UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY
Is the Sprawling Urban Form Sustainable? : An Investigation of the Ecological Impacts of Lowdensity Fringe Development
by
Ansbert Monah Abobo
A THESIS
SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES
IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE
DEGREE OF MASTER OF ENVIRONMENTAL DESIGN
FACULTY OF ENVIRONMENTAL DESIGN
CALGARY, ALBERTA
JULY, 2014
© Ansbert Monah Abobo 2014
Abstract
The traditional postwar city has been characterized by extensive low-density residential growth
coupled with an over-reliance on the private automobile for mobility in the city. As human
activities seem to be the defining determinants of the unsustainable urban fabric, it is essential to
understand the long-term impacts of the contemporary urban lifestyle and how it detrimentally
relates to the planet.
In this research, two urban development concepts were investigated to determine the type
of urban form suitable for structuring a more sustainable city. By comparing low-density
suburban communities to core area communities using an environmental impact assessment tool
supported with empirical observations and theory, the differences between these two urban
concepts were obtained. Using the ecological footprint methodology, footprint estimations were
done for suburban communities (N = 8) and core area communities (N = 4) in Calgary to find out
their disparities. The research used neighborhood household income/consumption as a proxy for
estimating the ecological footprint values and footprints obtained ranged between 11.35 Gha/cap
and 6.77 Gha/cap. All the data used in this research are secondary data obtained from Statistics
Canada, The City of Calgary, and a Canadian national footprint study by Mackenzie et al (2008).
The research suggests that drawing growth to core areas is a salient part of reducing
ecological footprint but it needs to be complemented with novel ways of urban fringe
development to maximize the outcomes of ecological footprint interventions. Since the highest
ecological footprint values were found in high-income suburban neighborhoods, it is relevant to
approach the problem by utilizing income as an integrator in making the urban form less
suburban and also changing the structure of the few indispensable suburban communities.
ii
Acknowledgements
I would like to express my appreciation to the God of all knowledge for seeing me through my
academic endeavor. In plying this stony road, faith has been the principal element guiding me
through. My supervisor, Dr. Noel Keough, has been helpful all the way from the beginning of
this thesis to where it is now. I thank him for introducing me to a new methodology and assisting
me to merge it with my research interests. I also appreciate all the materials he offered me and
his critiques and inputs that have made my thesis a success. Also, I would like to thank Mr. Les
Kuzyk, planning analyst at the City of Calgary, for his assistance with the methodology part of
this thesis.
My profound gratitude goes to Ms. Jennifer Taillefer of the Faculty of Environmental
Design for her patience and constant support when I was applying for graduate studies. I also
appreciate the efforts of all the professors in EVDS who helped me in diverse ways: Dr. Bev
Sandalack, Dr. Cormack Gates, Mr. Sunisa Tomic, Dr. Barry Wylant, and Dr. Graham Livesey. I
thank my colleagues, Leanne Junnila, Barbara Dupuis, Sharif Islam and Artan Zandian, for
introducing me to the ‘Canadian condition’ through academic and informal discussions. And my
thanks also go to the staff at the Spatial and Numeric Data Services (SANDS) of the University
of Calgary for helping me in accessing the data I needed for this research.
I thank my family for being there for me all the way through, and for their support and
encouragement. My gratitude also goes to Dr. Isaac Luginaah (University of Western Ontario),
Randy Wanye, and the Tuurosongs; they have really shown the essence of family throughout my
stay in Canada. And to the proactive friends who inspired me in their own special ways,
Emmanuel Owusu (Faculty of Law, UoC), Mariama Zaami (Department of Sociology, UoC),
and Douglas Yeboah (School of Engineering, UoC). Thank you all.
iii
Dedication
To all mothers including Earth
iv
Table of Contents
Abstract ............................................................................................................................... ii
Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................ iii
Dedication .......................................................................................................................... iv
Table of Contents .................................................................................................................v
List of Tables .................................................................................................................... vii
List of Figures .................................................................................................................. viii
List of Plates ........................................................................................................................x
List of Abbreviations ......................................................................................................... xi
Epigraph ........................................................................................................................... xiii
CHAPTER ONE: PAVING THE WAY ..........................................................................1
1.1 Introduction ................................................................................................................1
1.2 Vulnerable urban fringes ...........................................................................................4
1.3 Sustainable development ...........................................................................................7
1.4 Purpose and research questions .................................................................................9
1.5 Scope of the thesis .....................................................................................................9
1.6 Structure of the thesis ..............................................................................................10
1.7 Relevance of the research ........................................................................................10
CHAPTER TWO: SUSTAINABILITY IN THE URBAN CONTEXT ......................12
2.1 Urban dynamics .......................................................................................................12
2.1.1 The past and present ........................................................................................12
2.1.2 Urbanization and sprawl ..................................................................................20
2.1.3 Urban sprawl ...................................................................................................23
2.1.4 Sustainable spatial strategies ...........................................................................31
2.2 Natural capital and sustainability.............................................................................37
2.2.1 Natural capital is a finite resource ...................................................................37
2.2.2 Entropy as an indicator of sustainability .........................................................41
2.2.3 Ecological footprint and biocapacity ...............................................................43
CHAPTER THREE: CALGARY STUDY ....................................................................52
3.1 Spatial growth in Calgary ........................................................................................52
3.2 Growth control strategies .........................................................................................57
3.3 Response to growth strategies..................................................................................64
CHAPTER FOUR: METHODOLOGY ........................................................................70
4.1 Formulating the framework .....................................................................................70
4.2 Review of methodologies ........................................................................................76
4.2.1 The methodology by Wackernagel and Rees (1996) ......................................78
4.2.2 Work in Greater Oslo and Førde (Holden, 2004) ............................................80
4.2.3 Work in Oakville, Ontario (Wilson et al, 2013) ..............................................82
4.2.4 Ecological footprint by income and consumption (Kuzyk, 2011) ..................85
4.3 Research methodology .............................................................................................86
4.3.1 Neighborhood categorization ..........................................................................86
4.3.2 Footprint estimation.........................................................................................91
v
4.3.3 Limitations and suggestions ............................................................................97
CHAPTER FIVE: FINDINGS AND ANALYSIS.......................................................101
CHAPTER SIX: RECOMMENDATIONS .................................................................115
6.1 Income and urban form ..........................................................................................115
6.2 The bigger picture ..................................................................................................132
Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………..…...138
References………………………………………………………………………...….…..141
vi
List of Tables
Table 2-1 Comparison of ecological footprint and biocapacity (Sources: Adapted from
Wackernagel and Rees, 1996, and Global Footprint Network, 2010) .................................. 46
Table 3-1 Potential population changes in Calgary between 1991 and 2024 (Source: GoPlan;
in Sustainable Suburbs Study, 1995) .................................................................................... 59
Table 3-2 Comparison of population change between communities within and outside the
developed area (Source: Adapted from Calgary Community Profiles, The City of
Calgary, 2012b)..................................................................................................................... 68
Table 4-1 Median household incomes and distances of communities from downtown ............... 90
Table 4-2 Income deciles with associated footprints of consumption components [Source:
Adapted from Tables 1, A3, and A5 in Mackenzie et al (2008)] .......................................... 93
Table 4-3 Income deciles with adjusted disposable household incomes and adjusted
footprints of consumption components ................................................................................. 94
Table 6-1 Comparison of six ecological footprint studies .......................................................... 116
vii
List of Figures
Figure 2-1 Urban form of Tell Asmar (Source: Wide Urban World, 2011: online) ..................... 13
Figure 2-2 Map of Portland, the red line showing the urban growth boundary (Source: Bolen,
2008) ..................................................................................................................................... 35
Figure 3-1 Part of Sundance area in 1979 (Source: SANDS, TFDL, University of Calgary) ...... 55
Figure 3-2 Part of Sundance area in 2008 (Source: SANDS, TFDL, University of Calgary) ...... 55
Figure 3-3 Part of Bridlewood area in 1979 (Source: SANDS, TFDL, University of Calgary) .. 56
Figure 3-4 Part of Bridlewood area in 2008 (Source: SANDS, TFDL, University of Calgary) .. 56
Figure 3-5 Municipal Development Plan Typologies (Source: Adapted from Developed
Areas Growth and Change, 2010) ......................................................................................... 65
Figure 3-6 Google image of Evanston in the North sector of Calgary within the Symons
Valley Approved Community Plan ....................................................................................... 66
Figure 4-1 Locations of the selected communities ....................................................................... 88
Figure 4-2 [Citadel (A), Valley Ridge (B), and Centre City (J)] .................................................. 89
Figure 4-3 [Aspen Woods (C), Bridlewood (D), Chapparal (E), Copperfield (F), Monterey
Park (G), Coral Springs (H), and Centre City (J)] ................................................................ 89
Figure 4-4 Household consumption versus income (Source: Kuzyk, 2011) ................................ 92
Figure 4-5 Adjusted disposable household income versus adjusted housing footprint ................ 95
Figure 4-6 Adjusted disposable household income versus adjusted mobility footprint ............... 95
Figure 4-7 Adjusted disposable income versus adjusted total ecological footprint...................... 96
Figure 5-1 Comparison of impact components for the Calgary municipality ............................ 101
Figure 5-2 Ecological footprints for the 12 communities ........................................................... 105
Figure 5-3 Comparing distance and ecological footprint for the 12 communities ..................... 109
Figure 5-4 Comparing distance and mobility footprint for the 12 communities ........................ 109
Figure 6-1 Framework for utilizing income as an instrument for improving ecological
footprint in a less-privatized urban setting.......................................................................... 124
Figure 6-2 Inter-community travels will be less if communities have high heterogeneity ........ 128
viii
Figure 6-3 Comparing efficiency in the use of land and space on urban peripheries ................. 131
ix
List of Plates
Plate I The macro-community concept........................................................................................136
Plate II Recommendations for urban infilling and greenfield development................................137
x
List of Abbreviations
Symbol
Definition
ACP
Approved Community Plan
BRT
Bus rapid transit
CMHC
Central (later Canadian) Mortgage and Housing
Corporation
CMA
Census Metropolitan Area
CMP
Calgary Metropolitan Plan
CTP
Calgary Transportation Plan
DA
Dissemination area
EF
Ecological footprint
GFN
Global Footprint Network
Gha/cap
Global hectares per capita
HOV
High occupancy vehicle
IPCC
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
LIR
Local income ratio
LRT
Light rail transit
MDP
Metropolitan Development Plan
OECD
Organization for Economic Co-operation and
Development
ROI
Returns on investment
SDA
Standard Development Agreement
TCRP
Transit Cooperative Research Program
xi
UDI
Urban Development Institute
UGB
Urban Growth Boundary
UNCED
United Nations Commission on Environment and
Development
UNEP
United Nations Environment Programme
UNHSP
United Nations Human Settlement Programme
Upa
Units per acre
Uph
Units per hectare
WCED
World Commission on Environment and
Development
WWF
World Wide Fund for Nature
xii
Epigraph
The past is only the present become invisible and mute; and because it is invisible and mute, its
memoried glances and its murmurs are infinitely precious. We are tomorrow’s past. Even now
we slip away like those pictures painted on the moving dials of antique clocks – a ship, a cottage,
sun and moon, a nosegay. The dial turns, the ship rides up and sinks again, the yellow painted
sun has set, and we that were the new things, gather magic as we go.
Mary Webb, in Precious Barn (1924)
xiii
Chapter One: Paving the way
The chapter introduces three vital components of the thesis; the research problem, the resource in
question, and the ultimate goal of the research. It highlights the hypothesis of the thesis in a
fragmented but logically-connected pattern. The purpose, research questions, scope, the structure
and relevance of the thesis are also presented in this chapter.
1.1 Introduction
In global evolution, there always arises a distinct ideology at certain periods that significantly
attracts the attention of many scholars. Before the 1987 Brundtland Commission’s report, Our
Common Future, which highlighted some major problems the world faced at that time, various
scholars had dramatically driven the world to a new perspective of thinking; including Rachel
Carson and Barry Commoner. This perspective of thinking had the overarching motive of
conserving natural resources, as it had become evident that human behaviors from different
dimensions were adversely affecting natural capital; an ideology the Brundtland Commission’s
report reinforced by involving the ‘sustainable development’ concept as a possible remedy.
Commoner (1974, 11), in The Closing Circle, wrote that,
“To survive on the earth, human beings require the stable, continuing existence of a suitable
environment. Yet the evidence is overwhelming that the way in which we now live on the earth
is driving its thin, life-supporting skin, and ourselves with it, to destruction.”
The patterns of human consumption and lifestyle were seen to be over-dependent on nature and
greatly exceeding the self-reinforcing capacities of the planet. These patterns of living included
food consumption, housing preferences, overdependence on modern technology, consumption of
goods and services, and the immoderate production of synthetic wastes that interrupted
biophysical networks. The problem of consumption was also intensified by the emergence of a
1
‘global world,’ where people had easier access to goods from all corners of the world due to
improved global trade and relatively well-developed international relations among nations.
It has become necessary in the existing trend of global evolution to be aware of the
capacity of the planet and the corresponding contemporary living requirements of humanity.
Ecological footprint is a tool that has been utilized to measure these variables. The determination
of the ecological footprint of nations and cities has provided the resources for policymakers to
know which geographic locations are pulling the world to a more undesirable destination. It is
widely acknowledged that urban areas pose greater human impacts on natural systems than rural
locations. On the national scale, an additional person in a developed country consumes far more
and places a greater pressure on natural resources than an additional person in the developing
world (WCED, 1987). Housing, transportation, and the consumption lifestyle of urban dwellers
have been attributed to the rising ecological footprint of the world as a whole and within them
are problems of urban sprawl, excessive reliance on motor travel within the city, and an
exorbitant consumption of goods and services.
Sprawl is a problem in the urban environment that apparently proves the inadequacy of
policies to control growth. With cities growing at a higher rate than in the past decades, sprawl
has seemingly become the most discussed urban issue in European and North American planning
literature. Significant changes in global economic and social dynamics have resulted in an
increase of urban population at the expense of rural population; a phenomenon termed
urbanization. As urbanization continues to be on the rise, notwithstanding the myriad policies
implemented to control its proliferation, cities continue to welcome more people even though
available urban resources in most circumstances are evidently under intense pressure due to
over-dependency.
2
Urban sprawl is a type of spatial growth characterized by the extensive spread of the city
into peripheral lands with the major type of development being low-density, and mostly
homogenous. Sprawl has been extensively associated with several problems in the urban
environment. Cities have spread out into many suburban communities leading to high car
dependency, air pollution, social segregation, depletion and degradation of water resources,
imposition of extra expenditure on local governments to provide public utilities and services, and
the loss of natural habitat including land and wildlife (Couroux et al, 2006; St. Antoine, 2007;
Nguyen, 2010). The very striking concern about sprawl is its high degree of inflexibility; which
underscores that sprawling communities do not appear to become denser communities over time.
It is a phenomenon that intensifies the risks of global un-sustainability, sub-optimization of
limited natural resources, and the alarming future of natural capital in general; all being negative
indicators of ecological footprint.
Sprawl is referred to as “low-density, automobile-dependent development based on
segregated land uses” (Couroux et al, 2006; 3). The TCRP (1998) report defined low-density as
any residential development in the form of 0.33- to 1.0-acre lots and non-residential strip
development involving floor-to-area ratios of 0.20 or less. A single-unit detached house
constructed on a land size of 0.33 to 1.0 acre makes it a low-density development. The City of
Surrey, British Columbia, defined low-density to be 6-10 upa with each detached unit occupying
4000-6000 sq.ft of land, medium-density as 10-15 upa with each unit occupying 3000-4000 sq.ft,
and high-density as 25-45 upa in multi-unit developments which occupy varying lot sizes (City
of Surrey, 2009). Municipal areas have different definitions for low- and high-density often
established with a strong coherence to the existing local housing types. Irrespective of the
variation of definitions among municipalities, low-density developments appear to be more
3
conspicuous when there is a clear underutilization of vast land masses to provide fewer dwelling
spaces as seen in many suburbs.
Since greenfields tend to be cheaper than brownfield land, developers are constantly
pursuing undeveloped peripheral lands for new developments. Apart from the purchasing cost,
greenfields are relatively less expensive to develop considering total construction costs. Land
subsidization in greenfield development has been influential in suburban growth especially in the
case of Calgary. An IBI Group report by Plan It Calgary (Plan It Calgary, 2009) compared two
urban growth scenarios for Calgary; the Dispersed Scenario (following council-approved growth
policies) and the Recommended Direction (following proposals by the study). The study found
that with reference to the 2005 urbanized footprint of Calgary, 26,000 ha (25 percent increase
from 2005) of land will be required to achieve their proposals for the next 60 years compared to
46,000 ha (54 percent increase from 2005) for the Dispersed Scenario. The Recommended
Direction fosters a more compact urban structure by integrating land use and transportation to
reduce extensive land appropriation which minimizes the rate of peripheral land consumption.
As economists attach a higher economic value to built urban development than
agricultural land uses, farmlands have fallen to the massive encroachment of the city as well
(Brueckner, 2000). Another trend that increases the outward spread of the modern city is the high
demand of families for suburban housing coupled with the ease of accessing these suburbs with
the automobile and municipal transit systems. Hence, the rise of sprawl is multi-dimensional,
stemming from organic, cultural, and policymaking domains.
1.2 Vulnerable urban fringes
Cities are vast places; and becoming larger as the years pass. As an organism, the city cannot be
unresponsive to its necessary spatial growth arising from the influx of a greater proportion of the
4
world’s population into urban areas. However, the speed and style of growth are not good trends
for protecting natural capital for future generations. This trend of low-density and leapfrogging
growth is imposing pressure on urban fringes which are basically home to a substantial portion
of the biotic components surrounding the city; including forests, farmlands, and wildlife species.
