Stockholm Resilience Centre Research for Biosphere Stewardship and Innovation
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Stockholm Resilience Centre Research for Biosphere Stewardship and Innovation Master’s Thesis, 60 ECTS Social-ecological Resilience for Sustainable Development Master’s programme 2014/16, 120 ECTS Mapping neighbourhood typologies for social-ecological urbanism – A spatial experiential analysis of Stockholm Karl Samuelsson Mapping neighbourhood typologies for social-ecological urbanism – A spatial experiential analysis of Stockholm Karl Samuelsson Master’s thesis - Social-ecological resilience for sustainable development Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University Supervisor: Stephan Barthel Stockholm Resilience Centre Stockholm University Co-supervisors: Ann Legeby School of Architecture and the Built Environment Royal Institute of Technology Lars Marcus Department of Architecture Chalmers University of Technology Abstract. Studies on urban environments often display contradictory evidence regarding social and ecological outcomes, asserting conflicting development trajectories. In this thesis, affordance theory is applied with the aim of developing a method for relating high-precision mapping of urban structural characteristics to inhabitants’ experiences. I analyse neighbourhood scale trade-offs and synergies between residential populations (RP), working populations (WP) and the ecosystem service temperature regulation (TR) in Stockholm municipality. Neighbourhood typology is introduced as an empirical classification of neighbourhoods based on these structural characteristics. I further analyse experiential outcome in different typologies by applying inhabitant experience data (N = 1828) from an online public participatory geographic information system survey. Analyses reveal strong trade-off patterns between populations and TR capacity. No typologies feature a large RP, a large WP and high TR capacity. Positive experiences are more likely in neighbourhoods with high TR capacity and negative experiences are more likely in neighbourhoods with a large WP, while most neighbourhoods are equally well experienced despite differences in services. The thesis concludes that affordance theory provides methodological tools that when combined can close the gap between structural characteristics of the environment and experiential outcome, in turn leading to a better understanding of what constitutes social- ecological urbanism. KARL SAMUELSSON MASTER’S THESIS MAPPING NEIGHBOURHOODS FOR SOCIAL-ECOLOGICAL URBANISM 2 KARL SAMUELSSON MASTER’S THESIS MAPPING NEIGHBOURHOODS FOR SOCIAL-ECOLOGICAL URBANISM INTRODUCTION 4 Site 5 THEORY 7 The compact city paradox 7 The urban green area paradox 8 Linking people to the urban environment 9 METHODS 11 Space syntax 11 Public Participatory GIS 11 The neighbourhood and the place 11 Choosing variables 12 Study design 12 RESULTS 15 Relationships between services 15 Neighbourhood typologies 15 Inhabitants’ experiences of Stockholm 18 Experiences and individual services 18 Experiences and neighbourhood typologies 19 DISCUSSION 22 Implications for planning in Stockholm 24 Limitations 24 CONCLUSION 26 The case for affordance based analyses of urban environments 26 LITERATURE CITED 27 APPENDIX A – STUDY DESIGN 31 3 KARL SAMUELSSON MASTER’S THESIS MAPPING NEIGHBOURHOODS FOR SOCIAL-ECOLOGICAL URBANISM INTRODUCTION Increased awareness of cities’ impact on the biosphere, both locally (Alberti 2005; Tratalos et al. 2007; Soga et al. 2014) and globally (Grimm et al. 2008; Seto et al. 2011; Seto et al. 2012; Kennedy et al. 2015), as well as the quality of life for urban residents (van den Berg et al. 2007; Howley 2009; White et al. 2013; Alcock et al. 2014) presents a coupled challenge for urban planning: making cities more environmentally sustainable and more liveable. Also, urbanisation is projected to continue globally (United Nations 2014), requiring many cities to grow without compromising either environmental or social sustainability. Current urban planning promotes high densities that decrease car dependency (Newman 2006), enable sustainable modes of transportation (Jabareen 2006) and require less energy- spending on heating (VandeWeghe and Kennedy 2007). Meanwhile, others argue for urban green areas’ importance for stress restoration purposes (van den Berg et al. 2007) and ecosystem service (ES) supply (Haase et al. 2014). This creates two objectives for research and urban planning alike. Firstly, an environment that potentially can provide environmental and social sustainability simultaneously is one that affords access for inhabitants to large populations and ES supplying areas (both of which I refer to as services), requiring spatially precise analyses. Secondly, while inhabitants’ experiences of the city relate to certain places, urban planning is often concerned with the neighbourhood scale, requiring experientially precise analyses that connect the two scales (Kyttä et al. 2013). This empirical study aims to present an analysis of Stockholm municipality that fulfils these objectives by mapping three kinds of data; 1) population distribution, 2) data on one ES, temperature regulation (TR) and 3) geocoded experiences of inhabitants. It answers these questions: 1) What are the trade-offs and synergies between populations and TR supplying areas on the neighbourhood scale in Stockholm municipality? 