LAND AND THE CITY LAND AND THE CITY Patterns and processes of urban change Philip Kivell London and New York For my family First published 1993 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2003. Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge a division of Routledge, Chapman and Hall Inc. 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 © 1993 Philip Kivell All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue reference for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 0-203-42023-3 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-72847-5 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0-415-08781-3 Hb 0-415-08782-1 Pb Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Kivell, Philip. Land and the city: patterns and processes of urban change/ Philip Kivell. p. cm.—(Geography and environment series) Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 0-415-08781-3 (HB).—ISBN 0-415-08782-1 (PB) 1. Land use, Urban. I. Title. II. Series. HD1391.K57 1993 333.77´13–dc20 92–19286 CIP CONTENTS List of figures vii List of tables viii Preface x Acknowledgements xiii Abbreviations xiv 1 INTRODUCTION 1 Land as urban morphology 3 Land as power 5 Land as the basis of the planning system 7 Land as environment 9 Urban change 9 2 URBAN LAND ALLOCATION 13 The particular nature of urban land 13 Market forces 14 Models of urban land use and land allocation 17 Public intervention 32 Conclusion 41 3 MEASURING AND MONITORING URBAN LAND 43 Introduction 43 Procedural matters 44 Urban land use statistics 46 Land ownership and values 55 Conclusion 56 Appendix A 57 4 PATTERNS AND CHANGES OF LAND USE 60 The overall extent of urban land 60 Composition of urban land 65 Land use change 70 Land availability 73 Changing urban land use: case studies 75 Causes, explanations and processes 87 v CONTENTS 5LAND OWNERSHIP 93 The importance of land ownership 94 Who owns land? 96 The private sector 97 The public sector 109 Conclusion 122 6 LAND POLICY 124 The development process 125 Reasons for land policy 129 Instruments and techniques of land policy 133 Land policy: case studies 139 Conclusion 147 7 VACANT AND DERELICT LAND 150 The extent and nature of urban wasteland 150 Causes of vacant and derelict land 159 Land restoration policies 170 Conclusion 175 8 SOME CONCLUSIONS 177 Current trends 178 Transitions 185 Future urban change 193 References 196 Index 213 vi FIGURES 2.1 Urban land uses and the bid-rent model 19 2.2 Variation in land and transport costs with distance from city centre 20 2.3 Diagrammatic models of urban structure 21 2.4 The internal structure of regional, community and neighbourhood level shopping centres 23 2.5 Structural model of Central Area Core Retail Facilities 24 2.6 Rent gradient in an unplanned shopping centre 26 2.7 Changes in house prices, Melbourne, 1970–8 27 2.8 Changes in house prices, Melbourne, 1978–81 29 2.9 The changing urban land value surface 31 3.1 Land use change statistics: classification structure 1986 47 4.1 Land redevelopment in part of London Docklands 77 4.2 Developed land around Heathrow Airport, 1950–84 81 4.3 Hanley: major central area changes, 1985–90 83 4.4 Industrial land in East Manchester, 1965 and 1988 84 5.1 Commercial land prices: Japan, 1970–90 105 5.2 Land ownership in the Malmo metropolitan region, 1982 115 5.3 The growth of municipal land ownership in Manchester, 1820–1980 118 5.4 Land owned by Manchester City Council in 1982 121 6.1 Relationship between principal participants in market governed land development 125 6.2 Land owner behaviour: constraints and the development process 126 7.1 Changes in the amount of derelict land and the proportion justifying reclamation, 1974–88, by type of dereliction 153 7.2 Flows into and out of dereliction, by type 156 7.3 Major industrial closures in East Manchester 166 7.4 Vacant sites in East Manchester 167 7.5 Land use in the Swansea Maritime Zone: a) 1974, b) 1988 169 8.1 Recent developments on the northern fringe of Bristol 192 vii TAB LE S 2.1 European development control plans 36 2.2 Philadelphia zoning ordinance: summary 38 3.1 Developed areas 1969, England and Wales 54 4.1 Proportion of land occupied by urban areas 61 4.2 Selected urban population densities 62 4.3 Proportion of urban land in selected countries 63 4.4 Metropolitan areas in the USA 63 4.5 United States urban and built up land cover, by state, 1982 64 4.6 Regional distribution of urban land in England and Wales (%) 65 4.7 Land use in