Although these areas surrounding cities are responsible to absorb the cities’ growth, their
resilience must be invigorated to contribute to the global goal of reducing human impacts on
natural capital.
Canada faces a major crisis that is subtle to its citizens; the persistent incremental
consumption of natural landscape and the loss of the beneficial goods and services afforded by
natural capital (Olewiler, 2004). Almost all the landscape lost is as a result of human
development within which building construction forms a huge part. The situation of human
development in North America is in an alarming trend of using numerous acres of land to
accommodate fewer people which occurs as a response to satisfying human comfort and of much
interest to developers, accruing gain through consumer satisfaction. Between 1960 and 1990, the
amount of land developed in metro areas in the United States doubled, while the population
increased less than half (Benfield et al, 2001). It is also partly due to the minimal economic value
of natural landscapes when compared to physical urban development. Brueckner (2000) asserted
that a successful bid by developers implies that the land is more economically viable for urban
use than in agricultural use. The intricate psychosocial benefit in natural capital valuation is a
lost parameter since it is seemingly impossible to accurately value the qualitative rewards of
nature to human wellbeing. In cases when urban developments have prospects in improving the
quality of the built environment and creating wealth, most ecological concerns like pollution and
the degradation of the natural environment are ignored in the name of progress (Lang, 2005).
5
Behan et al (2008) also observed that though the allocation of land is determined by competition
between urban and agricultural land uses, the outcome has usually been in favor of the former.
There is a clear indication that fringe lands surrounding urban settlements are being
consumed rampantly; a phenomenon that dually weakens the optimization of natural resources
and spreads out the city hence demanding more resource exploitation to afford human
convenience. Households residing in suburban communities are usually found in the higher
levels of income stratification and life in the suburb is conceived to be almost perfect – a
contemporary reflection of the early twentieth-century reformers’ utopian dream. The
importance of nature is being eroded by novel cultural paradigms that extremely consider human
comfort at the core of decision making. On October 3, 1937, the fourth paragraph of an informal,
extemporaneous remark made by President Franklin Roosevelt in Montana read,
“This morning I smiled all the way through breakfast because I
happened to see an editorial, not in a paper here but in a Great
Falls paper, that talked about ‘balancing the budget of our
resources.’ That is something that is well worth thinking about. It
said that because we have made money in wasting and eroding
large human resources and piled up nominal wealth in securities
and bank balances, we have lost sight of the fact that the natural
resources of our land – our permanent capital – are being
converted into those nominal evidences of wealth at a faster rate
than our real wealth is being replaced.”
What is worth thinking about is the consideration given to the ‘nominal capital’ and the
‘permanent capital’ in contemporary development patterns and what defined catalysts decide
6
them. It is an eminent wake-up call to the world. This ethically-challenging assignment is a vital
component of this thesis.
1.3 Sustainable development
The term ‘sustainable development’ has been in existence since the 1970s and came as an
imperative reaction to the worldwide realization of human impacts on the natural environment.
Sustainability has become ubiquitous among academic disciplines, yet the conceptual roots of
the term reaches much deeper, and is related to the evolution of human behaviors toward the
environment within Western culture (Wheeler, 2004). Fairly, much has been done to control the
inefficient patterns of nature exploitation for human needs, but statistical records and projections
from different disciplines have proven that dearth improvements have been made over the years.
For example, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) used realistic growth
models to estimate that average temperature will increase by 2-3oC by the end of this century
(Moore, 2008), and the Keeling Curve for plotting global change in CO2 concentration has been
rising since its inception in 1958. Also, a 2012 report by the PBL Netherlands Environmental
Assessment Agency claimed that global CO2 emissions rose by an unprecedented 5 percent surge
in 2010 and increased by 3 percent in 2011 reaching an all-time high of 34 billion tonnes (Olivier
et al, 2012). Global warming is still rising though there have been numerous interventions
including mechanical improvements of machines and greener building practices which
paradoxically are the two overarching culprits of the problem. Clearly, there are still more
complicated setbacks in ecological protection policies to be investigated.
The ecological footprint of settlements determines the level of contribution of a given
population to the quest for sustainable development. Wackernagel and Rees (1996, 57) asserted
that ecological footprint draws humanity’s attention to the disproportionate consumption of
7
energy/material flows and the acquisition of habitat that otherwise would be available for other
species. They continued to question that, “Do we have an inherent right to so much of nature’s
productivity at the expense of the several million other species living on the planet?” However,
current consumption patterns can prove that humanity has arrived at the explicit conviction that
man matters most, and nature, misperceived as another disjoined entity in space, is an unbounded
resource bank. As a result, most of the choices of urban residents are contradictory to the ones
needed to ensure that sustainability is being promoted. In relation to suburban development,
more questions erupt regarding sustainability. Apart from the numerous acres of peripheral land
consumed annually to accommodate urban dwellers, there are more long-term effects of
sprawling communities on the ecosystem.
Regarding the challenge by Franklin Roosevelt, policymakers have to know whether
‘nominal capital’ or ‘permanent capital’ is more salient in making urban decisions. Meadows
(2001; edited by Wright, 2008) mentioned that when a particular subject is made the ultimate
goal of a system, usually, all the branches and forces within the system work to achieve that goal.
Hence, the final achievement of any system in most cases is a result of how all the actors in the
system comprehended the system’s goal from the onset of its operation. Therefore, if the best
cities, or nations for that matter, are to be decided depending on the economic improvements of
citizens as the ultimate goal, then all the forces influencing the operation of cities and nations
will work toward improving the economic stance of the citizenry.
Obviously, there may be equally important issues of concern such as social and
environmental problems but the system will work toward economic gains even if the other
equally vital concerns are to be compromised. In thinking about sustainable development in
urban evolution, it is essential to define the goals of the city as a system and most importantly
8
which goals are of the highest priority. It may require a significant paradigm shift to hugely
channel urban decisions toward environmental conservation at the expense of extreme
anthropocentric perspectives, which some critics may christen ‘environmental puritanism;’ but it
is a war worth fighting if the goal of sustainable development is to be achieved.
1.4 Purpose and research questions
To achieve a spatial structure that will help in the physical integration of the urban form through
sprawl reversal in order to afford an optimal consumption of natural resources as a contributory
indicator for a sustainable urban development.
The research questions include:
 What are the major contributors to the ecological footprint of urban settlements in
relation to the urban form?
 Do suburban and core area neighborhoods have different local effects on the ecological
footprint of cities?
 Will a transition of development to a more ‘urban infilling’ style be beneficial to the
natural economy and possibly reduce the ecological footprint of cities?
1.5 Scope of the thesis
The research encompasses views on how human settlements are deteriorating the resilience of
natural capital especially the consumption of greenfields on urban fringes through low-density
residential developments. Although extensive natural capital consumption is a global problem,
this research concentrates more on urban regions in Western cultures, mostly North American
cities, which are more advanced industrially and technologically. Two opposing concepts in
urban development, sprawl and inner city development, and their individual contributions to the
ecological footprint of the modern city fundamentally form the conceptual framework of this
9
project and are at the centre of the analysis. Analyses of neighborhoods’ differences concentrate
on their ecological impacts which are seen to be the most important components in the
contemporary city in the purview of this research.
1.6 Structure of the thesis
The next chapter (Chapter Two) will present a critical overview of the contemporary city as it
relates to sustainable development. Initially, the chapter deals with the historical foundations of
the postwar urban form and the socioeconomic and spatial dynamics that collectively forged the
modern urban morphology. Chapter Three will discuss the peculiar situations in Calgary as the
study area for this thesis with regards to its historical transformation and the numerous policies
that have been approved over the years to control where and how growth should occur in the
city. A critique on the response of Calgary’s actual growth is also presented to assess the
connection between policymaking and realistic implementation of proposals in urban
development. An elaboration of the detailed framework of this thesis is provided at the beginning
of Chapter Four while a review of different methods used elsewhere for ecological footprint
assessment is discussed later. The chapter continues with the footprint estimation for the 12
communities in Calgary used for this research work. Chapter Five gives an integrated
presentation of the findings of the thesis and the analysis in relation to the research objectives.
The final chapter concludes with recommendations in policymaking as well as spatial
interventions for achieving an urban form that will assist in improving ecological footprint.
1.7 Relevance of the research
Monfreda et al (2004, 231) wrote that, “The protection of natural capital, including its ability to
renew or regenerate itself, represents a core aspect of sustainability. Hence, reliable measures of
the supply of, and human demand on, natural capital are indispensable for tracking progress,
10
setting targets and driving policies for sustainability.” This thesis draws the quest for
sustainability to the role cities play in protecting natural landscapes on their peripheries and the
entire ecosystem. Comparing the ecological footprints of two urban growth phenomena (sprawl
and core area development) will afford policymakers the resources to determine the growth
pattern that imposes lower impacts on the natural environment. To achieve sustainability in the
urban domain, there should be a clear definition of the type of urban form that reduces our
footprint on the planet and aids the Earth to regenerate itself. The thesis envisages the most
sustainable urban form that gives more priority to natural capital while ensuring that the
sustenance of the other urban imperatives, the social and economic aspects, is not significantly
compromised. Also, using the ecological footprint methodology which represents human impacts
in a simple spatial metric will be an easier way of drawing the public’s attention to their impacts
on the planet in relation to their housing and other living choices in the city.
11
Chapter Two: Sustainability in the urban context
This chapter begins by concentrating on the evolution of the city through history and some social
and spatial transitions that have acted together in its transformation. It elaborates the influence of
planning in responding to the contemporary problems of the city at certain remarkable stages in
history and how these reactions have contributed to the current state of the city. The chapter
continues to create a link between urban transformation and the fate of natural capital in the
context of sustainable development. Within the discussions, the indicators of ecological footprint
are elaborated and linked to urban growth and general human impacts.
2.1 Urban dynamics
2.1.1 The past and present
Human evolution is a concept that cannot be consummately contextualized without involving the
significance of inhabitation in the entire process. Man has always sought to reach some level of
comfort in his environment; which manifested in the transition of the pre-historic man from cave
dwellings, to tree houses, to mud and thatch houses, and to the present day multi-material
buildings. LeGates and Stout (2011, 16) commented that, “If cities are civilization, they are also
the cultural instrumentality by which humanity has attempted, since Neolithic times, to achieve a
higher, more inclusive concept of community.” Travel adventure can be highlighted as one of the
vital forces that drew people from a highly disconnected world together to form early settlements
(McMahon, 2013). A considerable number of historical accounts on cities usually mention the
earliest cities to have existed in Mesopotamia in the fourth millennium BCE, a location found in
present day Syria and Iraq (Mumford, 1961). At the peak of the urbanization of Mesopotamian
cities, which included Uruk, Nippur, Tell Asmar, and Tell Brak, the maximum size of urban
12
centers occupied about only 100-150 hectares of land area (McMahon, 2013; in Clark, 2013).
Figure 2-1 shows the urban form of the Mesopotamian city of Tell Asmar that existed in the third
and early second millennium BCE. The size of ancient cities suggests that people in early cities
lived in an extremely compact settlement where walking was possibly the major mode of
mobility and population growth hugely relied on natural increase, hence a little need for
significant physical expansions to accommodate more people.
Figure 2-1 Urban form of Tell Asmar (Source: Wide Urban World, 2011: online)
To illuminate the real concept of the city, Aristotle in The Politics described the ‘idealcity’ as “one small enough so that a single citizen’s voice could be heard by all the assembled
fellow citizens” (LeGates and Stout, 2011; 16). Aristotle’s style of describing the city suggests
its unique characteristics as it was mainly recognized by its political and religious features in an
era of orations and public speeches that displayed the power of kings. The ancient city
13
maintained its state of contiguity for centuries before the emergence of the Industrial Revolution.
Before the Industrial Revolution between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, designers had
a somewhat myopic view about planning buildings and the city as a whole by giving more
priority to the aesthetics and the general appearance of urban landmarks. However, the late
nineteenth century saw a more humanistic approach which considered sanitation, functionality,
and the health of inhabitants at the core of decision making in town and city planning (Greed,
2000).
The Industrial Revolution marked one of the greatest turning points in the history of the
world and cities as such. Haughton and Hunter (1996) identified five stages in urban evolution;
the primeval phase, early farming phase, early urban phase, urban industrial phase, and global
interdependence phase. According to Fumega (2010), the fourth phase, the urban industrial
phase, was the most important to the evolution of cities as we know today and it was possible
due to the development of global commerce initiated by some European nations and the notion
of capital accumulation. Yet, before the fourth phase, other major factors in urban evolution were
slavery and colonialism that changed several settlement characters in colonized nations while
exploiting slaves in building the cities of colonial powers (Clark, 2013; Harris, 2004). Most
notably in Europe and North America, there arose a large-scale economic productivity, rising
urbanization, a general population rise, and the need to make cities more iconic to reflect the
contemporary technologies that were discovered in the revolution. In England, the primary hub
of the Industrial Revolution, cities grew larger and taller especially in the North and the
Midlands (Engels, 1845: in LeGates and Stout, 2011). Following this quantum of change, people
moved significantly from the countryside to settle in cities which were heavily endowed with
auspicious vantages in both economic and social realms.
14
The influx of huge populations into the city rather turned to be a disadvantageous trend
since the highly dense cities begun to lose their aesthetic qualities to massive squalor. The
excessive density did not cause only a widespread fear of disease but also the existence of social
pathologies such as crime, youth delinquencies, and civil disorder (Bruegmann, 2000; in
Freestone, 2000). Urban reformers of the twentieth century proposed that the city could spread
out to reduce the density at the core. A major advocate against the ills of the congested city was
British theorist Ebenezer Howard who highlighted other setbacks in the city including high rents
and rates, and the deprivation of natural features such as sunlight, greenery and clean air in the
city. In his book, Garden Cities of To-morrow (1902, 20), he wrote that, “It is well-nigh
universally agreed by men of all parties, not only in England, but all over Europe and America
and our colonies, that it is deeply to be deplored that the people should continue to stream into
the already-overcrowded cities, and should thus further deplete the country districts.” Following
his assumption of a close-to-global disapproval of the ‘great city’ idea, he proposed the Garden
City concept which would create smaller towns around a central city and be connected by transit
systems.
After several urban reformations, suburbs followed as the next evolutionary stage of the
city, as they were seen to provide better dwellings for urban settlers where they could have
access to gardening, green open spaces (Franklin, 2010), and larger living spaces for optimum
comfort and sound health. According to Olson (2000, 232), greater mobility would permit a
more generous use of space, “so that city dwellers could breathe again.” This utopian goal was
achieved with the emerging technologies that created more highways to connect the city’s core to
its edges coupled with a universal upsurge in automobile production and a corresponding car
ownership. Olson (2000) noted that it took close to a century to achieve the objective of the early
15
reformers only for later reformers to discover the drawbacks of the modern spread-out city. This
discovery is what has led to the novel ideology of New Urbanism that advocates a more compact
city with higher densities and walkable distances to utilitarian destinations as might have been in
the Mesopotamian cities.
The concerns of the new urbanists are raised concurrently with widespread ecological
views that are aiming to protect natural ecosystems on urban edges from encroachment by the
modern city’s growth. Both ideologies ply a common trajectory towards reducing the
consumption of natural capital through the creation of alternatives for urban dwellers to live
comfortably without much impact on the biophysical environment. Economic growth and energy
demands for houses and automobiles are major sustainability concerns in the urban environment.
Compact cities are seen to be the spatial components of the energy-saving strategy with smart
growth being a major procedure for achieving that goal. It is widely assumed that as cities
become more contiguous, movement within the city will not be overly dependent on cars but by
walking, cycling or using public transit.
Smart growth is a concept that emerged in the 1990s but has its roots from the statewide
growth management of the 1970s and 1980s in the United States (Edwards and Haines, 2007).
Smart growth advocates for compact urban centers that are pedestrian friendly, facilitates
bicycling, and encourages transit-oriented mobility. The distance between urban destinations is
as important as the ease of reaching them through a sustainable means of transportation; hence
both connectivity and proximity are equally important in valuing the sustainability of
neighborhoods. In 1970, it was estimated in Portland, Oregon, that it was possible to reduce
neighborhood gasoline consumption by 5 percent only by rejuvenating the concept of
neighborhood grocery stores (Hawkens et al, 1999). In a study by Frank et al (2004) in Atlanta, it
16
was discovered that the number of minutes walked in active transportation by participants had a
negative association with obesity, and a similar correlation can be assumed for the minutes spent
cycling. Both studies show there are more distant tradeoffs in the smart growth strategy that are
beneficial to the protection of the natural environment and to the individual as well. For instance,
cycling to work instead of driving will be more cost-effective and at the same time reduce urban
carbon emissions per capita. The cyclist also benefits by becoming less susceptible to obesity
and its associated health complications.
From the practical perspective of smart growth, it is more desirable environmentally, to
redevelop the obsolete urban parcels of a city before building brand-new structures on green
peripheral land (Benfield et al, 2001). Such patterns of development are usually high-density
since developers try as much as possible to efficiently utilize expensive brownfield sites in urban
redevelopment projects. Ecologically, the use of brownfield parcels will translate into farms,
forests, and wetlands saved on the hinterlands. Benfield et al (2001, 11) asserted that,
“Development will occur somewhere as long as the population is growing; instead of allowing
growth to occur in a haphazard, inefficient fashion, we can encourage it to take place in or
adjacent to existing communities.” Containing development within the core is a way of
maintaining the energy of the city and on the opposing side is sprawl which diffuses the energy
of the city to distant locations hence demanding more energy to access them. Jacobs (1961)
commented that when cities are lively, diverse, and intense, they contain the seeds of their own
regeneration and possess adequate energy to carry over for problems and needs beyond them.
