Is the Sprawling Urban Form Sustainable? : an Investigation of the Ecological Impacts of Low-Density Fringe Development

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2014-07-17 Is the Sprawling Urban Form Sustainable? : An Investigation of the Ecological Impacts of Low-density Fringe Development

Abobo, Ansbert Monah

Abobo, A. M. (2014). Is the Sprawling Urban Form Sustainable? : An Investigation of the Ecological Impacts of Low-density Fringe Development (Unpublished master's thesis). University of Calgary, Calgary, AB. doi:10.11575/PRISM/26684 http://hdl.handle.net/11023/1639 master thesis

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Is the Sprawling Urban Form Sustainable? : An Investigation of the Ecological Impacts of Low-

density Fringe Development

Ansbert Monah Abobo

A THESIS

SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES

IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE

DEGREE OF MASTER OF ENVIRONMENTAL DESIGN

FACULTY OF ENVIRONMENTAL DESIGN

CALGARY, ALBERTA

JULY, 2014

The traditional postwar city has been characterized by extensive low-density residential growth coupled with an over-reliance on the private automobile for mobility in the city. As human activities seem to be the defining determinants of the unsustainable urban fabric, it is essential to understand the long-term impacts of the contemporary urban lifestyle and how it detrimentally relates to the planet.

In this research, two urban development concepts were investigated to determine the type of urban form suitable for structuring a more sustainable city. By comparing low-density suburban communities to core area communities using an environmental impact assessment tool supported with empirical observations and theory, the differences between these two urban concepts were obtained. Using the ecological footprint methodology, footprint estimations were done for suburban communities (N = 8) and core area communities (N = 4) in Calgary to find out their disparities. The research used neighborhood household income/consumption as a proxy for estimating the ecological footprint values and footprints obtained ranged between 11.35 Gha/cap and 6.77 Gha/cap. All the data used in this research are secondary data obtained from Statistics

Canada, The City of Calgary, and a Canadian national footprint study by Mackenzie et al (2008).

The research suggests that drawing growth to core areas is a salient part of reducing ecological footprint but it needs to be complemented with novel ways of urban fringe development to maximize the outcomes of ecological footprint interventions. Since the highest ecological footprint values were found in high-income suburban neighborhoods, it is relevant to approach the problem by utilizing income as an integrator in making the urban form less suburban and also changing the structure of the few indispensable suburban communities.

ii Acknowledgements

I would like to express my appreciation to the God of all knowledge for seeing me through my academic endeavor. In plying this stony road, faith has been the principal element guiding me through. My supervisor, Dr. Noel Keough, has been helpful all the way from the beginning of this thesis to where it is now. I thank him for introducing me to a new methodology and assisting me to merge it with my research interests. I also appreciate all the materials he offered me and his critiques and inputs that have made my thesis a success. Also, I would like to thank Mr. Les

Kuzyk, planning analyst at the City of Calgary, for his assistance with the methodology part of this thesis.

My profound gratitude goes to Ms. Jennifer Taillefer of the Faculty of Environmental

Design for her patience and constant support when I was applying for graduate studies. I also appreciate the efforts of all the professors in EVDS who helped me in diverse ways: Dr. Bev

Sandalack, Dr. Cormack Gates, Mr. Sunisa Tomic, Dr. Barry Wylant, and Dr. Graham Livesey. I thank my colleagues, Leanne Junnila, Barbara Dupuis, Sharif Islam and Artan Zandian, for introducing me to the ‘Canadian condition’ through academic and informal discussions. And my thanks also go to the staff at the Spatial and Numeric Data Services (SANDS) of the University of Calgary for helping me in accessing the data I needed for this research.

I thank my family for being there for me all the way through, and for their support and encouragement. My gratitude also goes to Dr. Isaac Luginaah (University of Western Ontario),

Randy Wanye, and the Tuurosongs; they have really shown the essence of family throughout my stay in Canada. And to the proactive friends who inspired me in their own special ways,

Emmanuel Owusu (Faculty of Law, UoC), Mariama Zaami (Department of Sociology, UoC), and Douglas Yeboah (School of Engineering, UoC). Thank you all.

iii Dedication

To all mothers including Earth

iv Table of Contents

Abstract ...... ii Acknowledgements ...... iii Dedication ...... iv Table of Contents ...... v List of Tables ...... vii List of Figures ...... viii List of Plates ...... x List of Abbreviations ...... xi Epigraph ...... xiii

CHAPTER ONE: PAVING THE WAY ...... 1 1.1 Introduction ...... 1 1.2 Vulnerable urban fringes ...... 4 1.3 Sustainable development ...... 7 1.4 Purpose and research questions ...... 9 1.5 Scope of the thesis ...... 9 1.6 Structure of the thesis ...... 10 1.7 Relevance of the research ...... 10

CHAPTER TWO: SUSTAINABILITY IN THE URBAN CONTEXT ...... 12 2.1 Urban dynamics ...... 12 2.1.1 The past and present ...... 12 2.1.2 Urbanization and sprawl ...... 20 2.1.3 Urban sprawl ...... 23 2.1.4 Sustainable spatial strategies ...... 31 2.2 Natural capital and sustainability ...... 37 2.2.1 Natural capital is a finite resource ...... 37 2.2.2 Entropy as an indicator of sustainability ...... 41 2.2.3 Ecological footprint and biocapacity ...... 43

CHAPTER THREE: CALGARY STUDY ...... 52 3.1 Spatial growth in Calgary ...... 52 3.2 Growth control strategies ...... 57 3.3 Response to growth strategies ...... 64

CHAPTER FOUR: METHODOLOGY ...... 70 4.1 Formulating the framework ...... 70 4.2 Review of methodologies ...... 76 4.2.1 The methodology by Wackernagel and Rees (1996) ...... 78 4.2.2 Work in Greater Oslo and Førde (Holden, 2004) ...... 80 4.2.3 Work in Oakville, Ontario (Wilson et al, 2013) ...... 82 4.2.4 Ecological footprint by income and consumption (Kuzyk, 2011) ...... 85 4.3 Research methodology ...... 86 4.3.1 Neighborhood categorization ...... 86 4.3.2 Footprint estimation ...... 91

v 4.3.3 Limitations and suggestions ...... 97

CHAPTER FIVE: FINDINGS AND ANALYSIS ...... 101

CHAPTER SIX: RECOMMENDATIONS ...... 115 6.1 Income and urban form ...... 115 6.2 The bigger picture ...... 132

Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………..…...138

References………………………………………………………………………...….…..141

vi List of Tables

Table 2-1 Comparison of ecological footprint and biocapacity (Sources: Adapted from Wackernagel and Rees, 1996, and Global Footprint Network, 2010) ...... 46

Table 3-1 Potential population changes in Calgary between 1991 and 2024 (Source: GoPlan; in Sustainable Suburbs Study, 1995) ...... 59

Table 3-2 Comparison of population change between communities within and outside the developed area (Source: Adapted from Calgary Community Profiles, The City of Calgary, 2012b) ...... 68

Table 4-1 Median household incomes and distances of communities from downtown ...... 90

Table 4-2 Income deciles with associated footprints of consumption components [Source: Adapted from Tables 1, A3, and A5 in Mackenzie et al (2008)] ...... 93

Table 4-3 Income deciles with adjusted disposable household incomes and adjusted footprints of consumption components ...... 94

Table 6-1 Comparison of six ecological footprint studies ...... 116

vii List of Figures

Figure 2-1 Urban form of Tell Asmar (Source: Wide Urban World, 2011: online) ...... 13

Figure 2-2 Map of Portland, the red line showing the urban growth boundary (Source: Bolen, 2008) ...... 35

Figure 3-1 Part of Sundance area in 1979 (Source: SANDS, TFDL, University of Calgary) ...... 55

Figure 3-2 Part of Sundance area in 2008 (Source: SANDS, TFDL, University of Calgary) ...... 55

Figure 3-3 Part of Bridlewood area in 1979 (Source: SANDS, TFDL, University of Calgary) .. 56

Figure 3-4 Part of Bridlewood area in 2008 (Source: SANDS, TFDL, University of Calgary) .. 56

Figure 3-5 Municipal Development Plan Typologies (Source: Adapted from Developed Areas Growth and Change, 2010) ...... 65

Figure 3-6 Google image of Evanston in the North sector of Calgary within the Symons Valley Approved Community Plan ...... 66

Figure 4-1 Locations of the selected communities ...... 88

Figure 4-2 [Citadel (A), Valley Ridge (B), and Centre City (J)] ...... 89

Figure 4-3 [Aspen Woods (C), Bridlewood (D), Chapparal (E), Copperfield (F), Monterey Park (G), Coral Springs (H), and Centre City (J)] ...... 89

Figure 4-4 Household consumption versus income (Source: Kuzyk, 2011) ...... 92

Figure 4-5 Adjusted disposable household income versus adjusted housing footprint ...... 95

Figure 4-6 Adjusted disposable household income versus adjusted mobility footprint ...... 95

Figure 4-7 Adjusted disposable income versus adjusted total ecological footprint...... 96

Figure 5-1 Comparison of impact components for the Calgary municipality ...... 101

Figure 5-2 Ecological footprints for the 12 communities ...... 105

Figure 5-3 Comparing distance and ecological footprint for the 12 communities ...... 109

Figure 5-4 Comparing distance and mobility footprint for the 12 communities ...... 109

Figure 6-1 Framework for utilizing income as an instrument for improving ecological footprint in a less-privatized urban setting ...... 124

Figure 6-2 Inter-community travels will be less if communities have high heterogeneity ...... 128

viii Figure 6-3 Comparing efficiency in the use of land and space on urban peripheries ...... 131

ix List of Plates

Plate I The macro-community concept...... 136

Plate II Recommendations for urban infilling and greenfield development...... 137

x List of Abbreviations

Symbol Definition

ACP Approved Community Plan

BRT Bus rapid transit

CMHC Central (later Canadian) Mortgage and Housing

Corporation

CMA Census Metropolitan Area

CMP Calgary Metropolitan Plan

CTP Calgary Transportation Plan

DA Dissemination area

EF Ecological footprint

GFN Global Footprint Network

Gha/cap Global hectares per capita

HOV High occupancy vehicle

IPCC Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

LIR Local income ratio

LRT Light rail transit

MDP Metropolitan Development Plan

OECD Organization for Economic Co-operation and

Development

ROI Returns on investment

SDA Standard Development Agreement

TCRP Transit Cooperative Research Program

xi UDI Urban Development Institute

UGB Urban Growth Boundary

UNCED United Nations Commission on Environment and

Development

UNEP United Nations Environment Programme

UNHSP United Nations Human Settlement Programme

Upa Units per acre

Uph Units per hectare

WCED World Commission on Environment and

Development

WWF World Wide Fund for Nature

xii Epigraph

The past is only the present become invisible and mute; and because it is invisible and mute, its memoried glances and its murmurs are infinitely precious. We are tomorrow’s past. Even now we slip away like those pictures painted on the moving dials of antique clocks – a ship, a cottage, sun and moon, a nosegay. The dial turns, the ship rides up and sinks again, the yellow painted sun has set, and we that were the new things, gather magic as we go.

Mary Webb, in Precious Barn (1924)

xiii

Chapter One: Paving the way

The chapter introduces three vital components of the thesis; the research problem, the resource in question, and the ultimate goal of the research. It highlights the hypothesis of the thesis in a fragmented but logically-connected pattern. The purpose, research questions, scope, the structure and relevance of the thesis are also presented in this chapter.

1.1 Introduction

In global evolution, there always arises a distinct ideology at certain periods that significantly attracts the attention of many scholars. Before the 1987 Brundtland Commission’s report, Our

Common Future, which highlighted some major problems the world faced at that time, various scholars had dramatically driven the world to a new perspective of thinking; including Rachel

Carson and Barry Commoner. This perspective of thinking had the overarching motive of conserving natural resources, as it had become evident that human behaviors from different dimensions were adversely affecting natural capital; an ideology the Brundtland Commission’s report reinforced by involving the ‘sustainable development’ concept as a possible remedy.

Commoner (1974, 11), in The Closing Circle, wrote that,

“To survive on the earth, human beings require the stable, continuing existence of a suitable environment. Yet the evidence is overwhelming that the way in which we now live on the earth is driving its thin, life-supporting skin, and ourselves with it, to destruction.”

The patterns of human consumption and lifestyle were seen to be over-dependent on nature and greatly exceeding the self-reinforcing capacities of the planet. These patterns of living included food consumption, housing preferences, overdependence on modern technology, consumption of goods and services, and the immoderate production of synthetic wastes that interrupted biophysical networks. The problem of consumption was also intensified by the emergence of a

‘global world,’ where people had easier access to goods from all corners of the world due to improved global trade and relatively well-developed international relations among nations.

It has become necessary in the existing trend of global evolution to be aware of the capacity of the planet and the corresponding contemporary living requirements of humanity.

Ecological footprint is a tool that has been utilized to measure these variables. The determination of the ecological footprint of nations and cities has provided the resources for policymakers to know which geographic locations are pulling the world to a more undesirable destination. It is widely acknowledged that urban areas pose greater human impacts on natural systems than rural locations. On the national scale, an additional person in a developed country consumes far more and places a greater pressure on natural resources than an additional person in the developing world (WCED, 1987). Housing, transportation, and the consumption lifestyle of urban dwellers have been attributed to the rising ecological footprint of the world as a whole and within them are problems of urban sprawl, excessive reliance on motor travel within the city, and an exorbitant consumption of goods and services.

Sprawl is a problem in the urban environment that apparently proves the inadequacy of policies to control growth. With cities growing at a higher rate than in the past decades, sprawl has seemingly become the most discussed urban issue in European and North American planning literature. Significant changes in global economic and social dynamics have resulted in an increase of urban population at the expense of rural population; a phenomenon termed urbanization. As urbanization continues to be on the rise, notwithstanding the myriad policies implemented to control its proliferation, cities continue to welcome more people even though available urban resources in most circumstances are evidently under intense pressure due to over-dependency.

Urban sprawl is a type of spatial growth characterized by the extensive spread of the city into peripheral lands with the major type of development being low-density, and mostly homogenous. Sprawl has been extensively associated with several problems in the urban environment. Cities have spread out into many suburban communities leading to high car dependency, air pollution, social segregation, depletion and degradation of water resources, imposition of extra expenditure on local governments to provide public utilities and services, and the loss of natural habitat including land and wildlife (Couroux et al, 2006; St. Antoine, 2007;

Nguyen, 2010). The very striking concern about sprawl is its high degree of inflexibility; which underscores that sprawling communities do not appear to become denser communities over time.

It is a phenomenon that intensifies the risks of global un-sustainability, sub-optimization of limited natural resources, and the alarming future of natural capital in general; all being negative indicators of ecological footprint.

Sprawl is referred to as “low-density, automobile-dependent development based on segregated land uses” (Couroux et al, 2006; 3). The TCRP (1998) report defined low-density as any residential development in the form of 0.33- to 1.0-acre lots and non-residential strip development involving floor-to-area ratios of 0.20 or less. A single-unit detached house constructed on a land size of 0.33 to 1.0 acre makes it a low-density development. The City of

Surrey, British Columbia, defined low-density to be 6-10 upa with each detached unit occupying

4000-6000 sq.ft of land, medium-density as 10-15 upa with each unit occupying 3000-4000 sq.ft, and high-density as 25-45 upa in multi-unit developments which occupy varying lot sizes (City of Surrey, 2009). Municipal areas have different definitions for low- and high-density often established with a strong coherence to the existing local housing types. Irrespective of the variation of definitions among municipalities, low-density developments appear to be more

conspicuous when there is a clear underutilization of vast land masses to provide fewer dwelling spaces as seen in many suburbs.

Since greenfields tend to be cheaper than brownfield land, developers are constantly pursuing undeveloped peripheral lands for new developments. Apart from the purchasing cost, greenfields are relatively less expensive to develop considering total construction costs. Land subsidization in greenfield development has been influential in suburban growth especially in the case of Calgary. An IBI Group report by Plan It Calgary (Plan It Calgary, 2009) compared two urban growth scenarios for Calgary; the Dispersed Scenario (following council-approved growth policies) and the Recommended Direction (following proposals by the study). The study found that with reference to the 2005 urbanized footprint of Calgary, 26,000 ha (25 percent increase from 2005) of land will be required to achieve their proposals for the next 60 years compared to

46,000 ha (54 percent increase from 2005) for the Dispersed Scenario. The Recommended

Direction fosters a more compact urban structure by integrating land use and transportation to reduce extensive land appropriation which minimizes the rate of peripheral land consumption.

As economists attach a higher economic value to built urban development than agricultural land uses, farmlands have fallen to the massive encroachment of the city as well

(Brueckner, 2000). Another trend that increases the outward spread of the modern city is the high demand of families for suburban housing coupled with the ease of accessing these suburbs with the automobile and municipal transit systems. Hence, the rise of sprawl is multi-dimensional, stemming from organic, cultural, and policymaking domains.

1.2 Vulnerable urban fringes

Cities are vast places; and becoming larger as the years pass. As an organism, the city cannot be unresponsive to its necessary spatial growth arising from the influx of a greater proportion of the

world’s population into urban areas. However, the speed and style of growth are not good trends for protecting natural capital for future generations. This trend of low-density and leapfrogging growth is imposing pressure on urban fringes which are basically home to a substantial portion of the biotic components surrounding the city; including forests, farmlands, and wildlife species.

Although these areas surrounding cities are responsible to absorb the cities’ growth, their resilience must be invigorated to contribute to the global goal of reducing human impacts on natural capital.

Canada faces a major crisis that is subtle to its citizens; the persistent incremental consumption of natural landscape and the loss of the beneficial goods and services afforded by natural capital (Olewiler, 2004). Almost all the landscape lost is as a result of human development within which building construction forms a huge part. The situation of human development in North America is in an alarming trend of using numerous acres of land to accommodate fewer people which occurs as a response to satisfying human comfort and of much interest to developers, accruing gain through consumer satisfaction. Between 1960 and 1990, the amount of land developed in metro areas in the United States doubled, while the population increased less than half (Benfield et al, 2001). It is also partly due to the minimal economic value of natural landscapes when compared to physical urban development. Brueckner (2000) asserted that a successful bid by developers implies that the land is more economically viable for urban use than in agricultural use. The intricate psychosocial benefit in natural capital valuation is a lost parameter since it is seemingly impossible to accurately value the qualitative rewards of nature to human wellbeing. In cases when urban developments have prospects in improving the quality of the built environment and creating wealth, most ecological concerns like pollution and the degradation of the natural environment are ignored in the name of progress (Lang, 2005).

Behan et al (2008) also observed that though the allocation of land is determined by competition between urban and agricultural land uses, the outcome has usually been in favor of the former.

There is a clear indication that fringe lands surrounding urban settlements are being consumed rampantly; a phenomenon that dually weakens the optimization of natural resources and spreads out the city hence demanding more resource exploitation to afford human convenience. Households residing in suburban communities are usually found in the higher levels of income stratification and life in the suburb is conceived to be almost perfect – a contemporary reflection of the early twentieth-century reformers’ utopian dream. The importance of nature is being eroded by novel cultural paradigms that extremely consider human comfort at the core of decision making. On October 3, 1937, the fourth paragraph of an informal, extemporaneous remark made by President Franklin Roosevelt in Montana read,

“This morning I smiled all the way through breakfast because I

happened to see an editorial, not in a paper here but in a Great

Falls paper, that talked about ‘balancing the budget of our

resources.’ That is something that is well worth thinking about. It

said that because we have made money in wasting and eroding

large human resources and piled up nominal wealth in securities

and bank balances, we have lost sight of the fact that the natural

resources of our land – our permanent capital – are being

converted into those nominal evidences of wealth at a faster rate

than our real wealth is being replaced.”

What is worth thinking about is the consideration given to the ‘nominal capital’ and the

‘permanent capital’ in contemporary development patterns and what defined catalysts decide

them. It is an eminent wake-up call to the world. This ethically-challenging assignment is a vital component of this thesis.

1.3 Sustainable development

The term ‘sustainable development’ has been in existence since the 1970s and came as an imperative reaction to the worldwide realization of human impacts on the natural environment.

Sustainability has become ubiquitous among academic disciplines, yet the conceptual roots of the term reaches much deeper, and is related to the evolution of human behaviors toward the environment within Western culture (Wheeler, 2004). Fairly, much has been done to control the inefficient patterns of nature exploitation for human needs, but statistical records and projections from different disciplines have proven that dearth improvements have been made over the years.

For example, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) used realistic growth models to estimate that average temperature will increase by 2-3oC by the end of this century

(Moore, 2008), and the Keeling Curve for plotting global change in CO2 concentration has been rising since its inception in 1958. Also, a 2012 report by the PBL Netherlands Environmental

Assessment Agency claimed that global CO2 emissions rose by an unprecedented 5 percent surge in 2010 and increased by 3 percent in 2011 reaching an all-time high of 34 billion tonnes (Olivier et al, 2012). Global warming is still rising though there have been numerous interventions including mechanical improvements of machines and greener building practices which paradoxically are the two overarching culprits of the problem. Clearly, there are still more complicated setbacks in ecological protection policies to be investigated.

The ecological footprint of settlements determines the level of contribution of a given population to the quest for sustainable development. Wackernagel and Rees (1996, 57) asserted that ecological footprint draws humanity’s attention to the disproportionate consumption of

energy/material flows and the acquisition of habitat that otherwise would be available for other species. They continued to question that, “Do we have an inherent right to so much of nature’s productivity at the expense of the several million other species living on the planet?” However, current consumption patterns can prove that humanity has arrived at the explicit conviction that man matters most, and nature, misperceived as another disjoined entity in space, is an unbounded resource bank. As a result, most of the choices of urban residents are contradictory to the ones needed to ensure that sustainability is being promoted. In relation to suburban development, more questions erupt regarding sustainability. Apart from the numerous acres of peripheral land consumed annually to accommodate urban dwellers, there are more long-term effects of sprawling communities on the ecosystem.

Regarding the challenge by Franklin Roosevelt, policymakers have to know whether

‘nominal capital’ or ‘permanent capital’ is more salient in making urban decisions. Meadows

(2001; edited by Wright, 2008) mentioned that when a particular subject is made the ultimate goal of a system, usually, all the branches and forces within the system work to achieve that goal.

Hence, the final achievement of any system in most cases is a result of how all the actors in the system comprehended the system’s goal from the onset of its operation. Therefore, if the best cities, or nations for that matter, are to be decided depending on the economic improvements of citizens as the ultimate goal, then all the forces influencing the operation of cities and nations will work toward improving the economic stance of the citizenry.

Obviously, there may be equally important issues of concern such as social and environmental problems but the system will work toward economic gains even if the other equally vital concerns are to be compromised. In thinking about sustainable development in urban evolution, it is essential to define the goals of the city as a system and most importantly

which goals are of the highest priority. It may require a significant paradigm shift to hugely channel urban decisions toward environmental conservation at the expense of extreme anthropocentric perspectives, which some critics may christen ‘environmental puritanism;’ but it is a war worth fighting if the goal of sustainable development is to be achieved.

1.4 Purpose and research questions

To achieve a spatial structure that will help in the physical integration of the urban form through sprawl reversal in order to afford an optimal consumption of natural resources as a contributory indicator for a sustainable urban development.

The research questions include:

 What are the major contributors to the ecological footprint of urban settlements in

relation to the urban form?

 Do suburban and core area neighborhoods have different local effects on the ecological

footprint of cities?

 Will a transition of development to a more ‘urban infilling’ style be beneficial to the

natural economy and possibly reduce the ecological footprint of cities?

