital and sovereignty ‘containers’. Conflict inflicts a twofold effect on cities: civic conflict sparks on their public space with the violence and destruction that comes with it, but fight in the hinterland provokes an influx of displaced populations to the relatively safe cities (Beall, Goodfellow and Rodgers, 2013).

vernments, rendering them unable to respond to their growing challenges with infrastructure and human resources (Zhang, 2016). Institutional austerity worsens the social impact of the crisis (Donald et al., 2014), and in making cities less competitive it scares away the very necessary private investment (Macomber, 2011).

POOR URBAN GOVERNANCE The fast pace of urban growth, paired with the involvement of multiple government departments WEAK FINANCIAL CAPACITY and interest groups in urban management, makes The wealth-generating capacity of cities doesn’t cities less effective to address all these challenoften match the financial capacity of local go- ges (Macomber, 2011; Zhang, 2016).

Camp for Syrian refugees in Jordan

6

Metropolitan and Urban scale At the city scale, the problems that have been traditionally addressed by urban planning (Kerr and Herraghty, 2019) lay largely unresolved. Provision of water, food, energy, and good living conditions, reduction of crime, and traffic and waste management are taken for granted in developed countries, but are yet to be solved in developing urban regions. On top of this, new problems have arisen both in recent times: sprawl, data privacy, gentrification, heritage conservation, inclusion, participation...

Traffic congestion in Qom, Iran

STOCKS AND FLOWS MANAGEMENT Traffic and transportation, especially on the light of sustainability and low carbon emissions, still need to be solved, as the large amount of research on the topic shows (Verma, 2010).

Urbanisation and population growth threaten food provision due to increased demand and reduced agricultural land (Koscica, 2014); high demand coupled with reduced infiltration and contaminated aquifers also compromises water supplies (Esfandiari-Baiat et al., 2014). Energy requirements have risen dramatically over the last decades; this burden provokes energy poverty especially in urban areas (Bouzarovski and Thomson, 2018). The increase in population also generates a high volume of wastewater and solid waste, and puts pressure on infrastructure and management systems (Amerasinghe and Raman, 2014). Housing stock remains an issue with important policy implications: restrictive land use regulations reduce supply, raising housing prices until they are no longer affordable causing social inequality (Zhang, 2016).

SOCIAL COHESION Social segregation is a traditional problem in urban planning; however, today’s population movements present many layers of diversity, originating a super-diversity with implications in cities (Meissner and Vertovec, 2015) that challenges the traditional assimilation process (Crul, 2016).

Gentrification can cause displacement of the most vulnerable hindering social cohesion; when this is low, crime and vandalism appear.

ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY Ensuring good living conditions in the growing city is a challenge, especially when such growth usually came with cars, industrialisation, and sprawl (Zhang, 2016), provoking air, noise, and light pollution, and a loss of the urban space quality. Balancing the provision of land for urban expansion with preserving the natural and built heritage has proven a difficult task, all the more difficult the quicker this expansion is.

7

III. The challenge of housing a Definition of the problem The increased world population and its migration towards cities increases demand of housing. This, in turn, raises housing prices in urban areas, resulting in an influx of migrants that cannot afford decent housing, and displacement of urban settlers who are priced out of the most popular areas.

This, coupled with the availability of cheap mortgage lending, has spiked housing prices globally (Wetzstein, 2017)

lower classes see their ability to pay for food, healthcare, or education compromised, or are forced to live in substandard conditions. This effect is not limited to poor countries, both the global north and south are experimenting it (Wetzstein, 2017).

This housing crisis has both short- and long-term implications. Financial hardship runs rampant in low-income households living in unaffordable Decreased affordability affects everyone, but housing markets. Key workers such as police offiincreased intra-societal inequality means the cers, teachers, cleaners, nurses, etc, are essential 8

affordability

Central London, the most unaffordable city in the UK

to the good functioning of the city, but they are equality, inefficiency, and lack of material means being priced out of the areas where they deve- may lead to further spatial segregation, decaying lop their roles. Also, other challenges such as neighbourhoods and environmental damage. war, economic and political instability, or changing climate, add to the local housing demand further increasing scarcity and therefore prices.