Smart growth increases the resilience of the city by making it a quasi independent organism;
depending less on external forces to keep it on its wheels. As a positive consequence, the edges
17
of a compact city will also exhibit similar characteristics of resilience since the abutting city will
not depend much on the energy resources of the fringes.
Portland, Oregon, is in diverse ways a prominent paradigm of the smart growth
implementation. Earlier in the 1970s before the smart growth concept gained recognition in
planning, Portland had tried to manage growth through policy change and spatial planning
spearheaded by the Portland Metro council (Couroux et al, 2006). The most significant
component of the smart growth strategy in Portland was the implementation of the Urban
Growth Boundary (UGB). Since the implementation of the UGB strategy, Portland’s
metropolitan area has increased by only 11 square kilometres with a corresponding population
rise of more than 25 percent between 1990 and 2000 (Couroux et al, 2006). However, as many
urban solutions tend to do, the restriction of growth in Portland has been criticized to have
resulted in the rising housing prices throughout the region and the threatening decline in
affordable housing for low-income Portlanders (Brueckner, 2000). In refuting the criticisms on
growth restriction, Kolb (2008) challenged that cities can be compact but still make provision for
sufficient affordable housing for the low-income class.
Socioeconomic stratification has been recognized in several urban debates as the
anthropologist, Margaret Mead, reiterated its significance in the Habitat I held in Vancouver in
1976 that, “….Because it is two planets; the planet of the rich and the planet of the poor.”
Therefore, it always sounds reasonable and socially appealing to involve income stratification in
urban decision-making. Kolb (2008) proposed a development strategy that synergizes lowincome and high/middle-income housing in the inner city in a way that a sharp disparity between
income levels is vaguely represented. This could be accomplished, from a macro perspective, in
a neighborhood level development that provides a mixture of both low-income and high/middle18
income units in separate buildings, or from the micro perspective, in a single building that
contains units for both income classes. What is worth noting in such developments is the
proportioning of the number of units designated to each class depending on the need required by
each of them to prevent the emergence of redundancy or inadequacy of a particular class’s units.
The transition of the city has gone through a series of significant changes which usually
happened in response to the contemporary urban problems of the past decades. As can be
imagined in the Mesopotamian cities where population was relatively meager and population rise
relying on natural increase, the largest cities consumed only 100-150 hectares of land.
Adventurous travels and explorations by peoples of the ancient world began early globalization
creating the early larger cities. The industrial revolution drew more people into cities and the
density in terms of housing and jobs were seen to decline social and public health standards
resulting in suburbanization. Urban sprawl became the perfect solution giving urban dwellers the
chance to ‘breathe again’ only for later urban advocates to realize the myriad social, economic,
and environmental disincentives of the sprawling city. To this point, Bruegmann (2000; in
Freestone, 2000) acknowledged that the most recent, and certainly most contentious, aspect of
the conjecture on urban sprawl relates to environmental issues and to sustainability. Smart
growth strategies address the environmental aspects of sprawl as a major point of concern but are
also advocating for a conceptual proximity of the modern city to Aristotle’s ‘ideal-city’ concept
which harnesses the idea of conceptually smaller and inclusive cities. In the urban context, if the
twentieth century could be called the era of the suburbia as a reaction to the decaying urban core,
then the twenty-first century could be targeted to be the era of compact cities in response to
diminishing greenfields on urban fringes.
19
2.1.2 Urbanization and sprawl
One of the major urban challenges noted by the Brundtland Commission’s report in 1987 was
urbanization. Zeigler et al (2012) asserted that the excessive size of urban areas, in terms of both
population and geographical area, might better be described as a cause of problems than a
problem in itself. Urbanization is a problem in the sense of both its residual and resultant
outcomes. Many rural areas are becoming obsolete since people are leaving for the major urban
centers which have better opportunities for education, social life, and economic prosperity. In a
series of causes, firstly, without high urbanization, there would be no need for excessive
expansion of the city into undeveloped peripheral parcels, growth would be slower; and
secondly, ecosystems on urban fringes would be under no threat if the city was not expanding
aggressively. In a sense, urbanization as a cause of problems indirectly affects the resilience of
greenfields on urban fringes.
Urbanization, according to Davis (1965; in LeGates and Stout, 2011), is caused by ruralurban migration, not because of other possible factors as differential birth and mortality rates.
About 80 million people were added to a global population of 4.8 billion in 1985 (WCED, 1987).
Presently, the world’s population is speedily growing, but the world’s urban population is
growing four times faster (Zeigler et al, 2012). Jenks et al (2008) also projected that by 2030 an
estimated 60 percent of global population will be living in urban locations representing 4,912
million people, showing an increase of about seven times the world’s urban population in the
1950s. Sprawl in its widest sense, has long been an American zeitgeist (TCRP, 1998), and
urbanization is concurrently appearing to become an intractable problem. If sprawl is the ‘spirit
of the time’ and urbanization becoming a resilient phenomenon, then the two components of the
urban environment are generating a negative synergy that poses problems to urban ecosystems.
20
As urbanization reinforces the resistance of suburbanization to anti-sprawl strategies, sprawl also
inherently displays a ‘beautiful image’ that attracts more people to live on urban edges. In
addition, sprawl residents feel safer because in most cases they are neighbors to equally affluent
households and hence have the perception that they are free from burglary and robberies.
In the history of the suburbia, Los Angeles is regarded as a perfect prototype of the midtwentieth century suburban revolution. In the report Sprawl Hits the Wall (2001, 1), it was
accounted that,
“During the suburban era – between the 1950s and 1970s – Los
Angeles gained a reputation as the archetypal suburban
metropolis. Fueled by the defense and entertainment industries and
by a good deal of traditional unionized manufacturing,
metropolitan LA created an unparalleled middle-class economy.
With the construction of the freeway system and the rise of
production homebuilding, the region became the capital of
suburbia, transforming such outlying areas as Orange County and
the San Fernando Valley into classic suburban communities.”
The availability of good job opportunities in the Los Angeles area drew more people from both
rural areas and other cities into the region. It can also be found that rising incomes contributed to
the proliferation of sprawl in Los Angeles since most of the residents were in the middle class.
Eventually, suburbanization has pushed development deep into the secondary interior valleys
that ring the metropolis (Sprawl Hits the Wall, 2001). Most of these features of the Los Angeles
of the 1950s-70s are characteristically akin to the situation of Calgary’s current growth;
economic buoyancy and the attraction of populations into the city. Urbanization in this context
21
cannot be blamed as the sole cause of sprawl and the consequent damage to natural capital but
the influence of the income levels of residents is also a vital indicator.
In affluent nations like Canada, income has been rising in urban areas though not in a
uniform pattern. Between 1980 and 2005, income growth among full-time, full-year earners
showed substantial differences among Canadian provinces; Saskatchewan’s median income fell
by 7.4 percent, Ontario grew by 8.1 percent, and Alberta showed a relatively little change of 0.5
percent increase (Statistics Canada, 2006). However, in a national context, Canada’s median
income grew by 0.1 percent during the quarter century but increased by 2.4 percent between
2000 and 2005.
Household affluence and economic growth have occurred in Western urban centers
throughout history, but the scale of today’s growth is becoming a major concern to policymakers.
Fumega (2010) commented that cities have been places with problems related to overcrowding,
health and pollution, but it is the scale of these problems that is affecting our way of life and the
environment than never before. The scale of economic growth, suburban growth, reliance on
motor travel in the city, carbon emission, and greenfields depletion are all problems in one way
or another, stemming from urbanization. There is a vast disparity between the gravity of a spatial
problem caused by a rural population and another caused by an urban population; the magnitude
of the repercussions is usually worse in the urban domain.
According to the City Civic Census, new suburban areas of Calgary have captured all the
population growth averaging close to 100 percent between 2007 and 2011 (City of Calgary,
2012a). Between 1960 and 2000, the annual mileage of the average American driver has gone
from 4,000 to 10,000 miles; and as a result of that, in the past two decades, the average number
22
of hours that drivers are stuck in traffic has increased from 6hrs to 36hrs per year (Frumkin et al,
2004). Transport Canada claimed that traffic congestion costs the Canadian economy more than
$6 billion annually in lost productivity and wasted gasoline (McGran, 2005). Standard
projections suggest that global travel (person-miles per year) will more than double from 1990 to
2020, and then redouble by 2050, with global car travel tripling from 1990 to 2050 (Hawkens et
al, 1999). Brueckner (2000) connected all these indicators by arguing that there are three
powerful causes of urban spatial expansion; a growing population, rising incomes, and falling
commuting costs. It is evident that any increase in urban population contributes to the problem of
suburbanization and its associated necessity of automobile dependency. An extra person living in
the suburb increases the number of people who need a car to travel the city, and an extra car on
the highway increases the time another suburban resident will spend in traffic. Consequently,
time is wasted, energy is wasted, and carbon emission is increased drastically, hence establishing
a connection between urbanization and the decline in ecological resilience.
2.1.3 Urban sprawl
Irrespective of the focus of any specific debate or discussion on urban sprawl, usually, such
discussions attempt to define sprawl and argue whether it is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ (TCRP, 1998). To a
considerable extent, the sprawl argument has dealt quite well with its socioeconomic effects on
urban regions addressing such issues as social segregation (example: Freeman, 2001; Nguyen,
2010) and the existence of a distinct line between income levels. Of more importance in the
scope of this research is the environmental aspect of sprawl, as the ecological footprint of urban
areas seems to be strongly connected to the spatial growth of the city and its resultant energy
consumption and land mass requirements of suburban houses as well as extensive motor travel.
23
An upsurge in worldwide automobile ownership in the early periods of the twentieth
century appeared as the mechanical harbinger of the later fragmented city. The modern structure
of cities was foreseen by Herbert G. Wells who predicted that the metropolis (Great City) would
see its own resources deplete to decentralized ‘urban regions’ so massive a change that the actual
concept of ‘the city’ would become, in his own words, “as obsolete as mailcoach”(Fishman,
1987; in LeGates and Stout, 2011; 77). Wells’ prediction was based on the massive
improvements in transportation systems in the city and the arising prominence of the automobile.
Fishman also pointed out another personality, Frank Lloyd Wright, who prophesied similarly as
Wells and also based his argument on the universal automobile ownership coupled with a
network of superhighways constructed in the city. Suitably, Fishman called Wells and Wright the
prophets of the techno-city, or the modern suburbia.
Increasing automobile production, rising car ownership, and the spatial facilitator of
massive highway constructions linking the urban core to edge communities contribute
significantly to the spread of the city. Carbon emissions from long urban commuting are not only
causing global warming and ozone layer depletion, but are also causes of several health
complications to humans and other living forms, often related to the respiratory system. In 2005,
the Ontario Medical Association estimated that air pollution caused 5,800 premature deaths,
17,000 hospital admissions, 60,000 emergency room visits, and 29 million minor illness days.
Fiscal conversions of these parameters approximated that $374 million was wasted in lost
productivity and $507 million to the health care system, while strongly increasing all health and
economic impact figures (Ontario Medical Association, 2005). Meanwhile, global car
registrations are growing more than twice as fast as the population – 50 million cars in 1954, 350
million cars in 1989, and 500 million cars in 1997 (Hawkens et al, 1999). Newman and Waldron
24
(2012, 111) expressed that, “Whether urban areas will be a model, however, for a sustainable
society or ecological disasters will be determined, to a great extent, by one factor: the car.” The
paradox of the car and man is that, man created the car to be his slave; however, addiction and
over-dependency have now transformed the slave into a master, with the tables turning to make
man the new slave, as Andrew Nikiforuk clearly argued in his 2012 book, The Energy of Slaves:
Oil and the New Servitude.
According to Miron (2003), the concept of sprawl is generally ‘distasteful’ to writers.
However, in the view of Frenkel and Ashkenazi (2005), since sprawling neighborhoods usually
contain high-income residents, they have lower crime rates as compared to core area
neighborhoods. Burchell and Mukherji (2003) also mentioned two benefits of sprawl in urban
settings. They argued that households have a better access to cheaper single-family houses on
larger parcels located away from the urban core, and there is a better opportunity for
participation in governance due to the high number of smaller jurisdictions created in fringe
areas. Both benefits do not afford any direct incentive to the ecological resilience of urban
fringes. The former is a socioeconomic benefit that maximizes the welfare of society by
satisfying the desires of individual families who acquire bigger spaces at cheaper prices relative
to inner city residents who have smaller spaces at comparatively higher prices. The latter is
directed toward a political agenda of ensuring a stronger citizen participation in political
decision-making to ascertain a democratic image. Though both rewards are socially expedient,
they do not possess any strong advantages for ecological stability.
From another dimension of the socio-political merit of the single-family house, Peter
Sloterdijk (2006, 108) philosophically argued that the house behaves as a physical element for
the modern man to mentally weaken the virtual bonds of totalitarianism. Sloterdijk postulated
25
that the modern man assumes a state of micro-rulership by owning a house and residing in a
private setting which psychologically suppresses the ideologies of early twentieth century
dictatorships that arose from political theories. He wrote that,
“To them (referring to contemporary men), it seems immediately
that they must weave the fabric for their happiness in smaller,
more private dimensions. From this perspective, the building
supply centres are the real surety of democracy. They house the
popular support of everyday anti-totalitarianism. The moral of the
story is obvious. Literally it would go like this: Dwell in your place
and refuse the immersion in false collectives! Do not dwell in
racial totalities! Do not engage with super-collectivisations,
choose your furniture from your own supplies, take responsibility
for the micro-totalitarianism of your dwelling circumstances. And
never forget: in your homes, you are the infallible popes of your
own bad taste.”
Sloterdijk’s philosophy of the political advantage the house offers can only be conceived in the
abstract realm since there is no tangible demonstration of one becoming an ‘emperor of his own
place’ – after all, people still belong to that socio-political enclave called community. Even in the
same work, Sloterdijk contradicted by claiming that on the other side of man reigning as the
‘ruler’ of himself by owning his private house, he simultaneously succumbs to the power of
servitude as he becomes enslaved to that bounded legal domain called his property.
A suburban house may appear to be more affordable in the short term, but in the long
term, compared to a house in the urban core, it may demand extra expenditure. The cost on
26
mobility, the cost of services, and the expenditure on energy per household required to reside in a
single-family suburban house will possibly be higher than the cost in a family unit in a multi-unit
building located within the inner city. A study in Calgary found that there will be a significant
increase in housing choice and affordability if a household could avoid the purchase of an
automobile; for instance, an $80,000 income household had a considerable advantage for buying
an average house in 93 out of 202 census tracts (Keough, 2011). Even the quality of life of the
suburban resident is a state at risk. Ostensibly, suburban residents have to wake up earlier to beat
the traffic on their way to work in the inner city and they spend so much time in traffic jams in
the reverse direction back home. Eventually, the little time available for the busy suburban
dweller to enjoy leisure is rather suffered in stressful sedentary moments.
Beside the technological transition that triggered predictions in the early twentieth
century about the suburban revolution, recent studies suggest that the resilience of urban sprawl
arises from many other factors falling within organic, cultural, and policymaking domains. The
organic domain herein refers to the necessary outward growth of the city to accommodate more
people where urbanization plays a paramount role, intensified by the cultural indicator which
involves the contemporary housing demand of the average twenty-first century North American.
Peiser (2001) blamed the ‘American dream’ of most homebuyers wanting a single-family
detached home not only as a contributor to the proliferation of sprawl but also as a factor
invigorating the resistance of sprawl to mitigation strategies. As a matter of fact, mitigation
strategies to control sprawl will ultimately appear to be an affront to a key element of the
American lifestyle; the consumption of large amounts of living spaces at affordable prices
(Brueckner, 2000). The perceptions of people about what a quality neighborhood possesses also
fall within the purview of the cultural determinant.
27
Bier (2001) observed that sprawl increases as a result of young families’ demand for lowdensity suburban houses. This usually happens when there is improvement in people’s economic
stance in urban areas which consequently leads to the selling of houses in core areas and the
purchasing of newer and bigger ones at the fringe areas. Rising incomes contribute to urban
growth because urban dwellers demand more living space as they become richer (Brueckner,
2000). According to a report by the City of Calgary (2012a), suburban housing captures a large
proportion of the overall housing need in Calgary and has captured 68 percent of the total new
housing between 2007 and 2011. Apparently, housing preferences among the North American
population have been shifted toward urban fringes and this trend is transforming into a resistant
cultural phenomenon to be subverted by anti-sprawl strategies.
As extensive urban spatial expansion has been strongly associated with the interplay
between the demand for suburban single-family dwellings and the overuse of the automobile,
demystifying the misconception that technologies are deterministic is essential at this point. In
David Nye’s (2006, 210) book, Technology Matters: Questions to Live With, he tried to convince
that in the midst of whatever technological resources a group of people is exposed to, the
existence of such technologies or concepts boil down to their own choice. He wrote that,
“No determinism made the automobile an inevitable choice instead of mass transit. Nothing
inherent in technologies dictates that people should live in apartment buildings, semi-detached
dwellings, or single-family houses……..Rather, each group of people selects a repertoire of
techniques and devices to construct its world.”
