Sustainable planning concepts at the beginning of 21st century

 Although the process of growing of the cities can t be stopped the measures must be taken to minimize the energy consumption.  Architecture and town planning must become instruments for creating harmony between cities and natural environment.

 Interest in ecological problems is increasing and world scientists from different fields of knowledge are discussing about global world perspective.  Different proposals are given for the future town development. UN report Our Common Future proposed the conception of sustainable development and it became the main conceptual trend in modern town planning.

 Sustainability has the biggest potential in the urbanized territories where most part of consumption and pollution by world civilization is taking place. There are 4 main concepts of sustainable development and different combinations of these concepts. The best matching with sustainable development is the Compact City concept (Table 1).

SEVEN CRITERIA OF SUSTAINABLE URBAN FORM

1. COMPACTNESS
Compactness of the built environment is a widely acceptable strategy through which more sustainable urban forms might be achieved. Compactness also refers to urban contiguity (and connectivity), which suggests that future urban development should take place adjacent to existing urban structures For many planners and scholars, compactness is the crucial typology to be implemented to achieve sustainability.

2. Sustainable Transport
Transport is arguably the single biggest issue for environmental debates relating to urban form The form of our cities reflects, to a large extent, the transport technologies that were dominant at different stages of their development sustainable urban transportation system limits emissions and waste to within the areas ability to absorb; is powered by renewable energy sources, recycles its components, and minimizes the use of land; provides equitable access for people and their goods and helps achieve a healthy and desirable quality of life in each generation; and is financially affordable, operates at maximum efficiency, and supports a vibrant economy.

3. Density
Density is a critical typology in determining sustainable urban forms. It is the ratio of people or dwelling units to land area. The relationship between density and urban character is also based on the concept of viable thresholds: at certain densities (thresholds), the number of people within a given area becomes sufficient to generate the interactions needed to make urban functions or activities viable.

POPULATION DENSITY IN NEGHBOURHOODS (R. Rogers, 2005)

4. Mixed Land Uses

There is a general consensus among planners and scholars that mixed land use has an important role in achieving sustainable urban form. Mixed-use or heterogeneous zoning allows compatible land uses to locate in close proximity to one another and thereby decrease the travel distances between activities.

5. Diversity
Diversity of activity is essential to the sustainability of cities. Lack of concentrated diversity can put people into automobiles for almost all their needs. There are some similarities between diversity and mixed land uses; however, diversity is a multidimensional phenomenon It promotes further desirable urban features, including greater variety of housing types, building densities, household sizes, ages, cultures, and incomes diversity represents the social and cultural context of the urban form.

6. Passive Solar Design

Generally, the idea of this design is to reduce the demand for energy and to provide the best use of passive energy in sustainable ways through specific design measures. This design affects the form of the built environment through, for example, the orientation of buildings and urban densities Compared to open country, built urban sites have larger areas of exposed surfaces per unit area of ground cover. Because of the larger area, potentially more solar radiation can be collected on a built urban site than on a flat, open terrain, especially in winter. In the city, a surfaces exposure to the sun at any given time is largely determined by the built form, as well as the street widths and orientation.

7. Greening
Greening of the city, or green urbanism, appears to be an important design concept for the sustainable urban form. There are many other benefits from greening urban spaces : (1) contributions to maintenance of biodiversity through the conservation and enhancement of the distinctive range of urban habitats (2) amelioration of the physical urban environment by reducing pollution, moderating the extremes of the urban climate, and contributing to cost-effective sustainable urban drainage systems (3) Contributions to sustainable development to improve the image of the urban area; (4) improvement of the urban image and quality of life (5) increasing the economic attractiveness of a city and fostering community pride. Greening also has health benefits and an educational function as a symbol or representation of nature Finally greening aims also to preserve and enhance the ecological diversity of the environment of urban places.

4 CATEGORIES OF SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT CONCEPTS

Yra daug po i ri ir b d , kaip siekti urbanistini form darnos. Skirtinguose po i riuose atsispindi koncepcij kit aspekt svarbos i ry kinimas. vairov ir vien ar

Be to, planuotojai ir mokslininkai, siekdami pl tros darnumo, sukuria skirtingas planavimo princip kombinacijas, vienu metu laikydamiesi keli koncepcij . iuolaikines darnios pl tros koncepcijas literat roje priimta skirstyti keturias kategorijas.

1) Neotraditional Development Traditional built environments have inspired planners and architects to seek better urban forms based on some of their physical qualities, in a movement called neotraditional town planning. The new urbanism is the best known among the neotraditional approaches to planning. New urbanism advocates design-based strategies based on traditional urban forms to help arrest suburban sprawl and inner-city decline and to build and rebuild neighborhoods and cities.