On the longer run, homeownership is reduced in middle classes, diminishing their ability to move upwards in the social scale. The new generation, unable to afford owning their homes and save for retirement, is facing more material deprivation compared to their parents’ generation. Lastly, in9

Failed solutions Zoning regulations have been put at the core of this problem. Originally meant to limit incompatible uses in space, now it is used to regulate intensity of development. This prevents the natural evolution and adjustment of urban form respective to consumers’ preference. For instance, under strict zoning density regulations, a location that experiences increased centrality over time would not be able to adjust its optimal density, resulting in inefficient urban development patterns that are inflexible to absorb the increased demand, and therefore see their prices rise (McLaughlin, 2012).

Beer et al. (2007) identify “a need to streamline permit processes, extend ‘as of right’ provision for housing developments and speed up appeal processes”, concluding that planning alone has a negligible impact on affordability of housing; it has to be Both market and policy are characterised by a combined with other initiatives such as subsidies, slow responsiveness to changes in demand. Len- financial instruments or reduction of standards. gthy, complicated planning processes provoke a delay between the moment when demand is Another traditional tool to prevent unaffordabispotted and the coverage of said demand. This is lity has been rent control: putting a cap on eimade worse by a construction sector that is loc- ther how much can rents rise annually or directked-in in tradition and with interests in maintai- ly setting a maximum price. This, however, has ning the status quo. Fast-track development has been reported as having two damaging effects on been implemented in special housing zones. In- housing supply. On the one hand, when the cap clusionary zoning and supply of affordable hou- is applied to the whole of the housing market, sing by planning has had limited effects (Wetzs- housing supply is reduced overall, which despite tein, 2017). Evidence-based policy, rather than not increasing rents, still means that there is a being used to inform decisions on objective me- portion of the population that cannot live where trics, is used to support particular ideologies (Ja- they want. On the other hand, when said cap is cobs and Manzi, 2013). On top of this, renting applied to part of the market, the reduction in emerges as a tenure form that will need to be supply manifests in increased rents on the unaccepted as a life choice. controlled part (Skak and Bloze, 2013).

Traditional policy response to housing shortage has been to boost housing supply. This has been implemented differently through time, from direct provision of publicly owned housing in the first half of the 20th Century (Morobolo and Gunbeyaz, 2019), to subsidising, regulating, offering mortgage securities, and other forms of softer intervention to support a private investment-led market. Some of these soft forms of policy include removing red tape to make development faster, public-private joint developments, and rent increase caps. So far, however, a policy-outcome gap has been noted, probably due to a lack of understanding of the real impacts of policy on markets (Wetzstein, 2017).

Background: zoning plan of Tokyo, 1924

10

Proposed approaches Solutions for the global housing crisis will come from policies that are able to either locally reduce demand where prices are unaffordable, or increasing the pool of housing supply either by making it more attractive to develop or by directly injecting public money.

REDUCE DEMAND LOCALLY A theoretical simulation by Anenberg and Kung (2018) shows how, due to rent elasticity being very low, marginal reductions in supply constraints (this is, making development more attractive by reducing the time cost of red and green tape) won’t have a meaningful impact on rent prices.

However, improving amenities in low-priced neighbourhoods, despite increasing locally the prices, decreased demand in high-priced neighbourhoods via substitution effect. Renters and buyers that would like to live in prime areas would still be happy to live in a newly regenerated neighbourhood that they can afford, reducing prices in prime areas.

A drawback would be increased rents in low-rent neighbourhoods that would probably displace low-income residents further out, which has been shown to be a huge cost burden for households due to increased transport cost and the opportunity cost of the time invested in commuting (Acolin and Green, 2017).

INCREASE SUPPLY: DENSIFICATION With the already high land occupancy of our cities, further expansion to increase supply might not be desirable. However, most of this

development has been sprawl: there is a lot of room for densification.