In the construction of a ‘micro-world,’ a society decides the types of technologies and concepts
that will be accepted as ‘natural’ and be woven into its existing cultural fabric. In this context,
generations after the emergence of the suburban revolution will only view single-family housing
28
and automobile use as accepted norms, and when people start to accept some concepts as
inevitable ones, it is often challenging to reconstruct their culture by changing their perceptions
of what they classify as ‘natural’ and ‘unnatural.’ Some peoples have succeeded in being
impermeable to certain technologies they perceive to be unnecessary; Nye mentioned the
Mennonites and Amish in the United States who do not permit the telephone in their society but
preferably use face-to-face communication. In fact, it is rational to be skeptical about a projected
future devoid of single-family suburban housing but has a total reliance on public transit for
urban mobility. However, the United State’s Interstate Highway Act of 1956 is a distinctive
paradigm of how a powerful minority in society can define how technologies are made to govern
the lives of populations; Jackson (1985; in LeGates and Stout, 2011; 67) called it “the largest
peacetime construction project in history.”
Some suburban dwellers are also attracted to the suburbs with the ultimate motive of
enjoying the close-by natural landscape, a resource they cannot have in the inner city. In the case
of Austin, Texas, as accounted by Benfield et al (2001), it was a cattle county in the nineteenth
century. One of the major factors that speedily escalated the population of Austin was its natural
beauty which attracted huge populations into the city, consequently tripling Greater Austin’s
population within two decades from 1976 to 1996. In spite of Austin’s endowment with a good
amount of open land, the ultimate dream of families moving to the suburbs diminished in a
shorter time than they might have anticipated. This happened because many other families had
the same dream of enjoying the natural landscapes and so the problem occurs in continuum with
little prospects of any cessation. In the end, people only realize that dream in a short time and
will have to travel several kilometers to experience the natural landscapes they paid for.
29
In the policy domain, the government and developers have had a significant role in the
creation of the suburbia. Keating’s work on Chicago (1988) saw the creation of suburbs as a
result of the interaction between local governments and real estate developers. Public policies
that support the people to freely make housing choices in the view of creating a liberal market
society and the people’s will of leaving the urban core areas, which they view to be noisy and
overcrowded, can be seen as salient determinants of this trend. In the United States, Canada and
Australia, the predominant post-World War II housing type was single-family houses, usually
constructed on large parcels of land on the cities’ peripheries (Barnett, 2011). This was supported
by government policies, for example, in the US where mortgages were subsidized and incometax deducted for mortgage interests by the federal government. The availability of mortgage
money, rising income, and conformable public policies generated a concept of a housing right in
post-world war Canada (Foran, 2009). This liberty to housing choices is termed by Bier (2001)
as free-for-all and for most of America’s history, that is what it was and still is.
Inevitably, housing provision is, and should be a major agenda in the policies of both
local and federal governments in enhancing the sensitive subject of social equity. Equally
important to housing people is also considering the economic impacts on the government
resulting from sprawling development. Both socioeconomic and environmental issues are
important in the sustainable future advocates foresee. Burchell and Mukherji (2003) estimated
that under conventional development, the United States will spend more than $927 billion from
2000 to 2025 to provide road infrastructure. In a study by Carruthers and Ulfarsson (2003) in a
cross-section of 283 metropolitan counties in the United States during the 1982-1992 decade, it
was discovered that higher densities are more cost effective in the provision of public services
than low densities. Carruthers and Ulfarsson (2003, 520) concluded that, “Although US
30
metropolitan areas may continue to suburbanize, the results presented suggest that they may
maintain a more cost-effective urban form by doing so at higher densities and by consuming less
land.” Findings in the IBI Report (Plan It Calgary, 2009) showed that the cost required to grow
Calgary in the Recommended Direction will be 33 percent less than the cost for the Dispersed
Scenario, while land requirement will be reduced by 25 percent by following the recommended
pattern. It can also be deduced from this study that the Recommended Direction presents two
major merits in sustainability; both the reductions in land consumption and fiscal expenditure.
Some critics of urban sprawl propose a punitive control measure in making sprawl residents pay
for their impacts by imposing extra taxes for providing services such as roadways, sewage
systems, and gas lines. However, as discussed earlier, most sprawling communities are occupied
by affluent households, hence people can afford the costs to live in a single-family detached
house in the suburbs although there will be some level of reducing suburbanization by imposing
such costs on suburban dwellers.
2.1.4 Sustainable spatial strategies
Urban sprawl is generally an undesirable development pattern in the views of many planners,
ecologists and community-based activists. Its impacts on the urban environment range from
physical to socioeconomic disadvantages that are viewed to be diminishing the general quest for
sustainable development. In Rio de Janeiro, the 1992 United Nations Conference on
Environment and Development (UNCED) accepted arguments that cities with low-density
development patterns increase excessive energy consumption (UNHSP, 2009). It is projected
that over the next 25 years, the United States will convert 18.8 million acres of land to build 26.5
million new housing units and 26.5 billion square feet of new non-residential space based on
conventional development patterns (Burchell and Mukherji, 2003). Hence, mitigation strategies
31
for confronting sprawl are salient in the sustainable development agenda. It is also essential to
develop trajectories for understanding, at least in the assumptive sense, the possible outcomes of
a more contiguous development style to determine whether it will have a positive influence on
the ecological footprint of cities.
Planning and environmental advocates have proposed numerous strategies that will create
a better development pattern in postindustrial cities and suburbs to suppress the effects of the
disorderly jumble of sprawl and to reverse the declining quality-of-life urbanites are
experiencing. Proponents have come up with smart growth, new urbanism, green building, and
other related community development concepts that revolve around novel perspectives of
creating a more satisfying and livable built form (Jerke et al, 2008). Though the different design
concepts may have been developed by different proponents and may possess significantly
disparate views, their major normative principles overlap and are usually targeting the substantial
alleviation of conventional development patterns. Jerke et al (2008) asserted that sustainable
development and smart growth are concerned about the sustainability of natural resources in an
era of explosive population rise and the clear deteriorations in biodiversity and water and air
quality. The smart growth strategy has been used successfully in many urban contexts and has
produced laudable results in the urban landscape.
Smart growth, the leading normative procedure for transforming the urban form into a
more compact structure has been proven to render numerous outcomes that span between
physical, psychosocial, and economic benefits. Some of these benefits are somehow elusive and
too abstract to be empirically observed or quantitatively valued while others stand to be realized
in the longer term. In a number of public policy evaluation studies, it is usually problematic to do
accurate environmental assessments, since all the merits and demerits of policy options would
32
have to be converted into a common appreciable fiscal unit (Nijkamp, 2007; in Deakin et al,
2007). To obtain a more comprehensive assessment of the ecological impacts of development, it
would be more facilitative to generate methods of estimating the returns of a development on
natural conservation just as valuation experts do for the returns on investment (ROI). Thus, it
appears to be inappropriate to solely rely on cost-benefit analysis to quantify the importance of
the intangible resources the natural environment offers to the urban population.
Opinions in favor of compact cities revolve around the claims that they are more
efficient, inclusive, and sustainable. In addition, the time and costs of travelling are lower and the
costs of providing infrastructure are lower (UNHSP, 2009). A mobility scenario can be created to
elaborate the interconnectivity of the benefits of compact cities in the thematic domains of the
sustainability goal. The compact city affords a more convenient means of travelling the city; with
walking and cycling as the most preferred modes. Walking and cycling are modes of physical
activity and they keep people healthier and further reduce the money spent by governments and
individuals on medical costs related to obesity and cardiovascular diseases; hence stabilizing the
economic sustainability of the city. When people are healthier, there is a better quality of life
enhancing their psychosocial needs and generating a higher productivity in the workforce that
keeps the economic state of the city in a good balance. Contiguous neighborhoods will increase
social interaction and build a stronger sense of community. As a result, neighbors will not be
meeting each other only through the windscreen. In the longer term, a more sustainable mode of
mobility will reduce urban carbon emissions, reduce the amount of land surface that will have to
be converted into impermeable roadways to reduce excessive runoffs, and the encroachment of
greenfields on urban peripheries will be slower, which are all ecologically desirable indicators.
The Smart Growth Network outlines ten principles of smart growth as follows:
33
1. mixed land use
2. take advantage of compact building design
3. create a range of housing opportunities and choices
4. create walkable neighborhoods
5. foster distinctive and attractive communities with a strong sense of place
6. preserve open space, farmland, natural beauty and critical environmental areas
7. strengthen and direct development towards existing communities
8. provide a variety of transportation choices
9. make development decisions predictable, fair and cost effective
10. encourage community and stakeholder collaboration in development decisions.
(Smart Growth Network, 2013: online)
The principles prescribed by the Smart Growth Network are obtained through a combination of
local conditions from diverse geographical locations. In local smart growth implementation, it is
however essential to set the ten principles as the point of reference and build on them to define
local goals of a particular region because cities are sporadic and differ widely in socioeconomic
and environmental conditions.
The ten smart growth principles are implemented along with a more spatially-based
scheme called the Urban Growth Boundary (UGB). The governing body of Portland’s UGB
called the Metro, defines UGB as,
“A legal boundary separating urbanizable land from rural land…..The boundary controls urban
expansion onto farm, forest, and resource lands. At the same time, land, roads, utilities, and other
urban services are more efficiently distributed within the urban boundary” (Jun, 2004; 1334).
34
Basically, the UGB is a perimeter created around the edges of the city beyond which
development is restricted to occur for a period of time. In figure 2-2, the red line shows the UGB
along the edges of Portland. The Metro has the responsibility of maintaining a 20-year supply of
residential land to contain urban activity and growth for the Portland Metropolitan area (Jun,
2004). Daniels (1999) highlighted three co-ordinated measures used to manage the UGB: phased
development inside the UGB, limiting development outside the UGB, and flexible boundary of
the UGB. Through these measures, there has been a consistently contiguous development within
Portland’s UGB, and as of 1998, 25 million acres of farmland and forest have been zoned outside
the UGB for exclusive farm use and timber conservation (Daniels, 1999).
Figure 2-2 Map of Portland, the red line showing the urban growth boundary (Source:
Bolen, 2008)
35
In the European context, Copenhagen followed the typical growth pattern of traditional
European cities to develop a smart growth plan. In order to ensure a sustainable growth in
Copenhagen, which is expected to increase by 10,000 people annually for the next two decades,
the local authorities devised the ‘proximity principle’ which was used by planners to develop the
Five Fingers Plan (Greater Copenhagen Authority, 2004). In the plan, development was
proposed to occur along five major corridors radiating from the city centre. A transit-oriented
development pattern was adopted by concentrating high-density, mixed-use development around
transit nodes which are located at walking and cycling distances from residential buildings.
Laudable results from the Five Fingers Plan include;

a significant enhancement in transit-dependent mobility with over 200 million
passenger trips by bus and over six million passenger trips by train in 2003

a reduction in carbon emissions

a reduction in municipal infrastructure costs

an impressive preservation of green space across the region reflecting the
improvement of the quality of life of the residents.
The Copenhagen case portrays a conservative planning strategy that takes advantage of the
existing growth trend of the city by planning along with the original growth pattern of the city.
The plan mimicked the European style of cities’ growth where cities grow by radiating away
from the nucleus with mostly new transportation routes being continuations of existing ones. The
lesson in the Copenhagen project is that the implementation of smart growth strategies does not
always demand a consummate transformation of existing urban morphology but can also follow
36
a rule of conserving and improving existing features. All the outcomes in the Five Fingers Plan
in one way or another enhance the ecological resilience by either reducing the quantity of an
unwanted resource or preserving a natural stock.
The success of smart growth depends partly on the controlling power of the government
responsible. Hall (1996) recommended that the first prerequisite for the success of implementing
policies for compact cities is to have a strategic planning authority ‘with teeth.’ Dijst (2000; in
Roo and Miller, 2000) also agreed that for a strategic planning authority to have a significant
impact on urban development, it must have control over potential growth areas in the next 20 to
25 years, and over areas of major redevelopment within the city. Hence, the success of
sustainable development patterns partly depends on the performance of municipal governments
in controlling growth.
2.2 Natural capital and sustainability
2.2.1 Natural capital is a finite resource
White (1994) mentioned two opposing assumptions surrounding human development and the
natural environment: the first emphasizes the potential for development which assumes that
development has been possible due to the ability of humans to learn and adapt. The second
emphasizes the constraints imposed by the environment which also supports the salient fact that
the planet is a finite entity. Some critics of environmental conservatism may view the second
assumption as a neo-apocalyptic perspective outside theological circles that similarly aims at
creating panic of an imminent dead end of Earth. Such critics could be classified as adherents to
the expansionists’ belief that the human enterprise can be expanded perpetually on a planet that
37
is bounded; a view that, to some extent, correlates with the first assumption which places so
much hope in knowledge and technology as the dei ex machina for a sustainable future.
The environmental doctrine that humanity inhabits a finite planet, and hence collapsible,
sets the platform to make the first assumption crucial and useful through learning and adaptation.
If the second assumption is presumably valid, then it is susceptible to the power of the Murphy’s
Law, which states that “anything that can go wrong will go wrong.” In a real antique context,
Wheeler (2004) stressed the impermanency of the planet by arguing that the ancient
environmental collapse and the extensive deforestation of parts of the Mediterranean could be
the reason behind the decline of the ancient Mayan culture. These somehow suggest the fact that
nature, like any other existing energy-dependent phenomenon is bound by the universal power of
the second law of thermodynamics, and can collapse completely at a point. In a related sense,
more light is shed on the truism that human existence depends solely on the presence of nature,
hence the fall of nature will lead to the fall of humanity.
Expansionist thinkers believe technology can solve any problem that erupts in the modern
city. Wackernagel and Rees (1996, 24) put technological optimism in the position of a robot that
argues that the Earth can never run out of resources. The robot says,
“For the last two hundred years, technology has successfully met the challenges of growth. Once
people are faced with a problem, they will come up with a solution. Our greatest resource is the
human mind, and the potential for innovation is unlimited.”
Apparently, the expansionists believe in the ‘innovative us’ and establish a sheer negligence of
the tangible part of our existence, which is our endowment from nature; what Roosevelt called
our ‘permanent capital.’ In their candid view, tangible resources are not as important as the
innovative shrewdness of human cognition in the scope of building a sustainable future.
38
It is established that every year the human population increases, but the quantity of
natural resources required to sustain this growing population and to improve the quality of
human lives remain finite (WCED, 1987). Meadows (2001; edited by Wright, 2008; 63) stressed
that the real choice of managing non-renewable resources is whether “to get rich very fast or to
get less rich but stay that way longer.” Renewable resources can be revived through human
endeavor but for non-renewable resources, the only option to extend the span of their existence is
to reduce consumption to meaningful degrees. In another way, Meadows’ statement reflects the
true ethically-oriented definition of sustainable development which also draws in the aspects of
learning and adaptation to the dynamism of the urban environment.
Urban land, as a spatial commodity in the city can be classified as both a renewable and
non-renewable resource depending on how stakeholders in the urban society use, manage, and
reuse it. In its real form, urban land can be equally treated as a tree species in the forest that is
replaced through reforestation practices after being fell for human consumption. The only
distinct way in which the urban land–forest tree analogy is not parallel is that whilst the forest
tree may need an equally fertile soil as the tree it is replacing, urban land for redevelopment does
not require any special additives to be efficiently harnessed as a renewable resource. That is,
brownfield parcels for redevelopment do not have to be biologically replenished before building
construction, though there is much more demanding procedures involved than in the
development of a greenfield parcel. When urban land is treated more like a non-renewable
resource, there is a stronger pursuit for virgin parcels resulting from multidimensional reasons,
and developers and other stakeholders (in)advertently underestimate the potentials of
brownfields in urban development. Theoretically, the urban government largely defines whether
39
urban land is a renewable resource or otherwise, since it has the power in controlling
development and structuring the location and the scale at which growth should occur.
Since ecological footprint accounts for the amount of land area required to sustain a
defined population and the amount remaining to be exploited, it has a strong contribution in
conceptualizing the collapsibility of nature, at least in the eco-spatial domain. In urban peripheral
land development, there is a myopic assumption that more land still exists and land cannot easily
vanish looking at the massive land masses still remaining after centuries of human development
and civilization; a misconception that analogically resonates with the voice of the robot placed in
the stead of technological optimism. This can be much said of Canada which has a considerably
huge land mass inhabited by a relatively smaller human population. Meadows (2001; edited by
Wright, 2008; 117) mentioned one path that can lead to the collapse of a system through the
ignorant perception of infinity termed the ‘Tragedy of the Commons.’ She wrote that,
“In any commons system there is, first of all, a resource that is commonly shared. For the system
to be subject to tragedy, the resource must be not only limited, but erodible when overused. That
is, beyond some threshold, the less resource there is, the less it is able to regenerate itself, or the
more likely it is to be destroyed.”
The ‘Tragedy of the Commons’ happens when each consumer in a system does not know
the quantity of the stock the other consumers are exploiting. Also, all the consumers assume
there is more of the stock because it is hardly possible for one consumer to see beyond his
consumption to appreciate the others’ consumption. Eventually, this paucity of knowledge about
each other gives the general impression that “there is always more to consume” based on the
consumers’ individual perceptions which relate only their consumption to the stock. All the
consumers, therefore, see the stock as a ‘standing reserve’ perpetually awaiting exploitation. In
40
the end, the system is liable to failure which will subsequently lead to the demise of all the
consumers as well.
Drawing the analogy to the urban context, regional land use pattern is important in the
conservation of natural habitats from the encroachment of human development. Larger cities
contain many individual towns and villages that somehow got engulfed by the cities’ expansion.
