Sustainable Urban Planning

8 Principles

has always been dominant. Land-use patterning originated with

community conflicts which arose when landowners set out to

exercise their property rights unfettered, excluding all outside

influence, even in some instances resisting zoning, that most

normative of interventions.

Atbest, land policy determinations were arrived at previously

with some assembly of data and analytical input as the precursor to either a

‘letting out of the belt’ or a ‘filling in the gaps’ pattern based on an expansive 10-

to 20-year look ahead, inducing low densities for at least the first ten years. At

worst, land-use practice was based on expansionist greed, originating with

landowners and developers working with ‘booster’ local government leadership,

largely ignoring or overriding planning advice and input. As evidence, the Anglo-

settled North American and Australasian nations are adorned with plaques com-

memorating the frontier intrepidity of surveyors, the project prowess of engineers

and architects, and the visionary inspiration of politicians – with few plaques in

place or public service medals handed out to commemorate the work of urban

planners.

The reality is that planning, and planners, fell in with

exploitation-led and consumer-driven developer trends. Lacking

a conservancy ethic, community leaders encouraged the produc-

tion and use of formula rule books and plans, promoting the com-

modification of rural land assets into urban sprawl where, as

evocatively related in Campoli, Humstone and MacLean’s Above

and Beyond(2002: 197) ‘Like a dog chasing its tail we pursue the

dream of unlimited space, unrestricted movement and total

control (in situations where) What we want is is an unspoiled

rural landscape, but in pursuing it, what we get is sprawl.’ The way that

suburbia exhibits these sprawl characteristics, for different North American and

Figure 1.1 Anglo settler society nations. ‘New Zealand, Australia, and Canada, all with strong

frontier traditions, small [low density] populations, and a British-induced cultural dislike of cities,

share the American [suburban] experience’ (Kenneth Jackson,Crabgrass Frontier, 1985).

‘Since the mid-eighteenth

century, more of nature

has been destroyed than

in all of prior history.’

Hawken, Lovins, Lovins,

Natural Capitalism, 1999

Disclosed on the web by

Andres Duany (1999)

sourcing Jane Jacobs. ‘The

pseudoscience of

planning seems almost

neurotic in its

determination to imitate

empiric failure and ignore

empiric success.’