As an example, the city of Melbourne has set among their working lines for 2030 consolidation: on the basis of public transport, a centres policy to intensify land uses around transit stops in what are called “transit cities”. This densification increases developer interest, which in turn forces up land prices; this, together with the higher construction costs of building in height, might dampen the impact of this strategy on housing prices (Beer, Kearins and Pieters, 2007), although the supply would obviously be higher.

The idea of reimplementing the classic railway suburb in modern urbanism is also applied by David Rudlin in his take of the new Garden City.

The low density of Britain’s ubiquitous garden suburbs would be increased around transit stops, which would increase supply and hopefully help solve the housing crisis (Whiting, 2019). This idea of increasing the density in garden suburbs is central to Galina Tachieva’s “Sprawl Repair Manual” (2010), which advocates for repairing the urban tissue of the American city, to make it more livable and walkable while increasing its density (Butler, 2019).

11

INCREASE SUPPLY: COOP Another way of increasing supply could be by different forms of tenure, namely, cooperative housing. This ranges from owner-occupied housing to cohousing. Germany, a country where cooperative housing is ubiquitous, offers government- and local government-sponsored low-interest mortgages for this type of housing.

This living arrangement has many other benefits in addition to being affordable: owner-occupiers are more likely to have more commitment to the building and the place than renters and investors, they serve as cross-generational living, and re-

Cooperative housing in Leipzig

12

vitalise old unused buildings. However, cooperative living in some places is already unaffordable for moderate- and low-income households (Reynolds, 2018).

Cooperative housing has been used in Munich as a means to fight gentrification in the city centre, with the local government allocating portions of publicly-owned land to this tenure type. The city of Leipzig sees small, project-oriented cooperatives as a regeneration tool for its decaying urban centre, with promising prospects (Reynolds, 2018).

RELAXING REGULATIONS Strict building and land use regulations have been previously identified as leading to increasingly unaffordable cities (McLaughlin, 2012). This is the case especially in places where demand is particularly high: when studying the case of Ahmedabad, Patel et al. (2018) found that building regulations are fueling the growth of slums. The compulsory amount of affordable housing is defined in regulations, but that also means that the population that falls beyond that affordable housing provision has no protection. Building standards based in British norms prevent the private formal sector from producing homes that

the poor can afford: “When the formal housing market is unresponsive to changes in housing demand, a substitution effect happens into the informal sector, meaning, when regulations pose barriers to residents to enter the formal housing market, people meet their demand in slums�.

Relaxing standards is, therefore, a sensible solution to lower prices (Patel, Byahut and Bhatha, 2018) The limitation of overly complicated regulations is also the aim of Lean Urbanism, one of the most recent additions to urban theory (Svorcova, 2019)

Slum in Mumbai, India

13

IV. Conclusion The issue of housing affordability has been a pressing problem for a long time. We can deduce, from the many solutions that were approached and the rather low rate of success, that is a highly complex issue, that has no definitive “correct� answer. The outcomes of past policy have been assessed and throw in mixed results. Current thinking has many different routes to approach this challenge whose outcomes are still too new to analyse, but is has been made clear that no policy is

14

effective if it tries to work against the natural market forces.

Increasing responsiveness of markets and policy by simplifying regulations and procedures, locally reducing demand by spreading desirability, and broadening supply by putting decayed stock back into the market, densifying sprawl and spurring development by relaxing regulations and finding new investment partnerships are promising ways towards an end of the global housing crisis.

15

A. Bibliography • Acolin, A. and Green, R.K., 2017. Measuring housing affordability in São Paulo metropolitan region: Incorporating location. Cities , 62, pp.41–49.

• Amerasinghe, P. and Raman, R., 2014. Perspectives on Urban Sanitation, Liveability and Peri-urban Futures of Indian Cities. In: B. Maheshwari, R. Purohit, H. Malano, V.P. Singh and P. Amerasinghe, eds., The Security of Water, Food, Energy and Liveability of Cities, Water Science and Technology Library. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, pp.181–200.

• Anenberg, E. and Kung, E., 2018. Can more housing supply solve the affordability crisis? Evidence from a neighborhood choice model. Regional science and urban economics. [online] Available at: <https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0166046217304283>.

