As the next step, the OECD proposes regional compact city case studies. The analytical framework and key strategies developed in the report will be applied to several regions.
The study will include: analysis of urban spatial structure; the region’s economic, social and environmental performance; identification of key challenges; and policy recommendations. The OECD will be pleased to organise international seminars in case study regions, in collaboration with the relevant government and/or research institutions, to facilitate discussion. An OECD report/working paper will be delivered to the concerned regions and shared with other regions across OECD member countries.
Contacts and further information:
Yasushi Yoshida, Head of Division, Regional Policy for Sustainable Development (yasushi.YOSHIDA@oecd.org)
Tadashi Matsumoto, Senior policy analyst, Regional Policy for Sustainable Development (tadashi.MATSUMOTO@oecd.org)
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OECD-KRIHS Seminar on Compact City 101 Executive Summary
The compact city concept is one of the most discussed policy approaches in contemporary urban policy. Although compact cities take different forms, this report considers that the key characteristics of a compact city are dense and contiguous development patterns, built-up areas linked by public transport systems and accessibility to local services and jobs.
In recent years, compact city policies have increasingly been part of urban strategies, and international organisations and academic research groups highlight the significance of this approach to urban planning. While the compact city concept is not new and still generates debate, it is expected to play a role in achieving the OECD’s Green Growth objectives, now a general policy driver for OECD countries.
This report aims to better understand the compact city concept, its role in today’s urban contexts, and the potential outcomes of compact city policies. It examines compact city policies across the OECD in relation to green growth objectives and the role of indicators in tracking policy performance. It proposes key compact city strategies and ideas for achieving better outcomes and highlights governance challenges for implementing practical compact city strategies.
Current urban trends underscore the need for compact cities...
Current trends demonstrate the importance of compact cities and suggest that they can play a significant role. First, the continuing growth of urban populations underscores the need to conserve land resources. By 2050, 70% of the world’s population – and 86%
in OECD countries – will live in urban areas. Land consumption for built-up areas will increase more rapidly than population in 30 out of 34 OECD countries. Second, global warming raises new issues for cities and requires new responses. Third, energy price increases can affect living patterns, for example by raising transport costs. Fourth, the recent economic crisis has affected local governments’ finances, making it more difficult to invest in new infrastructure for example. Finally, as demographics change, policy makers need to adapt urban policies. Population in Germany and Japan is already decreasing. The elderly population has doubled over the past 60 years in OECD countries and tripled worldwide, a trend that will persist for at least four decades.
Average household size has also decreased in OECD countries.
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...that can achieve effectively a variety of sustainability goals.
Throughout its long history, the compact city has evolved and enlarged its scope and policy objectives. From a simple urban containment policy to protect the local natural environment or agricultural land from urban encroachment, it has gradually acquired new policy objectives: energy savings, quality of life and liveability, etc. It has come to imply a multi-dimensional policy approach with a wide range of urban sustainability goals and indeed a mainstream policy approach to achieving urban sustainability.
Policy makers need to see the compact city in an economic as well as an environmental perspective
Yet, the compact city is still often viewed simply as a way to protect the environment by controlling growth. This report, instead, argues that the compact city can also contribute positively to economic growth and that it is important to see the compact city concept from the perspective of green growth and explicitly incorporate economic growth as an objective of compact city policy. This can provide rich insights for the design and implementation of successful compact city policies.
Policy makers at the sub-national and national levels of government are encouraged to consider the economic potential of compact cities in today's urban contexts. This can help local policy makers judge local opportunities for introducing compact city policies.
While economic growth and reduction of CO2 emissions are central to the national policy agenda, it is also crucial for policy makers at the national level to understand the potential of compact city policies and include them as appropriate in national urban policy.
Compact city policies can help achieve urban sustainability in many, mutually reinforcing ways...