There are clear distinctions between cities and neighboring settlements with forests, farmlands
and other natural systems serving as spatial dividers, but these natural forms lose their habitats to
urban expansion when growth is more individualistic, as is happening today. If municipal
authorities tend to believe there is more land, and so low-density fringe development does not
pose questions on conservation, then it is probable that some countries can be totally covered
with human settlements in the near future. In the case of Canada, dependable agricultural land is
the resource under severe threat since the very location of this resource is where human
settlements are concentrated. It is however alarming to conceive the results of a planet that has
no more land for agricultural activities and natural landscapes to sustain human existence.
2.2.2 Entropy as an indicator of sustainability
Sustainability could be viewed from another perspective in the urban environment which
emphasizes the energy input and output dynamics of the city. In energy production and
consumption, there is a portion of the energy produced that is used for productive work and there
is another part that is wasted for no work, or dissipated; the latter is called entropy. Moughtin et
al (1999) defined entropy as the energy that has been dissipated and is unavailable for work; it is
no longer useful energy. This kind of energy is transformed into a resource that is not needed in
the environment, or may even be a harmful resource. The challenge in the urban environment is
about how efficient the energy available within the limits of the city and the energy drawn in
41
from other locations can be capitalized profitably as it passes toward increasing entropy. To
maximize urban energy utilization, entropy is a good phenomenon to note.
According to Moughtin et al (1999), while the total energy possessed by the Universe is
constant, the total entropy is increasing. It could be valid to conclude that energy is well used but
not efficiently used in the urban environment, a reflection of the sub-optimization of resources.
Suburban houses mostly occupy large lot sizes and are low-density because they are usually one
to two-storey single-family houses. Ewing (1997) defined sprawl as a development of one- or
two-storey, single-family houses on lots ranging in size from one-third to one acre, accompanied
by strip commercial centers and industrial parks, also two stories or less in height and with a
similar amount of land takings. Entropy rises when large parcels of land are used to
accommodate single households which are averagely made up of 2.5 people in Canada
(according to Statistics Canada, 2006). The invaluable energy lost from the combined wasted
land on the ground and the imaginary volumes of space above the buildings are what culminate
to partly make low-density fringe development pro-entropic.
Hawkens et al. (1999) did an analysis of the amount of energy used to move a driver in
the modern automobile. About 80 percent of the fuel the car consumes is lost as entropy (heat
and sound) and only 20 percent turns the wheels. Still out of the force produced in the 20
percent, only 5 percent moves the driver, the rest carries the vehicle itself. It is critical to also
consider the number of motor vehicles in the city and how all of them waste this huge amount of
energy daily. Doing the math, it is clear that entropy enjoys more energy than people do, so
apparently, people pay for gasoline and give at least 80 percent to entropy and only 1 percent of
the gasoline burnt moves the person. Frumkin (2002) compared the average car travel distance of
a person per day, which includes both drivers and non-drivers. The Atlanta metropolitan area,
42
one good example of sprawl in the United States, had 34.1 miles per person, while denser areas
like Philadelphia and Chicago had 16.9 miles and 19.9 miles respectively. Density therefore has
an impact on automobile dependency; hence influences the degree of entropy in the city. That is,
low-density peripheral housing and excessive dependence on motor travel, the latter being a
necessity for the former and the two being the major concerns about sprawling development, are
significant parameters in the rising entropy within the city. Moreover, entropy is an offset
parameter that can be used to conceptualize the level of sustainability and hence has an impact
on the ecological footprint of the city.
Meadows (2001; edited by Wright, 2008) argued that physical laws such as the second
law of thermodynamics are absolute rules, whether they are understood or not or liked or
disliked. The second law of thermodynamics states that “everything has been, is, and always will
be, running down to equilibrium and death.” In the view of Moughtin et al (1999, 90), life on this
planet, especially from the standpoint of sustainable development, “is a paradoxical contradiction
to this law.” Although Meadows viewed physical laws to be absolute rules, the second law of
thermodynamics, as it relates to the city as an active responsive organism, must be confuted in
the context of sustainability. Entropy is rising, land is being consumed rampantly, and many
ecological systems are under dire crises due to human development, but there are prospects in the
urban environment to minimize these trends that are contributing to the rising ecological
footprint of modern cities.
2.2.3 Ecological footprint and biocapacity
Several interrelated factors have been found to be the culprits of the rising ecological footprint of
the contemporary city. It has also been established that the prerequisites for human sustenance on
every time plane in evolution have totally depended on the existence of natural capital. Of more
43
significance is the realization that nature has a formidable characteristic of boundedness. The
current impacts of human consumption and dependence on nature and the corresponding quantity
of productive natural resources remaining to provide human needs are two crucial factors in
assessing progress in sustainable development.
Ecological footprint is an accounting tool that estimates the resource consumption and
waste assimilation requirements of a particular human population and converts them into the
equivalent productive land and sea area required to provide these services (Wackernagel and
Rees, 1996). It is also a combination of land use and consumption components. Kuzyk (2011)
defined biocapacity as the biologically productive land area available globally. A single static
difference between the two parameters (for example figures for a single year) will give an
indication of the reserve of nature remaining to be exploited or the deficit generated that subjects
the planet to stress. Also, comparing figures over a number of years between the two parameters
(for example yearly figures within a decade) will give an idea of how a defined population has
lived sustainably; that is, an increasing ecological footprint with a corresponding decrement in
biocapacity shows a declination in sustainability and vice versa. The Living Planet Index that
reflects changes in the planet’s biodiversity estimated that the global Living Planet Index
declined by 30 percent between 1970 and 2008. Meanwhile, the footprint of humanity exceeded
the earth’s biocapacity by over 50 percent in 2008 and recently the carbon footprint from GHG
emissions constitutes a substantial portion of this overshoot (WWF, 2012). The implication is
that while potential biodiversity to support human existence is reducing along with escalations in
global population, the global per capita footprint is rising indicating that consumption is
increasing as well.
44
In simple and comprehensive figures, the ecological footprint methodology converts
human consumption and the biocapacity or carrying capacity of the planet into appreciable
numerical figures for a wider range of people to understand. Wackernagel and Rees (1996)
asserted that a good theory maintains a good balance between complexity and simplicity, and for
it to be effectively used by policymakers, its models must be concrete enough to capture the
essence of reality but also simple enough to be understood and applied. Though a relatively
simple methodology, the ecological footprint analysis encompasses a wide range of human
lifestyle and consumption patterns to capture a reflection of human impacts with a reasonable
proximity to reality.
The ecological footprint comprises two categories of impacts from the human
environment: the first is the amount of productive land and water area required to provide all the
needs of a defined population; that is, housing, transportation, food and water consumption,
material goods and services, and public utilities consumption mainly provided by local,
provincial and federal governments. The second is the amount of productive land and water area
needed to consume the waste produced from all the operating systems that support the survival
of the population. This consists of the equivalent amount of productive land and water area
needed to sequester the population’s carbon emissions from automobiles and from domestic
operations, as well as the area required to assimilate wastes from food and material goods
consumptions. Concisely, the ecological footprint analysis accounts for the composite impact of
what is taken from nature and what is returned to nature to support human survival.
By a large extent, the human species is one single constituent on Earth that has
significantly treaded the planet with deeper, heavier and larger footsteps. Empirically, human
civilization and technology have a strong and positive correlation with rising ecological
45
footprint. It is evident in the rate at which more industrialized countries and cities generate larger
footprints than less advanced countries and cities. Member nations of the Organization for
Economic Co-operative and Development (OECD) now made up of 34 countries collectively
consume more resources than the rest of the world; and in 1990, a North American household of
four used as much power as an African village of 107 people (UNEP, 1997). Another factor
influencing the rise in ecological footprint is high economic growth which is also a direct
indicator of industrialization. Table 2-1 shows a comparison between ecological footprints and
biocapacity in the world and other specific regions in 1990 and 2007 using available data.
1990
2007
All figures
in
Gha/capita
Ecological
footprint
World
Canada
and US
Africa Canada US
World
Canada
and US
Africa
Canada
US
1.8
-
-
4.3
5.1
2.7
7.9
1.4
7.0
8.0
Biocapacity
-
-
-
-
-
1.8
4.9
1.5
14.9
3.9
Ecological
reserve (or
deficit)
-
-
-
-
-
0.9
3.0
0.1
7.9
4.1
Table 2-1 Comparison of ecological footprint and biocapacity (Sources: Adapted from
Wackernagel and Rees, 1996, and Global Footprint Network, 2010)
The table shows that globally ecological footprint has not improved; it has increased by
0.9 Gha/cap from 1990 to 2007. In 2007, the world’s total biocapacity was 1.8 Gha/cap which
gave an ecological deficit of 0.9 Gha/cap, implying that the planet needed an extra 0.9 hectares
46
for each person in the world to stay within its optimal biophysical capabilities. It should also be
noted that global population was 6,625 million in the middle of 2007 and projected to be 7,965
million by 2025 (Population Reference Bureau, 2007) which indicates that more feet are stepping
on the planet at a time when ecological footprint is increasing per capita. The Population
Reference Bureau (2007) also reported that 49 percent of global population lived in urban areas,
while 75 percent of the people living in developed countries are urban residents. As population is
growing, a considerable part is settling in cities where there is a greater affordance of
opportunities for residents to live unsustainable lifestyles.
The table also shows the combined ecological footprint of Canada and the United States
as 7.9 Gha/cap with a corresponding biocapacity of 4.9 Gha/cap, producing an ecological deficit
of 3.0 Gha/cap. Canada and the United States are both high income countries and highly
industrialized. Individually, Canada has an ecological reserve of 7.9 Gha/cap (which is a good
indicator) while the United States shows a deficit of 4.1 Gha/cap. A high ecological reserve
value for Canada does not imply that ‘all is well’ with Canadians’ ecological footprint; in fact
Canada has one of the highest ecological footprints in the world. Even so, in the context of
sustainable development, the efforts made to reduce consumption for the benefit of posterity are
the most essential ones; hence Canada’s high ecological reserve value does not imply progress if
ecological footprint is not improving. In theory, Canada only awaits some few more decades to
obtain an ecological deficit in prevailing conditions where ecological footprint is rising along
with a somewhat stagnant biocapacity.
Wackernagel and Rees (1996) acknowledged how ‘global’ the world has become, and
how interdependent nations have turned to be; hence, a country’s resources apparently belong to
everyone else. Haughton and Hunter (1996) call this present stage of evolution the ‘global
47
interdependence phase;’ implying that there is no more a statement like “this is our country” but
rather a loud worldwide voice saying “this is our planet.” Due to the recent magnitude of
connectedness among nations, ecological catastrophe in one nation will possibly ripple into
others. Wackernagel and Rees (1996) warned the world to be cautious of ecological disasters
which though may occur in different countries but will impose severe pressure on others that
may seem to be self-sufficient. In truth, the global altruistic spirit among nations would not allow
a nation to stay nonchalant while another perishes from ecological collapse. They even warned
of how ecological disasters could spark intra-national and international political and social
turmoil. It underscores that not only human consumption relies on natural capital, but the entire
human environment including social and political networks highly depend on nature to survive.
Apparently, all the tangible resources needed to keep these systems running are extracted from
natural stocks. The United States with its ecological deficit of 4.1 Gha/cap may impose severe
ecological pressure on Canada’s resources in case an ecological disaster erupts. The most
threatening part is that, such a change will be abrupt and policymaking becomes more delicate
when action is to be taken against an adversity within a period of sudden changes.
The African continent in general had an ecological footprint of 1.4 Gha/cap in 2007 with
a biodiversity of 1.5 Gha/cap giving an ecological reserve of 0.1 Gha/cap. However, individual
countries had significant variations in ecological footprint and biocapacity values. For example
Gabon had a biocapacity of 29.3 Gha/cap with a footprint of 1.4 Gha/cap while Libya had a 0.4
Gha/cap biocapacity with a footprint of 3.1 Gha/cap in 2007 (GFN, 2010). Almost all the
countries located in Africa’s desert zones had very low biocapacities which could be the reason
(coupled with Africa’s large population size) why the continent generally has a very low
biocapacity. Though Africa has an ecological reserve, Canada and the United States with a
48
deficit of 3.0 Gha/cap have a footprint value more than five times Africa’s footprint. Most of the
countries in Africa are in the low-income level and less industrialized. Some peoples and
cultures are still living within the restraints of strict ethical codes toward the natural environment
and with little reliance on modern technology for production, the consumption of natural capital
for manufacturing consumer goods is minimized. Although recent findings have proven that
there is a dramatic shift in global land use in which the demand for cropland is transitioning to
the demand for carbon uptake land which increases global carbon emission, and this trend is
occurring in all countries regardless of their income level (Galli et al, 2012). Yet still, affluence
has a strong influence on the ecological footprint of regions as can be seen in the difference
between Canada and the United States combined and that of Africa which is 6.5 Gha/cap.
Although Canada and the United States have a deficit of 3.0 Gha/cap, many North
Americans still live the normal life laden with consumerism through their housing choices,
transportation modes, the rate of goods consumption, and the quantity of waste they produce.
Hong Kong is a highly dense and a very affluent region yet has a small biocapacity, while many
African countries with larger biophysical capacities lack basic needs like food (Wackernagel and
Rees, 1996). This proves that nations are interdependent on each other for natural income and
that a larger ecological footprint does not mean a country has enough natural capital within its
geopolitical confines to provide its domestic needs. In addition to that, a country with abundant
natural capital will not necessarily have a large ecological footprint since there is a myriad of
factors that lead to rising footprint.
While it is important to view ecological impacts at a global level, it is more practically
expedient to confront these setbacks at a more local and basic level where initiatives can have a
better intimate influence on the problems. Several works have emphasized the ‘think global act
49
local’ concept which gives a better opportunity for authorities to address ecological problems
with a lesser domain to consider (example: Wackernagel and Rees, 1996; Nijkamp, 2007 - in
Deakin et al, 2007; Kuzyk, 2011). Ecological footprint connects the global condition to the
impacts from local destinations and this can range from the individual level to the national level.
Investigating footprint at the neighborhood level provides the platform to define those factors
creating the differences among disparate neighborhoods hence raising the awareness of those
impacts on the global environment. Information can also be derived to affirm the fact that within
the city, different neighborhoods have diverse influences on the city’s ecological footprint and
that a generalization of a city as being entirely unsustainable is only a disservice to particular
communities that are living more sustainably within the city.
Wilson et al’s (2013) work in Oakville, Ontario, estimated the local ecological footprints
for 249 neighborhoods. The results revealed that ecological footprint values ranged between 5.4
Gha/cap and 15.2 Gha/cap in a town with a population of about 170,000 that occupy 138.88 sq.
km of land, approximately one-sixth the size of Calgary. At the neighborhood level, there is the
opportunity to find out the peculiar characteristics of the areas with higher footprints and what
disparities they have from the ones with lower footprints. Some questions that could be raised
here include: (1) Are the differences due to the differing income levels on the neighborhood
level? (2) Do the differences have anything to do with the geographical locations of the
neighborhoods in the settlement? (3) Are residents in the lower footprint neighborhoods living
more sustainable lifestyles (in)advertently? (4) Do the differences have anything to do with the
spatial configuration and the density of these neighborhoods?
To address these questions, it demands quantitative comparisons among neighborhoods
placing more emphasis on the indicators mentioned in the questions, especially, income levels,
50
location of neighborhood, density and spatial configuration. The motive of this project is to find
the differences in footprint values among neighborhoods based on their locations within the city
in relation to the core.
51
Chapter Three: Calgary study
Concentrating on Calgary, the study area of the research, this chapter highlights and relates
major issues in the spatial growth of Calgary to demographic changes in the past decades. It
begins with the factors that commenced a tradition of low-density development, through
significant strategies approved by the City to control growth, and how the city has actually
grown after the approval of these growth strategies.
3.1 Spatial growth in Calgary
Calgary is a city located in the south of the province of Alberta, Canada. It is situated on the Bow
River in an area of foothills and prairies. Its location in Alberta creates a strong connection to the
oil sands industry and is well-known for its prominence in employment provision in several
fields ranging from engineering to administration. As a typical postindustrial North American
city, it possesses many characteristics of extensive spatial growth and other associated features of
growth and had an ecological footprint of 9.5-9.9 Gha/cap. in 2007 (City of Calgary, 2007)
which was over five times the world’s average. Calgary is one of the major economic hubs in
Canada along with Toronto and Vancouver, and also accommodates a multi-cultural and a
socially-diverse population.
An elaborate account of Calgary’s sprawling growth in the twentieth century, and the
variables that contributed in different degrees to generate the city’s growth pattern are captured
in Max Foran’s 2009 book, Expansive Discourses: Urban Sprawl in Calgary, 1945-1978.
According to Foran (2009, 3), historically, Calgary’s economic growth has been greatly
associated with the beef cattle and the fossil fuel industries; however, “it was real estate that best
chronicled the city’s boom-bust cycles.” His work is particularly concerned with the influence of
52
City Hall and developers on the present morphology of Calgary. Foran (2009, 4), referred to
them as, “the two main architects whose shared beliefs, differences, and pragmatic interactions
shaped the city’s residential growth pattern.” As a fact, in the midst of economic buoyancy, there
are still other instrumental factors in the city that define its growth pattern. Foran (2009) agreed
that though there were other actors, Calgary’s suburbanization was directed, monitored and
executed through the interaction of municipal authorities and land developers.
