In the recent years ‘sustainable development’ is a commonly used terminology among various sections of the society. Sustainable development is defined as, “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of the future generations to meet their own needs” (WCED 1987). Sustainable development is a pattern of resource-use that aims to meet human needs while preserving the environment so that these needs can be met not only in the present, but also for future generations. In order to sustain a development, the supply and quality of major consumables and inputs to our daily lives and economic production--such as air, water, energy, food, raw materials, land, and the natural environment need to be taken care of.
Sustainable development does not focus solely on environmental issues. The United Nations 2005 World Summit Outcome Document refers to the “interdependent and mutually reinforcing pillars” of sustainable development as economic development, social development, and environmental protection (United Nations 2005). According to Hasna (2007), sustainability is a process which tells of a development of all aspects of human life affecting sustenance. It means resolving the conflict between the various competing goals, and involves the simultaneous pursuit of economic prosperity, environmental qualityand social equity; hence it is a continually evolving process. The ‘journey’ (the process of achieving sustainability) is of course vitally important, but only as a means of getting to the destination (the desired future state). However, the ‘destination’ of sustainability is not a fixed place in the normal sense that we understand destination. Instead, it is a set of wishful characteristics of a future system.
2. Urban Growth and Sprawl
Urban growth is a spatial and demographic process and refers to the increased importance of towns and cities as a concentration of population within a particular economy and society. It occurs when the population distribution changes from being largely hamlet and village based to being predominantly town and city dwelling (Clark 1982). The spatial configuration and the dynamics of urban growth are important topics of analysis in the contemporary urban studies. Several studies have addressed these issues with or without the consideration of demographic process and urbanisation which have dealt with diverse range of themes (e.g., Acioly and Davidson 1996; Wang et al. 2003; Páez and Scott 2004; Zhu et al. 2006; Belkina 2007; Puliafito 2007; Yanos 2007; Martinuzzi et al. 2007; Hedblom and Soderstrom 2008; Zhang and Atkinson 2008; Geymen and Baz 2008).
The first and foremost reason of urban growth is increase in urban population. The rapid growth of urban areas is the result of two population growth factors: (1) natural increase in population, and (2) migration to urban areas. Natural population growth results from excess of births over deaths. Migration is defined as the long-term relocation of an individual, household or group to a new location outside the community of origin. In the recent time, the movement of people from rural to urban areas within the country (internal migration) is most significant. According to the United Nations report (UNFPA 2007), the number and proportion of urban dwellers will continue to rise quickly. Urban global population will grow to 4.9 billion by 2030. In comparison, the world’s rural population is expected to decrease by some 28 million between 2005 and 2030. At the global level, all future population growth will thus be in towns and cities; most of which will be in developing countries. The urban population of Africa and Asia is expected to be doubled between 2000 and 2030.
This huge growth in urban population will force in uncontrolled urban growth resulting in sprawl. Urban sprawl is the less compact outgrowth of a core urban area exceeding the population growth rate and having a refusal character or impact on sustainability of environment and human. The rapid growth of cities strains their capacity to provide services such as energy, education, health care, transportation, sanitation and physical security. Because governments have less revenue to spend on the basic upkeep of cities and the provision of services, cities will become areas of massive sprawl and serious environmental problems threatening the regional sustainability.
3. Infrastructure System
Infrastructure can be defined as the basic physical and organizational structures needed for the operation of a society or enterprise, or the services and facilities necessary for an economy to function, or a set of assets needed to supply certain desired services. Infrastructure has several layers of implementation, such as, physical infrastructure (e.g. transport, energy, water and telecommunications infrastructure), social infrastructure (e.g. the education and health systems), environmental infrastructure (e.g. national parks system), institutional infrastructure (e.g. the land use planning system), neighbourhood infrastructure (e.g., parcel system, lanes/by-lanes), community-level infrastructure (e.g., water, sewer, power), amongst others. All of these interact with other in complex relations and often these systems are overlapping. In the recent days, studies are essentially needed that address the nature and magnitude of the positive and negative links between infrastructure systems and the other various components of sustainable development: social, economic, and environmental.
4. Urban Sprawl, Infrastructure System and Sustainability
Urban sprawl has widely been discussed due to its ill effects on environment (Kirtland et al. 1994). However, sprawl is also blamed as being inordinately costly to its occupants and to society (Harvey and Clark 1965). It is blamed due to its economic cost (Buiton 1994). Cities have experienced an increase in demand for public services and for the maintenance and improvement of urban infrastructures (Barnes et al. 2001) such as fire-service stations, police stations, schools, hospitals, roads, water mains, and sewers in the countryside. Sprawl requires more infrastructures, since it takes more roads, pipes, cables and wires to service these low-density areas compared to more compact developments with the same number of households.