1.5 Scope of the thesis

The research encompasses views on how human settlements are deteriorating the resilience of natural capital especially the consumption of greenfields on urban fringes through low-density residential developments. Although extensive natural capital consumption is a global problem, this research concentrates more on urban regions in Western cultures, mostly North American cities, which are more advanced industrially and technologically. Two opposing concepts in urban development, sprawl and inner city development, and their individual contributions to the ecological footprint of the modern city fundamentally form the conceptual framework of this 9

project and are at the centre of the analysis. Analyses of neighborhoods’ differences concentrate on their ecological impacts which are seen to be the most important components in the contemporary city in the purview of this research.

1.6 Structure of the thesis

The next chapter (Chapter Two) will present a critical overview of the contemporary city as it relates to sustainable development. Initially, the chapter deals with the historical foundations of the postwar urban form and the socioeconomic and spatial dynamics that collectively forged the modern urban morphology. Chapter Three will discuss the peculiar situations in Calgary as the study area for this thesis with regards to its historical transformation and the numerous policies that have been approved over the years to control where and how growth should occur in the city. A critique on the response of Calgary’s actual growth is also presented to assess the connection between policymaking and realistic implementation of proposals in urban development. An elaboration of the detailed framework of this thesis is provided at the beginning of Chapter Four while a review of different methods used elsewhere for ecological footprint assessment is discussed later. The chapter continues with the footprint estimation for the 12 communities in Calgary used for this research work. Chapter Five gives an integrated presentation of the findings of the thesis and the analysis in relation to the research objectives.

The final chapter concludes with recommendations in policymaking as well as spatial interventions for achieving an urban form that will assist in improving ecological footprint.

1.7 Relevance of the research

Monfreda et al (2004, 231) wrote that, “The protection of natural capital, including its ability to renew or regenerate itself, represents a core aspect of sustainability. Hence, reliable measures of the supply of, and human demand on, natural capital are indispensable for tracking progress,

setting targets and driving policies for sustainability.” This thesis draws the quest for sustainability to the role cities play in protecting natural landscapes on their peripheries and the entire ecosystem. Comparing the ecological footprints of two urban growth phenomena (sprawl and core area development) will afford policymakers the resources to determine the growth pattern that imposes lower impacts on the natural environment. To achieve sustainability in the urban domain, there should be a clear definition of the type of urban form that reduces our footprint on the planet and aids the Earth to regenerate itself. The thesis envisages the most sustainable urban form that gives more priority to natural capital while ensuring that the sustenance of the other urban imperatives, the social and economic aspects, is not significantly compromised. Also, using the ecological footprint methodology which represents human impacts in a simple spatial metric will be an easier way of drawing the public’s attention to their impacts on the planet in relation to their housing and other living choices in the city.

Chapter Two: Sustainability in the urban context

This chapter begins by concentrating on the evolution of the city through history and some social and spatial transitions that have acted together in its transformation. It elaborates the influence of planning in responding to the contemporary problems of the city at certain remarkable stages in history and how these reactions have contributed to the current state of the city. The chapter continues to create a link between urban transformation and the fate of natural capital in the context of sustainable development. Within the discussions, the indicators of ecological footprint are elaborated and linked to urban growth and general human impacts.

2.1 Urban dynamics

2.1.1 The past and present

Human evolution is a concept that cannot be consummately contextualized without involving the significance of inhabitation in the entire process. Man has always sought to reach some level of comfort in his environment; which manifested in the transition of the pre-historic man from cave dwellings, to tree houses, to mud and thatch houses, and to the present day multi-material buildings. LeGates and Stout (2011, 16) commented that, “If cities are civilization, they are also the cultural instrumentality by which humanity has attempted, since Neolithic times, to achieve a higher, more inclusive concept of community.” Travel adventure can be highlighted as one of the vital forces that drew people from a highly disconnected world together to form early settlements

(McMahon, 2013). A considerable number of historical accounts on cities usually mention the earliest cities to have existed in Mesopotamia in the fourth millennium BCE, a location found in present day Syria and Iraq (Mumford, 1961). At the peak of the urbanization of Mesopotamian cities, which included Uruk, Nippur, Tell Asmar, and Tell Brak, the maximum size of urban

centers occupied about only 100-150 hectares of land area (McMahon, 2013; in Clark, 2013).

Figure 2-1 shows the urban form of the Mesopotamian city of Tell Asmar that existed in the third and early second millennium BCE. The size of ancient cities suggests that people in early cities lived in an extremely compact settlement where walking was possibly the major mode of mobility and population growth hugely relied on natural increase, hence a little need for significant physical expansions to accommodate more people.

Figure 2-1 Urban form of Tell Asmar (Source: Wide Urban World, 2011: online)

To illuminate the real concept of the city, Aristotle in The Politics described the ‘ideal- city’ as “one small enough so that a single citizen’s voice could be heard by all the assembled fellow citizens” (LeGates and Stout, 2011; 16). Aristotle’s style of describing the city suggests its unique characteristics as it was mainly recognized by its political and religious features in an era of orations and public speeches that displayed the power of kings. The ancient city

maintained its state of contiguity for centuries before the emergence of the Industrial Revolution.

Before the Industrial Revolution between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, designers had a somewhat myopic view about planning buildings and the city as a whole by giving more priority to the aesthetics and the general appearance of urban landmarks. However, the late nineteenth century saw a more humanistic approach which considered sanitation, functionality, and the health of inhabitants at the core of decision making in town and city planning (Greed,

2000).

The Industrial Revolution marked one of the greatest turning points in the history of the world and cities as such. Haughton and Hunter (1996) identified five stages in urban evolution; the primeval phase, early farming phase, early urban phase, urban industrial phase, and global interdependence phase. According to Fumega (2010), the fourth phase, the urban industrial phase, was the most important to the evolution of cities as we know today and it was possible due to the development of global commerce initiated by some European nations and the notion of capital accumulation. Yet, before the fourth phase, other major factors in urban evolution were slavery and colonialism that changed several settlement characters in colonized nations while exploiting slaves in building the cities of colonial powers (Clark, 2013; Harris, 2004). Most notably in Europe and North America, there arose a large-scale economic productivity, rising urbanization, a general population rise, and the need to make cities more iconic to reflect the contemporary technologies that were discovered in the revolution. In England, the primary hub of the Industrial Revolution, cities grew larger and taller especially in the North and the

Midlands (Engels, 1845: in LeGates and Stout, 2011). Following this quantum of change, people moved significantly from the countryside to settle in cities which were heavily endowed with auspicious vantages in both economic and social realms.

The influx of huge populations into the city rather turned to be a disadvantageous trend since the highly dense cities begun to lose their aesthetic qualities to massive squalor. The excessive density did not cause only a widespread fear of disease but also the existence of social pathologies such as crime, youth delinquencies, and civil disorder (Bruegmann, 2000; in

Freestone, 2000). Urban reformers of the twentieth century proposed that the city could spread out to reduce the density at the core. A major advocate against the ills of the congested city was

British theorist Ebenezer Howard who highlighted other setbacks in the city including high rents and rates, and the deprivation of natural features such as sunlight, greenery and clean air in the city. In his book, Garden Cities of To-morrow (1902, 20), he wrote that, “It is well-nigh universally agreed by men of all parties, not only in England, but all over Europe and America and our colonies, that it is deeply to be deplored that the people should continue to stream into the already-overcrowded cities, and should thus further deplete the country districts.” Following his assumption of a close-to-global disapproval of the ‘great city’ idea, he proposed the Garden

City concept which would create smaller towns around a central city and be connected by transit systems.

After several urban reformations, suburbs followed as the next evolutionary stage of the city, as they were seen to provide better dwellings for urban settlers where they could have access to gardening, green open spaces (Franklin, 2010), and larger living spaces for optimum comfort and sound health. According to Olson (2000, 232), greater mobility would permit a more generous use of space, “so that city dwellers could breathe again.” This utopian goal was achieved with the emerging technologies that created more highways to connect the city’s core to its edges coupled with a universal upsurge in automobile production and a corresponding car ownership. Olson (2000) noted that it took close to a century to achieve the objective of the early

reformers only for later reformers to discover the drawbacks of the modern spread-out city. This discovery is what has led to the novel ideology of New Urbanism that advocates a more compact city with higher densities and walkable distances to utilitarian destinations as might have been in the Mesopotamian cities.

The concerns of the new urbanists are raised concurrently with widespread ecological views that are aiming to protect natural ecosystems on urban edges from encroachment by the modern city’s growth. Both ideologies ply a common trajectory towards reducing the consumption of natural capital through the creation of alternatives for urban dwellers to live comfortably without much impact on the biophysical environment. Economic growth and energy demands for houses and automobiles are major sustainability concerns in the urban environment.

Compact cities are seen to be the spatial components of the energy-saving strategy with smart growth being a major procedure for achieving that goal. It is widely assumed that as cities become more contiguous, movement within the city will not be overly dependent on cars but by walking, cycling or using public transit.

Smart growth is a concept that emerged in the 1990s but has its roots from the statewide growth management of the 1970s and 1980s in the United States (Edwards and Haines, 2007).

Smart growth advocates for compact urban centers that are pedestrian friendly, facilitates bicycling, and encourages transit-oriented mobility. The distance between urban destinations is as important as the ease of reaching them through a sustainable means of transportation; hence both connectivity and proximity are equally important in valuing the sustainability of neighborhoods. In 1970, it was estimated in Portland, Oregon, that it was possible to reduce neighborhood gasoline consumption by 5 percent only by rejuvenating the concept of neighborhood grocery stores (Hawkens et al, 1999). In a study by Frank et al (2004) in Atlanta, it

was discovered that the number of minutes walked in active transportation by participants had a negative association with obesity, and a similar correlation can be assumed for the minutes spent cycling. Both studies show there are more distant tradeoffs in the smart growth strategy that are beneficial to the protection of the natural environment and to the individual as well. For instance, cycling to work instead of driving will be more cost-effective and at the same time reduce urban carbon emissions per capita. The cyclist also benefits by becoming less susceptible to obesity and its associated health complications.

From the practical perspective of smart growth, it is more desirable environmentally, to redevelop the obsolete urban parcels of a city before building brand-new structures on green peripheral land (Benfield et al, 2001). Such patterns of development are usually high-density since developers try as much as possible to efficiently utilize expensive brownfield sites in urban redevelopment projects. Ecologically, the use of brownfield parcels will translate into farms, forests, and wetlands saved on the hinterlands. Benfield et al (2001, 11) asserted that,

“Development will occur somewhere as long as the population is growing; instead of allowing growth to occur in a haphazard, inefficient fashion, we can encourage it to take place in or adjacent to existing communities.” Containing development within the core is a way of maintaining the energy of the city and on the opposing side is sprawl which diffuses the energy of the city to distant locations hence demanding more energy to access them. Jacobs (1961) commented that when cities are lively, diverse, and intense, they contain the seeds of their own regeneration and possess adequate energy to carry over for problems and needs beyond them.

Smart growth increases the resilience of the city by making it a quasi independent organism; depending less on external forces to keep it on its wheels. As a positive consequence, the edges

of a compact city will also exhibit similar characteristics of resilience since the abutting city will not depend much on the energy resources of the fringes.

Portland, Oregon, is in diverse ways a prominent paradigm of the smart growth implementation. Earlier in the 1970s before the smart growth concept gained recognition in planning, Portland had tried to manage growth through policy change and spatial planning spearheaded by the Portland Metro council (Couroux et al, 2006). The most significant component of the smart growth strategy in Portland was the implementation of the Urban

Growth Boundary (UGB). Since the implementation of the UGB strategy, Portland’s metropolitan area has increased by only 11 square kilometres with a corresponding population rise of more than 25 percent between 1990 and 2000 (Couroux et al, 2006). However, as many urban solutions tend to do, the restriction of growth in Portland has been criticized to have resulted in the rising housing prices throughout the region and the threatening decline in affordable housing for low-income Portlanders (Brueckner, 2000). In refuting the criticisms on growth restriction, Kolb (2008) challenged that cities can be compact but still make provision for sufficient affordable housing for the low-income class.

Socioeconomic stratification has been recognized in several urban debates as the anthropologist, Margaret Mead, reiterated its significance in the Habitat I held in Vancouver in

1976 that, “….Because it is two planets; the planet of the rich and the planet of the poor.”

Therefore, it always sounds reasonable and socially appealing to involve income stratification in urban decision-making. Kolb (2008) proposed a development strategy that synergizes low- income and high/middle-income housing in the inner city in a way that a sharp disparity between income levels is vaguely represented. This could be accomplished, from a macro perspective, in a neighborhood level development that provides a mixture of both low-income and high/middle-

income units in separate buildings, or from the micro perspective, in a single building that contains units for both income classes. What is worth noting in such developments is the proportioning of the number of units designated to each class depending on the need required by each of them to prevent the emergence of redundancy or inadequacy of a particular class’s units.

The transition of the city has gone through a series of significant changes which usually happened in response to the contemporary urban problems of the past decades. As can be imagined in the Mesopotamian cities where population was relatively meager and population rise relying on natural increase, the largest cities consumed only 100-150 hectares of land.

Adventurous travels and explorations by peoples of the ancient world began early globalization creating the early larger cities. The industrial revolution drew more people into cities and the density in terms of housing and jobs were seen to decline social and public health standards resulting in suburbanization. Urban sprawl became the perfect solution giving urban dwellers the chance to ‘breathe again’ only for later urban advocates to realize the myriad social, economic, and environmental disincentives of the sprawling city. To this point, Bruegmann (2000; in

Freestone, 2000) acknowledged that the most recent, and certainly most contentious, aspect of the conjecture on urban sprawl relates to environmental issues and to sustainability. Smart growth strategies address the environmental aspects of sprawl as a major point of concern but are also advocating for a conceptual proximity of the modern city to Aristotle’s ‘ideal-city’ concept which harnesses the idea of conceptually smaller and inclusive cities. In the urban context, if the twentieth century could be called the era of the suburbia as a reaction to the decaying urban core, then the twenty-first century could be targeted to be the era of compact cities in response to diminishing greenfields on urban fringes.

2.1.2 Urbanization and sprawl

One of the major urban challenges noted by the Brundtland Commission’s report in 1987 was urbanization. Zeigler et al (2012) asserted that the excessive size of urban areas, in terms of both population and geographical area, might better be described as a cause of problems than a problem in itself. Urbanization is a problem in the sense of both its residual and resultant outcomes. Many rural areas are becoming obsolete since people are leaving for the major urban centers which have better opportunities for education, social life, and economic prosperity. In a series of causes, firstly, without high urbanization, there would be no need for excessive expansion of the city into undeveloped peripheral parcels, growth would be slower; and secondly, ecosystems on urban fringes would be under no threat if the city was not expanding aggressively. In a sense, urbanization as a cause of problems indirectly affects the resilience of greenfields on urban fringes.

Urbanization, according to Davis (1965; in LeGates and Stout, 2011), is caused by rural- urban migration, not because of other possible factors as differential birth and mortality rates.

About 80 million people were added to a global population of 4.8 billion in 1985 (WCED, 1987).

Presently, the world’s population is speedily growing, but the world’s urban population is growing four times faster (Zeigler et al, 2012). Jenks et al (2008) also projected that by 2030 an estimated 60 percent of global population will be living in urban locations representing 4,912 million people, showing an increase of about seven times the world’s urban population in the

1950s. Sprawl in its widest sense, has long been an American zeitgeist (TCRP, 1998), and urbanization is concurrently appearing to become an intractable problem. If sprawl is the ‘spirit of the time’ and urbanization becoming a resilient phenomenon, then the two components of the urban environment are generating a negative synergy that poses problems to urban ecosystems.

As urbanization reinforces the resistance of suburbanization to anti-sprawl strategies, sprawl also inherently displays a ‘beautiful image’ that attracts more people to live on urban edges. In addition, sprawl residents feel safer because in most cases they are neighbors to equally affluent households and hence have the perception that they are free from burglary and robberies.

In the history of the suburbia, Los Angeles is regarded as a perfect prototype of the mid- twentieth century suburban revolution. In the report Sprawl Hits the Wall (2001, 1), it was accounted that,

“During the suburban era – between the 1950s and 1970s – Los

Angeles gained a reputation as the archetypal suburban

metropolis. Fueled by the defense and entertainment industries and

by a good deal of traditional unionized manufacturing,

metropolitan LA created an unparalleled middle-class economy.

With the construction of the freeway system and the rise of

production homebuilding, the region became the capital of

suburbia, transforming such outlying areas as Orange County and

the San Fernando Valley into classic suburban communities.”

The availability of good job opportunities in the Los Angeles area drew more people from both rural areas and other cities into the region. It can also be found that rising incomes contributed to the proliferation of sprawl in Los Angeles since most of the residents were in the middle class.

Eventually, suburbanization has pushed development deep into the secondary interior valleys that ring the metropolis (Sprawl Hits the Wall, 2001). Most of these features of the Los Angeles of the 1950s-70s are characteristically akin to the situation of Calgary’s current growth; economic buoyancy and the attraction of populations into the city. Urbanization in this context

cannot be blamed as the sole cause of sprawl and the consequent damage to natural capital but the influence of the income levels of residents is also a vital indicator.

In affluent nations like Canada, income has been rising in urban areas though not in a uniform pattern. Between 1980 and 2005, income growth among full-time, full-year earners showed substantial differences among Canadian provinces; Saskatchewan’s median income fell by 7.4 percent, Ontario grew by 8.1 percent, and Alberta showed a relatively little change of 0.5 percent increase (Statistics Canada, 2006). However, in a national context, Canada’s median income grew by 0.1 percent during the quarter century but increased by 2.4 percent between

2000 and 2005.

Household affluence and economic growth have occurred in Western urban centers throughout history, but the scale of today’s growth is becoming a major concern to policymakers.

Fumega (2010) commented that cities have been places with problems related to overcrowding, health and pollution, but it is the scale of these problems that is affecting our way of life and the environment than never before. The scale of economic growth, suburban growth, reliance on motor travel in the city, carbon emission, and greenfields depletion are all problems in one way or another, stemming from urbanization. There is a vast disparity between the gravity of a spatial problem caused by a rural population and another caused by an urban population; the magnitude of the repercussions is usually worse in the urban domain.

According to the City Civic Census, new suburban areas of Calgary have captured all the population growth averaging close to 100 percent between 2007 and 2011 (City of Calgary,

2012a). Between 1960 and 2000, the annual mileage of the average American driver has gone from 4,000 to 10,000 miles; and as a result of that, in the past two decades, the average number

of hours that drivers are stuck in traffic has increased from 6hrs to 36hrs per year (Frumkin et al,

2004). Transport Canada claimed that traffic congestion costs the Canadian economy more than

$6 billion annually in lost productivity and wasted gasoline (McGran, 2005). Standard projections suggest that global travel (person-miles per year) will more than double from 1990 to

2020, and then redouble by 2050, with global car travel tripling from 1990 to 2050 (Hawkens et al, 1999). Brueckner (2000) connected all these indicators by arguing that there are three powerful causes of urban spatial expansion; a growing population, rising incomes, and falling commuting costs. It is evident that any increase in urban population contributes to the problem of suburbanization and its associated necessity of automobile dependency. An extra person living in the suburb increases the number of people who need a car to travel the city, and an extra car on the highway increases the time another suburban resident will spend in traffic. Consequently, time is wasted, energy is wasted, and carbon emission is increased drastically, hence establishing a connection between urbanization and the decline in ecological resilience.

2.1.3 Urban sprawl

Irrespective of the focus of any specific debate or discussion on urban sprawl, usually, such discussions attempt to define sprawl and argue whether it is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ (TCRP, 1998). To a considerable extent, the sprawl argument has dealt quite well with its socioeconomic effects on urban regions addressing such issues as social segregation (example: Freeman, 2001; Nguyen,

2010) and the existence of a distinct line between income levels. Of more importance in the scope of this research is the environmental aspect of sprawl, as the ecological footprint of urban areas seems to be strongly connected to the spatial growth of the city and its resultant energy consumption and land mass requirements of suburban houses as well as extensive motor travel.

An upsurge in worldwide automobile ownership in the early periods of the twentieth century appeared as the mechanical harbinger of the later fragmented city. The modern structure of cities was foreseen by Herbert G. Wells who predicted that the metropolis (Great City) would see its own resources deplete to decentralized ‘urban regions’ so massive a change that the actual concept of ‘the city’ would become, in his own words, “as obsolete as mailcoach”(Fishman,

1987; in LeGates and Stout, 2011; 77). Wells’ prediction was based on the massive improvements in transportation systems in the city and the arising prominence of the automobile.

Fishman also pointed out another personality, Frank Lloyd Wright, who prophesied similarly as

Wells and also based his argument on the universal automobile ownership coupled with a network of superhighways constructed in the city. Suitably, Fishman called Wells and Wright the prophets of the techno-city, or the modern suburbia.

Increasing automobile production, rising car ownership, and the spatial facilitator of massive highway constructions linking the urban core to edge communities contribute significantly to the spread of the city. Carbon emissions from long urban commuting are not only causing global warming and ozone layer depletion, but are also causes of several health complications to humans and other living forms, often related to the respiratory system. In 2005, the Ontario Medical Association estimated that air pollution caused 5,800 premature deaths,

17,000 hospital admissions, 60,000 emergency room visits, and 29 million minor illness days.

Fiscal conversions of these parameters approximated that $374 million was wasted in lost productivity and $507 million to the health care system, while strongly increasing all health and economic impact figures (Ontario Medical Association, 2005). Meanwhile, global car registrations are growing more than twice as fast as the population – 50 million cars in 1954, 350 million cars in 1989, and 500 million cars in 1997 (Hawkens et al, 1999). Newman and Waldron

(2012, 111) expressed that, “Whether urban areas will be a model, however, for a sustainable society or ecological disasters will be determined, to a great extent, by one factor: the car.” The paradox of the car and man is that, man created the car to be his slave; however, addiction and over-dependency have now transformed the slave into a master, with the tables turning to make man the new slave, as Andrew Nikiforuk clearly argued in his 2012 book, The Energy of Slaves:

Oil and the New Servitude.

According to Miron (2003), the concept of sprawl is generally ‘distasteful’ to writers.

However, in the view of Frenkel and Ashkenazi (2005), since sprawling neighborhoods usually contain high-income residents, they have lower crime rates as compared to core area neighborhoods. Burchell and Mukherji (2003) also mentioned two benefits of sprawl in urban settings. They argued that households have a better access to cheaper single-family houses on larger parcels located away from the urban core, and there is a better opportunity for participation in governance due to the high number of smaller jurisdictions created in fringe areas. Both benefits do not afford any direct incentive to the ecological resilience of urban fringes. The former is a socioeconomic benefit that maximizes the welfare of society by satisfying the desires of individual families who acquire bigger spaces at cheaper prices relative to inner city residents who have smaller spaces at comparatively higher prices. The latter is directed toward a political agenda of ensuring a stronger citizen participation in political decision-making to ascertain a democratic image. Though both rewards are socially expedient, they do not possess any strong advantages for ecological stability.

From another dimension of the socio-political merit of the single-family house, Peter

Sloterdijk (2006, 108) philosophically argued that the house behaves as a physical element for the modern man to mentally weaken the virtual bonds of totalitarianism. Sloterdijk postulated

that the modern man assumes a state of micro-rulership by owning a house and residing in a private setting which psychologically suppresses the ideologies of early twentieth century dictatorships that arose from political theories. He wrote that,

“To them (referring to contemporary men), it seems immediately

that they must weave the fabric for their happiness in smaller,

more private dimensions. From this perspective, the building

supply centres are the real surety of democracy. They house the

popular support of everyday anti-totalitarianism. The moral of the

story is obvious. Literally it would go like this: Dwell in your place

and refuse the immersion in false collectives! Do not dwell in

racial totalities! Do not engage with super-collectivisations,

choose your furniture from your own supplies, take responsibility

for the micro-totalitarianism of your dwelling circumstances. And

never forget: in your homes, you are the infallible popes of your

own bad taste.”