• Beall, J., Goodfellow, T. and Rodgers, D., 2013. Cities and Conflict in Fragile States in the Developing World. Urban studies , 50(15), pp.3065–3083.

• Beer, A., Kearins, B. and Pieters, H., 2007. Housing Affordability and Planning in Australia: The Challenge of Policy Under Neo-liberalism. Housing Studies, 22(1), pp.11–24.

• Bouzarovski, S. and Thomson, H., 2018. Energy Vulnerability in the Grain of the City: Toward Neighborhood Typologies of Material Deprivation. Annals of the Association of American Geographers. Association of American Geographers, 108(3), pp.695–717.

• Burdett, R. and Sudjic, D., 2011. Living in the Endless City: The Urban Age Project by the London School of Economics and Deutsche Bank’s Alfred Herrhausen Society. Phaidon Press.

• Butler, M., 2019. Critical summary of Sprawl Repair Manual.

• Center for International Earth Science Information Network-CIESIN - Columbia University, International Food Policy Research Institute - IFPRI, The World Bank, and Centro Internacional de Agricultura Tropical - CIAT, 2011. Global Rural-Urban Mapping Project, Version 1 (GRUMPv1): Urban Extents Grid. Available at: <http://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/data/set/ grump-v1-urban-extents/maps> [Accessed 3 Jun. 2019].

• Cleland, J., 2013. World Population Growth; Past, Present and Future. Environmental and Resource Economics, Available at: <http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10640-013-9675-6>.

• Crul, M., 2016. Super-diversity vs. assimilation: how complex diversity in majority–minority cities challenges the assumptions of assimilation. Journal of ethnic and migration studies, 42(1), pp.54–68.

• Dolman, N. and Ogunyoye, F., 2018. How water challenges can shape tomorrow’s cities. Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers - Geotechnical Engineering, 171(6), pp.22–30.

• Donald, B., Glasmeier, A., Gray, M. and Lobao, L., 2014. Austerity in the city: economic crisis and urban service decline? Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, Available at: <http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/cjres/rst040>.

• Dyson, T., 2011. The Role of the Demographic Transition in the Process of Urbanization. Popula16

tion and Development Review, Available at: <http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1728-4457.2011.00377. x>.

• Editorial Board and Editorial Collective, 2016. Introducing Urbanisation. Urbanisation, Available at: <http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/2455747116646638>.

• Esfandiari-Baiat, M., Barzegar, Z., Yousefi, L. and Maheshwari, B., 2014. Urbanisation and Its Effects on Water, Food Security and Energy Needs in Iran: A Case Study of City of Shiraz. In: B. Maheshwari, R. Purohit, H. Malano, V.P. Singh and P. Amerasinghe, eds., The Security of Water, Food, Energy and Liveability of Cities, Water Science and Technology Library. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, pp.101–112.

• Giezen, M., 2016. Sustainable Cities: Addressing the Challenges of Tomorrow. disP - The Planning Review, Available at: <http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02513625.2016.1171054>.

• Glaeser, E.L., 2011. Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier. Penguin Press.

• Jacobs, K. and Manzi, T., 2013. Modernisation, marketisation and housing reform: The use of evidence based policy as a rationality discourse. People, Place and Policy Online, Available at: <http://dx.doi.org/10.3351/ppp.0007.0001.0001>.

• Kerr, W. and Herraghty, S., 2019. Industrialisation + Urban Form.

• Kim, S., 2019. Design strategies to respond to the challenges of shrinking city. Journal of Urban Design, 24(1), pp.49–64.

• Koscica, M., 2014. Agropolis: the role of urban agriculture in addressing food insecurity in developing cities. Journal of international affairs, 67(2), p.177.

• Lawhon, M., Silver, J., Ernstson, H. and Pierce, J., 2016. Unlearning (Un)Located Ideas in the Provincialization of Urban Theory. Regional Studies, Available at: <http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0 0343404.2016.1162288>.

• Macomber, J., 2011. The Role of Finance and Private Investment in Developing Sustainable Cities. Journal of Applied Corporate Finance, Available at: <http://dx.doi.org/10.1111 /j.1745-6622.2011.00343.x>.