The Costs of Sprawl and other studies have shown that development of neighbourhood infrastructure becomes less costly on a per-unit basis as density rises (for a review of literature, see Priest et al. 1977; Frank 1989; Bhatta 2010). As long as developers are responsible for the full costs of neighbourhood infrastructure, and pass such costs on to homebuyers and other end-users of land, lower-density development patterns will meet the test of economic efficiency (at least with respect to infrastructure costs). Where inefficiency is more likely to arise is in the provision of community-level infrastructure. Inefficiency may also arise in the operation and maintenance of infrastructure, and in the provision of public services. Because people are more dispersed and no longer residing in centralized cities, the costs of community infrastructure and public services in suburban areas increases (Brueckner 2000; Heimlich and Anderson 2001; Pedersen et al. 1999; Wasserman 2000). These costs tend to be financed with local taxes or user fees that are generally independent of location, causing remote development to be subsidized. From the standpoint of community-level infrastructure, costs do not vary so much with residential density but with the degree of clustering and/or proximity to existing development (Stone 1973; RERC 1974; Downing and Gustely 1977; Peiser 1984).
The preceding discussion directs our attention towards the challenges for sustainable development of infrastructure systems. This should ground the basis of immediate initiatives from all of the layers of the society—politicians, planners & administrators, enforcements, NGOs, environmentalists, stakeholders, and the general citizens as well. Achieving the goals of sustainability is indeed real challenging.
References
Acioly, C.C. and Davidson, F. (1996). Density in Urban Development. Building Issues, 8(3): 3–25.
Banerjee, A. (2005). Population growth, environment and development: some issues in sustainability of the mega city of Kolkata (Calcutta), West Bengal. Proceedings of the National Seminar on Population Environment and Nexus, 21 October, Deonar, Mumbai: Population Environment Centre, IIPS. Available at:http://www.iipsenvis.nic.in/paper/fp_anuradhab.pdf Accessed 13.02.08.
Barnes, K.B., Morgan III, J.M., Roberge M.C. and Lowe, S. (2001). Sprawl development: Its patterns, consequences, and measurement. Towson University: A white paper. Available at:http://chesapeake.towson.edu/landscape/ ... _paper.pdf
Belkina, T.D. (2007). Diagnosing Urban Development by an Indicator System. Studies on Russian Economic Development, 18(2): 162–170.
Bhatta, B. (2010). Analysis of Urban Growth and Sprawl from Remote Sensing Data. Springer-Verlag, Heidelberg, pp. 170.
Brueckner, J.K. (2000). Urban sprawl: Diagnosis and remedies. International Regional Science Review, 23(2): 160–171.
Buiton, P.J. (1994). A Vision for Equitable Land Use Allocation, Land Use Policy, 12(1): 63–68.
Clark, D. (1982). Urban Geography: An Introductory Guide. Taylor & Francis.
Downing, P.B. and Gustely R.D. (1977). The Public Service Costs of Alternative Development Patterns: A Review of the Evidence. In P.B. Downing (ed.), Local Service Pricing Policies and Their Effect on Urban Spatial Structure, Vancouver, B.C: University of British Columbia Press.
Frank, J.E. (1989). The Costs of Alternative Development Patterns: A Review of the Literature. Washington D.C.: Urban Land Institute.
Geymen, A. and Baz, I. (2008). Monitoring urban growth and detecting land-cover changes on the Istanbul metropolitan area. Environmental Monitoring Assessment, 136: 449–459.
Harvey, R.O., and Clark, W.A.V. (1965). The nature and economics of urban sprawl. Land Economics, 41(1): 1–9.
Hasna, A.M. (2007). Dimensions of sustainability. Journal of Engineering for Sustainable Development: Energy, Environment, and Health, 2(1): 47–57.
Hedblom, M. and Soderstrom, B. (2008). Woodlands across Swedish urban gradients: Status, structure and management implications. Landscape and Urban Planning, 84: 62–73.
Heimlich, R.E. and Anderson, W.D. (2001, June). Development at the urban fringe and beyond: Impacts on agriculture and rural land. ERS Agricultural Economic Report No. 803, pp. 88.
Kirtland, D., Gaydos, L., Clarke, K., DeCola, L., Acevedo, W. and Bell, C. (1994). An analysis of human-induced land transformations in the San Francisco Bay/Sacramento area. World Resources Review, 6(2): 206–217.