Sloterdijk’s philosophy of the political advantage the house offers can only be conceived in the abstract realm since there is no tangible demonstration of one becoming an ‘emperor of his own place’ – after all, people still belong to that socio-political enclave called community. Even in the same work, Sloterdijk contradicted by claiming that on the other side of man reigning as the

‘ruler’ of himself by owning his private house, he simultaneously succumbs to the power of servitude as he becomes enslaved to that bounded legal domain called his property.

A suburban house may appear to be more affordable in the short term, but in the long term, compared to a house in the urban core, it may demand extra expenditure. The cost on

mobility, the cost of services, and the expenditure on energy per household required to reside in a single-family suburban house will possibly be higher than the cost in a family unit in a multi-unit building located within the inner city. A study in Calgary found that there will be a significant increase in housing choice and affordability if a household could avoid the purchase of an automobile; for instance, an $80,000 income household had a considerable advantage for buying an average house in 93 out of 202 census tracts (Keough, 2011). Even the quality of life of the suburban resident is a state at risk. Ostensibly, suburban residents have to wake up earlier to beat the traffic on their way to work in the inner city and they spend so much time in traffic jams in the reverse direction back home. Eventually, the little time available for the busy suburban dweller to enjoy leisure is rather suffered in stressful sedentary moments.

Beside the technological transition that triggered predictions in the early twentieth century about the suburban revolution, recent studies suggest that the resilience of urban sprawl arises from many other factors falling within organic, cultural, and policymaking domains. The organic domain herein refers to the necessary outward growth of the city to accommodate more people where urbanization plays a paramount role, intensified by the cultural indicator which involves the contemporary housing demand of the average twenty-first century North American.

Peiser (2001) blamed the ‘American dream’ of most homebuyers wanting a single-family detached home not only as a contributor to the proliferation of sprawl but also as a factor invigorating the resistance of sprawl to mitigation strategies. As a matter of fact, mitigation strategies to control sprawl will ultimately appear to be an affront to a key element of the

American lifestyle; the consumption of large amounts of living spaces at affordable prices

(Brueckner, 2000). The perceptions of people about what a quality neighborhood possesses also fall within the purview of the cultural determinant.

Bier (2001) observed that sprawl increases as a result of young families’ demand for low- density suburban houses. This usually happens when there is improvement in people’s economic stance in urban areas which consequently leads to the selling of houses in core areas and the purchasing of newer and bigger ones at the fringe areas. Rising incomes contribute to urban growth because urban dwellers demand more living space as they become richer (Brueckner,

2000). According to a report by the City of Calgary (2012a), suburban housing captures a large proportion of the overall housing need in Calgary and has captured 68 percent of the total new housing between 2007 and 2011. Apparently, housing preferences among the North American population have been shifted toward urban fringes and this trend is transforming into a resistant cultural phenomenon to be subverted by anti-sprawl strategies.

As extensive urban spatial expansion has been strongly associated with the interplay between the demand for suburban single-family dwellings and the overuse of the automobile, demystifying the misconception that technologies are deterministic is essential at this point. In

David Nye’s (2006, 210) book, Technology Matters: Questions to Live With, he tried to convince that in the midst of whatever technological resources a group of people is exposed to, the existence of such technologies or concepts boil down to their own choice. He wrote that,

“No determinism made the automobile an inevitable choice instead of mass transit. Nothing inherent in technologies dictates that people should live in apartment buildings, semi-detached dwellings, or single-family houses……..Rather, each group of people selects a repertoire of techniques and devices to construct its world.”

In the construction of a ‘micro-world,’ a society decides the types of technologies and concepts that will be accepted as ‘natural’ and be woven into its existing cultural fabric. In this context, generations after the emergence of the suburban revolution will only view single-family housing

and automobile use as accepted norms, and when people start to accept some concepts as inevitable ones, it is often challenging to reconstruct their culture by changing their perceptions of what they classify as ‘natural’ and ‘unnatural.’ Some peoples have succeeded in being impermeable to certain technologies they perceive to be unnecessary; Nye mentioned the

Mennonites and Amish in the United States who do not permit the telephone in their society but preferably use face-to-face communication. In fact, it is rational to be skeptical about a projected future devoid of single-family suburban housing but has a total reliance on public transit for urban mobility. However, the United State’s Interstate Highway Act of 1956 is a distinctive paradigm of how a powerful minority in society can define how technologies are made to govern the lives of populations; Jackson (1985; in LeGates and Stout, 2011; 67) called it “the largest peacetime construction project in history.”

Some suburban dwellers are also attracted to the suburbs with the ultimate motive of enjoying the close-by natural landscape, a resource they cannot have in the inner city. In the case of Austin, Texas, as accounted by Benfield et al (2001), it was a cattle county in the nineteenth century. One of the major factors that speedily escalated the population of Austin was its natural beauty which attracted huge populations into the city, consequently tripling Greater Austin’s population within two decades from 1976 to 1996. In spite of Austin’s endowment with a good amount of open land, the ultimate dream of families moving to the suburbs diminished in a shorter time than they might have anticipated. This happened because many other families had the same dream of enjoying the natural landscapes and so the problem occurs in continuum with little prospects of any cessation. In the end, people only realize that dream in a short time and will have to travel several kilometers to experience the natural landscapes they paid for.

In the policy domain, the government and developers have had a significant role in the creation of the suburbia. Keating’s work on Chicago (1988) saw the creation of suburbs as a result of the interaction between local governments and real estate developers. Public policies that support the people to freely make housing choices in the view of creating a liberal market society and the people’s will of leaving the urban core areas, which they view to be noisy and overcrowded, can be seen as salient determinants of this trend. In the United States, Canada and

Australia, the predominant post-World War II housing type was single-family houses, usually constructed on large parcels of land on the cities’ peripheries (Barnett, 2011). This was supported by government policies, for example, in the US where mortgages were subsidized and income- tax deducted for mortgage interests by the federal government. The availability of mortgage money, rising income, and conformable public policies generated a concept of a housing right in post-world war Canada (Foran, 2009). This liberty to housing choices is termed by Bier (2001) as free-for-all and for most of America’s history, that is what it was and still is.

Inevitably, housing provision is, and should be a major agenda in the policies of both local and federal governments in enhancing the sensitive subject of social equity. Equally important to housing people is also considering the economic impacts on the government resulting from sprawling development. Both socioeconomic and environmental issues are important in the sustainable future advocates foresee. Burchell and Mukherji (2003) estimated that under conventional development, the United States will spend more than $927 billion from

2000 to 2025 to provide road infrastructure. In a study by Carruthers and Ulfarsson (2003) in a cross-section of 283 metropolitan counties in the United States during the 1982-1992 decade, it was discovered that higher densities are more cost effective in the provision of public services than low densities. Carruthers and Ulfarsson (2003, 520) concluded that, “Although US

metropolitan areas may continue to suburbanize, the results presented suggest that they may maintain a more cost-effective urban form by doing so at higher densities and by consuming less land.” Findings in the IBI Report (Plan It Calgary, 2009) showed that the cost required to grow

Calgary in the Recommended Direction will be 33 percent less than the cost for the Dispersed

Scenario, while land requirement will be reduced by 25 percent by following the recommended pattern. It can also be deduced from this study that the Recommended Direction presents two major merits in sustainability; both the reductions in land consumption and fiscal expenditure.

Some critics of urban sprawl propose a punitive control measure in making sprawl residents pay for their impacts by imposing extra taxes for providing services such as roadways, sewage systems, and gas lines. However, as discussed earlier, most sprawling communities are occupied by affluent households, hence people can afford the costs to live in a single-family detached house in the suburbs although there will be some level of reducing suburbanization by imposing such costs on suburban dwellers.

2.1.4 Sustainable spatial strategies

Urban sprawl is generally an undesirable development pattern in the views of many planners, ecologists and community-based activists. Its impacts on the urban environment range from physical to socioeconomic disadvantages that are viewed to be diminishing the general quest for sustainable development. In Rio de Janeiro, the 1992 United Nations Conference on

Environment and Development (UNCED) accepted arguments that cities with low-density development patterns increase excessive energy consumption (UNHSP, 2009). It is projected that over the next 25 years, the United States will convert 18.8 million acres of land to build 26.5 million new housing units and 26.5 billion square feet of new non-residential space based on conventional development patterns (Burchell and Mukherji, 2003). Hence, mitigation strategies

for confronting sprawl are salient in the sustainable development agenda. It is also essential to develop trajectories for understanding, at least in the assumptive sense, the possible outcomes of a more contiguous development style to determine whether it will have a positive influence on the ecological footprint of cities.

Planning and environmental advocates have proposed numerous strategies that will create a better development pattern in postindustrial cities and suburbs to suppress the effects of the disorderly jumble of sprawl and to reverse the declining quality-of-life urbanites are experiencing. Proponents have come up with smart growth, new urbanism, green building, and other related community development concepts that revolve around novel perspectives of creating a more satisfying and livable built form (Jerke et al, 2008). Though the different design concepts may have been developed by different proponents and may possess significantly disparate views, their major normative principles overlap and are usually targeting the substantial alleviation of conventional development patterns. Jerke et al (2008) asserted that sustainable development and smart growth are concerned about the sustainability of natural resources in an era of explosive population rise and the clear deteriorations in biodiversity and water and air quality. The smart growth strategy has been used successfully in many urban contexts and has produced laudable results in the urban landscape.

Smart growth, the leading normative procedure for transforming the urban form into a more compact structure has been proven to render numerous outcomes that span between physical, psychosocial, and economic benefits. Some of these benefits are somehow elusive and too abstract to be empirically observed or quantitatively valued while others stand to be realized in the longer term. In a number of public policy evaluation studies, it is usually problematic to do accurate environmental assessments, since all the merits and demerits of policy options would

have to be converted into a common appreciable fiscal unit (Nijkamp, 2007; in Deakin et al,

2007). To obtain a more comprehensive assessment of the ecological impacts of development, it would be more facilitative to generate methods of estimating the returns of a development on natural conservation just as valuation experts do for the returns on investment (ROI). Thus, it appears to be inappropriate to solely rely on cost-benefit analysis to quantify the importance of the intangible resources the natural environment offers to the urban population.

Opinions in favor of compact cities revolve around the claims that they are more efficient, inclusive, and sustainable. In addition, the time and costs of travelling are lower and the costs of providing infrastructure are lower (UNHSP, 2009). A mobility scenario can be created to elaborate the interconnectivity of the benefits of compact cities in the thematic domains of the sustainability goal. The compact city affords a more convenient means of travelling the city; with walking and cycling as the most preferred modes. Walking and cycling are modes of physical activity and they keep people healthier and further reduce the money spent by governments and individuals on medical costs related to obesity and cardiovascular diseases; hence stabilizing the economic sustainability of the city. When people are healthier, there is a better quality of life enhancing their psychosocial needs and generating a higher productivity in the workforce that keeps the economic state of the city in a good balance. Contiguous neighborhoods will increase social interaction and build a stronger sense of community. As a result, neighbors will not be meeting each other only through the windscreen. In the longer term, a more sustainable mode of mobility will reduce urban carbon emissions, reduce the amount of land surface that will have to be converted into impermeable roadways to reduce excessive runoffs, and the encroachment of greenfields on urban peripheries will be slower, which are all ecologically desirable indicators.

The Smart Growth Network outlines ten principles of smart growth as follows:

1. mixed land use

2. take advantage of compact building design

3. create a range of housing opportunities and choices

4. create walkable neighborhoods

5. foster distinctive and attractive communities with a strong sense of place

6. preserve open space, farmland, natural beauty and critical environmental areas

7. strengthen and direct development towards existing communities

8. provide a variety of transportation choices

9. make development decisions predictable, fair and cost effective

10. encourage community and stakeholder collaboration in development decisions.

(Smart Growth Network, 2013: online)

The principles prescribed by the Smart Growth Network are obtained through a combination of local conditions from diverse geographical locations. In local smart growth implementation, it is however essential to set the ten principles as the point of reference and build on them to define local goals of a particular region because cities are sporadic and differ widely in socioeconomic and environmental conditions.

The ten smart growth principles are implemented along with a more spatially-based scheme called the Urban Growth Boundary (UGB). The governing body of Portland’s UGB called the Metro, defines UGB as,

“A legal boundary separating urbanizable land from rural land…..The boundary controls urban expansion onto farm, forest, and resource lands. At the same time, land, roads, utilities, and other urban services are more efficiently distributed within the urban boundary” (Jun, 2004; 1334).

Basically, the UGB is a perimeter created around the edges of the city beyond which development is restricted to occur for a period of time. In figure 2-2, the red line shows the UGB along the edges of Portland. The Metro has the responsibility of maintaining a 20-year supply of residential land to contain urban activity and growth for the Portland Metropolitan area (Jun,

2004). Daniels (1999) highlighted three co-ordinated measures used to manage the UGB: phased development inside the UGB, limiting development outside the UGB, and flexible boundary of the UGB. Through these measures, there has been a consistently contiguous development within

Portland’s UGB, and as of 1998, 25 million acres of farmland and forest have been zoned outside the UGB for exclusive farm use and timber conservation (Daniels, 1999).

Figure 2-2 Map of Portland, the red line showing the urban growth boundary (Source:

Bolen, 2008)

In the European context, Copenhagen followed the typical growth pattern of traditional

European cities to develop a smart growth plan. In order to ensure a sustainable growth in

Copenhagen, which is expected to increase by 10,000 people annually for the next two decades, the local authorities devised the ‘proximity principle’ which was used by planners to develop the

Five Fingers Plan (Greater Copenhagen Authority, 2004). In the plan, development was proposed to occur along five major corridors radiating from the city centre. A transit-oriented development pattern was adopted by concentrating high-density, mixed-use development around transit nodes which are located at walking and cycling distances from residential buildings.

Laudable results from the Five Fingers Plan include;

 a significant enhancement in transit-dependent mobility with over 200 million

passenger trips by bus and over six million passenger trips by train in 2003

 a reduction in carbon emissions

 a reduction in municipal infrastructure costs

 an impressive preservation of green space across the region reflecting the

improvement of the quality of life of the residents.

The Copenhagen case portrays a conservative planning strategy that takes advantage of the existing growth trend of the city by planning along with the original growth pattern of the city.

The plan mimicked the European style of cities’ growth where cities grow by radiating away from the nucleus with mostly new transportation routes being continuations of existing ones. The lesson in the Copenhagen project is that the implementation of smart growth strategies does not always demand a consummate transformation of existing urban morphology but can also follow

a rule of conserving and improving existing features. All the outcomes in the Five Fingers Plan in one way or another enhance the ecological resilience by either reducing the quantity of an unwanted resource or preserving a natural stock.

The success of smart growth depends partly on the controlling power of the government responsible. Hall (1996) recommended that the first prerequisite for the success of implementing policies for compact cities is to have a strategic planning authority ‘with teeth.’ Dijst (2000; in

Roo and Miller, 2000) also agreed that for a strategic planning authority to have a significant impact on urban development, it must have control over potential growth areas in the next 20 to

25 years, and over areas of major redevelopment within the city. Hence, the success of sustainable development patterns partly depends on the performance of municipal governments in controlling growth.

2.2 Natural capital and sustainability

2.2.1 Natural capital is a finite resource

White (1994) mentioned two opposing assumptions surrounding human development and the natural environment: the first emphasizes the potential for development which assumes that development has been possible due to the ability of humans to learn and adapt. The second emphasizes the constraints imposed by the environment which also supports the salient fact that the planet is a finite entity. Some critics of environmental conservatism may view the second assumption as a neo-apocalyptic perspective outside theological circles that similarly aims at creating panic of an imminent dead end of Earth. Such critics could be classified as adherents to the expansionists’ belief that the human enterprise can be expanded perpetually on a planet that

is bounded; a view that, to some extent, correlates with the first assumption which places so much hope in knowledge and technology as the dei ex machina for a sustainable future.

The environmental doctrine that humanity inhabits a finite planet, and hence collapsible, sets the platform to make the first assumption crucial and useful through learning and adaptation.

If the second assumption is presumably valid, then it is susceptible to the power of the Murphy’s

Law, which states that “anything that can go wrong will go wrong.” In a real antique context,

Wheeler (2004) stressed the impermanency of the planet by arguing that the ancient environmental collapse and the extensive deforestation of parts of the Mediterranean could be the reason behind the decline of the ancient Mayan culture. These somehow suggest the fact that nature, like any other existing energy-dependent phenomenon is bound by the universal power of the second law of thermodynamics, and can collapse completely at a point. In a related sense, more light is shed on the truism that human existence depends solely on the presence of nature, hence the fall of nature will lead to the fall of humanity.

Expansionist thinkers believe technology can solve any problem that erupts in the modern city. Wackernagel and Rees (1996, 24) put technological optimism in the position of a robot that argues that the Earth can never run out of resources. The robot says,

“For the last two hundred years, technology has successfully met the challenges of growth. Once people are faced with a problem, they will come up with a solution. Our greatest resource is the human mind, and the potential for innovation is unlimited.”

Apparently, the expansionists believe in the ‘innovative us’ and establish a sheer negligence of the tangible part of our existence, which is our endowment from nature; what Roosevelt called our ‘permanent capital.’ In their candid view, tangible resources are not as important as the innovative shrewdness of human cognition in the scope of building a sustainable future.

It is established that every year the human population increases, but the quantity of natural resources required to sustain this growing population and to improve the quality of human lives remain finite (WCED, 1987). Meadows (2001; edited by Wright, 2008; 63) stressed that the real choice of managing non-renewable resources is whether “to get rich very fast or to get less rich but stay that way longer.” Renewable resources can be revived through human endeavor but for non-renewable resources, the only option to extend the span of their existence is to reduce consumption to meaningful degrees. In another way, Meadows’ statement reflects the true ethically-oriented definition of sustainable development which also draws in the aspects of learning and adaptation to the dynamism of the urban environment.

Urban land, as a spatial commodity in the city can be classified as both a renewable and non-renewable resource depending on how stakeholders in the urban society use, manage, and reuse it. In its real form, urban land can be equally treated as a tree species in the forest that is replaced through reforestation practices after being fell for human consumption. The only distinct way in which the urban land–forest tree analogy is not parallel is that whilst the forest tree may need an equally fertile soil as the tree it is replacing, urban land for redevelopment does not require any special additives to be efficiently harnessed as a renewable resource. That is, brownfield parcels for redevelopment do not have to be biologically replenished before building construction, though there is much more demanding procedures involved than in the development of a greenfield parcel. When urban land is treated more like a non-renewable resource, there is a stronger pursuit for virgin parcels resulting from multidimensional reasons, and developers and other stakeholders (in)advertently underestimate the potentials of brownfields in urban development. Theoretically, the urban government largely defines whether

urban land is a renewable resource or otherwise, since it has the power in controlling development and structuring the location and the scale at which growth should occur.

Since ecological footprint accounts for the amount of land area required to sustain a defined population and the amount remaining to be exploited, it has a strong contribution in conceptualizing the collapsibility of nature, at least in the eco-spatial domain. In urban peripheral land development, there is a myopic assumption that more land still exists and land cannot easily vanish looking at the massive land masses still remaining after centuries of human development and civilization; a misconception that analogically resonates with the voice of the robot placed in the stead of technological optimism. This can be much said of Canada which has a considerably huge land mass inhabited by a relatively smaller human population. Meadows (2001; edited by

Wright, 2008; 117) mentioned one path that can lead to the collapse of a system through the ignorant perception of infinity termed the ‘Tragedy of the Commons.’ She wrote that,

“In any commons system there is, first of all, a resource that is commonly shared. For the system to be subject to tragedy, the resource must be not only limited, but erodible when overused. That is, beyond some threshold, the less resource there is, the less it is able to regenerate itself, or the more likely it is to be destroyed.”

The ‘Tragedy of the Commons’ happens when each consumer in a system does not know the quantity of the stock the other consumers are exploiting. Also, all the consumers assume there is more of the stock because it is hardly possible for one consumer to see beyond his consumption to appreciate the others’ consumption. Eventually, this paucity of knowledge about each other gives the general impression that “there is always more to consume” based on the consumers’ individual perceptions which relate only their consumption to the stock. All the consumers, therefore, see the stock as a ‘standing reserve’ perpetually awaiting exploitation. In

the end, the system is liable to failure which will subsequently lead to the demise of all the consumers as well.

Drawing the analogy to the urban context, regional land use pattern is important in the conservation of natural habitats from the encroachment of human development. Larger cities contain many individual towns and villages that somehow got engulfed by the cities’ expansion.

There are clear distinctions between cities and neighboring settlements with forests, farmlands and other natural systems serving as spatial dividers, but these natural forms lose their habitats to urban expansion when growth is more individualistic, as is happening today. If municipal authorities tend to believe there is more land, and so low-density fringe development does not pose questions on conservation, then it is probable that some countries can be totally covered with human settlements in the near future. In the case of Canada, dependable agricultural land is the resource under severe threat since the very location of this resource is where human settlements are concentrated. It is however alarming to conceive the results of a planet that has no more land for agricultural activities and natural landscapes to sustain human existence.

2.2.2 Entropy as an indicator of sustainability

Sustainability could be viewed from another perspective in the urban environment which emphasizes the energy input and output dynamics of the city. In energy production and consumption, there is a portion of the energy produced that is used for productive work and there is another part that is wasted for no work, or dissipated; the latter is called entropy. Moughtin et al (1999) defined entropy as the energy that has been dissipated and is unavailable for work; it is no longer useful energy. This kind of energy is transformed into a resource that is not needed in the environment, or may even be a harmful resource. The challenge in the urban environment is about how efficient the energy available within the limits of the city and the energy drawn in

from other locations can be capitalized profitably as it passes toward increasing entropy. To maximize urban energy utilization, entropy is a good phenomenon to note.

According to Moughtin et al (1999), while the total energy possessed by the Universe is constant, the total entropy is increasing. It could be valid to conclude that energy is well used but not efficiently used in the urban environment, a reflection of the sub-optimization of resources.

Suburban houses mostly occupy large lot sizes and are low-density because they are usually one to two-storey single-family houses. Ewing (1997) defined sprawl as a development of one- or two-storey, single-family houses on lots ranging in size from one-third to one acre, accompanied by strip commercial centers and industrial parks, also two stories or less in height and with a similar amount of land takings. Entropy rises when large parcels of land are used to accommodate single households which are averagely made up of 2.5 people in Canada

(according to Statistics Canada, 2006). The invaluable energy lost from the combined wasted land on the ground and the imaginary volumes of space above the buildings are what culminate to partly make low-density fringe development pro-entropic.

Hawkens et al. (1999) did an analysis of the amount of energy used to move a driver in the modern automobile. About 80 percent of the fuel the car consumes is lost as entropy (heat and sound) and only 20 percent turns the wheels. Still out of the force produced in the 20 percent, only 5 percent moves the driver, the rest carries the vehicle itself. It is critical to also consider the number of motor vehicles in the city and how all of them waste this huge amount of energy daily. Doing the math, it is clear that entropy enjoys more energy than people do, so apparently, people pay for gasoline and give at least 80 percent to entropy and only 1 percent of the gasoline burnt moves the person. Frumkin (2002) compared the average car travel distance of a person per day, which includes both drivers and non-drivers. The Atlanta metropolitan area,

one good example of sprawl in the United States, had 34.1 miles per person, while denser areas like Philadelphia and Chicago had 16.9 miles and 19.9 miles respectively. Density therefore has an impact on automobile dependency; hence influences the degree of entropy in the city. That is, low-density peripheral housing and excessive dependence on motor travel, the latter being a necessity for the former and the two being the major concerns about sprawling development, are significant parameters in the rising entropy within the city. Moreover, entropy is an offset parameter that can be used to conceptualize the level of sustainability and hence has an impact on the ecological footprint of the city.