Unlike cities such as Edmonton, Red Deer and Saskatoon where land ownership and
development were a mixed private/public sharing program for the first two cities, and the city as
the dominant land assembler and developer for the third, Calgary had a somewhat private-based
scheme (Gertler and Crowley, 1977). The Provincial Planning Act of 1963 increased the City of
Calgary’s power to control residential growth and the continuation of the City’s policy of
shifting financial burdens to the developer promoted the growth pattern of Calgary (Foran,
2009). In Calgary, the role of a single corporation, Genstar, which had managed to achieve a
formidable dominance in the market, with another conglomerate, Nu West, together produced
about 36 percent of Calgary’s housing starts in 1973 (Gertler and Crowley, 1977). However, this
was a macro-regional trend in western Canadian urban centers with the exception of Edmonton,
Red Deer and Saskatoon that had developed a better strategy in land acquisition and
development to mitigate excessive growth. This trend was partly due to the movement of
population to western Canada, especially Alberta, following the 1947 Leduc oil discovery that
brought more money and job opportunities to Albertan cities with Calgary as one of the major
destinations (Foran, 2009). The flow, like the early twentieth century exodus of populations to
urban areas following the Industrial Revolution, increased the demand for housing across
western Canada and imposed an arduous task on municipal authorities to contain these
53
populations within the constraints of environmental conservation. After 1947, both post-war
constraints and the oil discovery demanded more housing facilities which led to the City of
Calgary instituting a policy whereby city-owned land was sold out well below assessed values.
Figure 3-1 shows part of the Sundance area in 1979 and figure 3-2 is a picture around the
same area in 2008. Figure 3-3 shows part of the Bridlewood area in 1979 and figure 3-4 shows
the same area in 2008. Calgary’s edge communities basically developed through an affirmative
response to the modernists’ philosophy of town and city planning which gives considerable
attention to the private automobile.
Olson (2000; in Bunting and Filion, 2000) contended that Calgary was a good example of
prosperity characterized by a golden triangle of oil-company skyscrapers, high levels of car
ownership, superb highways, a preponderance of single-family detached housing, and
elaborately segregated residential neighborhoods. She continued to argue that these features
implied that Calgary drew more kilowatts, guzzled more gasoline, and spewed out more nitrogen
oxides than in the past. In 2009, over 50 percent of Calgary’s total energy consumption was from
petroleum-based products while about 70 percent of that category was from diesel and gasoline
consumption which implied that a large portion of the city’s energy demand was related to
automobile use (State of Our City Report, 2009). Relating this trend to Calgary’s population
growth suggests a tremendous energy demand that is yet to exist due to massive urban expansion
and the accompanying car travel distances. More important to urbanization and spatial
expansion, these favorable features noted by Olson (2000; in Bunting and Filion, 2000) that
characterized Calgary’s physical transformation meant the city was, or would be, faring very
well in the global competitiveness of urban centres in attracting both national and international
populations (Tourism Calgary, 2013).
54
Figure 3-1 Part of Sundance area in 1979 (Source: SANDS, TFDL, University of Calgary)
Figure 3-2 Part of Sundance area in 2008 (Source: SANDS, TFDL, University of Calgary)
55
Figure 3-3 Part of Bridlewood area in 1979 (Source: SANDS, TFDL, University of Calgary)
Figure 3-4 Part of Bridlewood area in 2008 (Source: SANDS, TFDL, University of Calgary)
56
The present structure of Calgary is a culmination of its past dynamics and more
importantly the successive transformations in its economic and social characteristics intertwined
with decisions of the government and private developers. As a multi-cultural, socially and
economically vibrant city, Calgary has a very high attraction value for immigrants and even
Canadians living in other parts of the country. Incidentally, Calgary was number five out of 140
global cities in the ‘Most Livable Cities in the World’ ranking by the Economist Intelligence
Unit in 2011 (Tourism Calgary, 2013). Calgary is the largest major metropolitan area between
Toronto and Vancouver; 23.6 percent of Calgary’s population are immigrants and is only third
behind Toronto and Vancouver among the highest visible minority rates in Canada (ibid.).
Calgary’s population was 1,019,942 in 2007 and 1,090,936 in 2011, increasing by 7 percent in
the five-year period (City of Calgary, 2012b). The population of Calgary as at April 2013 was
estimated to be 1,149,552 and projected to be 1,273,800 and 1,370,500 in the 2017 and 2022
censuses respectively (Walters and Pawluk, 2013). With enticing accolades on the global scene
and projected economic prosperity still defining the status quo of Calgary, the city is inevitably
susceptible to the influx of more people in the immediate forthcoming years which raises
concerns regarding its spatial growth as related to fringe undeveloped land.
3.2 Growth control strategies
Calgary is expected to accommodate one million more people in the next five decades, and
municipal authorities are envisaging a growth pattern that will keep the incoming population
within the established area boundaries and closer to the urban core. The City is making efforts to
achieve a more inclusive and sustainable city in the next decades by relying less on greenfields
on the fringes since authorities are well aware of the high ecological footprint of the city. For a
57
long time, several documents have been prepared to expansively elaborate the details of how
planners want Calgary to grow sustainably along with its rising population.
The City Council in July 1995 adopted the Sustainable Suburbs Study prepared by the
Planning and Building Department of the City of Calgary as a normative scheme to tailor the
city’s suburban growth. Included in the reasons for this study was the goal to implement the
Calgary Transportation Plan (CTP) which was a progeny of the 1992 GoPlan (City of Calgary,
1995). The GoPlan was a review of the city’s transportation system that projected Calgary’s
condition in the next 30 years when the city was expected to contain 540,000 more people,
260,000 more houses, and 470,000 more cars (ibid.). The major motive of the GoPlan was to
optimize the use of present road and transit infrastructure by ensuring positive land use and
travel behavioral change among the public (City of Calgary, 2010b).
Based on two factors, the Sustainable Suburbs Study projected that over 98 percent of the
population growth in Calgary in the next 30 years will occur in the suburbs of the city:
1. When communities grow to a peak population, children grow up and leave home to
form new households usually in newly-formed communities.
2. New housing developments create changes in developed areas, however, new units
created replace some demolished units, hence the net increase is lower than the
number of new units added.
Table 3-1 shows the GoPlan’s (adopted by the City as the Calgary Transportation Plan in May
1995) population projections in specified sub-areas of Calgary suggesting that major population
increase in the city will be occurring in suburban communities.
58
POTENTIAL POPULATION CHANGES
Sub Area
1991
2024
Change
Downtown/ Inner City
104,000
138,000
+34,000
Inner Suburbs
155,000
161,000
+6,000
Established Suburbs
309,000
268,000
-41,000
New Suburbs
135,000
670,000
+535,000
Other Areas
5,000
13,000
+8,000
CITY-WIDE TOTAL
708,000
1,250,0001
+542,000
Table 3-1 Potential population changes in Calgary between 1991 and 2024 (Source:
GoPlan; in Sustainable Suburbs Study, 1995)
Household structure and transformation have a significant impact on the city’s growth
pattern; they are social variables that impact the spatial dynamics of the city. Over this projected
period of population change (1991-2024) with respect to location, the established suburbs that
already occupy large parcels of land are the only places that will be showing a declining
population. Meanwhile, new suburbs that will demand more land appropriation will be
accommodating about 98.7 percent of the general population change. In effect, there are possibly
wasted dwelling spaces in established suburbs that are not occupied, since some suburban houses
lack the flexibility to accommodate a wider diversity of households. They are typically designed
for single families and when children grow up and leave home, their rooms become obsolete and
1
According to the Calgary Economic Development’s (2014) projections this number will be exceeded, with an
estimated 1,659,500 people in 2022 and 1,758,800 people in 2027.
59
those spaces end up not contributing to the city’s housing needs though they occupy significant
land masses. Smith (2000; in Bunting and Filion, 2000) mentioned that even when it happens
that parents also leave their houses for younger families, the natural turnover of population is still
impacted to a certain degree. He argued that local demographics change because the average size
of contemporary families is smaller than that of the baby-boom generations. Household size in
Calgary is projected to decline from 2.6 in 2001 to 2.4 in 2031; while in 2001, households
consisting of families with children are expected to rise from 32 percent to 34 percent by 2016
and then decline steadily in the next two decades and beyond (Cooper, 2006). In the projections
from table 3-1, only 40,000 Calgarians will prefer to live in and closer to core neighborhoods,
which represent only 7.4 percent of the total population change. Meanwhile, the IBI Group’s
Recommended Scenario projected 50 percent growth in exiting areas and the other half in
suburban areas to ensure a more sustainable growth (Plan It Calgary, 2009).
Beside the major goal of the Sustainable Suburbs Study to implement the Calgary
Transportation Plan, the other goals were to control the costs of growth, to better meet people’s
needs, and to encourage more sustainable lifestyles. Cost control was more concerned with
reducing massive infrastructural expenses that were suffered by the government in providing
transportation networks, water and other utilities, schools and security facilities to emerging
peripheral communities. People’s needs had to be met in terms of social needs, transportation, as
well as recreational and cultural needs by planning in accordance with emerging trends and
transitions in the social system. Encouraging a more sustainable lifestyle was an all-inclusive
strategy to involve residents in their daily lives in the general course for sustainability by
creating the awareness and educating people on the trajectories to achieving a sustainable future.
60
The major proposal of the study included an elaborate set of design guidelines that would
yield a ‘complete community.’ A complete community would approximately occupy a minimum
area of 2.6 sq. km and accommodate about 12,000 people. The community should be distinctly
bounded as an individual urban village containing all the needs of the residents including
schools, shopping centers, recreational spaces, a focal point for identity, a wide variety of
residential choices, public and commercial facilities, and a diversity of job opportunities. Higher
residential densities were to be located closer (within 400m or 5 minutes walk) to utilitarian
destinations, major public spaces and transit points.
Considering the total area of the community, mobility would be possible through walking
and cycling due to the good proximity factor which would foster a more sustainable lifestyle as
envisaged. Communities could be socially and spatially closer to Aristotle’s ‘ideal-city’ concept
without undermining social capital through spatial fragmentation. Moreover, transitions in
household formation would survive in a complete community due to the provision of different
housing/unit choices. The proposal reinforced the urban village concept by considerably
reducing dependent relationships among the city’s communities since each would be a more
resilient and self-sufficient entity on its own, hence demanding less energy from other
communities to survive. Reducing energy expenditure through this strategy is one of the
achievements that will go a long way to improve the ecological footprint of individual
neighborhoods. Creating a sustainable city depends largely on the performance of its
components, and performance depends on the resultant reactions of residents to the generated
urban morphology. Thus, planning communities to direct the lifestyle of residents could lead to a
significant paradigm change that will influence people to change their choices to more
sustainable ones.
61
The study however proposed a minimum residential density of 17.3 uph (or 7 upa) across
a community, though individual neighborhoods within the community may have varying
densities. In order to make good use of land, the minimum density proposed by the study is
comparatively lower and will not reflect an efficient utilization of land. Notwithstanding the
relatively lower density recommended, which may have been proposed to respond to the
contemporary issues at the time of the study almost two decades ago, the ultimate lessons from
the study is that population growth is inevitable and growth necessarily has to eat up fringe land.
However, a better way to sustainably allow growth is to increase densities and drastically reduce
the homogeneity of new suburban communities so that they can contain population growth for a
longer period of time before more land is appropriated beyond them.
The Municipal Development Plan (MDP, 2009) is another work that built upon the
contents of the GoPlan and The Calgary Plan (1998) with a sustainable development pattern as
the ultimate goal. Along with the Calgary Transportation Plan (CTP), the MDP sets a 60-year
planning strategy that proposes a more sustainable urban form and how to achieve it by
incorporating good mobility networking with land use. It is also augmented with a 30-year plan
for managing growth along with a shorter-term 10-year economic-oriented plan that all aim at
collectively ensuring a better urban form for Calgary at a reasonable fiscal expenditure. The
MDP generally sets major goals and proposes several key directions for achieving each goal. The
goals of the MDP include:
1. Build a globally competitive city that supports a vibrant, diverse and adaptable local
economy, maintains a sustainable municipal financial system and does not compromise
the quality of life for current and future Calgarians.
62
2. Direct future growth of the city in a way that fosters a more compact efficient use of land,
creates complete communities, allows for greater mobility choices and enhances vitality
and character in local neighborhoods.
3. Create great communities by maintaining quality living and working environments,
improving housing diversity and choice, enhancing community character and
distinctiveness and providing vibrant public places.
4. Make Calgary a livable, attractive, memorable and functional city by recognizing its
unique setting and dynamic urban character and creating a legacy of quality public and
private developments for future generations.
5. Develop an integrated, multi-modal transportation system that supports land use, provides
increased mobility choices for citizens, promotes vibrant, connected communities,
protects the natural environment and supports a prosperous and competitive economy.
6. Conserve, protect and restore the natural environment.
Though the goals of the MDP consider growth in a broader city-wide context, they considerably
capture ideas from the proposals of the Sustainable Suburbs Study and also advocate a compact
and more inclusive urban form for Calgary but the big difference is the fifty-fifty split of growth
between existing and suburban areas recommended by the MDP. With policies and strategies
clearly laid out, the MDP concludes with a strategic framework for growth and change to
facilitate the implementation of the proposed policies in practice. The framework is designed to
ensure that policy, strategy and resources for growth are rightly aligned to facilitate the supply of
planned and serviced lands and also achieve the goals of the Calgary Metropolitan Plan (CMP),
the Municipal Development Plan (MDP) and the Calgary Transportation Plan (CTP). The
framework draws together all the stakeholders including the provincial government into a
63
network that will ensure a fiscally and spatially feasible development defining when and where
growth should occur in Calgary.
3.3 Response to growth strategies
It is essential in the scope of sustainability to assess the growth of Calgary in the past two
decades whether it has achieved the objectives of the Sustainable Suburbs Study and the other
documents that were developed before and after it. Figure 3-5 shows the Municipal Development
Plan Typologies with the boundaries of Calgary’s developed area and the city’s limits. It is used
along with the Developed Areas Growth and Change 2010 (2010) and the Suburban Residential
Growth 2012-2016 (2012) to assess the growth and projected growth of Calgary years after the
City Council approved the Sustainable Suburbs Study (1995).
The developed area covers a total land mass of 42,420 hectares representing 37 percent of
the total city land area and accommodating 79 percent of the city’s population (City of Calgary,
2010a). From 1990 to 2000, much of the outer areas beyond the present developed area would
have been part of the developing area (communities that were not fully developed), for example
McKenzie Lake, Somerset and Arbour Lake. Hence, the current developed area only became
fully established in the early 2000s. Most of these areas have followed the tradition of lowdensity development. For instance, new communities within the Symons Valley’s Approved
Community Plan (ACP) including Nolan Hill, Sage Hill, Evanston and Kincora have all been
developed according to the traditional low-density pattern and have a relatively lower degree of
heterogeneity which makes the car a necessity.
64
Figure 3-5 Municipal Development Plan Typologies (Source: Adapted from Developed
Areas Growth and Change, 2010)
65
Figure 3-6 Google image of Evanston in the North sector of Calgary within the Symons
Valley Approved Community Plan
With the addition of 24 new communities, suburban housing has captured more people
than the developed area and has significantly increased outward growth in Calgary. Between
2007 and 2011, new areas in Calgary absorbed a little more than 100 percent of population rise
gaining additional population from net migration, natural increase and from the population lost
by the established areas (City of Calgary, 2012a). Within this same period, 61 percent (40,527)
of the total new housing units added to Calgary’s stock were single and semi-detached units
while 39 percent of the units were found in row and apartment buildings.
From 2012-2016, the Suburban Residential Growth 2012-2016 estimated that 1,610
hectares of land will be required to provide 40,100 new single and multi-units at 24.7 uph (that
is, 1,810 hectares at 22.2 uph or 2,010 hectares at 19.8 uph). As of April 2011, an estimated
66
3,985 residential hectares were available for residential and related uses for a 12 to 14 year
period. Based on these projections and the data provided on land availability for the next 5 years,
in the next 14 years, more than 4,500 residential hectares will be needed if the rate of land
requirement is appreciably consistent. Meanwhile, the city has an estimated 3,985 hectares
available based on the capacity of vacant registered lots and developer anticipated units from
within approved land use applications, which gives a deficit of at least 515 hectares. It should be
noted that this estimation is done with the highest density of 24.7 uph provided by the document,
hence a fall in density will imply a bigger deficit. Moreover, this density has not been
implemented in any new suburban development within Calgary.
Through the Standard Development Agreement (SDA) developed by the City involving
the Urban Development Institute (UDI) of Calgary in annual negotiations, details have been
given on developers’ obligations to provide public infrastructure and fiscal contributions in the
form of fees and levies in the development of new subdivisions (City of Calgary, 2012a).
However, these levies are not enough for development (Plan it Calgary, 2009) and developers
have recently resisted the efforts of the local government in taking such levies.
Table 3-2 compares population changes in selected communities outside and within the
developed area boundary of Calgary between 2007 and 2011 (5 years). The table shows that
population in the communities within the developed area generally declined slightly. Though
there is a general population decline within the developed area, some communities have rather
shown significant increases. For instance Hillhurst and Haysboro have respectively experienced
13.4 percent and 11.7 percent increases within the 5 year period. Hillhurst is one of the oldest
neighborhoods in Calgary, established in the first quarter of the twentieth century, but has shown
a great deal of resilience to social and spatial changes. Its proximity to the downtown could be a
67
factor in its rising population since there are some residents who choose to live closer to the
active parts of the city.