The outcomes of compact city policies have been widely debated. By and large, they appear positive and significant. However, there is extensive debate over whether compact city policies ultimately help to reach urban sustainability objectives. The lack of a clear understanding of these positive policy outcomes helps explain why compact city policies do not seem to have gained more general support.
Environmentally, shorter intra-urban distances and less automobile dependency can help reduce energy consumption and CO2 emissions. Compact cities conserve farmland and natural biodiversity around urban areas that would otherwise be irretrievably lost. They
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OECD-KRIHS Seminar on Compact City 103 create more opportunities for urban-rural linkages. Nearby farming encourages local food consumption and reduces the distance travelled by food, which also helps reduce CO2 emissions. In economic terms, compact cities can increase the efficiency of infrastructure investment and reduce the cost of maintenance, particularly for line systems such as transport, energy and water supply, and waste disposal. Residents have easier access to a diversity of local services and jobs. Moreover, high density, combined with a diversity of urban functions, is claimed to stimulate knowledge diffusion and thus economic growth. It is also argued that the compact city generates new green needs that promote technological development and innovation and thus stimulate growth. For example, less automobile dependency will require new types of green infrastructure (light rail, cycling, etc.). There are social benefits as well. Shorter travel distances and public transport systems mean lower travel costs; this facilitates the mobility of low-income households.
Local services and jobs nearby contribute to higher quality of life.
...although potential adverse effects require careful consideration
Nonetheless, the compact city concept has generated concerns. The adverse effects commonly cited relate to higher densities: traffic congestion, air pollution, housing affordability, quality of life, urban heat islands, high energy demand in densely built-up areas and loss of open and recreational spaces. Compact cities may be more vulnerable to natural disasters such as earthquake, tsunami, flooding and fires. They may also be more affected by climate change. Care must be taken to mitigate their vulnerability and to make cities resilient to the various risks associated with natural disasters. For example, built-up areas at high risk of flooding may not be appropriate for densification.
Compact city policies can link environmental and economic benefits for green growth...
Compact city policies can help achieve the economic and environmental benefits of green growth. The core value of a compact city is its capacity to integrate urban policy goals such as economic viability, environmental sustainability and social equity. Compact city policies link these policy priorities rather than address them in separate - even mutually exclusive - ways. In particular, they can address economic and environmental goals simultaneously without major trade-offs if policies are designed and implemented as appropriate.
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...but tracking compact city policy outcomes requires quantitative studies and indicators
Overall, therefore, the compact city's potential is not to be neglected. However, for policy makers to develop strong policy commitment and base their decisions on hard data, they need quantitative studies that make policy outcomes clear. In particular, internationally comparable indicators can help monitor compact city policy performance so that metropolitan regions can benchmark their results and improve their policy actions. Since comparative data are limited at the metropolitan level, efforts are needed to collect and develop relevant data. Compactness can be measured in various ways.
The volume and spatial distribution of built-up areas in a metropolitan region indicates contiguity of urban development. Density, measured by the average 24-hour population within metropolitan built-up areas, can show how intensively urban land is used. The efficiency of public transport systems can be measured. Local service employment per resident indicates the accessibility of local services in a neighbourhood. However, qualitative considerations should not be omitted when formulating policy.
Most OECD countries now have some compact city policies at both national and metropolitan level
The OECD compact city survey revealed that most national governments currently have elements of compact city policies. In Australia, France, Korea and Japan, the compact city concept is part of their major urban policy documents. Elsewhere, policy documents recognise the relevance of the compact city approach to urban policy without adopting the term. Case studies of five OECD metropolitan regions (Melbourne, Vancouver, Paris, Toyama and Portland) offer a variety of policy strategies and instruments in a variety of local circumstances. Policy makers in these regions are challenged to design the best strategies and policy tools to address the specific, context-dependent attributes of their metropolitan region.