Martinuzzi, S., Gould, W.A. and Gonzalez, O.M.R. (2007). Land development, land use, and urban sprawl in Puerto Rico integrating remote sensing and population census data. Landscape and Urban Planning, 79: 288–297.
Páez, A. and Scott, D.M. (2004). Spatial statistics for urban analysis: A review of techniques with examples. GeoJournal, 61: 53–67.
Pedersen, D., Smith, V. E. and Adler, J. (1999, July 19). Sprawling, sprawling ……. Newsweek, 23– 27.
Peiser, R.B. (1984). Does It Pay to Plan Suburban Growth? Journal of the American Planning Association, 50(4): 419–433.
Priest, D. et al. (1977). Large-Scale Development: Benefits, Constraints, and State and Local Policy Incentives. Washington D.C.: Urban Land Institute, pp. 37–45.
Puliafito, J.L. (2007). A transport model for the evolution of urban systems. Applied Mathematical Modelling, 31: 2391–2411.
RERC (Real Estate Research Corporation) (1974). The Costs of Sprawl, Detailed Cost Analysis. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office.
Stone, P.A. (1973). The Structure, Size, and Costs of Urban Settlements. London: Cambridge University Press.
UNFPA (United Nations Population Fund) (2007). Peering into the dawn of an urban millennium, State of world population 2007: Unleashing the potential of urban growth. Available at:www.unfpa.org/swp/2007/english/introduction.html
United Nations (2005). World Summit Outcome Document, World Health Organization.
Wang, W., Zhu, L., Wang, R. and Shi, Y. (2003). Analysis on the spatial distribution variation characteristic of urban heat environmental quality and its mechanism – A case study of Hangzhou City. Chinese Geographical Science, 13(1): 39–47.
Wasserman, M. (2000). Confronting urban sprawl. Regional Review of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, 9–16.
WCED (World Commission on Environment and Development) (1987). Our Common Future. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Yanos, P.T. (2007). Beyond “Landscapes of Despair”: The need for new research on the urban environment, sprawl, and the community integration of persons with severe mental illness. Health & Place, 13: 672–676.
Zhang, P. and Atkinson, P.M. (2008). Modelling the effect of urbanization on the transmission of an infectious disease. Mathematical Biosciences, 211: 166–185.
Zhu, M., Xu, J., Jiang, N., Li, J. and Fan, Y. (2006). Impacts of road corridors on urban landscape pattern: a gradient analysis with changing grain size in Shanghai, China. Landscape Ecology, 21: 723–734.
Sustainable development does not focus solely on environmental issues. The United Nations 2005 World Summit Outcome Document refers to the “interdependent and mutually reinforcing pillars” of sustainable development as economic development, social development, and environmental protection (United Nations 2005). According to Hasna (2007), sustainability is a process which tells of a development of all aspects of human life affecting sustenance. It means resolving the conflict between the various competing goals, and involves the simultaneous pursuit of economic prosperity, environmental qualityand social equity; hence it is a continually evolving process. The ‘journey’ (the process of achieving sustainability) is of course vitally important, but only as a means of getting to the destination (the desired future state). However, the ‘destination’ of sustainability is not a fixed place in the normal sense that we understand destination. Instead, it is a set of wishful characteristics of a future system.
2. Urban Growth and Sprawl
Urban growth is a spatial and demographic process and refers to the increased importance of towns and cities as a concentration of population within a particular economy and society. It occurs when the population distribution changes from being largely hamlet and village based to being predominantly town and city dwelling (Clark 1982). The spatial configuration and the dynamics of urban growth are important topics of analysis in the contemporary urban studies. Several studies have addressed these issues with or without the consideration of demographic process and urbanisation which have dealt with diverse range of themes (e.g., Acioly and Davidson 1996; Wang et al. 2003; Páez and Scott 2004; Zhu et al. 2006; Belkina 2007; Puliafito 2007; Yanos 2007; Martinuzzi et al. 2007; Hedblom and Soderstrom 2008; Zhang and Atkinson 2008; Geymen and Baz 2008).
The first and foremost reason of urban growth is increase in urban population. The rapid growth of urban areas is the result of two population growth factors: (1) natural increase in population, and (2) migration to urban areas. Natural population growth results from excess of births over deaths. Migration is defined as the long-term relocation of an individual, household or group to a new location outside the community of origin. In the recent time, the movement of people from rural to urban areas within the country (internal migration) is most significant. According to the United Nations report (UNFPA 2007), the number and proportion of urban dwellers will continue to rise quickly. Urban global population will grow to 4.9 billion by 2030. In comparison, the world’s rural population is expected to decrease by some 28 million between 2005 and 2030. At the global level, all future population growth will thus be in towns and cities; most of which will be in developing countries. The urban population of Africa and Asia is expected to be doubled between 2000 and 2030.
