“The carbon devil,” says Griffith U urban researcher Jago Dodson, “is in the detail on urban density.”
When different building scales are compared on objective environmental criteria the evidence suggests that high-rise apartments are often the worst performers. The building scale with least overall ecological impact – measured in energy, CO₂ and water use per capita – tends to be medium-rise of between three to six storeys, with individual detached dwellings the next best. …
Sydney, Australia’s densest city with 20 persons per hectare, is only three quarters as dense as Los Angeles, which has 27 persons per hectare. Yet public transport commuting in Sydney is five times the Los Angeles rate. Transport policy, Mees argues convincingly, is at least as important as urban form in shaping a city’s transport outcomes.
Misleading headline maybe, but I’d welcome the counterargument. I think density *is* the inevitable natural trend of human habitation, absent any regulations keeping it low.
But agreed Paris’ four-to-six-stories are massively preferable to Towers-in-the-park with an elevator direct to the parking lot.
Sitting atop the Eiffel Tower, six storeys as far as the eye can see
– now think of the same for Vancouver – what a different place it would be.
Paris from the top of the Eiffel Tower:
Without going into building form (highrise vs midrise or low rise) the article misses a couple of points about density. The average density of a city is almost meaningless, it can be spun in so many ways. For some discussion on this see Jarett Walkers Human Transit blog where he has a post on ‘the perils of average density,’ and ‘can we make density make sense.’
Thanks Rico for pointing to that entry before I had the chance. The link is here: http://www.humantransit.org/2010/09/the-perils-of-average-density.html
People are often surprised to hear that Los Angeles has a higher average density than New York even. Of course, a higher portion of New York’s population live in extremely high density accommodation, and they also are more likely to work in similarly high density places, and that’s the New York everyone knows. But because it’s surrounded by a huge amount of extremely low density sprawl, the average density lowers significantly, even though it’s a relatively small proportion of the population who actually live in that sprawl, at least compared to Los Angeles. Nor does average density take into account the fact that large tracts of many cities are taken up by parkland. I suspect the issue with Sydney is similar.
That’s not to say that mid-rise, walk-up density isn’t preferable for many reasons, only that average density shouldn’t be used as the crutch.