Community
2007
2011
Change (%)
Charleswood
3,468
3,357
-3.2
Christie Park
2,217
2,180
-1.7
Communities
Chinatown
1,308
1,269
-3.0
within the
Banff Trail
3,738
3,582
-4.2
Mayland Heights
5,930
5,835
-1.6
Cambrian Heights
2,060
2,039
-1.0
Strathcona Park
7,234
7,039
-2.7
Evanston
3,269
5,889
+80.1
Rocky Ridge
6,605
7,266
+10.0
Communities
Tuscany
16,119
18,838
+16.9
outside the
Cranston
6,515
10,831
+66.2
developed area
Chaparral
8,896
11,151
+25.3
Saddle Ridge
9,431
13,388
+42.0
Taradale
11,253
16,110
+43.2
1,019,942
1,090,936
+7
developed area
CALGARY
Table 3-2 Comparison of population change between communities within and outside the
developed area (Source: Adapted from Calgary Community Profiles, The City of Calgary,
2012b)
68
Table 3-1 also projected that population will increase in the inner suburbs of the city by 6,000
people between 1991 and 2024 and Hillhurst falls within that territory. Haysboro has also shown
a population rise though it is located about 10 km south of the downtown. However, the
communities beyond the limits of the developed areas have mostly experienced a significant
population rise and the trend has occurred in almost all the new communities built from the early
2000s. The trend implies that population change within the developed area has slightly declined
but there is a significant increase in the newer communities, hence it can be concluded that
Calgary’s growing population is basically settling in newer suburban communities more than
inner city areas.
Since the approval of the Sustainable Suburbs Study (1995), new communities emerging
beyond the developed area of Calgary have mostly followed the conventional sprawling pattern.
Most of the high-density developments have occurred within the developed area, usually closer
or inside the inner city and centre city boundaries. There has not been any prototype of the
‘complete community’ concept in emerging subdivisions and there seems to be an elusive
conclusion that high-density developments are prohibited on green edges. The rate of lowdensity growth on the fringes will be difficult to decelerate if development continues to be
single-unit-oriented, less contiguous, and homogenous.
69
Chapter Four: Methodology
4.1 Formulating the framework
The ecological economist, Herman Daly, defined growth as “an increase in size through material
accretion” and development as “the realization of a fuller and greater potential” (Wackernagel
and Rees, 1996; 33). The former is associated with undesirable extensiveness, as can be seen in
the sprawling city, while the latter fosters an aggregative profit-making (not only in fiscal terms)
by making good use of land that reflects in habitat conservation. Semantically, the two terms are
even wider apart when they are considered in the scheme of ecological conservation since urban
growth is promoted by exploiting natural capital at a more extensive rate and scale and hence
undermining, to this far, the most important component of the urban environment. Urban
development on the other hand does not imply that nature is totally not affected, rather, nature is
exploited with a clearer sense of its importance to all the systems in the urban society;
resultantly, there is a better maximization of available resources to afford as much services as
possible for the urban society. A more counter-entropic environment is achieved as a result.
Also, making intergenerational solidarity a vital consideration in resource utilization and
instilling a more cognisant approach in both authorities and the larger public regarding
consumption patterns appear to accelerate urban development over growth. It is indicative that
there is the need for replacing the natural capital appropriated to ensure the continuity of nature;
but how can urban planning replace lost natural capital?
In the purview of this study, it is not the sameness of building façades that is of much
concern about sprawling growth but rather the extensive appropriation of land in peripheral
development coupled with the longer term ecological disincentives emerging from this
70
conventional style of growth. Presently, there is a higher demand for larger living spaces
(Crawford, 2002) and both internal and external spaciousness are somewhat synonymous with
low-density housing. Averagely, bedrooms are much larger and kitchen spaces have enough
room for moving around, living areas are also suitably spacious, and more importantly there is
comparatively a better provision of storage spaces which in itself is a cause of other problems.
More garage spaces implies that households can have enough space for more than a car and more
outdoor storage gives the opportunity for households to purchase other enormous goods like
recreational vehicles. There is the affordance for households to acquire all they ‘want’ (which is
different from ‘need’) and as a fact live far beyond their respective fair earthshares2.
One major catalyst facilitating this kind of lifestyle, as mentioned earlier, is economic
wellness which enables households to purchase these houses (Bier, 2001) that have enough space
for keeping consumer goods. Single-family houses occupying one-third to one acre consume this
much land area to accommodate a very small number of people. All these considerations should
be viewed along with the magnitude of this trend in urban areas and the number of green acres
that are converted into human settlements annually. If ecological footprint is averagely
increasing annually per capita, then peripheral low-density housing has a lot to do with footprint
rise than even perceived.
Another detail in suburban housing is material consumption in the construction of
buildings (Crawford, 2002). Roughly, comparing the total material requirements of a suburban
house to that of an inner-city apartment with equivalent housing provisions will give an
implication that more is needed for the former than the latter. Consider the building envelopes of
2
Fair Earthshare: The amount of ecologically productive land available per person on Earth. In 1996 the Earthshare
per capita was 1.5 hectares (Wackernagel and Rees, 1996).
71
each house in a row of detached suburban houses and the approximately 900-1200 sq.ft gap
between every two of them; also, the external walls of every two abutting buildings and the
quantity of material that could be conserved if the two houses (or units in this case) were to be
separated by just a single party wall. Perhaps, people are just interested in defining their
distinctive property lines from others and the ownership of a defined private space seems to hold
some quantum of pride among many urban residents. If a single wall can be used to shelter two
households on one side, why do we create two separate walls for each and provide a narrow gap
between families as a legal definition of “what is mine and what is yours?” If people ‘fear’ to
live in the same building with other households, as some critics refute the vantage of multi-unit
housing, then what is the vindication for the promotion of social integrity and a sense of
community that sprawling communities argue to strongly foster? Aside the location of houses in
relation to the core area of the city being a major consideration in sustainability analysis,
building types is also a crucial factor that offers more detailed observations about sustainability
in relation to the composition of houses.
In multi-unit buildings, another detail to notice is shared spaces; including shared
corridors, stairways, and in some cases there are shared kitchens and common lounges. Before
the second half of the nineteenth century, there were mostly smaller houses with shared
bedrooms and public spaces, and the idea that each child could and should have a separate
bedroom is only a few hundred years old (Nye, 2006). The fading away of shared spaces and a
corresponding increasing space dimensions in residential design seems to be in correlation with
the organized proliferation in enlightenment and technology. In shared spaces, apart from a
relatively smaller space usefully serving more people, the energy requirements for lighting and
heating/cooling these spaces are also shared among a number of people. Holden (2004)
72
acknowledged that there is an economy of scale in situations where footprint or ecological
impact is shared among more people. Entropy, and hence ecological footprint are impacted
positively when an ample number of people share common spaces which develops from the
lower material requirement per person, and the reduced energy demand per capita for lighting
and heating/cooling these shared spaces. Although, spaces in single-family houses could also be
well called shared spaces, the number of people involved is not very encouraging to ensure a
more efficient utilization of building materials and energy.
Both inner-city and suburban single-family houses are somewhat equivalent in their
material requirements and sometimes land mass appropriations, but the two factors that set them
apart are their connectivity and proximity to the core of the city. The core area mostly
accommodates a considerable proportion of the city’s jobs; though there is presently job sprawl
which, however, is not as influential in transforming urban morphology as does housing sprawl.
In spite of this, the central business district still holds a distinctive identity in its endowment with
more jobs, entertainment facilities, cultural centers, shopping centers, recreational areas, public
spaces, and in some circumstances a number of educational facilities are located within core area
boundaries. Jobs may be spread all over the city, but due to the high density of the core area, its
job concentration surpasses any other defined spatial territory of the city. As a result, every urban
resident is somehow attached to the downtown in one way or another. Hence, the factors of
connectivity and proximity are crucial in striking environmental impact differences between core
area and suburban single-family houses.
In this view, connectivity has to do with the ease of accessing downtown destinations
from a certain location in the city, as well as the variety of mobility choices at a person’s
disposal for accessing these destinations. Proximity is about the closeness to core area
73
destinations even in the midst of diverse mobility choices. The connectedness of suburban
houses to the core areas can tentatively be called a hard connectivity. In the suburbs, the most
convenient mobility choice is the car since most new suburban communities are not connected
by transit systems, and even established communities that are connected have a low ridership
hence public transit is slower in such locations. Moreover, cycle lanes usually have a limit with
reference to the city’s core and the only routes connecting suburbs to core areas, beyond a certain
point, are highways and super-highways. Hence, apart from suburban communities having a
lower proximity factor, they also show a low connectivity factor which directly contradicts the
situation for houses located in inner neighborhoods. Between suburban and core area singlefamily houses, the difference in ecological merit is the transportation factor which appears to be
more expedient for the latter, though their material and domestic energy requirements, and
sometimes land mass demands are apparently similar.
Urban growth imposes intensive financial burdens on governments. When new
communities emerge on the city’s edges, there is the need to connect all these areas to the core
not only for transportation but also to public utilities and services (Carruthers and Ulfarsson,
2003). More land gets covered with asphalt, and more trenches and underground piping and
ducting have to be done to convey water, gas and other utilities to the suburban population. All
the underground networks created also make those particular stretches of land unusable for any
productive ecological activities. Meanwhile, the intrinsic energy of the city’s core is being
diffused to farther locations and hence depriving the city of its resilience and its capacities to
self-regenerate. Subsequently, more energy is required to connect suburban residents back to the
inner city for some very basic needs, as Al Gore rightly exaggerated that, “A gallon of gas can be
used up just driving to get a gallon of milk.” It is a problem that erupts when sprawl is more
74
homogeneous with housing; and clearly there are usually fewer prospects of many utilitarian
facilities appearing in suburban areas any time soon after these new communities are established.
The traditional post-Industrial Revolution/World War II city is basically characterized by
its core area and its suburban areas, and these two spatial components of the city could possibly
be contributing in varying degrees to the ecological footprint of the city as a whole. So far, the
conjecture has mostly favored the core area as the most desirable location for urban development
in envisioning a sustainable future that greatly prioritizes the natural environment. However,
empirical evidences and an accumulation of subjective and case-based views cannot only be
relied on as bases for theorizing that compact cities that hugely concentrate development within
inner-city limits are more sustainable and will have a positive impact on ecological footprint.
Innes and Booher (2010) conceived theory as a way of viewing ideas informed by both social
theory and grounded theorizing based on in-depth case analysis and comparison. At least to
capture a greater part of reality and to buttress assertions with facts, there is the need to draw
comprehensive comparisons between the ecological impacts of core neighborhoods and fringe
neighborhoods. The comparison is only concentrating on ecological impacts because in the scope
of this thesis, subjectively, the environmental component is presently more crucial than the other
two imperatives of the urban environment since its existence defines the sustenance of the others.
Moreover, making concrete arguments on the ecological impacts of urban neighborhoods with
respect to their geographical locations will provide a more factual perspective founded on
realistic analysis, hence affording a higher degree of authenticity, and specifying the indicators
that significantly generate the disparities in the footprint values of neighborhoods.
75
4.2 Review of methodologies
To conceptualize improvements made en route to sustainable development, it is essential to
make assessments that bring the parameters of sustainability together to give an aggregative idea
of how much progress has been made. Since the sustainable development concept by the
Brundtland Commission involves a composition of the economic, social, and ecological
components of settlements, it would be more desirable to have an assessment tool that could
unify all the components into a single metric. There have been attempts to develop a unified
framework of indicators encompassing the economic, social and environmental aspects of
reality. However, this integrative procedure of combining all the three urban components could
be seen to be hiding more than they reveal about the progress in sustainability (Moffatt, 2000).
That is, a better revelation of reality can be achieved by treating each component separately and
comparing individual thematic figures if there is the need, to relate the general progress in
sustainability.
The ecological footprint methodology, like many environmental assessment tools, is
ecological-oriented. Thus, it satisfies the ultimate intent of this research to measure the
ecological impact of neighborhoods in relation to their geographical locations within the city
which significantly defines the general form of the city. It has been argued that depending on the
expansionists’ approach of making environmental assessments using monetary valuations does
not really draw people’s attention to their ecological impacts on the planet (Wackernagel and
Rees, 1996; Moffatt, 2000). Moreover, strategies intended to make development more
sustainable can show a better degree of feasibility if they are directed toward consumer behavior
(Moffatt, 2000); hence making environmental assessment results easily assimilative to the public
will considerably contribute to the quest for sustainability. Monfreda et al (2004, 232) argued
76
that “market prices or other monetary valuation methods are unreliable means for informing
about the long-term viability of ecosystems that provide goods and services such as topsoil
creation, climatic stability, biodiversity, fuel, and fodder.” Nijkamp (2007; in Deakin et al, 2007)
also found a fault in environmental assessments that rely on the fiscal equivalence of human
impacts on ecological systems. In a way, value needs to have a more intimate connection to a
natural phenomenon which affords the opportunity to see the value of the natural environment in
a clearer representation without concealing reality with fiscal quantification. The ecological
footprint gives an areal figure that makes it possible for a person or a group of people to easily
know their direct impact on the environment measured in a spatial metric.
In the urban context, all consumption factors can be translated into the amount of
biologically productive land and sea area required to provide them and assimilate all the wastes
involved. Biologically productive land consists of areas such as cropland, forest, and fishing
grounds; and excludes deserts, glaciers, and the open ocean (Kitzes and Wackernagel, 2009).
The urban dweller’s needs related to ecological footprint could be summarized as:
(a) food footprint (eating animal-based, processed, packaged, imported food, and water)
(b) goods and services footprint (general goods eg. clothing, and waste production)
(c) energy footprint (domestic electricity and energy demands)
(d) housing footprint (size of house, lot size, household size, and housing typology and
location), and
(e) mobility footprint (travel modes and distance travelled annually by each mode).
The last three factors can be highlighted as the ones creating the strongest link between the urban
form and ecological footprint. Domestic energy demands, housing size and type as well as travel
77
distances resulting from land-use mix strategies all define the nature of the urban form. The first
two factors also relate to the urban form though to a lesser degree. For instance, how far people
travel from their homes to buy food and other goods, how far service trucks have to travel to
collect domestic waste and perform other activities, and how long piping and ducting have to be
done to convey water and gas to houses are all variables dictated by the urban form. Energy
footprint concentrates on the quantity of energy required per capita, hence a type of housing with
more shared spaces for a number of people reduces the footprint per capita; and also the source
of energy such as hydroelectric, coal-powered or photovoltaic also has an impact. Housing
footprint combines the size of the house in both lot size and building footprint area, material
requirements, household size also emphasizes the square footage per capita, and the housing type
has to do with density – that is, single-family or multi-unit housing. The location of the house
can also be placed in this category; whether it is suburban or inner city-located since this factor
will influence the mobility footprint of the occupants. Mobility footprint is connected to the
choices of transportation of a person, that is, private car, public transit, biking, or walking as well
as the distance one has to travel to access utilitarian destinations. These factors are also well
connected to the urban form which defines the mode of transportation for people and the
distances people have to travel depending on the spatial configuration of the city.
4.2.1 The methodology by Wackernagel and Rees (1996)
In Rees’s work (1992), he used the concepts of human carrying capacity and natural capital to
argue that present assumptions in relation to urbanization and the sustainability of cities must be
reviewed in the light of changes in the global economy. He also posited that orthodox economic
analysis has abstracted from reality so much so that its capacity to detect, let alone afford policy
recommendations on socially sensitive macro-environmental dimensions of global urbanization
78
is gravely compromised. The fundamental concept behind the Ecological Footprint is that for
every material or energy consumption, a defined amount of land in one or more ecosystem
categories is needed to provide the consumption-related resource flows and for waste
assimilation. The ecosystem categories include croplands, forests, and water bodies for fishing.
Separately, two variables are calculated, the consumption category and the waste assimilation
category. Consumption is classified into five major components: food, housing, transportation,
consumer goods, and services.
The method first estimates the average annual consumption per capita for a particular
category of consumption, for instance residential land area required for each person in a region
can be estimated by dividing the gross residential built-up area occupied by the population by the
total population. That is:
Residential land area per capita = Gross residential built-up area ÷ Total population
The same procedure is used for food, mobility and all the other consumption categories. All the
values for each category are converted into the equivalent land or sea area required to provide
them and summed up to represent the consumption-related footprint value of the analysis.
However, a category like the residential land area is maintained since it is already in an areal
metric. Solid waste assimilation requirements can also be estimated through the same procedure
and converted to the equivalent land area values. The two, consumption-related component and
the waste-assimilation component are added to obtain the total ecological footprint per capita.
The method uses global and national data on the categories for the calculation; for
example the total food consumption for a region, the total land mass occupied by residential
buildings in the region, and the total carbon emissions by the region can all be obtained from
established data. Data sources for this method include Food and Agricultural Organization of the
79
United Nations
(FAO
Yearbook),
International
Road Transportation Union
(World
Transportation Data), World Resources Institute (World Resources), United Nations statistics,
federal and local government publications with national statistics and several others. The work
by Wackernagel and Rees estimated footprint values for nations and smaller settlements and
subsequently set the pace for more work to be done in much smaller scales.
4.2.2 Work in Greater Oslo and Førde (Holden, 2004)
The major goal of Holden’s study was to obtain more empirical and theoretical knowledge about
the relationship connecting physical urban planning and household consumption. The study
based on two assumptions: (1) that the significant and increasing environmental damage due to
private household consumption presents a major challenge in achieving sustainable development,
and (2) that a large part of this consumption appears to be influenced by our physical living
situation, that is, the way we design and locate our houses. In this view, the way we design our
houses refers to housing type (single-unit or multi-unit, the choice of building materials, and
space dimensions) and location deals with whether a house (or a residential unit) is suburban or
situated within the inner city.