Meadows (2001; edited by Wright, 2008) argued that physical laws such as the second law of thermodynamics are absolute rules, whether they are understood or not or liked or disliked. The second law of thermodynamics states that “everything has been, is, and always will be, running down to equilibrium and death.” In the view of Moughtin et al (1999, 90), life on this planet, especially from the standpoint of sustainable development, “is a paradoxical contradiction to this law.” Although Meadows viewed physical laws to be absolute rules, the second law of thermodynamics, as it relates to the city as an active responsive organism, must be confuted in the context of sustainability. Entropy is rising, land is being consumed rampantly, and many ecological systems are under dire crises due to human development, but there are prospects in the urban environment to minimize these trends that are contributing to the rising ecological footprint of modern cities.

2.2.3 Ecological footprint and biocapacity

Several interrelated factors have been found to be the culprits of the rising ecological footprint of the contemporary city. It has also been established that the prerequisites for human sustenance on every time plane in evolution have totally depended on the existence of natural capital. Of more

significance is the realization that nature has a formidable characteristic of boundedness. The current impacts of human consumption and dependence on nature and the corresponding quantity of productive natural resources remaining to provide human needs are two crucial factors in assessing progress in sustainable development.

Ecological footprint is an accounting tool that estimates the resource consumption and waste assimilation requirements of a particular human population and converts them into the equivalent productive land and sea area required to provide these services (Wackernagel and

Rees, 1996). It is also a combination of land use and consumption components. Kuzyk (2011) defined biocapacity as the biologically productive land area available globally. A single static difference between the two parameters (for example figures for a single year) will give an indication of the reserve of nature remaining to be exploited or the deficit generated that subjects the planet to stress. Also, comparing figures over a number of years between the two parameters

(for example yearly figures within a decade) will give an idea of how a defined population has lived sustainably; that is, an increasing ecological footprint with a corresponding decrement in biocapacity shows a declination in sustainability and vice versa. The Living Planet Index that reflects changes in the planet’s biodiversity estimated that the global Living Planet Index declined by 30 percent between 1970 and 2008. Meanwhile, the footprint of humanity exceeded the earth’s biocapacity by over 50 percent in 2008 and recently the carbon footprint from GHG emissions constitutes a substantial portion of this overshoot (WWF, 2012). The implication is that while potential biodiversity to support human existence is reducing along with escalations in global population, the global per capita footprint is rising indicating that consumption is increasing as well.

In simple and comprehensive figures, the ecological footprint methodology converts human consumption and the biocapacity or carrying capacity of the planet into appreciable numerical figures for a wider range of people to understand. Wackernagel and Rees (1996) asserted that a good theory maintains a good balance between complexity and simplicity, and for it to be effectively used by policymakers, its models must be concrete enough to capture the essence of reality but also simple enough to be understood and applied. Though a relatively simple methodology, the ecological footprint analysis encompasses a wide range of human lifestyle and consumption patterns to capture a reflection of human impacts with a reasonable proximity to reality.

The ecological footprint comprises two categories of impacts from the human environment: the first is the amount of productive land and water area required to provide all the needs of a defined population; that is, housing, transportation, food and water consumption, material goods and services, and public utilities consumption mainly provided by local, provincial and federal governments. The second is the amount of productive land and water area needed to consume the waste produced from all the operating systems that support the survival of the population. This consists of the equivalent amount of productive land and water area needed to sequester the population’s carbon emissions from automobiles and from domestic operations, as well as the area required to assimilate wastes from food and material goods consumptions. Concisely, the ecological footprint analysis accounts for the composite impact of what is taken from nature and what is returned to nature to support human survival.

By a large extent, the human species is one single constituent on Earth that has significantly treaded the planet with deeper, heavier and larger footsteps. Empirically, human civilization and technology have a strong and positive correlation with rising ecological

footprint. It is evident in the rate at which more industrialized countries and cities generate larger footprints than less advanced countries and cities. Member nations of the Organization for

Economic Co-operative and Development (OECD) now made up of 34 countries collectively consume more resources than the rest of the world; and in 1990, a North American household of four used as much power as an African village of 107 people (UNEP, 1997). Another factor influencing the rise in ecological footprint is high economic growth which is also a direct indicator of industrialization. Table 2-1 shows a comparison between ecological footprints and biocapacity in the world and other specific regions in 1990 and 2007 using available data.

1990 2007

All figures World Canada Africa Canada US World Canada Africa Canada US in and US and US Gha/capita Ecological 1.8 - - 4.3 5.1 2.7 7.9 1.4 7.0 8.0 footprint Biocapacity - - - - - 1.8 4.9 1.5 14.9 3.9

Ecological - - - - - 0.9 3.0 0.1 7.9 4.1 reserve (or deficit)

Table 2-1 Comparison of ecological footprint and biocapacity (Sources: Adapted from

Wackernagel and Rees, 1996, and Global Footprint Network, 2010)

The table shows that globally ecological footprint has not improved; it has increased by

0.9 Gha/cap from 1990 to 2007. In 2007, the world’s total biocapacity was 1.8 Gha/cap which gave an ecological deficit of 0.9 Gha/cap, implying that the planet needed an extra 0.9 hectares

for each person in the world to stay within its optimal biophysical capabilities. It should also be noted that global population was 6,625 million in the middle of 2007 and projected to be 7,965 million by 2025 (Population Reference Bureau, 2007) which indicates that more feet are stepping on the planet at a time when ecological footprint is increasing per capita. The Population

Reference Bureau (2007) also reported that 49 percent of global population lived in urban areas, while 75 percent of the people living in developed countries are urban residents. As population is growing, a considerable part is settling in cities where there is a greater affordance of opportunities for residents to live unsustainable lifestyles.

The table also shows the combined ecological footprint of Canada and the United States as 7.9 Gha/cap with a corresponding biocapacity of 4.9 Gha/cap, producing an ecological deficit of 3.0 Gha/cap. Canada and the United States are both high income countries and highly industrialized. Individually, Canada has an ecological reserve of 7.9 Gha/cap (which is a good indicator) while the United States shows a deficit of 4.1 Gha/cap. A high ecological reserve value for Canada does not imply that ‘all is well’ with Canadians’ ecological footprint; in fact

Canada has one of the highest ecological footprints in the world. Even so, in the context of sustainable development, the efforts made to reduce consumption for the benefit of posterity are the most essential ones; hence Canada’s high ecological reserve value does not imply progress if ecological footprint is not improving. In theory, Canada only awaits some few more decades to obtain an ecological deficit in prevailing conditions where ecological footprint is rising along with a somewhat stagnant biocapacity.

Wackernagel and Rees (1996) acknowledged how ‘global’ the world has become, and how interdependent nations have turned to be; hence, a country’s resources apparently belong to everyone else. Haughton and Hunter (1996) call this present stage of evolution the ‘global

interdependence phase;’ implying that there is no more a statement like “this is our country” but rather a loud worldwide voice saying “this is our planet.” Due to the recent magnitude of connectedness among nations, ecological catastrophe in one nation will possibly ripple into others. Wackernagel and Rees (1996) warned the world to be cautious of ecological disasters which though may occur in different countries but will impose severe pressure on others that may seem to be self-sufficient. In truth, the global altruistic spirit among nations would not allow a nation to stay nonchalant while another perishes from ecological collapse. They even warned of how ecological disasters could spark intra-national and international political and social turmoil. It underscores that not only human consumption relies on natural capital, but the entire human environment including social and political networks highly depend on nature to survive.

Apparently, all the tangible resources needed to keep these systems running are extracted from natural stocks. The United States with its ecological deficit of 4.1 Gha/cap may impose severe ecological pressure on Canada’s resources in case an ecological disaster erupts. The most threatening part is that, such a change will be abrupt and policymaking becomes more delicate when action is to be taken against an adversity within a period of sudden changes.

The African continent in general had an ecological footprint of 1.4 Gha/cap in 2007 with a biodiversity of 1.5 Gha/cap giving an ecological reserve of 0.1 Gha/cap. However, individual countries had significant variations in ecological footprint and biocapacity values. For example

Gabon had a biocapacity of 29.3 Gha/cap with a footprint of 1.4 Gha/cap while Libya had a 0.4

Gha/cap biocapacity with a footprint of 3.1 Gha/cap in 2007 (GFN, 2010). Almost all the countries located in Africa’s desert zones had very low biocapacities which could be the reason

(coupled with Africa’s large population size) why the continent generally has a very low biocapacity. Though Africa has an ecological reserve, Canada and the United States with a

deficit of 3.0 Gha/cap have a footprint value more than five times Africa’s footprint. Most of the countries in Africa are in the low-income level and less industrialized. Some peoples and cultures are still living within the restraints of strict ethical codes toward the natural environment and with little reliance on modern technology for production, the consumption of natural capital for manufacturing consumer goods is minimized. Although recent findings have proven that there is a dramatic shift in global land use in which the demand for cropland is transitioning to the demand for carbon uptake land which increases global carbon emission, and this trend is occurring in all countries regardless of their income level (Galli et al, 2012). Yet still, affluence has a strong influence on the ecological footprint of regions as can be seen in the difference between Canada and the United States combined and that of Africa which is 6.5 Gha/cap.

Although Canada and the United States have a deficit of 3.0 Gha/cap, many North

Americans still live the normal life laden with consumerism through their housing choices, transportation modes, the rate of goods consumption, and the quantity of waste they produce.

Hong Kong is a highly dense and a very affluent region yet has a small biocapacity, while many

African countries with larger biophysical capacities lack basic needs like food (Wackernagel and

Rees, 1996). This proves that nations are interdependent on each other for natural income and that a larger ecological footprint does not mean a country has enough natural capital within its geopolitical confines to provide its domestic needs. In addition to that, a country with abundant natural capital will not necessarily have a large ecological footprint since there is a myriad of factors that lead to rising footprint.

While it is important to view ecological impacts at a global level, it is more practically expedient to confront these setbacks at a more local and basic level where initiatives can have a better intimate influence on the problems. Several works have emphasized the ‘think global act

local’ concept which gives a better opportunity for authorities to address ecological problems with a lesser domain to consider (example: Wackernagel and Rees, 1996; Nijkamp, 2007 - in

Deakin et al, 2007; Kuzyk, 2011). Ecological footprint connects the global condition to the impacts from local destinations and this can range from the individual level to the national level.

Investigating footprint at the neighborhood level provides the platform to define those factors creating the differences among disparate neighborhoods hence raising the awareness of those impacts on the global environment. Information can also be derived to affirm the fact that within the city, different neighborhoods have diverse influences on the city’s ecological footprint and that a generalization of a city as being entirely unsustainable is only a disservice to particular communities that are living more sustainably within the city.

Wilson et al’s (2013) work in Oakville, Ontario, estimated the local ecological footprints for 249 neighborhoods. The results revealed that ecological footprint values ranged between 5.4

Gha/cap and 15.2 Gha/cap in a town with a population of about 170,000 that occupy 138.88 sq. km of land, approximately one-sixth the size of Calgary. At the neighborhood level, there is the opportunity to find out the peculiar characteristics of the areas with higher footprints and what disparities they have from the ones with lower footprints. Some questions that could be raised here include: (1) Are the differences due to the differing income levels on the neighborhood level? (2) Do the differences have anything to do with the geographical locations of the neighborhoods in the settlement? (3) Are residents in the lower footprint neighborhoods living more sustainable lifestyles (in)advertently? (4) Do the differences have anything to do with the spatial configuration and the density of these neighborhoods?

To address these questions, it demands quantitative comparisons among neighborhoods placing more emphasis on the indicators mentioned in the questions, especially, income levels,

location of neighborhood, density and spatial configuration. The motive of this project is to find the differences in footprint values among neighborhoods based on their locations within the city in relation to the core.

Chapter Three: Calgary study

Concentrating on Calgary, the study area of the research, this chapter highlights and relates major issues in the spatial growth of Calgary to demographic changes in the past decades. It begins with the factors that commenced a tradition of low-density development, through significant strategies approved by the City to control growth, and how the city has actually grown after the approval of these growth strategies.

3.1 Spatial growth in Calgary

Calgary is a city located in the south of the province of Alberta, Canada. It is situated on the Bow

River in an area of foothills and prairies. Its location in Alberta creates a strong connection to the oil sands industry and is well-known for its prominence in employment provision in several fields ranging from engineering to administration. As a typical postindustrial North American city, it possesses many characteristics of extensive spatial growth and other associated features of growth and had an ecological footprint of 9.5-9.9 Gha/cap. in 2007 (City of Calgary, 2007) which was over five times the world’s average. Calgary is one of the major economic hubs in

Canada along with Toronto and Vancouver, and also accommodates a multi-cultural and a socially-diverse population.

An elaborate account of Calgary’s sprawling growth in the twentieth century, and the variables that contributed in different degrees to generate the city’s growth pattern are captured in Max Foran’s 2009 book, Expansive Discourses: Urban Sprawl in Calgary, 1945-1978.

According to Foran (2009, 3), historically, Calgary’s economic growth has been greatly associated with the beef cattle and the fossil fuel industries; however, “it was real estate that best chronicled the city’s boom-bust cycles.” His work is particularly concerned with the influence of

City Hall and developers on the present morphology of Calgary. Foran (2009, 4), referred to them as, “the two main architects whose shared beliefs, differences, and pragmatic interactions shaped the city’s residential growth pattern.” As a fact, in the midst of economic buoyancy, there are still other instrumental factors in the city that define its growth pattern. Foran (2009) agreed that though there were other actors, Calgary’s suburbanization was directed, monitored and executed through the interaction of municipal authorities and land developers.

Unlike cities such as Edmonton, Red Deer and Saskatoon where land ownership and development were a mixed private/public sharing program for the first two cities, and the city as the dominant land assembler and developer for the third, Calgary had a somewhat private-based scheme (Gertler and Crowley, 1977). The Provincial Planning Act of 1963 increased the City of

Calgary’s power to control residential growth and the continuation of the City’s policy of shifting financial burdens to the developer promoted the growth pattern of Calgary (Foran,

2009). In Calgary, the role of a single corporation, Genstar, which had managed to achieve a formidable dominance in the market, with another conglomerate, Nu West, together produced about 36 percent of Calgary’s housing starts in 1973 (Gertler and Crowley, 1977). However, this was a macro-regional trend in western Canadian urban centers with the exception of Edmonton,

Red Deer and Saskatoon that had developed a better strategy in land acquisition and development to mitigate excessive growth. This trend was partly due to the movement of population to western Canada, especially Alberta, following the 1947 Leduc oil discovery that brought more money and job opportunities to Albertan cities with Calgary as one of the major destinations (Foran, 2009). The flow, like the early twentieth century exodus of populations to urban areas following the Industrial Revolution, increased the demand for housing across western Canada and imposed an arduous task on municipal authorities to contain these

populations within the constraints of environmental conservation. After 1947, both post-war constraints and the oil discovery demanded more housing facilities which led to the City of

Calgary instituting a policy whereby city-owned land was sold out well below assessed values.

Figure 3-1 shows part of the Sundance area in 1979 and figure 3-2 is a picture around the same area in 2008. Figure 3-3 shows part of the Bridlewood area in 1979 and figure 3-4 shows the same area in 2008. Calgary’s edge communities basically developed through an affirmative response to the modernists’ philosophy of town and city planning which gives considerable attention to the private automobile.

Olson (2000; in Bunting and Filion, 2000) contended that Calgary was a good example of prosperity characterized by a golden triangle of oil-company skyscrapers, high levels of car ownership, superb highways, a preponderance of single-family detached housing, and elaborately segregated residential neighborhoods. She continued to argue that these features implied that Calgary drew more kilowatts, guzzled more gasoline, and spewed out more nitrogen oxides than in the past. In 2009, over 50 percent of Calgary’s total energy consumption was from petroleum-based products while about 70 percent of that category was from diesel and gasoline consumption which implied that a large portion of the city’s energy demand was related to automobile use (State of Our City Report, 2009). Relating this trend to Calgary’s population growth suggests a tremendous energy demand that is yet to exist due to massive urban expansion and the accompanying car travel distances. More important to urbanization and spatial expansion, these favorable features noted by Olson (2000; in Bunting and Filion, 2000) that characterized Calgary’s physical transformation meant the city was, or would be, faring very well in the global competitiveness of urban centres in attracting both national and international populations (Tourism Calgary, 2013).

Figure 3-1 Part of Sundance area in 1979 (Source: SANDS, TFDL, University of Calgary)

Figure 3-2 Part of Sundance area in 2008 (Source: SANDS, TFDL, University of Calgary)

Figure 3-3 Part of Bridlewood area in 1979 (Source: SANDS, TFDL, University of Calgary)

Figure 3-4 Part of Bridlewood area in 2008 (Source: SANDS, TFDL, University of Calgary) 56

The present structure of Calgary is a culmination of its past dynamics and more importantly the successive transformations in its economic and social characteristics intertwined with decisions of the government and private developers. As a multi-cultural, socially and economically vibrant city, Calgary has a very high attraction value for immigrants and even

Canadians living in other parts of the country. Incidentally, Calgary was number five out of 140 global cities in the ‘Most Livable Cities in the World’ ranking by the Economist Intelligence

Unit in 2011 (Tourism Calgary, 2013). Calgary is the largest major metropolitan area between

Toronto and Vancouver; 23.6 percent of Calgary’s population are immigrants and is only third behind Toronto and Vancouver among the highest visible minority rates in Canada (ibid.).

Calgary’s population was 1,019,942 in 2007 and 1,090,936 in 2011, increasing by 7 percent in the five-year period (City of Calgary, 2012b). The population of Calgary as at April 2013 was estimated to be 1,149,552 and projected to be 1,273,800 and 1,370,500 in the 2017 and 2022 censuses respectively (Walters and Pawluk, 2013). With enticing accolades on the global scene and projected economic prosperity still defining the status quo of Calgary, the city is inevitably susceptible to the influx of more people in the immediate forthcoming years which raises concerns regarding its spatial growth as related to fringe undeveloped land.

3.2 Growth control strategies

Calgary is expected to accommodate one million more people in the next five decades, and municipal authorities are envisaging a growth pattern that will keep the incoming population within the established area boundaries and closer to the urban core. The City is making efforts to achieve a more inclusive and sustainable city in the next decades by relying less on greenfields on the fringes since authorities are well aware of the high ecological footprint of the city. For a

long time, several documents have been prepared to expansively elaborate the details of how planners want Calgary to grow sustainably along with its rising population.

The City Council in July 1995 adopted the Sustainable Suburbs Study prepared by the

Planning and Building Department of the City of Calgary as a normative scheme to tailor the city’s suburban growth. Included in the reasons for this study was the goal to implement the

Calgary Transportation Plan (CTP) which was a progeny of the 1992 GoPlan (City of Calgary,

1995). The GoPlan was a review of the city’s transportation system that projected Calgary’s condition in the next 30 years when the city was expected to contain 540,000 more people,

260,000 more houses, and 470,000 more cars (ibid.). The major motive of the GoPlan was to optimize the use of present road and transit infrastructure by ensuring positive land use and travel behavioral change among the public (City of Calgary, 2010b).

Based on two factors, the Sustainable Suburbs Study projected that over 98 percent of the population growth in Calgary in the next 30 years will occur in the suburbs of the city:

1. When communities grow to a peak population, children grow up and leave home to

form new households usually in newly-formed communities.

2. New housing developments create changes in developed areas, however, new units

created replace some demolished units, hence the net increase is lower than the

number of new units added.

Table 3-1 shows the GoPlan’s (adopted by the City as the Calgary Transportation Plan in May

1995) population projections in specified sub-areas of Calgary suggesting that major population increase in the city will be occurring in suburban communities.

POTENTIAL POPULATION CHANGES

Sub Area 1991 2024 Change

Downtown/ Inner City 104,000 138,000 +34,000

Inner Suburbs 155,000 161,000 +6,000

Established Suburbs 309,000 268,000 -41,000

New Suburbs 135,000 670,000 +535,000

Other Areas 5,000 13,000 +8,000

CITY-WIDE TOTAL 708,000 1,250,0001 +542,000

Table 3-1 Potential population changes in Calgary between 1991 and 2024 (Source:

GoPlan; in Sustainable Suburbs Study, 1995)

Household structure and transformation have a significant impact on the city’s growth pattern; they are social variables that impact the spatial dynamics of the city. Over this projected period of population change (1991-2024) with respect to location, the established suburbs that already occupy large parcels of land are the only places that will be showing a declining population. Meanwhile, new suburbs that will demand more land appropriation will be accommodating about 98.7 percent of the general population change. In effect, there are possibly wasted dwelling spaces in established suburbs that are not occupied, since some suburban houses lack the flexibility to accommodate a wider diversity of households. They are typically designed for single families and when children grow up and leave home, their rooms become obsolete and

1 According to the Calgary Economic Development’s (2014) projections this number will be exceeded, with an estimated 1,659,500 people in 2022 and 1,758,800 people in 2027. 59

those spaces end up not contributing to the city’s housing needs though they occupy significant land masses. Smith (2000; in Bunting and Filion, 2000) mentioned that even when it happens that parents also leave their houses for younger families, the natural turnover of population is still impacted to a certain degree. He argued that local demographics change because the average size of contemporary families is smaller than that of the baby-boom generations. Household size in

Calgary is projected to decline from 2.6 in 2001 to 2.4 in 2031; while in 2001, households consisting of families with children are expected to rise from 32 percent to 34 percent by 2016 and then decline steadily in the next two decades and beyond (Cooper, 2006). In the projections from table 3-1, only 40,000 Calgarians will prefer to live in and closer to core neighborhoods, which represent only 7.4 percent of the total population change. Meanwhile, the IBI Group’s

Recommended Scenario projected 50 percent growth in exiting areas and the other half in suburban areas to ensure a more sustainable growth (Plan It Calgary, 2009).

Beside the major goal of the Sustainable Suburbs Study to implement the Calgary

Transportation Plan, the other goals were to control the costs of growth, to better meet people’s needs, and to encourage more sustainable lifestyles. Cost control was more concerned with reducing massive infrastructural expenses that were suffered by the government in providing transportation networks, water and other utilities, schools and security facilities to emerging peripheral communities. People’s needs had to be met in terms of social needs, transportation, as well as recreational and cultural needs by planning in accordance with emerging trends and transitions in the social system. Encouraging a more sustainable lifestyle was an all-inclusive strategy to involve residents in their daily lives in the general course for sustainability by creating the awareness and educating people on the trajectories to achieving a sustainable future.

The major proposal of the study included an elaborate set of design guidelines that would yield a ‘complete community.’ A complete community would approximately occupy a minimum area of 2.6 sq. km and accommodate about 12,000 people. The community should be distinctly bounded as an individual urban village containing all the needs of the residents including schools, shopping centers, recreational spaces, a focal point for identity, a wide variety of residential choices, public and commercial facilities, and a diversity of job opportunities. Higher residential densities were to be located closer (within 400m or 5 minutes walk) to utilitarian destinations, major public spaces and transit points.

Considering the total area of the community, mobility would be possible through walking and cycling due to the good proximity factor which would foster a more sustainable lifestyle as envisaged. Communities could be socially and spatially closer to Aristotle’s ‘ideal-city’ concept without undermining social capital through spatial fragmentation. Moreover, transitions in household formation would survive in a complete community due to the provision of different housing/unit choices. The proposal reinforced the urban village concept by considerably reducing dependent relationships among the city’s communities since each would be a more resilient and self-sufficient entity on its own, hence demanding less energy from other communities to survive. Reducing energy expenditure through this strategy is one of the achievements that will go a long way to improve the ecological footprint of individual neighborhoods. Creating a sustainable city depends largely on the performance of its components, and performance depends on the resultant reactions of residents to the generated urban morphology. Thus, planning communities to direct the lifestyle of residents could lead to a significant paradigm change that will influence people to change their choices to more sustainable ones.