twenty-two North American cities 66 4.8 Proportion of urban land in various uses, USA 66 4.9 Composition of the urban area in England and Wales, 1961 (%) 67 4.10 Composition of developed areas in England and Wales, 1969 (cities exceeding 200,000 population) 68 4.11 Summary of land use in sixteen large Japanese cities, 1975–80 70 4.12 Conversion of agricultural land to built up land, 1960–80 71 4.13 Changes in land use, England (recorded in 1988) 72 4.14 Expansion of urban areas for every 1% rise in population, 1961–71 89 5.1 Major urban land ownership groups: some basic characteristics 98 5.2 Net property investment by selected institutions 102 5.3 Selected large property companies in Britain 103 5.4 Japanese real estate holdings in New York region, 1987 106 5.5 Land ownership in Auckland and Melbourne central business streets 107 5.6 Land holdings controlled and administered by Manchester City Council committees, 1982 119 viii TAB LE S 5.7 Land located within the City of Manchester owned (freehold) by public bodies, 1982 120 6.1 Reasons for selling development land 129 7.1 The amount of derelict land and the proportion justifying reclamation, by type of dereliction, April 1988 152 7.2 Derelict land in major metropolitan areas, 1988 152 7.3 Vacant land on the public land register in major urban areas, 1987 154 7.4 Vacant land ownership, 1987 155 7.5 Urban development corporations and derelict land 172 7.6 Summary of mechanisms for land reclamation in England and Wales 173 8.1 Components of change in the city 193 ix PREFACE This book is an attempt to provide a broadly based, yet succinct statement of land use patterns and processes in urban areas. It has been written in the conviction that land has been, and will continue to be, of the greatest importance in helping us to understand both the spatial patterning and the functioning of modern settlements and societies. Urban areas, although changing profoundly, remain of overwhelming and obvious importance in western societies. Quantitatively, land given over to urban uses is of relatively minor importance, occupying typically no more than 5 to 10 per cent of the total in most of the developed nations. However, it has a significance far greater than this small share of total area implies, for in most of these countries between 75 and 90 per cent of the population live in urban locations. Most obviously land can be seen as a container of human communities and their economic activities, it provides the basic morphological elements, or the physical skeleton, of the city. In this it provides a strong reflection of the space needs of both past and present technologies and can be viewed as a record of evolving patterns of life. Urban land use is remarkably durable and in the central areas of many older cities morphological patterns which are many hundreds of years old may be retained. A second way in which urban land is important is as a source of power. Simple economic power may be gained from the ownership of valuable urban land, but a more subtle form of social power and status may also be exercised by individuals or groups who hold land in select locations. Third, land is the key to planning and control by government and other institutions. In this sense land use and ownership is inherently political. Finally, land is also intimately connected with environmental issues. Urban areas are vast consumers of resources and thus exert their influence over wide areas, but even viewed more narrowly it is clear that there is currently great concern over the quality of the urban environment in which such large numbers of people live. Urban areas have been the subject of large amounts of academic analysis, especially recently, but the important land use aspects have invariably been neglected. One of the main purposes of this book is to cover those neglected areas. x PREFACE Many processes affect the pattern and changing use of urban land, but two broad sets of processes and the interplay between them will be given particular attention. First, there are a number of market forces which include the competition between different urban activities, the changing locational needs of industry and commerce, the nature of the urban land value surface and changing transport technologies. These remain central to any understanding of urban land, and although they have been fairly fully documented elsewhere, the discussion of them, and their interplay with land issues has not been well integrated.