This huge growth in urban population will force in uncontrolled urban growth resulting in sprawl. Urban sprawl is the less compact outgrowth of a core urban area exceeding the population growth rate and having a refusal character or impact on sustainability of environment and human. The rapid growth of cities strains their capacity to provide services such as energy, education, health care, transportation, sanitation and physical security. Because governments have less revenue to spend on the basic upkeep of cities and the provision of services, cities will become areas of massive sprawl and serious environmental problems threatening the regional sustainability.
3. Infrastructure System
Infrastructure can be defined as the basic physical and organizational structures needed for the operation of a society or enterprise, or the services and facilities necessary for an economy to function, or a set of assets needed to supply certain desired services. Infrastructure has several layers of implementation, such as, physical infrastructure (e.g. transport, energy, water and telecommunications infrastructure), social infrastructure (e.g. the education and health systems), environmental infrastructure (e.g. national parks system), institutional infrastructure (e.g. the land use planning system), neighbourhood infrastructure (e.g., parcel system, lanes/by-lanes), community-level infrastructure (e.g., water, sewer, power), amongst others. All of these interact with other in complex relations and often these systems are overlapping. In the recent days, studies are essentially needed that address the nature and magnitude of the positive and negative links between infrastructure systems and the other various components of sustainable development: social, economic, and environmental.
4. Urban Sprawl, Infrastructure System and Sustainability
Urban sprawl has widely been discussed due to its ill effects on environment (Kirtland et al. 1994). However, sprawl is also blamed as being inordinately costly to its occupants and to society (Harvey and Clark 1965). It is blamed due to its economic cost (Buiton 1994). Cities have experienced an increase in demand for public services and for the maintenance and improvement of urban infrastructures (Barnes et al. 2001) such as fire-service stations, police stations, schools, hospitals, roads, water mains, and sewers in the countryside. Sprawl requires more infrastructures, since it takes more roads, pipes, cables and wires to service these low-density areas compared to more compact developments with the same number of households.
The Costs of Sprawl and other studies have shown that development of neighbourhood infrastructure becomes less costly on a per-unit basis as density rises (for a review of literature, see Priest et al. 1977; Frank 1989; Bhatta 2010). As long as developers are responsible for the full costs of neighbourhood infrastructure, and pass such costs on to homebuyers and other end-users of land, lower-density development patterns will meet the test of economic efficiency (at least with respect to infrastructure costs). Where inefficiency is more likely to arise is in the provision of community-level infrastructure. Inefficiency may also arise in the operation and maintenance of infrastructure, and in the provision of public services. Because people are more dispersed and no longer residing in centralized cities, the costs of community infrastructure and public services in suburban areas increases (Brueckner 2000; Heimlich and Anderson 2001; Pedersen et al. 1999; Wasserman 2000). These costs tend to be financed with local taxes or user fees that are generally independent of location, causing remote development to be subsidized. From the standpoint of community-level infrastructure, costs do not vary so much with residential density but with the degree of clustering and/or proximity to existing development (Stone 1973; RERC 1974; Downing and Gustely 1977; Peiser 1984).
The preceding discussion directs our attention towards the challenges for sustainable development of infrastructure systems. This should ground the basis of immediate initiatives from all of the layers of the society—politicians, planners & administrators, enforcements, NGOs, environmentalists, stakeholders, and the general citizens as well. Achieving the goals of sustainability is indeed real challenging.
References
Acioly, C.C. and Davidson, F. (1996). Density in Urban Development. Building Issues, 8(3): 3–25.
Banerjee, A. (2005). Population growth, environment and development: some issues in sustainability of the mega city of Kolkata (Calcutta), West Bengal. Proceedings of the National Seminar on Population Environment and Nexus, 21 October, Deonar, Mumbai: Population Environment Centre, IIPS. Available at:http://www.iipsenvis.nic.in/paper/fp_anuradhab.pdf Accessed 13.02.08.
Barnes, K.B., Morgan III, J.M., Roberge M.C. and Lowe, S. (2001). Sprawl development: Its patterns, consequences, and measurement. Towson University: A white paper. Available at:http://chesapeake.towson.edu/landscape/ ... _paper.pdf
Belkina, T.D. (2007). Diagnosing Urban Development by an Indicator System. Studies on Russian Economic Development, 18(2): 162–170.
