Published May 24, 2019
Urban Growth Patterns and Environmental Performance - A Comparison of Late 20th Century American Suburban Patterns to Those of Late 19th Century Central European Urban Fabric
Presentation by James Dougherty at the 6th Annual Places and Technologies Conference, held at the University of Pécs, Hungary, May 2019.
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As towns and cities grow, the pattern chosen for new urban development has a profound impact on environmental footprint. The global proliferation of late 20th Century American suburban growth patterns has been implicated in disproportionately high levels of environmental degradation and an exaggerated effect upon issues affected by global energy consumption rates, such as climate change. In contrast, the compact and highly walkable growth patterns of late 19th Century Central European urban fabric, built just prior to the proliferation of the automobile, may provide a useful model for emulation to improve the environmental performance of future urban developments.
This is a presentation of an academic paper, containing a typological analysis comparing late 20th Century American suburban growth patterns to the growth patterns of late 19th Century Central European urban fabric, with accompanying analysis of each pattern regarding key environmental performance factors. The examples being studied are chosen for their clear representation of their respective settlement patterns and their similar range of building heights.
Tysons, Virginia, USA was planned and built in the late 20th Century and is an archetypal example of American auto-oriented suburban development. It exhibits the physical separation of land uses, sparsely-connected street network and automobile-dominant transportation bias typical of development regulated by suburban Euclidean Zoning.
Szeged, Hungary was rebuilt almost completely in the decade following a devastating flood in 1879 as a modern city of its time. It is therefore an unusually pure example of late 19th Century Central European pre-automobile urban development principles. It exhibits a fine-grained network of interconnected streets and compact blocks which are occupied by attached, street-oriented courtyard buildings containing a diverse mix of land uses.
The sample size used is a one square kilometer segment from each location. This is large enough to reduce the effect of any anomalies the examples may contain and is similar in dimension to the 5-minute Pedestrian Shed often used by planners to define the size of a typical walkable neighbourhood.
The comparative characteristics chosen for this analysis were selected from the LEED-ND rating system, which was developed by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC). According to the USGBC, the LEED for Neighborhood Development (LEED-ND) rating system was developed “to inspire and help create better, more sustainable, well-connected neighborhoods and looks beyond the scale of buildings to consider the environmental implications of the design of entire communities”.
Urban Growth Patterns and Environmental Performance
Теги
environmental performancegreen buildingLEED-NDsuburbanurbangreenhouse gasseswalkable neighborhoodDover-KohlTowncraftingurban patternconnectivitywalkableliveable citiesNew UrbanismAn Inconvenient Truthglobal warmingclimate changeClimate Change Planning UnitUN-HabitatUnited States Green Building Councilland usetransportationparkingcarbon footprinturban formTysons VirginiaSzeged Hungary