• Martinez-Fernandez, C., Audirac, I., Fol, S. and Cunningham-Sabot, E., 2012. Shrinking Cities: Urban Challenges of Globalization. International journal of urban and regional research, 36(2), pp.213–225.

• McLaughlin, R.B., 2012. Land use regulation: Where have we been, where are we going? Cities , 29, pp.S50–S55.

• Meissner, F. and Vertovec, S., 2015. Comparing super-diversity. Ethnic and racial studies, 38(4), pp.541–555.

17

• Morobolo, S. and Gunbeyaz, Z.G., 2019. New Frankfurt and Ernst May. • OECD, 2010. Climate Change Impacts Specific to Urban Regions. Available at: <http://dx.doi. org/10.1787/9789264091375-7-en>.

• Patel, B., Byahut, S. and Bhatha, B., 2018. Building regulations are a barrier to affordable housing in Indian cities: the case of Ahmedabad. Journal of Housing and the Built Environment, Available at: <http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10901-017-9552-7>.

• Reynolds, K., 2018. Creating Permanent Housing Affordability: Lessons From German Cooperative Housing Models. Cityscape , 20(2), pp.263–276.

• Satterthwaite, D., 2009. The implications of population growth and urbanization for climate change. Environment and urbanization, 21(2), pp.545–567.

• Schindler, S. and Silver, J., 2019. Florida in the Global South: How Eurocentrism Obscures Global Urban Challenges—and What We Can Do about It. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research. Available at: <http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1468-2427.12747>.

• Singh, R.B. ed., 2015. Urban Development Challenges, Risks and Resilience in Asian Mega Cities. Advances in Geographical and Environmental Sciences. Tokyo: Springer Japan.

• Skak, M. and Bloze, G., 2013. Rent Control and Misallocation. Urban studies , 50(10), pp.1988– 2005.

• Svorcova, L., 2019. From Urban Villages to Lean Urbanism via the UK and US. • Tachieva, G., 2010. Sprawl Repair Manual. Island Press.

• United Nations Population Fund, 2016. Urbanization. [online] UNFPA. Available at: <https:// www.unfpa.org/urbanization> [Accessed 6 Mar. 2019].

• Verma, A., 2010. Challenges in Transportation Planning for Asian Cities. Journal of Urban Planning and Development, Available at: <http://dx.doi.org/10.1061/(asce)07339488(2010)136:1(1)>.

• Wetzstein, S., 2017. The global urban housing affordability crisis. Urban studies , 54(14), pp.3159–3177.

• Whiting, D., 2019. A Critical Assessment of David Rudlin’s Garden City.

• Zhang, X.Q., 2016. The trends, promises and challenges of urbanisation in the world. Habitat international, 54, pp.241–252.

18

B. Image sources • Cover, p.2-3, p.14-15: “Paris Francia” by Eduardo Javier Maldonado Acevedo. 2017. PD • “050902-N-5328N-582” by Gary Nichols. 2005. PD • “Skyscrapers of Shinjuku 2009 January (revised)” by Morio. 2009. CC SA 3.0 • “Automobilwerk Eisenach Bau” by Spielvogel. 2013. CC BY SA 4.0 • “Makoko” by Rainer Wozny. 2010. CC BY SA 2.0 • “An Aerial View of the Za’atri Refugee Camp” by U.S. Department of State. 2013. PD • “Qom city entrance traffic” by Tasnim News Agency. 2018. CC BY 4.0 • “London City Views” by ilirjan rrumbullaku. 2017. CC NC ND 2.0 • “Zoning map of town-planning area of Tokyo - 1925” by Norman B. Leventhal Map Center.

2015. CC BY 2.0 • “Housing cooperatives: a valuable resource worth preserving” by Marina Leduc & Constance Bénard. 2018. CC BY ND 3.0 • “Slum in Mumbaï, 2008” by Raphael99. 2008. CC BY 2.0 BY: Attribution CC: Creative Commons NC: Non-Commercial ND: No Derivatives PD: Public Domain SA: Share Alike

19