Bhatta, B. (2010). Analysis of Urban Growth and Sprawl from Remote Sensing Data. Springer-Verlag, Heidelberg, pp. 170.
Brueckner, J.K. (2000). Urban sprawl: Diagnosis and remedies. International Regional Science Review, 23(2): 160–171.
Buiton, P.J. (1994). A Vision for Equitable Land Use Allocation, Land Use Policy, 12(1): 63–68.
Clark, D. (1982). Urban Geography: An Introductory Guide. Taylor & Francis.
Downing, P.B. and Gustely R.D. (1977). The Public Service Costs of Alternative Development Patterns: A Review of the Evidence. In P.B. Downing (ed.), Local Service Pricing Policies and Their Effect on Urban Spatial Structure, Vancouver, B.C: University of British Columbia Press.
Frank, J.E. (1989). The Costs of Alternative Development Patterns: A Review of the Literature. Washington D.C.: Urban Land Institute.
Geymen, A. and Baz, I. (2008). Monitoring urban growth and detecting land-cover changes on the Istanbul metropolitan area. Environmental Monitoring Assessment, 136: 449–459.
Harvey, R.O., and Clark, W.A.V. (1965). The nature and economics of urban sprawl. Land Economics, 41(1): 1–9.
Hasna, A.M. (2007). Dimensions of sustainability. Journal of Engineering for Sustainable Development: Energy, Environment, and Health, 2(1): 47–57.
Hedblom, M. and Soderstrom, B. (2008). Woodlands across Swedish urban gradients: Status, structure and management implications. Landscape and Urban Planning, 84: 62–73.
Heimlich, R.E. and Anderson, W.D. (2001, June). Development at the urban fringe and beyond: Impacts on agriculture and rural land. ERS Agricultural Economic Report No. 803, pp. 88.
Kirtland, D., Gaydos, L., Clarke, K., DeCola, L., Acevedo, W. and Bell, C. (1994). An analysis of human-induced land transformations in the San Francisco Bay/Sacramento area. World Resources Review, 6(2): 206–217.
Martinuzzi, S., Gould, W.A. and Gonzalez, O.M.R. (2007). Land development, land use, and urban sprawl in Puerto Rico integrating remote sensing and population census data. Landscape and Urban Planning, 79: 288–297.
Páez, A. and Scott, D.M. (2004). Spatial statistics for urban analysis: A review of techniques with examples. GeoJournal, 61: 53–67.
Pedersen, D., Smith, V. E. and Adler, J. (1999, July 19). Sprawling, sprawling ……. Newsweek, 23– 27.
Peiser, R.B. (1984). Does It Pay to Plan Suburban Growth? Journal of the American Planning Association, 50(4): 419–433.
Priest, D. et al. (1977). Large-Scale Development: Benefits, Constraints, and State and Local Policy Incentives. Washington D.C.: Urban Land Institute, pp. 37–45.
Puliafito, J.L. (2007). A transport model for the evolution of urban systems. Applied Mathematical Modelling, 31: 2391–2411.
RERC (Real Estate Research Corporation) (1974). The Costs of Sprawl, Detailed Cost Analysis. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office.
Stone, P.A. (1973). The Structure, Size, and Costs of Urban Settlements. London: Cambridge University Press.
UNFPA (United Nations Population Fund) (2007). Peering into the dawn of an urban millennium, State of world population 2007: Unleashing the potential of urban growth. Available at:www.unfpa.org/swp/2007/english/introduction.html
United Nations (2005). World Summit Outcome Document, World Health Organization.
Wang, W., Zhu, L., Wang, R. and Shi, Y. (2003). Analysis on the spatial distribution variation characteristic of urban heat environmental quality and its mechanism – A case study of Hangzhou City. Chinese Geographical Science, 13(1): 39–47.
Wasserman, M. (2000). Confronting urban sprawl. Regional Review of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, 9–16.
WCED (World Commission on Environment and Development) (1987). Our Common Future. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Yanos, P.T. (2007). Beyond “Landscapes of Despair”: The need for new research on the urban environment, sprawl, and the community integration of persons with severe mental illness. Health & Place, 13: 672–676.
Zhang, P. and Atkinson, P.M. (2008). Modelling the effect of urbanization on the transmission of an infectious disease. Mathematical Biosciences, 211: 166–185.
Zhu, M., Xu, J., Jiang, N., Li, J. and Fan, Y. (2006). Impacts of road corridors on urban landscape pattern: a gradient analysis with changing grain size in Shanghai, China. Landscape Ecology, 21: 723–734.
No comments:
Post a Comment