Different local circumstances call for different policy responses
As expected, the survey and case studies showed that no single, comprehensive compact city model is applicable to all cities and regions, because each must take local circumstances into account. The comparative assessment revealed several links between local circumstances and policy responses. For example, in fast-growing regions with strong development pressures such as Melbourne, regulatory tools are important to
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OECD-KRIHS Seminar on Compact City 105 prevent uncontrolled urban extension, and complementary fiscal tools can orient more market-based decisions about the location and volume of development. In contrast, a region with a shrinking population such as Toyama may find measures to contain urban development politically difficult, because of fears of weakened competitiveness and accelerated hollowing out of the population. Sophisticated measures to induce people to move to urban centres may therefore be required. Likewise, while compact city policies may apply both in large and smaller regions, appropriate policy instruments may differ.
Well-chosen combinations of policy instruments can achieve several policy objectives
The case-study regions make clear that innovative use of price mechanisms can be effective for co-ordinating different policy objectives, including economic growth. In Portland, tax reductions for owners of farm and forest lands seemed to enhance the competitiveness of these land uses at the urban fringes. Toyama fully recognised in its master plan the economic benefits of compact city policies: more efficient public service delivery. Public investment in Toyama Light-Rail Transit was combined with fiscal incentives to guide private development within the urban centre and near the mass-transit stations.
To deal with potential adverse effects of compact city policies, some case-study regions incorporate policies to minimise them into the compact city policy package. Prominent examples include Portland's green infrastructure initiatives, addressing the restoration of the hydrologic cycle and tackling urban heat islands, and Vancouver's EcoDensity initiative, which combines densification with the provision of affordable housing options.
So far, however, such practices are at a limited scale; these issues are viewed as general problems to be addressed and dealt with separately.
Five recommendations for compact city strategies
The first recommendation is to set explicit compact city goals and establish a national urban policy framework that includes compact cities. National and regional/local policy makers should consider metropolitan-wide planning with explicit compact city goals. This can help stakeholders (including local constituents and private investors) share the overall vision of a compact city.
The second is to encourage dense and contiguous development at urban fringes. Because urban structure changes slowly, compact city policies are most effective for new
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development. As most new development takes place in green-field areas on urban fringes that involve both urban and rural land use, this strategy is very important. It can rely on more effective regulatory tools, dense development at appropriate locations, and synchronising urban and rural land use policies.
The third is to retrofit existing built-up areas. This allows existing urban space to accommodate more activities. All built-up areas are concerned, from the central business district to single-family neighbourhoods. Promoting brown-field development, harmonising industrial policies with compact city policies, regenerating existing low-density residential suburbs, promoting transit-oriented development in built-up areas, and encouraging
"intensification" of existing urban assets are effective strategies.
The fourth is to enhance diversity and quality of life in urban centres. Lively urban centres help to sustain the centrifugal power of a metropolitan region. Urban centres typically have offices and housing and commercial functions, and their diversity can boost the region's economic growth potential. A mismatch in residents, local services and jobs (less diverse urban centres) may cause inefficient use of urban land and infrastructure. Quality of life is also an essential part of the attractiveness of an urban centre. Possibilities include promoting mixed land use, attracting residents and local services to urban centres, and promoting a walking and cycling environment.
The final key strategy is to combine tools to minimize adverse effects. Compact city strategies should be coupled with strategies to combat unwanted effects: suppressing traffic congestion; encouraging the provision of affordable housing, promoting high-quality urban design and focused investment in the public space; fostering a "sense of place" in urban centres; and encouraging greening of built-up areas.
The key role of metropolitan governance
The case studies revealed four common elements for the achievement of compact city outcomes.
First, city and regional governments need to commit to compact city policies by designing and implementing a region-wide long-term vision. This will give residents and private investors a spatial image of the future and enable development in accordance with the vision. The central government should be committed to compact city concepts and provide direct policy, governance and financial support to city and regional governments' strategic plans to implement the vision.
Second, a clear understanding of who does what - within governments, between