The study however proposed a minimum residential density of 17.3 uph (or 7 upa) across a community, though individual neighborhoods within the community may have varying densities. In order to make good use of land, the minimum density proposed by the study is comparatively lower and will not reflect an efficient utilization of land. Notwithstanding the relatively lower density recommended, which may have been proposed to respond to the contemporary issues at the time of the study almost two decades ago, the ultimate lessons from the study is that population growth is inevitable and growth necessarily has to eat up fringe land.

However, a better way to sustainably allow growth is to increase densities and drastically reduce the homogeneity of new suburban communities so that they can contain population growth for a longer period of time before more land is appropriated beyond them.

The Municipal Development Plan (MDP, 2009) is another work that built upon the contents of the GoPlan and The Calgary Plan (1998) with a sustainable development pattern as the ultimate goal. Along with the Calgary Transportation Plan (CTP), the MDP sets a 60-year planning strategy that proposes a more sustainable urban form and how to achieve it by incorporating good mobility networking with land use. It is also augmented with a 30-year plan for managing growth along with a shorter-term 10-year economic-oriented plan that all aim at collectively ensuring a better urban form for Calgary at a reasonable fiscal expenditure. The

MDP generally sets major goals and proposes several key directions for achieving each goal. The goals of the MDP include:

1. Build a globally competitive city that supports a vibrant, diverse and adaptable local

economy, maintains a sustainable municipal financial system and does not compromise

the quality of life for current and future Calgarians.

2. Direct future growth of the city in a way that fosters a more compact efficient use of land,

creates complete communities, allows for greater mobility choices and enhances vitality

and character in local neighborhoods.

3. Create great communities by maintaining quality living and working environments,

improving housing diversity and choice, enhancing community character and

distinctiveness and providing vibrant public places.

4. Make Calgary a livable, attractive, memorable and functional city by recognizing its

unique setting and dynamic urban character and creating a legacy of quality public and

private developments for future generations.

5. Develop an integrated, multi-modal transportation system that supports land use, provides

increased mobility choices for citizens, promotes vibrant, connected communities,

protects the natural environment and supports a prosperous and competitive economy.

6. Conserve, protect and restore the natural environment.

Though the goals of the MDP consider growth in a broader city-wide context, they considerably capture ideas from the proposals of the Sustainable Suburbs Study and also advocate a compact and more inclusive urban form for Calgary but the big difference is the fifty-fifty split of growth between existing and suburban areas recommended by the MDP. With policies and strategies clearly laid out, the MDP concludes with a strategic framework for growth and change to facilitate the implementation of the proposed policies in practice. The framework is designed to ensure that policy, strategy and resources for growth are rightly aligned to facilitate the supply of planned and serviced lands and also achieve the goals of the Calgary Metropolitan Plan (CMP), the Municipal Development Plan (MDP) and the Calgary Transportation Plan (CTP). The framework draws together all the stakeholders including the provincial government into a

network that will ensure a fiscally and spatially feasible development defining when and where growth should occur in Calgary.

3.3 Response to growth strategies

It is essential in the scope of sustainability to assess the growth of Calgary in the past two decades whether it has achieved the objectives of the Sustainable Suburbs Study and the other documents that were developed before and after it. Figure 3-5 shows the Municipal Development

Plan Typologies with the boundaries of Calgary’s developed area and the city’s limits. It is used along with the Developed Areas Growth and Change 2010 (2010) and the Suburban Residential

Growth 2012-2016 (2012) to assess the growth and projected growth of Calgary years after the

City Council approved the Sustainable Suburbs Study (1995).

The developed area covers a total land mass of 42,420 hectares representing 37 percent of the total city land area and accommodating 79 percent of the city’s population (City of Calgary,

2010a). From 1990 to 2000, much of the outer areas beyond the present developed area would have been part of the developing area (communities that were not fully developed), for example

McKenzie Lake, Somerset and Arbour Lake. Hence, the current developed area only became fully established in the early 2000s. Most of these areas have followed the tradition of low- density development. For instance, new communities within the Symons Valley’s Approved

Community Plan (ACP) including Nolan Hill, Sage Hill, Evanston and Kincora have all been developed according to the traditional low-density pattern and have a relatively lower degree of heterogeneity which makes the car a necessity.

Figure 3-5 Municipal Development Plan Typologies (Source: Adapted from Developed

Areas Growth and Change, 2010)

Figure 3-6 Google image of Evanston in the North sector of Calgary within the Symons

Valley Approved Community Plan

With the addition of 24 new communities, suburban housing has captured more people than the developed area and has significantly increased outward growth in Calgary. Between

2007 and 2011, new areas in Calgary absorbed a little more than 100 percent of population rise gaining additional population from net migration, natural increase and from the population lost by the established areas (City of Calgary, 2012a). Within this same period, 61 percent (40,527) of the total new housing units added to Calgary’s stock were single and semi-detached units while 39 percent of the units were found in row and apartment buildings.

From 2012-2016, the Suburban Residential Growth 2012-2016 estimated that 1,610 hectares of land will be required to provide 40,100 new single and multi-units at 24.7 uph (that is, 1,810 hectares at 22.2 uph or 2,010 hectares at 19.8 uph). As of April 2011, an estimated

3,985 residential hectares were available for residential and related uses for a 12 to 14 year period. Based on these projections and the data provided on land availability for the next 5 years, in the next 14 years, more than 4,500 residential hectares will be needed if the rate of land requirement is appreciably consistent. Meanwhile, the city has an estimated 3,985 hectares available based on the capacity of vacant registered lots and developer anticipated units from within approved land use applications, which gives a deficit of at least 515 hectares. It should be noted that this estimation is done with the highest density of 24.7 uph provided by the document, hence a fall in density will imply a bigger deficit. Moreover, this density has not been implemented in any new suburban development within Calgary.

Through the Standard Development Agreement (SDA) developed by the City involving the Urban Development Institute (UDI) of Calgary in annual negotiations, details have been given on developers’ obligations to provide public infrastructure and fiscal contributions in the form of fees and levies in the development of new subdivisions (City of Calgary, 2012a).

However, these levies are not enough for development (Plan it Calgary, 2009) and developers have recently resisted the efforts of the local government in taking such levies.

Table 3-2 compares population changes in selected communities outside and within the developed area boundary of Calgary between 2007 and 2011 (5 years). The table shows that population in the communities within the developed area generally declined slightly. Though there is a general population decline within the developed area, some communities have rather shown significant increases. For instance Hillhurst and Haysboro have respectively experienced

13.4 percent and 11.7 percent increases within the 5 year period. Hillhurst is one of the oldest neighborhoods in Calgary, established in the first quarter of the twentieth century, but has shown a great deal of resilience to social and spatial changes. Its proximity to the downtown could be a

factor in its rising population since there are some residents who choose to live closer to the active parts of the city.

Community 2007 2011 Change (%)

Charleswood 3,468 3,357 -3.2

Christie Park 2,217 2,180 -1.7

Communities Chinatown 1,308 1,269 -3.0

within the Banff Trail 3,738 3,582 -4.2 developed area Mayland Heights 5,930 5,835 -1.6

Cambrian Heights 2,060 2,039 -1.0

Strathcona Park 7,234 7,039 -2.7

Evanston 3,269 5,889 +80.1

Rocky Ridge 6,605 7,266 +10.0

Communities Tuscany 16,119 18,838 +16.9

outside the Cranston 6,515 10,831 +66.2 developed area Chaparral 8,896 11,151 +25.3

Saddle Ridge 9,431 13,388 +42.0

Taradale 11,253 16,110 +43.2

CALGARY 1,019,942 1,090,936 +7

Table 3-2 Comparison of population change between communities within and outside the developed area (Source: Adapted from Calgary Community Profiles, The City of Calgary,

2012b)

Table 3-1 also projected that population will increase in the inner suburbs of the city by 6,000 people between 1991 and 2024 and Hillhurst falls within that territory. Haysboro has also shown a population rise though it is located about 10 km south of the downtown. However, the communities beyond the limits of the developed areas have mostly experienced a significant population rise and the trend has occurred in almost all the new communities built from the early

2000s. The trend implies that population change within the developed area has slightly declined but there is a significant increase in the newer communities, hence it can be concluded that

Calgary’s growing population is basically settling in newer suburban communities more than inner city areas.

Since the approval of the Sustainable Suburbs Study (1995), new communities emerging beyond the developed area of Calgary have mostly followed the conventional sprawling pattern.

Most of the high-density developments have occurred within the developed area, usually closer or inside the inner city and centre city boundaries. There has not been any prototype of the

‘complete community’ concept in emerging subdivisions and there seems to be an elusive conclusion that high-density developments are prohibited on green edges. The rate of low- density growth on the fringes will be difficult to decelerate if development continues to be single-unit-oriented, less contiguous, and homogenous.

Chapter Four: Methodology

4.1 Formulating the framework

The ecological economist, Herman Daly, defined growth as “an increase in size through material accretion” and development as “the realization of a fuller and greater potential” (Wackernagel and Rees, 1996; 33). The former is associated with undesirable extensiveness, as can be seen in the sprawling city, while the latter fosters an aggregative profit-making (not only in fiscal terms) by making good use of land that reflects in habitat conservation. Semantically, the two terms are even wider apart when they are considered in the scheme of ecological conservation since urban growth is promoted by exploiting natural capital at a more extensive rate and scale and hence undermining, to this far, the most important component of the urban environment. Urban development on the other hand does not imply that nature is totally not affected, rather, nature is exploited with a clearer sense of its importance to all the systems in the urban society; resultantly, there is a better maximization of available resources to afford as much services as possible for the urban society. A more counter-entropic environment is achieved as a result.

Also, making intergenerational solidarity a vital consideration in resource utilization and instilling a more cognisant approach in both authorities and the larger public regarding consumption patterns appear to accelerate urban development over growth. It is indicative that there is the need for replacing the natural capital appropriated to ensure the continuity of nature; but how can urban planning replace lost natural capital?

In the purview of this study, it is not the sameness of building façades that is of much concern about sprawling growth but rather the extensive appropriation of land in peripheral development coupled with the longer term ecological disincentives emerging from this

conventional style of growth. Presently, there is a higher demand for larger living spaces

(Crawford, 2002) and both internal and external spaciousness are somewhat synonymous with low-density housing. Averagely, bedrooms are much larger and kitchen spaces have enough room for moving around, living areas are also suitably spacious, and more importantly there is comparatively a better provision of storage spaces which in itself is a cause of other problems.

More garage spaces implies that households can have enough space for more than a car and more outdoor storage gives the opportunity for households to purchase other enormous goods like recreational vehicles. There is the affordance for households to acquire all they ‘want’ (which is different from ‘need’) and as a fact live far beyond their respective fair earthshares2.

One major catalyst facilitating this kind of lifestyle, as mentioned earlier, is economic wellness which enables households to purchase these houses (Bier, 2001) that have enough space for keeping consumer goods. Single-family houses occupying one-third to one acre consume this much land area to accommodate a very small number of people. All these considerations should be viewed along with the magnitude of this trend in urban areas and the number of green acres that are converted into human settlements annually. If ecological footprint is averagely increasing annually per capita, then peripheral low-density housing has a lot to do with footprint rise than even perceived.

Another detail in suburban housing is material consumption in the construction of buildings (Crawford, 2002). Roughly, comparing the total material requirements of a suburban house to that of an inner-city apartment with equivalent housing provisions will give an implication that more is needed for the former than the latter. Consider the building envelopes of

2 Fair Earthshare: The amount of ecologically productive land available per person on Earth. In 1996 the Earthshare per capita was 1.5 hectares (Wackernagel and Rees, 1996). 71

each house in a row of detached suburban houses and the approximately 900-1200 sq.ft gap between every two of them; also, the external walls of every two abutting buildings and the quantity of material that could be conserved if the two houses (or units in this case) were to be separated by just a single party wall. Perhaps, people are just interested in defining their distinctive property lines from others and the ownership of a defined private space seems to hold some quantum of pride among many urban residents. If a single wall can be used to shelter two households on one side, why do we create two separate walls for each and provide a narrow gap between families as a legal definition of “what is mine and what is yours?” If people ‘fear’ to live in the same building with other households, as some critics refute the vantage of multi-unit housing, then what is the vindication for the promotion of social integrity and a sense of community that sprawling communities argue to strongly foster? Aside the location of houses in relation to the core area of the city being a major consideration in sustainability analysis, building types is also a crucial factor that offers more detailed observations about sustainability in relation to the composition of houses.

In multi-unit buildings, another detail to notice is shared spaces; including shared corridors, stairways, and in some cases there are shared kitchens and common lounges. Before the second half of the nineteenth century, there were mostly smaller houses with shared bedrooms and public spaces, and the idea that each child could and should have a separate bedroom is only a few hundred years old (Nye, 2006). The fading away of shared spaces and a corresponding increasing space dimensions in residential design seems to be in correlation with the organized proliferation in enlightenment and technology. In shared spaces, apart from a relatively smaller space usefully serving more people, the energy requirements for lighting and heating/cooling these spaces are also shared among a number of people. Holden (2004)

acknowledged that there is an economy of scale in situations where footprint or ecological impact is shared among more people. Entropy, and hence ecological footprint are impacted positively when an ample number of people share common spaces which develops from the lower material requirement per person, and the reduced energy demand per capita for lighting and heating/cooling these shared spaces. Although, spaces in single-family houses could also be well called shared spaces, the number of people involved is not very encouraging to ensure a more efficient utilization of building materials and energy.

Both inner-city and suburban single-family houses are somewhat equivalent in their material requirements and sometimes land mass appropriations, but the two factors that set them apart are their connectivity and proximity to the core of the city. The core area mostly accommodates a considerable proportion of the city’s jobs; though there is presently job sprawl which, however, is not as influential in transforming urban morphology as does housing sprawl.

In spite of this, the central business district still holds a distinctive identity in its endowment with more jobs, entertainment facilities, cultural centers, shopping centers, recreational areas, public spaces, and in some circumstances a number of educational facilities are located within core area boundaries. Jobs may be spread all over the city, but due to the high density of the core area, its job concentration surpasses any other defined spatial territory of the city. As a result, every urban resident is somehow attached to the downtown in one way or another. Hence, the factors of connectivity and proximity are crucial in striking environmental impact differences between core area and suburban single-family houses.

In this view, connectivity has to do with the ease of accessing downtown destinations from a certain location in the city, as well as the variety of mobility choices at a person’s disposal for accessing these destinations. Proximity is about the closeness to core area

destinations even in the midst of diverse mobility choices. The connectedness of suburban houses to the core areas can tentatively be called a hard connectivity. In the suburbs, the most convenient mobility choice is the car since most new suburban communities are not connected by transit systems, and even established communities that are connected have a low ridership hence public transit is slower in such locations. Moreover, cycle lanes usually have a limit with reference to the city’s core and the only routes connecting suburbs to core areas, beyond a certain point, are highways and super-highways. Hence, apart from suburban communities having a lower proximity factor, they also show a low connectivity factor which directly contradicts the situation for houses located in inner neighborhoods. Between suburban and core area single- family houses, the difference in ecological merit is the transportation factor which appears to be more expedient for the latter, though their material and domestic energy requirements, and sometimes land mass demands are apparently similar.

Urban growth imposes intensive financial burdens on governments. When new communities emerge on the city’s edges, there is the need to connect all these areas to the core not only for transportation but also to public utilities and services (Carruthers and Ulfarsson,

2003). More land gets covered with asphalt, and more trenches and underground piping and ducting have to be done to convey water, gas and other utilities to the suburban population. All the underground networks created also make those particular stretches of land unusable for any productive ecological activities. Meanwhile, the intrinsic energy of the city’s core is being diffused to farther locations and hence depriving the city of its resilience and its capacities to self-regenerate. Subsequently, more energy is required to connect suburban residents back to the inner city for some very basic needs, as Al Gore rightly exaggerated that, “A gallon of gas can be used up just driving to get a gallon of milk.” It is a problem that erupts when sprawl is more

homogeneous with housing; and clearly there are usually fewer prospects of many utilitarian facilities appearing in suburban areas any time soon after these new communities are established.

The traditional post-Industrial Revolution/World War II city is basically characterized by its core area and its suburban areas, and these two spatial components of the city could possibly be contributing in varying degrees to the ecological footprint of the city as a whole. So far, the conjecture has mostly favored the core area as the most desirable location for urban development in envisioning a sustainable future that greatly prioritizes the natural environment. However, empirical evidences and an accumulation of subjective and case-based views cannot only be relied on as bases for theorizing that compact cities that hugely concentrate development within inner-city limits are more sustainable and will have a positive impact on ecological footprint.

Innes and Booher (2010) conceived theory as a way of viewing ideas informed by both social theory and grounded theorizing based on in-depth case analysis and comparison. At least to capture a greater part of reality and to buttress assertions with facts, there is the need to draw comprehensive comparisons between the ecological impacts of core neighborhoods and fringe neighborhoods. The comparison is only concentrating on ecological impacts because in the scope of this thesis, subjectively, the environmental component is presently more crucial than the other two imperatives of the urban environment since its existence defines the sustenance of the others.

Moreover, making concrete arguments on the ecological impacts of urban neighborhoods with respect to their geographical locations will provide a more factual perspective founded on realistic analysis, hence affording a higher degree of authenticity, and specifying the indicators that significantly generate the disparities in the footprint values of neighborhoods.

4.2 Review of methodologies

To conceptualize improvements made en route to sustainable development, it is essential to make assessments that bring the parameters of sustainability together to give an aggregative idea of how much progress has been made. Since the sustainable development concept by the

Brundtland Commission involves a composition of the economic, social, and ecological components of settlements, it would be more desirable to have an assessment tool that could unify all the components into a single metric. There have been attempts to develop a unified framework of indicators encompassing the economic, social and environmental aspects of reality. However, this integrative procedure of combining all the three urban components could be seen to be hiding more than they reveal about the progress in sustainability (Moffatt, 2000).

That is, a better revelation of reality can be achieved by treating each component separately and comparing individual thematic figures if there is the need, to relate the general progress in sustainability.

The ecological footprint methodology, like many environmental assessment tools, is ecological-oriented. Thus, it satisfies the ultimate intent of this research to measure the ecological impact of neighborhoods in relation to their geographical locations within the city which significantly defines the general form of the city. It has been argued that depending on the expansionists’ approach of making environmental assessments using monetary valuations does not really draw people’s attention to their ecological impacts on the planet (Wackernagel and

Rees, 1996; Moffatt, 2000). Moreover, strategies intended to make development more sustainable can show a better degree of feasibility if they are directed toward consumer behavior

(Moffatt, 2000); hence making environmental assessment results easily assimilative to the public will considerably contribute to the quest for sustainability. Monfreda et al (2004, 232) argued

that “market prices or other monetary valuation methods are unreliable means for informing about the long-term viability of ecosystems that provide goods and services such as topsoil creation, climatic stability, biodiversity, fuel, and fodder.” Nijkamp (2007; in Deakin et al, 2007) also found a fault in environmental assessments that rely on the fiscal equivalence of human impacts on ecological systems. In a way, value needs to have a more intimate connection to a natural phenomenon which affords the opportunity to see the value of the natural environment in a clearer representation without concealing reality with fiscal quantification. The ecological footprint gives an areal figure that makes it possible for a person or a group of people to easily know their direct impact on the environment measured in a spatial metric.

In the urban context, all consumption factors can be translated into the amount of biologically productive land and sea area required to provide them and assimilate all the wastes involved. Biologically productive land consists of areas such as cropland, forest, and fishing grounds; and excludes deserts, glaciers, and the open ocean (Kitzes and Wackernagel, 2009).

The urban dweller’s needs related to ecological footprint could be summarized as:

(a) food footprint (eating animal-based, processed, packaged, imported food, and water)

(b) goods and services footprint (general goods eg. clothing, and waste production)

(d) housing footprint (size of house, lot size, household size, and housing typology and

location), and

(e) mobility footprint (travel modes and distance travelled annually by each mode).

The last three factors can be highlighted as the ones creating the strongest link between the urban form and ecological footprint. Domestic energy demands, housing size and type as well as travel

distances resulting from land-use mix strategies all define the nature of the urban form. The first two factors also relate to the urban form though to a lesser degree. For instance, how far people travel from their homes to buy food and other goods, how far service trucks have to travel to collect domestic waste and perform other activities, and how long piping and ducting have to be done to convey water and gas to houses are all variables dictated by the urban form. Energy footprint concentrates on the quantity of energy required per capita, hence a type of housing with more shared spaces for a number of people reduces the footprint per capita; and also the source of energy such as hydroelectric, coal-powered or photovoltaic also has an impact. Housing footprint combines the size of the house in both lot size and building footprint area, material requirements, household size also emphasizes the square footage per capita, and the housing type has to do with density – that is, single-family or multi-unit housing. The location of the house can also be placed in this category; whether it is suburban or inner city-located since this factor will influence the mobility footprint of the occupants. Mobility footprint is connected to the choices of transportation of a person, that is, private car, public transit, biking, or walking as well as the distance one has to travel to access utilitarian destinations. These factors are also well connected to the urban form which defines the mode of transportation for people and the distances people have to travel depending on the spatial configuration of the city.

4.2.1 The methodology by Wackernagel and Rees (1996)

In Rees’s work (1992), he used the concepts of human carrying capacity and natural capital to argue that present assumptions in relation to urbanization and the sustainability of cities must be reviewed in the light of changes in the global economy. He also posited that orthodox economic analysis has abstracted from reality so much so that its capacity to detect, let alone afford policy recommendations on socially sensitive macro-environmental dimensions of global urbanization

is gravely compromised. The fundamental concept behind the Ecological Footprint is that for every material or energy consumption, a defined amount of land in one or more ecosystem categories is needed to provide the consumption-related resource flows and for waste assimilation. The ecosystem categories include croplands, forests, and water bodies for fishing.

Separately, two variables are calculated, the consumption category and the waste assimilation category. Consumption is classified into five major components: food, housing, transportation, consumer goods, and services.

The method first estimates the average annual consumption per capita for a particular category of consumption, for instance residential land area required for each person in a region can be estimated by dividing the gross residential built-up area occupied by the population by the total population. That is:

Residential land area per capita = Gross residential built-up area ÷ Total population

The same procedure is used for food, mobility and all the other consumption categories. All the values for each category are converted into the equivalent land or sea area required to provide them and summed up to represent the consumption-related footprint value of the analysis.

However, a category like the residential land area is maintained since it is already in an areal metric. Solid waste assimilation requirements can also be estimated through the same procedure and converted to the equivalent land area values. The two, consumption-related component and the waste-assimilation component are added to obtain the total ecological footprint per capita.

The method uses global and national data on the categories for the calculation; for example the total food consumption for a region, the total land mass occupied by residential buildings in the region, and the total carbon emissions by the region can all be obtained from established data. Data sources for this method include Food and Agricultural Organization of the

United Nations (FAO Yearbook), International Road Transportation Union (World

Transportation Data), World Resources Institute (World Resources), United Nations statistics, federal and local government publications with national statistics and several others. The work by Wackernagel and Rees estimated footprint values for nations and smaller settlements and subsequently set the pace for more work to be done in much smaller scales.

4.2.2 Work in Greater Oslo and Førde (Holden, 2004)

The major goal of Holden’s study was to obtain more empirical and theoretical knowledge about the relationship connecting physical urban planning and household consumption. The study based on two assumptions: (1) that the significant and increasing environmental damage due to private household consumption presents a major challenge in achieving sustainable development, and (2) that a large part of this consumption appears to be influenced by our physical living situation, that is, the way we design and locate our houses. In this view, the way we design our houses refers to housing type (single-unit or multi-unit, the choice of building materials, and space dimensions) and location deals with whether a house (or a residential unit) is suburban or situated within the inner city.