1) Neotraditional Development (continued) Neotraditional development, or the new urbanism, emphasizes certain concepts of sustainable urban form. In transport, neotraditional development suggests pedestrian orientation and walkable villages. In density, it promotes higher residential densities than typical suburbs. In mixed land uses, it suggests a mix of residential, commercial, and civic uses. Accordingly, the ideal neotraditional town would be self-contained, tightly clustered, walkable, and patterned on the American small town of preWorld War II. It would have mixed land uses, as well as higher densities; street patterns that allow drivers and pedestrians a variety of path options (encouraging people to walk from place to place); distinct traditional architectural characters; and the encouragement of street life through such features as narrower streets, front porches, and public open space

2) Urban Containment
During the 1970s and 1980s, more than 95 percent of U.S. and western Europe population growth took place in suburban areas outside cities. In the United States today, more people live and work in suburbs than in cities. Thus, sprawl, which is characterized as a chaotic mess of low-density housing and commercial strip development created by and dependent on extensive automobile use, has emerged as the dominant development pattern Recognition of the costs of sprawl has prompted policy makers in the United States, other developed countries, and a few developing countries to create urban containment policies that impose geographical constraints on urban growth to contain sprawl and restrain urban growth.

2) Urban Containment (continued) urban containment prevents the outward expansion of the urban field and forces the development market to look inward. It seeks to employ an array of public policy tools to manipulate push and pull factors so that the metropolitan area will take a particular and desirable geographical form. The goals of containment policy vary widely and include preservation of natural land, as well as farmland and resource extraction land, whose economic value will not be able to compete with urban development; cost-efficient construction and use of urban infrastructure; reinvestment in existing urbanized areas that might otherwise be neglected; and the creation of higher-density land use patterns that encourage a mix of uses and patronage of public transit, leading to a more efficient utilization of land in urbanized areas

2) Urban Containment (continued) Urban containment policies include the enactment of regulatory urban growth boundaries, limiting utility extensions to outlying areas, delineation and acquisition of greenbelts, controls on pattern and density of development, restricting new residential development in agricultural areas, pacing new development to match development of new infrastructure, restricting the numbers of new residential permits issued, land preservation programs, tax incentives, and a variety of other measures In general, urban containment policies seek to use at least three different types of tools to shape metropolitan growth. Greenbelts and urban growth boundaries are used to affect the push factors, while urban service areas are used to affect the pull factors.

3) Compact City
The popularization of sustainable development has contributed to the promotion of the urban compactness idea by enhancing the ecological and environmental justifications behind it. Since the 1990s, research has generally led to the advocacy of cities that are spatially compact, with a mix of uses. Compact cities are also favored because urban land can be reused, while rural land beyond the urban edge is protected. Ultimately, it is argued that a good quality of life can be sustained, even with high concentrations of people.

3) Compact City (continued) The European Commissions Green Paper (Commission of European Communities 1990) advocates very strongly the compact city, assuming that it makes urban areas more environmentally sustainable and improves quality of life. The compact city is being promoted in the United Kingdom and throughout Europe as a component of the strategy formed to tackle the problem of unsustainability. It is proposed that in more compact cities, travel distances are reduced (thus lessening fuel emissions), rural land is saved from development, local facilities are supported, and local areas become more autonomous The main focus has been on the impacts of different urban forms on travel behavior and transport provision, resource efficiency, social equity, accessibility, and economic viability.

4) The Eco-City
The eco-city is an umbrella metaphor that encompasses a wide range of urban-ecological proposals that aim to achieve urban sustainability. These approaches propose a wide range of environmental, social, and institutional policies that are directed to managing urban spaces to achieve sustainability. This type promotes the ecological agenda and emphasizes environmental management through a set of institutional and policy tools. The distinctive concepts of the eco-city are greening and passive solar design. In terms of density and other concepts, the eco-city might be conceived as a formless city or an ecoamorphous city. There are some approaches that emphasize the passive solar design, such as the Ecovillage, Solar Village

4) The Eco-City (continued)

It is remarkable that the core of many approaches is the management of the city, rather than the suggesting of any specific urban form; it is believed that not the physical shape of the city and its built environment that is important; it is how the urban society is organized and managed that counts most. Therefore, the city is managed to achieve sustainability through different land use, environmental, institutional, social, and economic policies In practice, many local governments, planning consultants, landscape architects, and so on are grappling much more specifically with aspects of ecological, pedestrianoriented, or otherwise sustainable urban form.

1. The main arguments for the compact city are: 2. Higher level of control over urban processes, reuse of previously developed facilities and derelict land, bigger urban vitality, rational city form and preserved outskirts of the towns. 3. Effectiveness of public transport and decreased fuel consumption, lower pollution per person. 4. Possibility of mixed use development due to higher population density. 5. Savings of energy in heating and other facilities as the result of dense urban fabric. 6. Possibility of social mix when different tenure and comfort level tenements are close together.

COMPACT CITY MODEL

DISTRICTS

TOWNS

CITIES

TYPES OF BUILT UP TERRITORIES

Different types of buildings an the same territory to build the same 75 tenements ( R. Rogers and partners studio)

INTEGRATED TRANSPORTATION SYSTEM IN COMPACT CITY (Wright, 2003)