2) Can neighbourhoods be grouped into a set of typologies on the basis of these neighbourhood-scale services? 3) How do inhabitants’ experiences of places differ in relation to these services and typologies, respectively? I hypothesise a general trade-off between populations and TR supplying areas on the neighbourhood scale, with some neighbourhoods deviating from the general pattern. I further 4 KARL SAMUELSSON MASTER’S THESIS MAPPING NEIGHBOURHOODS FOR SOCIAL-ECOLOGICAL URBANISM hypothesise that neighbourhoods featuring a service mix will harbour more positive experiences than those with one predominant service. Site Stockholm municipality, Sweden, is a suitable study site, due to the mix of urban, suburban and nature environments, spatially precise available data on homes, workplaces and some ES, and the challenge to, considering a prospected population increase (Svensson et al. 2014), “make development sustainable in the long term, from an economic, social and environmental perspective” (Stockholm City Planning Administration 2010:8). At the end of 2014, 911 989 people lived in Stockholm municipality. It is divided into nine boroughs with population densities ranging from 2925 inhabitants per km² (Skarpnäck) to 15 842 (Södermalm) (City of Stockholm 2015). Nature areas are often interspersed with built-up Figure 1. Map of Stockholm municipality. Land is white and water is grey. Important landscape features include the distinct division between inner city and suburbs, the Royal National City Park and Bromma airport. 5 KARL SAMUELSSON MASTER’S THESIS MAPPING NEIGHBOURHOODS FOR SOCIAL-ECOLOGICAL URBANISM areas, and large water bodies (grey in Figure 1) contribute to TR capacity. Important landscape features include the distinct division between inner city, southern and western suburbs, the Royal National City Park, and Bromma Airport (see Figure 1). 6 KARL SAMUELSSON MASTER’S THESIS MAPPING NEIGHBOURHOODS FOR SOCIAL-ECOLOGICAL URBANISM THEORY The compact city paradox Cities can be understood as emergent complex systems (Bettencourt and West 2010), or metaphorically as “organisms” (Batty 2012). This understanding has developed parallel to a critique of modernist top-down social engineering (Fainstein 2005). Jane Jacobs’ (1961) plea for a diverse cityscape regarding people and functions was seminal for this critique. Jacobs presented several criteria for achieving diversity but one, concentration of people, had a disproportionate impact on the urban planning paradigm of recent decades, the “compact city” (Neuman 2005). Empirical inquiries regarding compact cities’ environmental sustainability has given mixed results (Neuman 2005). For example, Kennedy et al. (2015) found that lower electricity consumption per capita in compact cities was largely attributable to smaller gross floor areas per capita in such cities. Evidence of social effects of population density is contradictory. Economic quantities such as information, innovation and wealth scale exponentially with city population (Bettencourt et al. 2007). However, while Bettencourt and West (2010) claim that city population growth induces denser settlements, a study involving 386 European cities found no such relationship (Fuller and Gaston 2009). Ample evidence exists of the beneficial effects of access to urban Figure 2. The compact city can be seen as a paradox as it is often argued to be sustainable due to e.g. transport reasons while on the other hand lack of access to green space has been linked to e.g. detrimental health outcomes. Pictures courtesy of Pix Spotting at Flickr (left) and Timo at Flickr (right). 7 KARL SAMUELSSON MASTER’S THESIS MAPPING NEIGHBOURHOODS FOR SOCIAL-ECOLOGICAL URBANISM green areas on health, both physical (Mitchell and Popham 2008; Sugiyama et al. 2008) and mental (Alcock et al. 2014), as well as psychological restoration (Kaplan 1995; van den Berg et al. 2007). Thus, outcomes of compact cities appear paradoxical from a sustainability viewpoint – they are often less energy intensive but can reduce residents’ quality of life. Contrarily, urban sprawl has been associated with increased social interaction (Brueckner and Largey 2008), and decreased physical activity (Ewing et al. 2003). Optimal centrality theory (Cicerchia