The project, spanning between 1997 and 2001, was based in two large scale Norwegian settlements, Greater Oslo with a population of approximately 1 million and Førde with a population around 12,000. Data on housing-related consumption were collected in the study areas from 537 households. Ecological footprint calculations were done to link consumption and sustainable development. At the end, the analysis indicated which overall living situation based on consumption afforded the least serious environmental impacts. The project consisted of an empirical part which was concerned with obtaining new knowledge on the connection between housing-related consumption and the indicators that affect its extent and composition. It also had

a theoretical part which sought to incorporate the results from the empirical part into a discussion in the view of other related knowledge.

The empirical part included three phases: surveys carried in the two study areas with questionnaires distributed by post, 24 case studies were done to derive a deeper insight into the variables that influence people’s consumer behavior in everyday situations using qualitative research interviews on households, and the ecological footprint calculations done to find which living situations had lower ecological impacts. The survey part set the platform for describing how consumption varied between housing types and locations. In order to ensure that an adequate number of respondents from different housing types and housing localities participated in the survey, the study used the stratified probability sampling method.

Using results from the household survey, the housing-related consumption patterns were converted into their ecological footprint equivalents. Data was collected as follows:

 consumer behavior: information was collected on a broad range of housing-related

consumption with regard to conditions (directly or indirectly) connected to the house.

Household consumption was also studied in connection with holidays and recreation

activities;

 characteristics of each house: such as housing type, size (sq.m floor area), construction

type (wood, brick, concrete) and the total size of the plot (sq.m);

 the physical and structural properties of the surroundings: data was collected on inter alia

services within walking distance (500–1000 m) of the house (shops, public offices,

commercial services, etc.), the distance to the nearest service of each type, as well as the

density of buildings in the immediate vicinity and local community;

 socioeconomic and socio-demographic background data on the individuals living in the

households;

 environmental attitudes: e.g., attitudes to general, environmental and political issues.

The data collected on households and individuals were converted to equivalent ecological footprint measures to determine how housing type, house location, and the size of settlements

(Greater Oslo and Førde) affect ecological footprint. Greater Oslo had an average household ecological footprint of 1.70 Gha/cap while Førde had an average of 1.56 Gha/cap. It is worth noting that the footprint values in this study only represent the housing-related consumption indicators and not the entire footprint components.

4.2.3 Work in Oakville, Ontario (Wilson et al, 2013)

The major proposal in Wilson et al’s work was that assessments of ecological impacts are more relevant and useful to planners and policymakers when done at a much smaller scale. The study calculated ecological footprint values for 249 neighborhoods in the Town of Oakville, Ontario.

Results ranged between 5.4 Gha/cap and 15.2 Gha/cap while the average for the entire town was

9.0 Gha/cap.

In the methodology, neighborhoods were assumed to coincide directly with Statistics

Canada’s designated dissemination areas (DAs). A dissemination area is a small, relatively stable geographic unit composed of one or more neighboring dissemination blocks accommodating a population of about 400 to 700 people. Ecological footprint values were calculated for six footprint components which included: (1) shelter, energy (2) shelter, non-energy (3) consumer goods and services (4) mobility (5) food, and (6) government. The study calculated footprint values separately for each component and the figures aggregated to obtain the total ecological footprint for each neighborhood.

The footprint associated with shelter (energy) referred to the direct domestic energy demand of households. This was calculated by converting household electricity consumption and natural gas consumption into the equivalent energy land area needed to sequester the associated greenhouse gas emissions. Information was derived from the Environment Canada greenhouse gas conversion factors (2010) and the Global Footprint Network (GFN) CO2e to energy land conversion factor. Data on neighborhood electricity and natural gas consumption were obtained from Oakville Hydro and Union Gas respectively by postal codes. The two parameters were compiled to obtain the total shelter (energy) footprint for each neighborhood.

The shelter (non-energy) component included the construction, maintenance, and other material inputs that support shelter. This component was estimated by comparing average total floor area occupied per person, for each neighborhood with Oakville’s average, and then scaling the non-energy part of the shelter footprint accordingly. The total residential floor area was assumed to be a proxy for the total resource inputs regarding shelter. Data on residential floor areas for neighborhoods were obtained from the Town of Oakville.

Footprint values for consumer goods and services for neighborhoods were estimated by adjusting the average goods and services footprint per capita in Oakville by difference in available income between the Oakville average and the respective neighborhoods. Available income is the total income at the disposal of households to spend on goods and services after deducting average expenditure on gross rent or mortgage payment, pension contributions, savings, insurance payments, charitable donations, and support payments such as child support, from the median income after tax. Statistics Canada (2006) provided data on rent and mortgage expenses at the DA level while data on pension contributions, savings, insurance payments, charitable donations and support payments were obtained from Survey of Household Spending

(Statistics Canada, 2010). However, some data were not available at the DA level so adjustments were made along with the respective Ontario-wide averages.

The mobility component was further categorized into personal transportation, air travel and other passenger travels. It was assumed that footprint associated with personal travel correlated with the neighborhood level commuting pattern. Commuting footprint values for neighborhoods were estimated by multiplying median commuting distance with respect to the mode of commuting (for example personal vehicle as driver or passenger, walking, public transit etc.) by the number of users for each mode. The total distance travelled for each mode is converted to its carbon emission equivalence using greenhouse coefficients by travel mode from

Environment Canada’s Greenhouse Gas Inventory (2010). Subsequently, the carbon dioxide equivalents were converted into energy land area using the Global Footprint Network energy footprint coefficient (2009). Figures were adjusted for the air travel component and the footprint associated with other passenger travels including rail and recreational vehicles using respective expenditure data from the Survey of Household Spending (Statistic Canada, 2010).

Since no food consumption statistics were available at the neighborhood level, the study estimated the neighborhood food footprint by adjusting the Oakville-wide average food footprint based on median household income in proportion to differences in income deciles proposed by

Mackenzie et al (2008). Mackenzie et al (2008) in a Canadian study found a low variability in food footprint among households regardless of the income category. For example they found that the food footprints of Canadian households in the highest decile was about 5 percent above the

Canadian average and the spread between those in the lowest decile and those in the highest decile was 8 percent.

The government component had no data at the neighborhood level. The study therefore used the community-wide value for all neighborhoods based on the assumption that all Oakville residents had equal access to municipal, provincial and federal government services and no neighborhood-specific adjustments were made. The Oakville government footprint was obtained from the Global Footprint Network Canadian Land Use Matrix (Global Footprint Network,

2010).

Finally, all the individual footprint components were accumulated for each neighborhood to find the local ecological footprint for each of the 249 dissemination areas. The methodology used data from a wide time range spanning between 2006 and 2010, and used several adjustment techniques to obtain certain footprint values. However, the study did an in-depth inquiry for each category before aggregating all values which gave a good degree of detail.

4.2.4 Ecological footprint by income and consumption (Kuzyk, 2011)

Following the assumption that income correlates very well with consumption and consumption as a measure of sustainability (Wackernagel and Rees, 1996), especially at the household level,

Kuzyk (2011) proposed a methodology for calculating footprint for small scale settlements using household income. The procedure works closely with the Canadian ecological footprint study by

Mackenzie et al (2008) that connected income levels in Canadian households to their respective footprint values. They used a more detailed approach by categorizing the households into income deciles and using adjustments with the Global Footprint Network standards to estimate the footprints for individual decile groups based on income. The study also estimated footprint values for each of the ecological footprint indicators as well as the values for all the land use components for each decile category.

Kuzyk’s work proposed an application of a local income adjustment ratio to trim the calculations to a more detailed and localized scope. A local income ratio (LIR) is calculated using data from Statistics Canada’s household income levels by comparing the median after-tax household income of the area under study to the national median after-tax income. Using national data, disposable household income and their associated footprint values are estimated and entered into a spreadsheet. Both the footprint values and the disposable incomes are adjusted to represent the local condition of the area under study by multiplying them by the LIR. A scatter diagram is plotted for the two adjusted parameters to derive the coefficient of determination (R2) and the equation of the line. The equation can be used to estimate the footprint value for any defined area within the study area with a known median after-tax household income.

After deriving an equation for the general footprint values, the same procedure is used to obtain the individual footprint values for all the ecological footprint components including food, goods, services, housing, and mobility. Along with data in Mackenzie et al (2008), the land use demands can also be estimated using the same procedure for energy land, cropland, pasture, forest land, built area, and fishing grounds. A detailed elaboration will be done on this methodology since it will be used for footprint estimations in this project.

4.3 Research methodology

4.3.1 Neighborhood categorization

Calgary contains 198 neighborhoods (referred to as communities by the City) spread over a land mass of about 825.29 sq.km. In this study, footprint values for 12 communities are estimated using income/consumption as a proxy, as postulated by Kuzyk (2011). The communities under study are categorized into two as per the approach of this thesis; that is, suburban and core area

communities. To spread the study evenly, 8 suburban communities are used along with 4 core area communities. While the quadrant division system of Calgary is used in the suburban communities’ selection, core area communities are selected within the territory bordered by the

Bow River on the north, 14th Street on the west, 17th Avenue on the south, and 7th Street on the east. It is assumed that this territory encompasses communities considered to be situated in the centre city as they all fall within an average distance of not more than 2.0 km from the downtown area. Suburban communities are selected along the edges of the city. Figure 4-1 shows the locations of selected communities on the map of Calgary.

In the selection procedure, 8 suburban communities were chosen using the quadrant division as a spatial guide. Calgary is divided into 4 quadrants, Northwest (NW), Northeast (NE),

Southwest (SW), and Southeast (SE). Two communities are selected from each quadrant based on income distribution. The suburban community with the highest median household income and the one with the lowest are selected from each quadrant. The suburban communities include:

Valley Ridge, Citadel, Aspen Woods, Bridlewood, Chapparal, Copperfield, Coral Springs, and

Monterey Park. Core area communities are also selected using income distribution; the two communities with the highest median household income and the two with the lowest. Core area communities include: Eau Claire, Downtown West End, Chinatown, and East Village. The approach for selection follows a rationale of spreading the study along the city’s edges to capture the impacts from different locations and to ensure that the analysis is not based on polarized results from only a few locations. Also, selection of more suburban communities than core area counterparts is because there are proportionally more edge communities than core area communities. Income also fits in as a reasonable parameter for selection because this study uses

household income as a proxy for footprint estimation and also the approach will provide an understanding of the ecological impacts from different income levels.

Figure 4-1 Locations of the selected communities

Figures 4-2 and 4-3 show Google images of the communities in relation to highways and other neighborhoods around them.

Figure 4-2 [Citadel (A), Valley Ridge (B), and Centre City (J)]

Figure 4-3 [Aspen Woods (C), Bridlewood (D), Chapparal (E), Copperfield (F), Monterey

Park (G), Coral Springs (H), and Centre City (J)]

Table 4-1 shows the selected communities with their respective median household incomes as estimated by Statistics Canada (2006), and approximated average network distances from the downtown using the Google Earth measurement tool. The intersection of 4th Street SW and 6th Avenue SW was used as a common reference point for estimating the distances.

Quadrant/ Community Median household Network Distance

territory income after tax, 2005 ($) from downtown

(km)

Northwest Valley Ridge 100,599 16.0

Citadel 71,862 19.0

Northeast Coral Springs 78,417 18.3

Monterey Park 62,896 15.6

Southwest Aspen Woods 108,724 10.5

Bridlewood 62,008 24.5

Southeast Chapparal 81,274 26.5

Copperfield 66,378 26.5

Eau Claire 63,331 0.7

Core area Downtown West End 45,977 1.4

Chinatown 17,279 1.0

East Village 17,227 1.8

Table 4-1 Median household incomes and distances of communities from downtown

4.3.2 Footprint estimation

In earlier discussions, income size has been noted to have a significant impact on household consumption pattern, and consumption as a determinant of sustainability. On an international scale, Cranston et al (2010) used other variables to test footprint generation and asserted that ecological footprint strongly relies on the per capita national income. In a scatter plot by Kuzyk

(2011) shown in figure 4-4, plotting median household spending against median household income after tax using figures for selected CMAs across Canada gave a strong coefficient of determination (R2) of 0.94. The national study by Mackenzie et al (2008) revealed that the richest

10% of Canadian households had a footprint of 12.4 Gha/cap which was 66% higher than the average footprint value for Canada. Meanwhile, the poorest 60% of households were leaving behind a footprint below the national average, and the richest 10% had a footprint value close to two-and-a-half times that of the poorest 10%.

From the various studies reviewed, it could be accepted that consumption is highly dependent on the disposable income households make annually, and consumption fits well to be a proxy for estimating environmental impact. Meanwhile, taking note of self-selection biases in household consumption is essential to realize some discrepancies that may arise even with this assumption being a strong backdrop for ecological footprint assessment. In order to minimize the shortcomings in footprint calculation using income, the portion of household income used in this work is the median household income after tax which excludes the income spent in the payment of taxes. The tax deduction from gross income is considered to have no impact on households’ footprint generation since its use does not require any of the land use categories proposed by

Wackernagel and Rees (1996) or better still taxes are used for primarily providing municipal services which is already captured in the footprint estimation.

Figure 4-4 Household consumption versus income (Source: Kuzyk, 2011)

For this study, the methodology by Kuzyk (2011) is used alongside data from Mackenzie et al (2008) to find neighborhood ecological footprint values. After finding the local income ratio

(LIR) for Calgary, disposable household incomes for all the ten income deciles in Mackenzie et al are adjusted with the LIR. The individual footprint values for each consumption component are also adjusted with the LIR and a scatter plot generated for each of the consumption components against the adjusted income. From the scatter plots, the coefficient of determination

(R2) for each component can be derived as well as the equations of the lines. For each neighborhood, the equations derived are used to estimate the footprint values for the four consumption components that have the strongest relationship to the urban form (housing, mobility, goods, and services) to compare the impacts of individual consumption components.

The estimation goes on to plot a scatter diagram using values of the adjusted disposable incomes and the corresponding footprints to estimate the total ecological footprint for each community.

Disposable Housing Mobility Goods Services Total footprint Income household footprint (b) footprint (c) footprint (e) footprint (f) (T) decile income (a) (Gha/cap) (Gha/cap) (Gha/cap) (Gha/cap) (Gha/cap) ($)

1 11,531 1.51 0.36 0.56 0.55 5.03

2 19,710 1.82 0.62 0.74 0.68 5.66

3 26,901 1.79 0.88 0.82 0.71 6.34

4 33,867 1.73 1.04 0.85 0.74 6.48

5 41,113 1.88 1.20 0.93 0.79 6.93

6 48,810 1.98 1.43 1.00 0.82 7.36

7 57,732 2.06 1.55 1.09 0.83 7.67

8 68,804 2.19 1.74 1.16 0.89 8.12

9 85,533 2.31 2.17 1.33 0.95 8.87

10 155,845 3.40 3.23 2.11 1.48 12.42

Table 4-2 Income deciles with associated footprints of consumption components [Source:

Adapted from Tables 1, A3, and A5 in Mackenzie et al (2008)]

In Table 4-2, income deciles are corresponded with their respective footprint values for housing, mobility, goods, and services. The lowest 10% have a median disposable income of

$11,531 while the highest 10% make $155,845 annually. With the figures in Table 4-2, the local income ratio (LIR) for Calgary is used to adjust the disposable incomes and the associated footprint values for the components to obtain the footprint for each income decile to create Table

4-3. The LIR is calculated by dividing median household income after tax for Calgary by that of

Canada using data from Statistics Canada (2006).

LIR for Calgary = 57,601/46,584 = 1.236

Adjusted Adjusted Adjusted Adjusted Adjusted Adjusted total Income disposable housing mobility goods services footprint (T1) decile household footprint (b1) footprint (c1) footprint (d1) footprint (e1) income (a1) T1 = T [LIR] a1 = a [LIR] b1 = b [LIR] c1 = c [LIR] d1 = d [LIR] e1 = e [LIR]

1 14,252.32 1.866 0.445 0.69 0.68 6.22

2 24,361.56 2.249 0.766 0.91 0.84 6.99

3 33,249.64 2.212 1.088 1.01 0.88 7.84

4 41,859.61 2.138 1.285 1.05 0.91 8.01

5 50,815.67 2.324 1.483 1.15 0.98 8.57

6 60,329.16 2.447 1.767 1.24 1.01 9.09

7 71,365.75 2.546 1.916 1.35 1.03 9.48

8 85,041.74 2.707 2.151 1.43 1.1 10.04

9 105,718.8 2.855 2.682 1.64 1.17 10.96

10 192,624.4 4.202 3.992 2.61 1.83 15.35

Table 4-3 Income deciles with adjusted disposable household incomes and adjusted footprints of consumption components

Adjusted houshold income vs adjusted housing footprint

4 y = 1e-5x + 1.7234 R² = 0.97

Adjusted housingAdjustedfootprint 1

0 0 40000 80000 120000 160000 200000

Adjusted disposable household income

Figure 4-5 Adjusted disposable household income versus adjusted housing footprint

Adjusted household income vs adjusted mobility footprint

y = 2e-5x + 0.4297 3 R² = 0.97

1 Adjusted mobility mobility Adjustedfootprint

0 0 40000 80000 120000 160000 200000 Adjusted disposable household income

Figure 4-6 Adjusted disposable household income versus adjusted mobility footprint

All the consumption components show fairly different impacts. With the figures in Table 4-3, the values for each consumption component are plotted against the adjusted disposable incomes with the incomes on the x-axis and the footprints on the y-axis. From the scatter plot, the R2 and the equation of the line are derived and used to estimate the footprints for the consumption components for each neighborhood. Shown in figures 4-5 and 4-6 are the scatter plot diagrams for the housing and mobility footprint components.

Plotting individual footprint against income showed a good correlation between consumption and environmental impact. All the four consumption components had a R2 not less than 0.9 which gives a good idea of how economic class influences a household’s consumption.

Adjusted disposable household income vs adjusted total footprint

14 y = 5e-5x + 5.912 12 R² = 0.98

Adjusted totalAdjustedfootprint 4

0 0 40000 80000 120000 160000 200000

Adjusted disposable household income

Figure 4-7 Adjusted disposable income versus adjusted total ecological footprint

In figure 4-7, the scatter plot shows adjusted disposable household income versus adjusted total ecological footprints which gave a R2 of 0.98. The equation y = 5e-5x + 5.912 is used to estimate

the ecological footprints for the 12 communities using the median after tax household incomes as the x value.

4.3.3 Limitations and suggestions

It should be noted that the ecological footprint methodology as a tool for environmental impact assessment is not a completely perfect procedure for revealing the consummate reality of human impacts. The strength of the methodology even declines more when other parameters are employed to modify the estimations and some can even simplify it to the extent that no authenticity is achieved at the end. Though the consumption/income analysis has been tested in several studies to correlate strongly with environmental impact, some few shortcomings could be generated in the course of adjusting values and using nationwide averages for local estimations.

The ultimate benefit of the method used in this research is the calculation of the LIR which is used to adjust the national figures from Mackenzie et al’s study to a more local domain. While the LIR affords the advantage of drawing assessments to a local level, the methodology treated income as if it is spent on a single consumption commodity since median household income after tax is directly used as a proxy to estimate a footprint value that encompasses disparate consumption components. The argument here is that, two neighborhoods with a median household income of $70,000 does not imply that the households in both cases spend equal proportions of this sum on the various consumption components.

It is obvious that people spend their money in different ways. For instance, when a person spends $5,000 on improving his professional skills and another spends the same amount on shipping goods from a distant country, the footprint produced from each spending will differ though the fiscal quantity involved in both ventures is the same. Also, spending $2,000 on food and spending the same amount on mobility will give different footprints. The indication is that,

assuming a common ecological footprint based on the fiscal quantity involved will conceal some realities of the spending as related to environmental impacts. Hence, the footprint of an individual/household depends highly on how income is distributed among the consumption components. However, this methodology is a generalization of neighborhoods’ footprints without much detail into how households within the neighborhoods spend their income.

To better use consumption as a proxy for estimating neighborhood footprint values, undertaking a slightly detailed and disaggregated assessment for each consumption component will improve the correlation between fiscal values and consumption, and subsequently ecological footprint. That is, using local neighborhood spending statistics to estimate the average local proportions of income spent by households on each consumption component; housing, mobility, food, goods, and services. The average amount spent on transportation by a neighborhood can be converted to its footprint equivalence using data from the GFN estimations (2007) and supported with the national figures in Mackenzie et al (2008). Individual footprints for components can then be aggregated to obtain a more detailed and localized impact value at the neighborhood level. This modification to the methodology will require a categorized breakdown of neighborhood median household income into the consumption components, which will reduce the limitations in generalizing income as if it is spent on a single commodity. For instance, a suburban neighborhood may have an average annual spending on mobility way higher than an inner city neighborhood though the two have a similar median household income.

Household size in Canada has a somewhat balanced trend, with a couple-and-children household usually having four persons or less. There are some households with both children and seniors, and some only made up of a couple. Meanwhile, single-person households are also gaining prominence in present Canadian household formation. Based on these differences in

household composition, consumption may vary drastically even when households make the same annual income. A Canadian study found that vehicle-kilometers-travelled (VKTs) rise when there is an increase in the number of cars owned, number of adults in the household, and household income (Tomalty, 2010). Hence, one vital parameter to draw into the footprint estimation based on consumption will be household size which Mackenzie et al (2008) noted in their proposal but did not clearly figure it into their estimations.

Another improvement that could yield a fairer understanding of the influence of distance and density on footprint is by sampling a reasonable number of households in designated postal codes starting from the core area, through the inner city areas, to the suburbs, and estimating detailed footprint values using the modified methodology recommended above. This could also take into account the housing types of the households involved in the study, whether they live in a single-family detached house or a multi-unit building. With both distance and housing characteristics considerably captured in the assessments, a stronger link between urban form and ecological footprint can be created to develop more realistic guidelines for proposing an urban structure that poses the mildest impacts to the natural environment.

In future academic and professional careers, I intend to delve more into the relationship between the urban form and ecological footprint. Using specific neighborhoods and a disaggregated approach in footprint assessment will provide more comprehensive results on environmental impact to guide policymaking and spatial planning in smaller settlement scales. I also have the intention of formulating a matrix using the indicators of the urban form that have a strong linkage to ecological footprint to guide impact assessment for existing urban neighborhoods and also be useful in projecting the probable outcomes of proposed developments. In the case of the latter, forecasted scenarios can be compared from the matrix to

determine the most eco-friendly urban configuration and subsequently make eco-oriented planning have a more factual backbone than to largely rely on luck.

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Chapter Five: Findings and analysis

The findings and analysis make use of the results found for the 12 communities in this study and supported with the theoretical ideas from the literature reviewed in earlier chapters. Meanwhile, some analyses will use the footprint findings for Calgary in general. The income value used for the footprint estimations is the median household income after tax which has a stronger correlation with household consumption and ecological footprint.

After adjusting the values with the LIR of Calgary, the research found that some consumption components had a higher impact and stronger linkages to income size than others.

They can be noted as the major indicators in footprint estimation. Figure 5-1 shows the comparison of individual consumption components in relation to disposable household income.

Adjusted household income vs adjusted individual footprint values

Housing 3 Mobility Goods

components Services 2

1 Adjusted footprintsAdjustedfor consumption

0 0 40000 80000 120000 160000 200000

Adjusted disposable household income

Figure 5-1 Comparison of impact components for the Calgary municipality

The scatter plot comparison shows a strong correlation of income to all the footprint components with all having R2 values between the 0.9 to 1 range. Housing and mobility are strong indicators

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in estimating footprint and they characterize the urban form to a large extent. However, the component for goods had the strongest coefficient of determination of 0.99 which could be argued to be so by virtue of the availability of storage space and extra income which determine the level of household goods expenditure3. These goods substantially include furniture, clothing, electronic devices, and recreational vehicles; meanwhile the goods component explicitly excludes the services component. In purchasing goods, people usually consider the availability of space for keeping these commodities and this depends largely on the indoor and outdoor space provisions in residential development. Obviously, households with lower incomes are less likely to buy excess consumer goods on the basis of inadequate space and storage provision as well as limited disposable income for buying extra commodities.

Housing types and mobility patterns are parameters that have been well investigated in ecological footprint analysis; however, goods consumption may stand to have a more consistent footprint impact with reference to income distribution. In multi-unit housing design, there is usually a good economy of space with limited provision of storage spaces which apparently hinders households from purchasing commodities that may not really be of need. In suburban

Calgary, as well as many other North American examples, houses are well endowed with space.

Uninhabited basements and two or three car garages give a clear idea of how much space suburban households have at their disposal and consumption is further enabled by the extra income for these households.

3 It should be noted that a graph with a high correlation between parameters does not explicitly mean it has a high predictive power. A line can have a high R2 but if its slope is not significantly different from zero then it does not afford a strong predictive power. For instance comparing lines for mobility and goods in figure 5-2 showed goods having a higher R2 but mobility with a relatively lower R2 rather had a greater slope. 102

Another important aspect of urban ecological footprint revealed in figure 5-1 is the significant increase in the mobility footprint as median household income rises. The line for the mobility component starts from a very low impact value and rises to the highest footprint among all the components. It underscores that the major impact component when related to income distribution will be the mobility component. Personal choice on mobility could be noted as a major factor in this trend but land use pattern and the convenience of private mobility are also influential in the accretion of the mobility footprint. This means that when people have the fiscal capacity and also access to extensive private mobility infrastructure, the tendency to expend high quantities of energy for private transportation rises, and at the same time the choice to spend their income on sustainable mobility is largely controlled by themselves.

In this study, the major indicators of ecological footprint have been found to be housing and mobility as many other footprint studies have testified, however, another parameter of relevance is the goods component which can be argued to be highly dependent on the provision of space in residential design and the availability of excess income for purchasing goods. Thus, the indication is that all the footprint indicators are to differing degrees reliant on the urban structure of cities, yet in terms of recognition and interventions to curtail rising footprint, the goods component has been less addressed in urban restructuring. Also, ecological footprint from spending patterns is significantly dependent on all the four consumption components that have a stronger connection to the urban form; housing, mobility, goods, and services which are shown in the variations among the income decile groups.

Were there any disparities in comparing the footprint values of suburban and core area communities? Aspen Woods (suburban) in the northwest was found to have the highest footprint of 11.35 Gha/cap while the lowest impact community was East Village (core) with a value of

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6.77 Gha/cap (40.4% lower) making a difference of 4.58 Gha/cap. Figure 5-2 shows the ecological footprint values with the first eight being the suburban communities and the last four, core area communities. The suburban communities had an average footprint of 9.86 Gha/cap while the core areas had 7.71 Gha/cap (21.8% lower) with the difference being 2.15 Gha/cap.

The highest impact core community (Eau Claire) had a footprint greater than the lowest impact suburban community (Bridlewood) by only 0.07 Gha/cap (0.77% higher).

In comparison, only two of the suburban communities (Bridlewood and Monterey Park) had lower footprints than the highest impact core community (Eau Claire) but the other six suburban communities all had footprints higher than Eau Claire in varying degrees. Contrary to common belief, not all core area neighborhoods had lower impacts as two core communities

(Eau Claire and Downtown West End) both had footprints higher than the Canadian national average of 7.5 Gha/cap. Chinatown and East Village had the lowest footprints of 6.78 Gha/cap and 6.77 Gha/cap respectively, 9.7% lower than the Canadian average, which reflected their respective median after-tax household incomes of $17,279 and $17,227.

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Figure 5-2 Ecological footprints for the 12 communities

In Wilson et al’s (2013) footprint estimations for neighborhoods in the Town of Oakville, though majority of the neighborhoods within the highest quintile of footprint were along the town’s edges, other highest quintile communities were spread across the town’s land area. This draws in the conjecture on the cause of the footprint size of such high-impact core area communities while it is widely assumed that the core area is denser and residents expend less energy for transportation. The compensation hypothesis states that people who have lower daily energy expenditure (for instance due to certain housing characteristics) make longer journeys in their leisure time to compensate for needs that are not fulfilled where they live (Holden, 2004).

By putting the ends together, it will be realized that when people make money, they spend it, as the spending-versus-disposable income comparison rightly showed. For instance, when a particular household makes a good income every year but spends less throughout the year because they live in a core area neighborhood, the hypothesis postulates that they still spend the 105

surplus of the income anyway, and this may be largely spent on leisure activities and international holiday travels. It will be essential, though, to note that these assumed air travels and leisure spending are very infrequent and their impacts on footprint will be lower when compared to the daily travels of suburban residents to access urban resources. The agreement is that there are differences between suburban and core communities’ footprints but they do not always have to do with the geographical location but the disposable household income as well.

These findings open new doors for viewing ecological footprint as a metric that is highly dependent on disposable income and also suggest that since high income is a booster of suburban growth, it has a significant impact on the city’s footprint rise as the results showed the six highest footprint communities to be suburban. The high-income core communities also had larger footprints which supported the compensation hypothesis but their environmental incentives in relation to suburban areas are clear. Results from a study in Barcelona rather found the net effect of density on the per capita footprint of housing and mobility to be negative but rather indicated that there is a maximum degree of density beyond which the impact becomes positive due to the increasing importance of compensatory behavior (Muniz et al, 2013). New spatial strategies for confronting rising footprint should consider the most significant urban form indicators in footprint assessment (mobility, housing, goods, and services) and how income can be integrated with these indicators as an instrument for reducing ecological degradation. One major constraint that hinders the implementation of sustainable models for urban development is fiscal constraint, but policies to redirect local incomes from a less-private consumption pattern to a more collective form can increase the feasibility of such strategies.

Will a transition of development to a more ‘urban infilling’ style be beneficial to the natural economy and possibly reduce the footprint of cities? This question is in response to the

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argument on distance being a determinant of ecological footprint in an era with a plethora of proposals that advocate an extensive densification of the urban core. Responding to the first part of the question, the essence of urban infilling to natural capital can be realized by empirically observing the amount of land that will be saved by reversing population growth toward urban core areas. That is more overt to look at, knowing that any increase in dwelling units in core areas will benefit the fringes by saving a piece of a natural habitat. Thus, the extent of using urban land as a renewable resource will determine the quantum of peripheral land appropriated for the provision of residential units annually to meet the city’s housing demands.

The second part of the question is answered by plotting the estimated distances from the urban core for the 12 communities against their respective footprint values. There is a weak correlation between the distance of communities from core areas and their footprints; hence, a household living within the boundaries of the urban core is not necessarily an incentive to the broader concept of ecological footprint. A mobility footprint research in the Barcelona

Metropolitan Region (BMR) discovered that between 1986 and 1996, rise in footprint per capita was greater in the central city than in the inner ring which was associated to the substantial increase in household income in the central city than the inner ring while the satellite cities showed almost 30% rise in mobility footprint than central Barcelona (Muniz and Galindo, 2005).

The coefficient of determination of the scatter plot for distance and footprint was 0.28 which implies a divergence between distance and ecological footprint. Muniz and Galindo (2005) argued that there is a paucity of inquiry into the impact of distance to urban transport axes on travel pattern, however most researches have largely concentrated on distance to the city center as a major determinant. Therefore, it is necessary to view ecological footprint resulting from travel patterns as a measure that embodies not only the distance of neighborhoods from the urban

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core areas but also the intricate indicator of accessibility to major transit axes in the city. Even with these findings, the argument can still revolve around the fact that the frequency of the assumed non-work travels by high-income urban core residents that consolidate the compensation hypothesis is lower when related to that of suburban residents frequently commuting in the reverse direction to the core.

In Holden’s (2004) study, he found that the size of a settlement is not very significant in assessing housing footprint but the footprint increases as the location of a house moves further away from the urban core. It is also clear that travel distances and the commensurate carbon footprint resulting from greenhouse gas emissions will establish a distinct line between suburban and core area communities in terms of footprint generation. Even so, the internal spatial characteristics of a neighborhood may be of more significance; this means that a core area neighborhood may still have high energy demands for its residents if its topology is essentially handicapped. A study by Tomalty (2010) supported the claim that the design attributes of new urbanist developments (NUDs) promote higher walking and biking modal shares compared to conventional suburban developments (CSDs) but not a self-selection bias among respondents living in NUDs. Therefore, distance may not be the only practical variable to confront in structuring a sustainable urban form but rather the internal topology of individual or a collection of related communities could be a stronger point of intervention. In a sense, the spatial arrangement and relationships among the several urban components within a neighborhood would be of much help in assessing and reconstructing the city from the community level.

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Distance 15 from core (km)

10 Ecological footprint (Gha/cap) 5

Figure 5-3 Comparing distance and ecological footprint for the 12 communities

20 Distance from core 15 (km)

Mobility 10 footprint (Gha/cap) 5

Figure 5-4 Comparing distance and mobility footprint for the 12 communities

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In figure 5-3, the footprint of Aspen Woods is 11.35 Gha/cap though it is approximately

10.5 km from the core area. There is a high inconsistency when Aspen Woods is compared to

Copperfield which has a footprint of 9.23 Gha/cap while being a good 26.5 km away from the urban core. Based on common assumptions, it would be expected that Aspen Woods would have a much lower footprint but not the inverse. This suggests that the high disposable income of

Aspen Woods ($108,724) may not be much expended on only work/school-related travels throughout the week, but rather on other travels that satisfy the needs of the residents but are not available within the confines of Aspen Woods. Figure 5-4 also shows a significant divergence between distance and the mobility footprints of the neighborhoods suggesting that ecological impact from transportation does not depend solely on the distance of communities to the core area but on other mobility factors like accessibility to major transit axes.

Nevertheless, generalizing this assertion will be a disservice to some households that make huge incomes annually but spend it on lower-impact houses and hybrid vehicles that are less ecologically detrimental but pricy to purchase and maintain. Environmental consciousness, though, is not very popular among urban residents and as a result few households will be expected to advertently live low-impact lifestyles while having the luxury of surplus income at their doorsteps. Self-selection biases would also make location depend on individual preferences on how daily mobility is conducted instead of the location inherently determining mobility which undermines the strength of compensatory behavior as a concrete factor in urban mobility patterns

(Muniz et al, 2013).

The study by Tomalty (2010) that compared four new urbanist developments (NUDs) to four conventional suburban developments (CSDs) located in both outer and inner suburbs in

Calgary, Montreal, and Markham revealed that 51 percent of NUD households reported walking

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or biking to utilitarian destinations several times a week as compared to 19 percent for CSD households. Additionally, the study compressed the built form into three synthetic variables including high dwelling density and jobs within 5 km, public open space and high walkability, and mixed land use with a denser street network. In relating these indicators to the findings, it will be noted that the spatial structure of communities is significant in programming an energy- efficient city than just concentrating on distance alone. In another sense, new urbanist developments, regardless of their location, possess qualities that make people expend less energy for mobility on a frequent basis and also demand less land appropriation due to densification.

In Calgary, the community-based case study for 8 neighborhoods by Natural Resources

Canada’s CanmetENERGY explored the connections between urban form, residents’ lifestyle patterns, and energy consumption. Britannia recorded an average annual GHG emission of 15.5 tonnes while Tuscany recorded an average of 11.2 tonnes for different housing types (Natural

Resources Canada, 2009). Comparing the two communities, Britannia is only about 5.3 km from the downtown area with a median household income of $137,402 (2005) as against Tuscany which is about 20 km from the core with a median household income of $88,895 (2005). These figures go ahead to intensify the divergence between distance and footprint generation while income size appears to be a prominent factor in footprint analysis. Distance, therefore, may be an overt indicator for assessing environmental impacts of neighborhoods, but income and urban resource distribution could be really salient variables in the procedures for creating a sustainable city. Apparently, an approach for integrating the urban form to control spending patterns can contribute to mitigation strategies that aim at reducing ecological footprint.

It is quite clear that shorter distances are imperative to both reduce the frequency of motor travel and also encourage active transportation within communities to improve ecological

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footprint. However, in the findings discussed, income keeps on surfacing as a major parameter in footprint generation, energy dependency, and carbon emission. In attempting to improve the urban form, certain lapses of planning that contribute to excessive urban growth and hence increasing travel distances can be improved by optimally incorporating household income as an integrator. Calgary’s municipal infrastructural base is hugely unbalanced in favor of private transportation with figures in Chapter Three showing a tremendous movement of populations to the low-density suburbs as well. The indication is that concurrently, travel distances are increasing among Calgary’s growing population while the infrastructure to enhance a more sustainable lifestyle is fundamentally denied in the city’s growth. In this view, concrete policies to decline the provision of infrastructure that facilitate private-oriented mobility and low-density suburban dwellings due to consumer demand need to be put in place. However, with ample improvements in housing and mobility footprints through mechanisms that exclude income, the compensation hypothesis will still make the general footprint impact insignificant. Hence, utilizing income will enhance the efforts made in the urban form to reduce impact and reduce consumption per capita, thereby affording a more holistic result in footprint moderation.

In this thesis, it has been observed that there are indicators that have greater influences in ecological footprint valuation which are the housing, mobility, goods, and services components with mobility and housing having the highest impacts. The housing and mobility components have attracted more attention in terms of formulating policies to confront urban footprint rise, but the goods component which also had a strong connection to income and also related to the configuration of residential designs has been partly ignored in such policies. Within the goods component, the car as a classified portion has gained ample recognition in research and policy but is widely an infrequent household purchase as compared to other consumer goods that are

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bought all year long. Suburban and core neighborhoods also showed differences in ecological footprint but that had weaker linkages with the distance between communities and the urban core. This afforded the idea that core areas could still have high-impact communities which has been attributed to the compensation hypothesis. Finally, due to the inconsistency between distance and ecological footprint, urban infilling may not be the single trajectory to building a sustainable city, though green edges will clearly benefit from such growth patterns. Practically, an urban form that possesses low-impact commodities, be it housing or other consumer goods, coupled with a restructuring of urban growth patterns in the form of densification and diversification of land uses will be stronger approaches to saving greenfields and improving ecological footprint in the midst of rising incomes and population.

The linkages among these findings in relation to the theoretical and historical foundations of extensive urban growth and its associated impacts on footprint, as well as involving the glorified remedy of ‘urban infilling’ as an ultimate panacea for a sustainable city should be emphasized. One principle in systems thinking is that “today’s problems come from yesterday’s solutions.” To quote Krieger (2006, 23), “…..ignoring the metropolitan periphery as if it were unworthy of a true urbanist, or merely limiting one’s efforts to urban ‘infill,’ may simply be a form of problem avoidance.” Ebenezer Howard’s Garden City concept proposed a more compact town system, but its isolation from the problem it was confronting (the ‘great city’s’ congestion) only contributed to the creation of another paradigm of urban nemesis. Though Krieger argued from a more urban design perspective, essentially, the denounced suburb cannot be completely overlooked in programming a sustainable urban form. Urban infilling alone would not stand as a resilient solution to sprawl but rather the very incremental outcomes of reducing footprint through urban form reformation may be found within both peripheral and core area interventions.

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The historical backdrop of the postwar city saw a close-to-absolute rejection of the urban core to create a new residential territory for the people, but by learning from the results of such solutions, a more ecologically-benign urban form can rise from positive outcomes that are engendered by both core and suburban areas.

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Chapter Six: Recommendations

6.1 Income and urban form

Although income and consumption are strong proxies for footprint estimation while household consumption seems to be a better point of intervention to reduce impact, it will certainly be a hard nut to crack at any policy level to influence ecological impact by controlling household spending patterns. Since people personally decide on how to spend their income based on their discretions on what is best, and to a considerable extent, the urban fabric of where they live, incorporating household income and urban form in restructuring the city can result in a more feasible strategy in influencing people to spend less on impact-oriented commodities. Also, pertaining the consumption part of footprint generation, stringent regulations can control the production and consumption of commodities through full cost accounting that substantially captures certain externalities (such as ecological cost) involved in manufacturing and consumption. Several measures to confront footprint escalation have been suggested by studies that usually have close relationship with the methodology used for the analysis as well as the scope of the study. Table 6-1 compares the methods and conclusions/recommendations in six footprint studies and assists in synthesizing the linkages between footprint estimation methods and their appropriate mitigation measures. This chapter continues with policy and spatial planning options intended to improve ecological footprint from the neighborhood level to reflect in the city-wide context.

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Author(s) and Scope Methodology Conclusion/Recommendation Location(s) Using a stratified probability Integration of decentralized concentration Holden (2004) Housing- sampling method to select 537 into a policy that encourages smaller related households, housing-related compact urban towns and cities consumption consumption assisted EF estimation throughout the country, or policy that based on housing-related consumer promotes decentralized concentration Greater Oslo behavior, house characteristics, within existing cities. and Førde relation of house to significant destinations, socio-economic and sociodemographic background data, and environmental attitude. Regional data was used to estimate Urban form characterization is based on Muniz and EF from EF of commuting consisting of the intensity of land used for residential Galindo (2005) intra- energy used in traction, vehicle purposes (population density) and metropolitan manufacturing, construction and accessibility (distance to the centre and commuting maintenance of transport distance to major transport axes). Also, Barcelona infrastructure, and land occupied by socio-economic factors at the household Metropolitan transport infrastructure. The EF was level and job ratio (ratio of jobs to Region (BMR) estimated for only trips made by car, residents) play an important role in EF bus, motorbike, bicycle, and train. generation, but the urban form has a much clearer impact on EF. Equations derived from scatter plots Income and consumption, though being Kuzyk (2011) Total EF, using EF and income data from sensitive phenomena at both the personal and secondary sources adjusted with a and political levels, their ability to individual local income ratio (LIR) were used to represent EF instils insight into the General EF for food, estimate the total EF and individual portion of ecological sustainability that proposal for housing, components’ EF at different they represent. In terms of local policy, Canadian mobility, settlement scales. there may be a minimal influence of settlements goods, and government and policy planners on (with emphasis services income to improve sustainability; though on Calgary) tax hikes on suburban homes and tax rebate on homes with better ecological cognisance may be possibilities. A disaggregated approach was used The surprising degree of variability Wilson et al Total EF to estimate EF for 249 neighborhoods (footprint range: 5.4 to 15.2) confirms (2013) by categorizing EF components into that policy makers are provided with finer shelter (energy), shelter (non-energy), data at the neighborhood level to develop consumer goods and services, more specified programs to reduce EF. mobility, food, and government. Also, reducing household consumption, Using data from a range of sources, a shifting spending patterns, and improving Oakville, ON direct estimation was done for the efficiency in household energy shelter component while a top-down consumption are essential, and can be calculation approach used to adjust achieved by redesigning urban form, Oakville’s EF for respective rethinking how our communities work, categories based on differences in and adjusting government policies to average per capita consumption levels afford opportunities for households to between each neighborhood and the lower their EF. Oakville average. ………continued on next page

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Thorpe (2013) Carbon Post-occupancy evaluation of carbon Money saved from the occupants’ ‘green’ footprint footprints by occupants compared to lifestyles was spent elsewhere supporting footprints of people living close to the compensation hypothesis. the BedZED housing project. Beddington Zero Energy Development (BedZED) in South London Muniz et al Housing and 440 personal surveys with The net effect of density on the per capita (2013) mobility questionnaires collecting data on ecological footprint of mobility and footprint to family profile, attitude towards housing is negative which questions the test the sustainability, housing total validity of the compensation compensation (characteristics), and mobility hypothesis. The results further indicated Barcelona hypothesis (choices). that there is a maximum level of density Metropolitan beyond which the impact becomes Region (BMR) positive due to the rising importance of the compensatory behavior. Table 6-1 Comparison of six ecological footprint studies

The problem of sprawl as seen earlier is like a tumor that is incessantly growing due to urbanization and powered by decisions of urban stakeholders who only concentrate on dwelling provision at the expense of the health of the city’s peripheries. Endowed with the power to promote the growth of this tumor, stakeholders including City Hall and planning professionals can equally heal the tumor without undermining the anthropocentric part of the equation. There is the need for a transition of housing types to more sustainable styles regardless of where the development is taking place, and a more equitable distribution of municipal resources to be accessible to a greater part of the population within shorter commuting distances. This idea suggests two basic inputs in peripheral development: that fringes are not only suitable for single- family housing, and that no absolute rule in planning has precisely agreed on tagging the urban fringe as a mandatory land-use zone designated as purely residential. The discussion below will throw more light on the basic indicators in urban morphology that can improve the

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impermeability of fringe land to excessive encroachment and reduce motor travel through interventions in policy and physical development starting from the core towards city edges.

In policymaking, economic mechanisms to control income levels can be tested to reduce disposable income since it seems to be a major indicator in footprint generation. For example, through taxing policies, high incomes can be cut down to generate more revenue for improving the urban form while reducing disposable income for consumption concurrently. It has been observed that intensifying and diversifying the city along its length will be a better way of equitably spreading urban resources to be easily accessible to people. On the other hand, raising such issues like income reduction could yield a bigger problem arising from political and social forces, particularly in cases where there are trust issues between populists and political powers.

Environmental conservation through income control and urban form transformation is a collective action, but its true advent can only be sparked by a local government ‘with teeth.’ If there is policy to increase density within urban core areas, there can equally be guidelines to raise the density of new developments on fringes to desirable levels.

A less-privatized urban setting will be the one with a higher dependency on public transit than the car coupled with a high patronage of multi-unit housing, but an efficient urban transit network significantly requires a reasonable scale of land mass to function desirably. Hence, boosting growth within settled inner-city areas and intensifying new suburbs will be practical tools for constructing a manageable city size for efficient transit to thrive. When average spending on mobility decreases through high transit ridership, there will be a significant control of the mobility footprint but then this kind of change demands a collective approach to mobility expenditure. Thus, household income merges in as the point of departure for sparking a less- private urban setting through revenue generation, and lower goods consumption will

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subsequently be an offshoot trade-off when households have lower surplus incomes to spend on goods.

In Calgary, based on current short term projections of growth rates applied against supply, it is estimated that the amount of land that is available presently or will be available for residential use will last between 32 to 40 years (Calgary Snapshots, 2013). Mahogany is a council-approved community in southeast Calgary with a proposed overall density of 10 upa: that is, 10 percent of the land area will have multi-unit buildings with a density of 56 upa while the remaining 90 percent will contain single-family houses with a density of 5.4 upa (ibid). The forecasts on Calgary’s land resources for residential development use densities in such approved communities like Mahogany and a larger ACP like the Symons Valley which will possibly have a lower overall density than Mahogany. Roughly, doubling suburban densities along the city’s edges will have a multiplier effect on the life span of Calgary’s residential land.

The City Council has the power of controlling these densities which are clearly inadequate for a municipality that is expected to run out of land in the next four decades by growing along the lines of traditional patterns. More essentially, in relation to income size, the mechanisms for reducing consumption can be rightly built into the urban structure. The urban form has the potency to control people’s choices of housing, mobility, and the commodities they choose to spend their incomes on. It is well acknowledged that technologies and concepts do not determine what people opt to accept into their cultural fabric as David Nye (2006) argued, but there is also the possibility of implementing a workable spatial concept that will direct people’s behavior. When suburbs are filled with more multi-unit housing than single-family units, the consumer demand will passively shift to a more desirable form.

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In Albuquerque, the mayor in 2006 approved green purchase policies to import only energy-efficient goods into the city in an attempt to shift demand toward more sustainable products (The World Bank, 2009). Such approaches to socioeconomic control are more reasonable and face weaker protests from populism than policies that lurk around more sensitive targets like income. Additionally, the idea of denser ‘bedroom communities’ needs more attention from authorities because even if the suburbs are made denser with only housing without any other auxiliary uses, the whole concept of environmental conservation will be flawed. With only residential-intensified suburbs, ecological footprint from motor travel may not be improved though there will be a more efficient use of greenfields. It will end up that people will still have to commute longer distances to work, school, shopping and leisure.

Job sprawl in many postwar cities is pulling employment opportunities further away from urban centres; yet, high residential density could be a catalyst for building sustainable suburbs when high-density edges are properly interlaced with job sprawl. When business enterprises have the assurance of becoming accessible to a wider population, they will surely invest anywhere regardless of the distance from the urban core. These assertions are popularizing the fact that fringe lands will always be appropriated but a paradigm shift to densification and diversification of greenfield developments will curb the need to consume large land masses for housing annually. Calgary, however, offers a unique situation with its dominant central business district

(Morrall et al, 1995) accommodating a relatively large number of enormous corporations which will inhibit the prospects of essentially decentralizing employment to other parts of the city.

In the pursuit for a sustainable city, the automobile has functioned really well as an apparent barrier to transforming the structure of mainstream cities. The construction of new highways as well as widening existing ones has extensively promoted the growth of the suburbia

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and it has been observed that the ‘smart’ addition of extra lanes to reduce traffic jams on congested highways has only resulted in a phenomenon termed induced traffic (Litman, 2014).

Sustainability has lately been expected to gracefully rise from the promotion of hybrid vehicles

(Hawken et al, 1999) that are more efficient and emit less greenhouse gases than their traditional counterparts; a measure intended to compensate the ecological stress imposed by massive infrastructure that aid private mobility.

The beginning of the century saw the birth of the hybrid car when the Toyota Prius and

Honda Insight were released into the market. Since that time, sales of hybrid vehicles rose from less than 12,000 in 2000 to about 350,000 seven years later with the Prius accounting for over 50 percent of the number (Li, 2010). Through federal income tax deductions and later federal income tax credits (after 2006), the United States government has been supporting the purchase of hybrid vehicles. However, federal income tax credit sizes begin to phase out for a given manufacturer at a point when over 60,000 eligible vehicles are sold out; Toyota and Honda ran out of credit in 2007 and 2008, respectively (ibid). Such federal incentives have a sturdier buttress to safeguarding sustainability policies for continuity while creating a platform for exploring new innovations for further intervention.

Will hybrid vehicles be a more robust bridge leading to the sustainable city? As Hawkens et al (1999) agreed, a proliferation of energy-efficient vehicles such as the hypercar will not eliminate some undesirable effects of the traditional automobile, since traffic congestion and its associated losses in time and energy wastage will still be in existence. Looking further is also the material consumption for manufacturing hybrid cars at a time when both population and the demand for private vehicles are on the rise. Efficiency can rather be raised by investing in energy-efficient high-occupancy vehicles (HOVs) that are designed to service a type of urban

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structure (macro-community) that will be discussed later in this chapter. Energy-efficient HOVs will generate lower impacts, and when denser communities increase public transit ridership and substantially eradicate the automobile from the highways, the sustainable city could be in its real nascence.

A study in Calgary found that housing choice and affordability in large Canadian cities can be improved if municipal transportation is developed from the right options (Keough, 2011).

The research estimated that within the decade of 1998 and 2007, private mobility expenditure in

Calgary was over ten times the money spent by the municipal government on transportation

($52,500,000,000 against $5,200,000,000). On different income scales, it further proved how a car-free lifestyle would be an inducement for urban residents in buying houses from a wider range of choices and within a variety of locations. This further suggests that while an extensive privatization of urban transportation increases footprint, it also goes a long way to impact the quality of life of urban residents that manifests in convenient house-buying. Somehow, there should be a reconsideration of how income is spent on urban mobility, whether it should remain largely private or otherwise, turn to a collective effort of channeling incomes into public investments that end up producing incremental benefits in both housing and transportation.

Transportation as an adhesive force between urban form and ecological footprint can be achieved in two compatible patterns: either by pulling populations back into core areas or allowing growth to happen in satellite-like communities. Both forms of development have in them merits and demerits but a logical synergy of the two approaches will provide a more equitable urban form along the city’s length. For instance, the first option will be refuted by critics from the perspective of congestion issues while the latter will raise questions on how residents will access other urban resources that are only available within core areas. In the latter

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case, satellite communities can take a new form in larger scales that are endowed with a variety of resources and possibly making travels to the core areas almost unnecessary; or rather, a novel approach of public investment could develop a more reliable public transit system while reducing investments in road construction. In this scenario, municipal taxes will be hugely invested in HOV modes of transportation while denying the extensive provision of infrastructure that foster more privatized modes of mobility. Subsequently, the emerging multiple transit corridors created will catalytically promote mixed-use developments along them to fill the voids left between core communities and the satellite communities arising on the edges.

In figure 6-1, a framework for managing income to foster a collective municipal approach to reduce ecological footprint by improving the urban form is shown. Through increased revenue generation, the municipal government can build its capital base to fund infrastructural developments that promote a more public-based city in terms of housing and mobility. Public investments should concentrate on improving the urban form in both the city’s core and suburban locations through adequate transit provision and mixed-use communities. Transformations should be made more evident in suburban developments where jobs, higher housing densities and an efficient transit network are incorporated. The government can support this type of urban development by giving incentives to developers who promote higher densities through land price reductions or fiscal support for development. While better consumer preferences will essentially be maximized, more developers will be induced to change their development styles with these incentives from the government. Moreover, increased revenue generation will also afford a trade- off by reducing private consumption pattern since the income households spend on consumer goods will be decreased. Eventually, both housing and mobility footprints will be improved through new local forms that are tactically enforced in the city regardless of the location of the

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communities, thus undermining the limitation of making only core neighborhoods sustainable.

Private consumption will also be reduced to improve the goods and services footprint.

Figure 6-1 Framework for utilizing income as an instrument for improving ecological footprint in a less-privatized urban setting

An essential part of the framework is public awareness. Sustainability in its complete form will require a stronger approach that involves the general public and takes ecological responsibility down to the consumer level. Hawkes (2001) stated that the achievement of sustainability can only be possible when it becomes an enthusiastically embraced part of culture.

With regard to urban development, cultural preferences have to shift toward the principles that guide sustainable patterns of growth while ignoring and gradually eroding conventional methods.

In order to generate more revenue from household incomes for implementing sustainable policies that incorporate new forms of urban housing and transportation, the need to extensively inform

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the public about the consequences of current lifestyles and the possible outcomes of remedial strategies cannot be underestimated. Drawing the public’s attention to these approaches of growth and consumption through information and education will complement the efforts made in physical planning to achieve sustainability.

The essence of public awareness is even more critical in this framework to inform people about how the high taxes they pay will be used to sustain the planet from the local level. At the household level particularly, private goods consumption is one aspect of sustainability people have to be aware of to advertently minimize the ecological footprint generated from private consumption. Public awareness requires both the non-formal (non-governmental organizations, agricultural extension agents) and the informal (mass media) education sectors to work hand in hand with the more organized formal education sector to educate people of all generations and all walks of life (Tilbury et al, 2002). Social media as an efficient information dissemination tool can also be involved in this process of making people aware of their impacts and how a transition to a collective expenditure on housing and mobility will be beneficial to nature and themselves.

Public awareness has to be well addressed to suppress the inhibitors that diffuse the potentials of sustainable physical strategies due to consumers’ selection biases and also fill the voids left between broader ecological footprint strategies and the intricacies at the consumer level.

A critical look at the disparities in household choice-making and the sporadic nature of urban transformation suggests that it will be as challenging to confront consumption behavior at the individual household level as it will be to implement a city-wide approach of improving ecological footprint. Hence, it appears that the neighborhood level stands to be the ultimate and more pragmatic scale for interventions to improve a city’s ecological footprint. As several works have suggested, some with realistic projects, high-density development affords a more rational

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use of land and poses less impacts on the natural environment since a relatively smaller land mass is appropriated to accommodate a considerable number of people (Gabor, 1997; Holden,

2004). However, some questions high-density development poses are: What is the optimal density for achieving a good neighborhood and reducing impact at the same time? How can density be well incorporated into the existing cultural orientation of the average Canadian regarding choices in housing type and location? Will suburban densification improve ecological resilience?

Three ideologies in urban development can be integrated to facilitate the production of a sustainable urban form that poses lower impacts on the green hinterland and be of benefit to the entire ecosystem without eroding the cultural preferences of people. Decentralized concentration

(Holden, 2004), hyperdensity (Chakrabarti, 2013), and the complete community concept

(Sustainable Suburbs Study, 1995) are integrated to form the conceptual framework for a more sustainable urban form. Decentralized concentration refutes the idea of converging populations in mega urban centres and proposes a more decentralized urban structure that has smaller compact towns around a large metropolis. Hyperdensity as defined by Chakrabarti (2013) is density sufficient to support subways. This strategy promotes the transit-oriented development style in which transit stops are intensified with housing and jobs, and well programmed with street-level commercial activities that activate the streetscape. The complete community encourages new suburban developments to be more diverse in land use pattern in a way that commuting distances to utilitarian destinations will be considerably reduced.

In considering the city as a whole, three indicators can be highlighted as the driving forces in ecological footprint assessment as related to the urban form; density, heterogeneity, and proximity and connectivity. The three indicators to varying degrees are all embedded in the

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urban development concepts noted above. Density and heterogeneity are prerequisites to achieving optimum proximity and connectivity. Housing and mobility are influential components in footprint determination when related to income distribution, and they can be rightly placed within the domains of density and heterogeneity. When there is a high diversity of land use in communities, travelling distances could be significantly affected for the better. The findings in this thesis showed clearly that suburban communities averagely had higher footprints than core communities hence the policy options to reduce footprint may be situated around integrative strategies that increase core area development and afford new forms of suburban development.

Decentralized concentration will only be beneficial if the densification is not homogenous like in sprawling communities but rather accompanied by other land uses. If new developments on edges are made denser (say 70 upa or more), the only ecological benefit will be the efficient use of land that will reduce the housing footprint of neighborhoods. The other part of ecological footprint that will rather be disadvantaged will be the mobility footprint resulting from the concentration of huge populations on peripheries that will have to commute longer for work, leisure, and school. In this view, the more efficient urban form will make it irrational for people to purposefully decide to live in one mixed-use community while working or schooling in another similar community. If there are dwellings close to people’s workplaces, the assumption is that a majority of them would prefer to live just close by because the urban form has been structured in a way that a maximum number of the city’s communities have diverse land uses.

Peng (1997) however asserted that at the macro level (municipal or metropolitan), jobs and housing may be well mixed to reduce travel distances but residents may still work in different locations from their local neighborhoods. Hence, suggesting that economic activity as a regional

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phenomenon results in people changing jobs more frequently than houses and this may potentially stand in the way of achieving such goals of distance reduction in urban development.

Figure 6-2 illustrates the possible outcomes of diversifying land use in communities. In urban mobility, the major destinations are the home, work, school, shop and leisure; hence spreading these resources along the length of a city will reduce travel distances. A research in

Calgary revealed the expectation that a majority of walking trips are within 5 kilometres

(Martinson, 2014); and it is clear that any reduction in this distance will increase the frequency of non-motor travels as well as increase the number of people that choose active transportation.

As the diagram shows, residents in both communities will have access to basic infrastructure which would reduce the travels between them while also within each community shorter distances will reduce the mobility footprint that is generated from excessive car travels.

Figure 6-2 Inter-community travels will be less if communities have high heterogeneity

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Realistically, it is nearly impossible to make every individual community self-sufficient in terms of urban resource provision due to fiscal constraints on municipal governments while there will also be a ruthless suppression of the zoning that people have become accustomed to. A further study of intensifying and diversifying urban form informed the generation of a concept that will be called macro-communities. The idea strongly complies with the urban village concept that embodies a set of principles advocating well designed, mixed use and sustainable urban areas, with a sense of place and strong community commitment (Aldous, 1992). This would be more efficient on urban peripheries in new developments though can be tested in existing communities through infilling and redevelopment. Plate I shows a detailed illustration of this concept while Plate II is a representation of improving density and heterogeneity along the length of the city from the core to the peripheries.

In Plate I, an urban form close to the multi-centered city will be achieved. The analysis showed distance to core areas not to be a major determinant of ecological footprint, thus the internal structure of neighborhoods could also have a strong impact and more to that, distant neighborhoods from the core area can be programmed to generate lower footprints. Based on transit-oriented development recommendations on the distances and residential densities that encourage more active transportation (600m, 800m, up to 1,000m), the idea of macro- communities was developed. The concept can be achieved through a strategic selection of related communities to form a rational transit network for routing the local bus system.

Macro-communities with diversified uses will encourage people to live, work and school within the boundaries of the community and most travels during working days will be within the macro-community. This proposal is close to the multi-centered city concept but from a spatial perspective will not happen by extensively spreading the city outward since it advocates urban

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infilling as well. It also fosters the reduction in capital costs for providing transportation infrastructure. The IBI Report (Plan It Calgary, 2009) that compared two growth scenarios found that the Recommended Direction would reduce transportation costs for the Dispersed Scenario by $600 million due to the inclusion of dedicated busways in existing parts of the city that will reduce LRT extensions. Similarly, the local bus route in the macro-community can cut down costs on LRT extensions for servicing all the city’s communities.

The findings revealed that suburban communities had an average footprint 21.8% more than the core area communities which suggest that the physical structure and composition of core communities have better incentives to the environment. Plate II combined residential density, job density, and recommended density levels of major transit stops to conceptualize an urban structure with a good spread of density. The estimations considered densities from the City of

Calgary’s recommendations and other densities elsewhere recommended for creating sustainable communities. It also used transit-oriented development guidelines for job densities and gross densities for transit points. Residential density in Plate II decreases outward from the centre of the city coherent with the existing trend of population spread but even the territory with the lowest density (new suburbs) have a sustainable size of density. Job density is rather higher in the new suburbs than the established suburbs to create an outer job territory that will encourage suburban residents to live closer to their workplaces and make peripheral communities more stable to reduce greenfield consumption.

The ideas in Plate II can be achieved through a city-wide planning policy that concentrates on prescribing the location of new developments depending on their use. At this point, urban land should be more renewable than it is now, and inner city area redevelopments should concentrate on mixing residential units with other uses which will reverse population

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growth from the peripheries to the core. Peripheral land consumption cannot be totally eliminated in urban growth, however, it can now occur with a more diversified and intensified approach. Practically, the fringes cannot attain the density of the core, but a rise in density will be of major benefit by changing housing preferences which will be a long-term strategy for instilling ecological consciousness at the consumer level.

In support of burgeoning propositions for a more rational pattern of urban development, decentralized concentration, hyperdensity, and the complete community concept are feasible principles for exploring a more sustainable urban form that will improve footprint. As shown in figure 6-3, mid-rise development on urban fringes will capture the energy that is wasted as entropy in conventional low-density housing while land area will be saved by providing more dwelling units on a much smaller land mass.

Figure 6-3 Comparing efficiency in the use of land and space on urban peripheries

Moreover, material consumption for housing per capita will be reduced as a result of using common walls to separate family units but not two separate walls and a 900-1200 sq.ft of land space. Residential design can delve more into innovative design approaches that do not

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undermine the cultural preferences of people but produce a good deal of density while made compatible with other land uses to improve heterogeneity and reduce the footprint from mobility.

In advocating for densification, a major point of focus is to prevent kitschy high-rise developments that mar the public realm and suppress cultural perceptions of a good urban environment as such interventions will only fall to the rage of NIMBYism. When cultural determinism conflicts modern sustainable urban development practices arising from parochial community activists who are extremely concerned with antiquity, the cracks between them strain the prospects of ecologically-driven ideas like densification and mixed-use developments. It is somehow clear that when policies significantly deviate from the choices of the people, they only end up as futilities. A reasonable attention to people’s preferences coupled with a local government that optimally uses its municipal power to control growth can transform urban fringes into a more efficient territory and eliminate the almost-accepted norm that the peripheries are fundamentally single-family residential zones.

6.2 The bigger picture

In the context of the urban form proposed, a forecasted scenario can be such that macro- communities will contain residents who spend less on transportation within the city and hence reduce the mobility footprint. It also appears that weakening the correlation between disposable income and the mobility and housing footprints will be a more coherent process of creating an equitable urban environment and this can be accomplished by affording moderately similar opportunities for all people regardless of their income classes. Indeed, the housing footprint component can be effectively improved within the city’s limits which will demand the efforts of municipal governments and the various stakeholders involved in urban growth. However, the

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mobility footprint comes in two categories: the local and global impacts. The local impact can be considerably curbed in a macro-community where there is less demand and reliance on private transportation due to the shorter distances provided by neighborhood diversification and the accompanying local bus (ideally hybrid buses) transit system. Thinking globally, the pertinent question arising here is about how people will spend the money thus saved spending less within their local environments.

Basing on the compensation hypothesis (Holden, 2004), the surplus income will still be spent in one way or another with the principal example usually being international holiday travels. This implies that at the end, the local ecological intervention of improving the urban form is neutralized by the carbon expenditure stemming from excessive international travels due to surplus household income. A typical example of this hypothesis is the Beddington Zero

Energy Development (BedZED), an energy-saving housing project in South London that included several sustainable state-of-the-art features in its construction. However, a post- occupancy evaluation by BioRegional found that the carbon footprint of the occupants was not significantly lower than that of the other residents in the vicinity. It was realized that the money occupants saved through their ‘green’ lifestyles was eventually spent elsewhere, usually for air travels (Thorpe, 2014). The platform is then set to argue that the totality of sustainability is found in a more holistic approach of confronting the problem drawing in multi-disciplinary strategies and innovations to act with synergy towards the common goal. This underscores that the proposed urban form and many other urban growth strategies for reducing ecological footprint will still remain deficient if the impacts beyond the single city’s domain are not well addressed.

It will however be impractical to approach this new outgrowth by making policy to limit people’s international travel annually since this will demand a consensus from all nations to

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enforce a common legislation within their geopolitical confines. In relation to a global contribution to sustainability, the International Air Transport Association’s (IATA) Sustainable

Aviation Fuels Strategy set a major ambition to achieve a 50 percent net emissions reduction by

2050 compared to emissions for 2005 (IATA, 2014). With such strategies, energy-efficient technologies will hugely reduce impact even if there are more air travels, but such issues arguably depend on serendipity and the political will of governments to redirect global evolution in such directions by taxing the people for the planet’s sake.

The bottom line of sustainability is that people have to commensurately pay for their impacts on the natural environment, but unfortunately in reality, sustainable commodities tend to cost more than their conventional high-impact counterparts. For instance hybrid cars cost more than traditional fossil fuel vehicles but by considering real externalized costs (including the ecological costs) of these two commodities, the latter should be pricier than the former. Efforts by governments to generate higher revenues from the people to promote sustainable strategies including housing and all modes of transportation from a broader context will project a better image of the quest for sustainability. Although such approaches will seem to be punitive on the people, growing toward such directions will produce a better quality of life and significantly efface the traces of doom marked on humanity and the planet by existing lifestyles.

In Calgary, housing contributes 17 percent of the ecological footprint, 18 percent from mobility, and 23 percent of energy is expended to manufacture, transport, and sell the goods and services Calgarians consume (City of Calgary, 2010b). Moreover, Calgarians owned 22 percent more vehicles than the national average of 597 vehicles per 1,000 population (City of Calgary,

2010b) which also goes on to confirm, in relation to income levels, that Calgary has a large median household income compared to other CMAs in Canada as shown in figure 4-4. The

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indication is that restructuring Calgary’s urban form to manage footprint by reducing annual spending in local transactions will increase households’ surplus income as discussed above.

Thus, by thinking global and acting local, Calgary as a city would be contributing its quota to the general quest for sustainability but the efforts of other cities and disciplines outside urban planning cannot be compromised if true sustainability is to gain a stronger foundation.

More so, the excess income remaining in the coffers of households has to also be managed to be spent on low-impact commodities and activities which will possibly be happening beyond the city’s limits. The City of Calgary’s Triple Bottom Line policy has a goal of addressing decision-making from the social, economic, environmental, and smart growth impacts in all city business. In this view, decisions will possibly encompass all these thematic areas so that spending patterns are directed towards the lines of ecological conservation while people are made to pay for using high-impact commodities, and socio-cultural liberties are minimally undermined. The spatial interventions on the neighborhood level, if well implemented, will be a springboard for commencing a transition that will breed a positive cumulative ecological effect from the community, municipal, regional, national, and to the international level. At the end, with complementary interventions at different locations and scales, the generic picture of sustainability would be clearly defined making footprint mitigation strategies more reliable and feasible irrespective of the scale at which they are implemented.

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Conclusion

In the human environment, adversity can erupt at any possible time and the ideal mechanism for surviving our everyday is rooted in three cumulative principles – how to improvise, adapt and overcome. Impoverishment is a difficult task for any living form to suddenly conform to standards that are way below what it has cognitively deemed as ‘natural’ and ‘traditional’ for a long period of time. In fact, psychological studies have shown that probable gains have to overweigh threatened losses threefold before people willingly transit from their current lifestyles to new ways of living (Wackernagel and Rees, 1996). The quest for sustainability is laden with consumer level intricacies that may build a strong barrier to the efforts of stakeholders in transforming the urban form.

As the study revealed, ecological footprint is highly influenced by housing, mobility, and goods consumption which are all parameters related to the urban form in different ways and also dependent on household disposable income. Moreover, in creating the sustainable city, restructuring the urban form on a city-wide scale may produce healthier results than only concentrating on intensifying core areas through urban infilling or conversely, intensifying suburbs through decentralized concentration. This study suggested policy and spatial planning options that support the idea that promoting compact urban core development is relevant in reducing ecological footprint but the suburbs can support the completeness of footprint mitigation by taking a new form of growth. Moreover, household income appeared to be significant in footprint generation, particularly in the case where the two high-income core communities had larger footprints than the Canadian average. Therefore, income should be structured into policies that attempt to improve ecological footprint through urban reformation.

While revenue generation from household income will augment the local government’s capital

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base to implement sustainable strategies, a reduction in surplus income for goods consumption will simultaneously curtail the footprint generated from private consumption. The revenue generated can be invested in a more inclusive urban growth pattern that undermines private housing and mobility but spreads the ecological impacts of urban activities across a wider range of population in a more sustainable core and supportive suburban communities.

It is somehow convincing that the contemporary suburb cannot always be treated as a condemned dystopia if municipal power is still invested in local government bodies that control spatial growth. Without a paradigm, a revolution can never be set on wheels. Future peripheral developments can create a new utopia to impact the undesirable consequences of sprawl on urban peripheries and save the natural habitats degraded every year in the name of dwelling provision. Since income affects footprint significantly, municipal policies should address issues of encouraging people to spend their income on lower impact commodities including housing, mobility, and even further to change goods consumption to low-impact products. But then, as the psychological study revealed about the expectations of people on new concepts and policies, there should be a convincing message that although the new urban form will not afford a threefold benefit of the old convenient motor-oriented city, it is a step toward saving green urban fringes and the biophysical environment in general for posterity.

Sadly, popularizing intergenerational altruism may sound absurd to the expansionist; nonetheless, some people living now could metaphorically be part of posterity when the future

Earth begins to react to the hefty strains it has been subjected to for centuries. Projections show that Calgary roughly has forty more years to consume all its residential land resources, so the bleak future is not very distant from Calgarians who are teenagers today. But hopefully, when people start to improvise in high-density mix-use communities, in a few decades there will be a

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close-to general adaptation to this new urban concept. Overcoming the fear of raising children in the midst of high populations and actively or passively giving up certain conveniences like the automobile in favor of public transit will ideally take the city closer to the shore of sustainability.

To a large extent, these desired transitions in people’s choice-making depend on how the urban morphology is programmed to be a principal determinant in daily urban life. In the formulation of the sustainable urban form, we have to create tolerances that will aid us to improvise, adapt and overcome – and even further, we have to gather more magic as we go.

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