The project, spanning between 1997 and 2001, was based in two large scale Norwegian
settlements, Greater Oslo with a population of approximately 1 million and Førde with a
population around 12,000. Data on housing-related consumption were collected in the study
areas from 537 households. Ecological footprint calculations were done to link consumption and
sustainable development. At the end, the analysis indicated which overall living situation based
on consumption afforded the least serious environmental impacts. The project consisted of an
empirical part which was concerned with obtaining new knowledge on the connection between
housing-related consumption and the indicators that affect its extent and composition. It also had
80
a theoretical part which sought to incorporate the results from the empirical part into a discussion
in the view of other related knowledge.
The empirical part included three phases: surveys carried in the two study areas with
questionnaires distributed by post, 24 case studies were done to derive a deeper insight into the
variables that influence people’s consumer behavior in everyday situations using qualitative
research interviews on households, and the ecological footprint calculations done to find which
living situations had lower ecological impacts. The survey part set the platform for describing
how consumption varied between housing types and locations. In order to ensure that an
adequate number of respondents from different housing types and housing localities participated
in the survey, the study used the stratified probability sampling method.
Using results from the household survey, the housing-related consumption patterns were
converted into their ecological footprint equivalents. Data was collected as follows:

consumer behavior: information was collected on a broad range of housing-related
consumption with regard to conditions (directly or indirectly) connected to the house.
Household consumption was also studied in connection with holidays and recreation
activities;

characteristics of each house: such as housing type, size (sq.m floor area), construction
type (wood, brick, concrete) and the total size of the plot (sq.m);

the physical and structural properties of the surroundings: data was collected on inter alia
services within walking distance (500–1000 m) of the house (shops, public offices,
commercial services, etc.), the distance to the nearest service of each type, as well as the
density of buildings in the immediate vicinity and local community;
81

socioeconomic and socio-demographic background data on the individuals living in the
households;

environmental attitudes: e.g., attitudes to general, environmental and political issues.
The data collected on households and individuals were converted to equivalent ecological
footprint measures to determine how housing type, house location, and the size of settlements
(Greater Oslo and Førde) affect ecological footprint. Greater Oslo had an average household
ecological footprint of 1.70 Gha/cap while Førde had an average of 1.56 Gha/cap. It is worth
noting that the footprint values in this study only represent the housing-related consumption
indicators and not the entire footprint components.
4.2.3 Work in Oakville, Ontario (Wilson et al, 2013)
The major proposal in Wilson et al’s work was that assessments of ecological impacts are more
relevant and useful to planners and policymakers when done at a much smaller scale. The study
calculated ecological footprint values for 249 neighborhoods in the Town of Oakville, Ontario.
Results ranged between 5.4 Gha/cap and 15.2 Gha/cap while the average for the entire town was
9.0 Gha/cap.
In the methodology, neighborhoods were assumed to coincide directly with Statistics
Canada’s designated dissemination areas (DAs). A dissemination area is a small, relatively stable
geographic unit composed of one or more neighboring dissemination blocks accommodating a
population of about 400 to 700 people. Ecological footprint values were calculated for six
footprint components which included: (1) shelter, energy (2) shelter, non-energy (3) consumer
goods and services (4) mobility (5) food, and (6) government. The study calculated footprint
values separately for each component and the figures aggregated to obtain the total ecological
footprint for each neighborhood.
82
The footprint associated with shelter (energy) referred to the direct domestic energy
demand of households. This was calculated by converting household electricity consumption and
natural gas consumption into the equivalent energy land area needed to sequester the associated
greenhouse gas emissions. Information was derived from the Environment Canada greenhouse
gas conversion factors (2010) and the Global Footprint Network (GFN) CO2e to energy land
conversion factor. Data on neighborhood electricity and natural gas consumption were obtained
from Oakville Hydro and Union Gas respectively by postal codes. The two parameters were
compiled to obtain the total shelter (energy) footprint for each neighborhood.
The shelter (non-energy) component included the construction, maintenance, and other
material inputs that support shelter. This component was estimated by comparing average total
floor area occupied per person, for each neighborhood with Oakville’s average, and then scaling
the non-energy part of the shelter footprint accordingly. The total residential floor area was
assumed to be a proxy for the total resource inputs regarding shelter. Data on residential floor
areas for neighborhoods were obtained from the Town of Oakville.
Footprint values for consumer goods and services for neighborhoods were estimated by
adjusting the average goods and services footprint per capita in Oakville by difference in
available income between the Oakville average and the respective neighborhoods. Available
income is the total income at the disposal of households to spend on goods and services after
deducting average expenditure on gross rent or mortgage payment, pension contributions,
savings, insurance payments, charitable donations, and support payments such as child support,
from the median income after tax. Statistics Canada (2006) provided data on rent and mortgage
expenses at the DA level while data on pension contributions, savings, insurance payments,
charitable donations and support payments were obtained from Survey of Household Spending
83
(Statistics Canada, 2010).
However, some data were not available at the DA level so
adjustments were made along with the respective Ontario-wide averages.
The mobility component was further categorized into personal transportation, air travel
and other passenger travels. It was assumed that footprint associated with personal travel
correlated with the neighborhood level commuting pattern. Commuting footprint values for
neighborhoods were estimated by multiplying median commuting distance with respect to the
mode of commuting (for example personal vehicle as driver or passenger, walking, public transit
etc.) by the number of users for each mode. The total distance travelled for each mode is
converted to its carbon emission equivalence using greenhouse coefficients by travel mode from
Environment Canada’s Greenhouse Gas Inventory (2010). Subsequently, the carbon dioxide
equivalents were converted into energy land area using the Global Footprint Network energy
footprint coefficient (2009). Figures were adjusted for the air travel component and the footprint
associated with other passenger travels including rail and recreational vehicles using respective
expenditure data from the Survey of Household Spending (Statistic Canada, 2010).
Since no food consumption statistics were available at the neighborhood level, the study
estimated the neighborhood food footprint by adjusting the Oakville-wide average food footprint
based on median household income in proportion to differences in income deciles proposed by
Mackenzie et al (2008). Mackenzie et al (2008) in a Canadian study found a low variability in
food footprint among households regardless of the income category. For example they found that
the food footprints of Canadian households in the highest decile was about 5 percent above the
Canadian average and the spread between those in the lowest decile and those in the highest
decile was 8 percent.
84
The government component had no data at the neighborhood level. The study therefore
used the community-wide value for all neighborhoods based on the assumption that all Oakville
residents had equal access to municipal, provincial and federal government services and no
neighborhood-specific adjustments were made. The Oakville government footprint was obtained
from the Global Footprint Network Canadian Land Use Matrix (Global Footprint Network,
2010).
Finally, all the individual footprint components were accumulated for each neighborhood
to find the local ecological footprint for each of the 249 dissemination areas. The methodology
used data from a wide time range spanning between 2006 and 2010, and used several adjustment
techniques to obtain certain footprint values. However, the study did an in-depth inquiry for each
category before aggregating all values which gave a good degree of detail.
4.2.4 Ecological footprint by income and consumption (Kuzyk, 2011)
Following the assumption that income correlates very well with consumption and consumption
as a measure of sustainability (Wackernagel and Rees, 1996), especially at the household level,
Kuzyk (2011) proposed a methodology for calculating footprint for small scale settlements using
household income. The procedure works closely with the Canadian ecological footprint study by
Mackenzie et al (2008) that connected income levels in Canadian households to their respective
footprint values. They used a more detailed approach by categorizing the households into income
deciles and using adjustments with the Global Footprint Network standards to estimate the
footprints for individual decile groups based on income. The study also estimated footprint
values for each of the ecological footprint indicators as well as the values for all the land use
components for each decile category.
85
Kuzyk’s work proposed an application of a local income adjustment ratio to trim the
calculations to a more detailed and localized scope. A local income ratio (LIR) is calculated
using data from Statistics Canada’s household income levels by comparing the median after-tax
household income of the area under study to the national median after-tax income. Using
national data, disposable household income and their associated footprint values are estimated
and entered into a spreadsheet. Both the footprint values and the disposable incomes are adjusted
to represent the local condition of the area under study by multiplying them by the LIR. A scatter
diagram is plotted for the two adjusted parameters to derive the coefficient of determination (R2)
and the equation of the line. The equation can be used to estimate the footprint value for any
defined area within the study area with a known median after-tax household income.
After deriving an equation for the general footprint values, the same procedure is used to
obtain the individual footprint values for all the ecological footprint components including food,
goods, services, housing, and mobility. Along with data in Mackenzie et al (2008), the land use
demands can also be estimated using the same procedure for energy land, cropland, pasture,
forest land, built area, and fishing grounds. A detailed elaboration will be done on this
methodology since it will be used for footprint estimations in this project.
4.3 Research methodology
4.3.1 Neighborhood categorization
Calgary contains 198 neighborhoods (referred to as communities by the City) spread over a land
mass of about 825.29 sq.km. In this study, footprint values for 12 communities are estimated
using income/consumption as a proxy, as postulated by Kuzyk (2011). The communities under
study are categorized into two as per the approach of this thesis; that is, suburban and core area
86
communities. To spread the study evenly, 8 suburban communities are used along with 4 core
area communities. While the quadrant division system of Calgary is used in the suburban
communities’ selection, core area communities are selected within the territory bordered by the
Bow River on the north, 14th Street on the west, 17th Avenue on the south, and 7th Street on the
east. It is assumed that this territory encompasses communities considered to be situated in the
centre city as they all fall within an average distance of not more than 2.0 km from the
downtown area. Suburban communities are selected along the edges of the city. Figure 4-1
shows the locations of selected communities on the map of Calgary.
In the selection procedure, 8 suburban communities were chosen using the quadrant
division as a spatial guide. Calgary is divided into 4 quadrants, Northwest (NW), Northeast (NE),
Southwest (SW), and Southeast (SE). Two communities are selected from each quadrant based
on income distribution. The suburban community with the highest median household income and
the one with the lowest are selected from each quadrant. The suburban communities include:
Valley Ridge, Citadel, Aspen Woods, Bridlewood, Chapparal, Copperfield, Coral Springs, and
Monterey Park. Core area communities are also selected using income distribution; the two
communities with the highest median household income and the two with the lowest. Core area
communities include: Eau Claire, Downtown West End, Chinatown, and East Village. The
approach for selection follows a rationale of spreading the study along the city’s edges to capture
the impacts from different locations and to ensure that the analysis is not based on polarized
results from only a few locations. Also, selection of more suburban communities than core area
counterparts is because there are proportionally more edge communities than core area
communities. Income also fits in as a reasonable parameter for selection because this study uses
87
household income as a proxy for footprint estimation and also the approach will provide an
understanding of the ecological impacts from different income levels.
Figure 4-1 Locations of the selected communities
Figures 4-2 and 4-3 show Google images of the communities in relation to highways and other
neighborhoods around them.
88
Figure 4-2 [Citadel (A), Valley Ridge (B), and Centre City (J)]
Figure 4-3 [Aspen Woods (C), Bridlewood (D), Chapparal (E), Copperfield (F), Monterey
Park (G), Coral Springs (H), and Centre City (J)]
89
Table 4-1 shows the selected communities with their respective median household
incomes as estimated by Statistics Canada (2006), and approximated average network distances
from the downtown using the Google Earth measurement tool. The intersection of 4th Street SW
and 6th Avenue SW was used as a common reference point for estimating the distances.
Quadrant/
Community
territory
Median household
Network Distance
income after tax, 2005 ($)
from downtown
(km)
Northwest
Northeast
Southwest
Southeast
Core area
Valley Ridge
100,599
16.0
Citadel
71,862
19.0
Coral Springs
78,417
18.3
Monterey Park
62,896
15.6
Aspen Woods
108,724
10.5
Bridlewood
62,008
24.5
Chapparal
81,274
26.5
Copperfield
66,378
26.5
Eau Claire
63,331
0.7
Downtown West End
45,977
1.4
Chinatown
17,279
1.0
East Village
17,227
1.8
Table 4-1 Median household incomes and distances of communities from downtown
90
4.3.2 Footprint estimation
In earlier discussions, income size has been noted to have a significant impact on household
consumption pattern, and consumption as a determinant of sustainability. On an international
scale, Cranston et al (2010) used other variables to test footprint generation and asserted that
ecological footprint strongly relies on the per capita national income. In a scatter plot by Kuzyk
(2011) shown in figure 4-4, plotting median household spending against median household
income after tax using figures for selected CMAs across Canada gave a strong coefficient of
determination (R2) of 0.94. The national study by Mackenzie et al (2008) revealed that the richest
10% of Canadian households had a footprint of 12.4 Gha/cap which was 66% higher than the
average footprint value for Canada. Meanwhile, the poorest 60% of households were leaving
behind a footprint below the national average, and the richest 10% had a footprint value close to
two-and-a-half times that of the poorest 10%.
From the various studies reviewed, it could be accepted that consumption is highly
dependent on the disposable income households make annually, and consumption fits well to be
a proxy for estimating environmental impact. Meanwhile, taking note of self-selection biases in
household consumption is essential to realize some discrepancies that may arise even with this
assumption being a strong backdrop for ecological footprint assessment. In order to minimize the
shortcomings in footprint calculation using income, the portion of household income used in this
work is the median household income after tax which excludes the income spent in the payment
of taxes. The tax deduction from gross income is considered to have no impact on households’
footprint generation since its use does not require any of the land use categories proposed by
Wackernagel and Rees (1996) or better still taxes are used for primarily providing municipal
services which is already captured in the footprint estimation.
91
Figure 4-4 Household consumption versus income (Source: Kuzyk, 2011)
For this study, the methodology by Kuzyk (2011) is used alongside data from Mackenzie
et al (2008) to find neighborhood ecological footprint values. After finding the local income ratio
(LIR) for Calgary, disposable household incomes for all the ten income deciles in Mackenzie et
al are adjusted with the LIR. The individual footprint values for each consumption component
are also adjusted with the LIR and a scatter plot generated for each of the consumption
components against the adjusted income. From the scatter plots, the coefficient of determination
(R2) for each component can be derived as well as the equations of the lines. For each
neighborhood, the equations derived are used to estimate the footprint values for the four
consumption components that have the strongest relationship to the urban form (housing,
mobility, goods, and services) to compare the impacts of individual consumption components.
The estimation goes on to plot a scatter diagram using values of the adjusted disposable incomes
and the corresponding footprints to estimate the total ecological footprint for each community.
92
Disposable
Housing
Mobility
Goods
Services
Total footprint
Income
household
footprint (b)
footprint (c)
footprint (e)
footprint (f)
(T)
decile
income (a)
(Gha/cap)
(Gha/cap)
(Gha/cap)
(Gha/cap)
(Gha/cap)
($)
1
11,531
1.51
0.36
0.56
0.55
5.03
2
19,710
1.82
0.62
0.74
0.68
5.66
3
26,901
1.79
0.88
0.82
0.71
6.34
4
33,867
1.73
1.04
0.85
0.74
6.48
5
41,113
1.88
1.20
0.93
0.79
6.93
6
48,810
1.98
1.43
1.00
0.82
7.36
7
57,732
2.06
1.55
1.09
0.83
7.67
8
68,804
2.19
1.74
1.16
0.89
8.12
9
85,533
2.31
2.17
1.33
0.95
8.87
10
155,845
3.40
3.23
2.11
1.48
12.42
Table 4-2 Income deciles with associated footprints of consumption components [Source:
Adapted from Tables 1, A3, and A5 in Mackenzie et al (2008)]
In Table 4-2, income deciles are corresponded with their respective footprint values for
housing, mobility, goods, and services. The lowest 10% have a median disposable income of
$11,531 while the highest 10% make $155,845 annually. With the figures in Table 4-2, the local
income ratio (LIR) for Calgary is used to adjust the disposable incomes and the associated
footprint values for the components to obtain the footprint for each income decile to create Table
93
4-3. The LIR is calculated by dividing median household income after tax for Calgary by that of
Canada using data from Statistics Canada (2006).
LIR for Calgary = 57,601/46,584 = 1.236
Adjusted
disposable
household
income (a1)
a1 = a [LIR]
Adjusted
housing
footprint (b1)
Adjusted
mobility
footprint (c1)
Adjusted
goods
footprint (d1)
Adjusted
services
footprint (e1)
b1 = b [LIR]
c1 = c [LIR]
d1 = d [LIR]
e1 = e [LIR]
1
14,252.32
1.866
0.445
0.69
0.68
6.22
2
24,361.56
2.249
0.766
0.91
0.84
6.99
3
33,249.64
2.212
1.088
1.01
0.88
7.84
4
41,859.61
2.138
1.285
1.05
0.91
8.01
5
50,815.67
2.324
1.483
1.15
0.98
8.57
6
60,329.16
2.447
1.767
1.24
1.01
9.09
7
71,365.75
2.546
1.916
1.35
1.03
9.48
8
85,041.74
2.707
2.151
1.43
1.1
10.04
9
105,718.8
2.855
2.682
1.64
1.17
10.96
10
192,624.4
4.202
3.992
2.61
1.83
15.35
Income
decile
Adjusted total
footprint (T1)
T1 = T [LIR]
Table 4-3 Income deciles with adjusted disposable household incomes and adjusted
footprints of consumption components
94
Adjusted houshold income vs adjusted housing footprint
Adjusted housing footprint
5
4
y = 1e-5x + 1.7234
R² = 0.97
3
2
1
0
0
40000
80000
120000
160000
200000
Adjusted disposable household income
Figure 4-5 Adjusted disposable household income versus adjusted housing footprint
Adjusted household income vs adjusted mobility footprint
Adjusted mobility footprint
5
4
y = 2e-5x + 0.4297
R² = 0.97
3
2
1
0
0
40000
80000
120000
160000
200000
Adjusted disposable household income
Figure 4-6 Adjusted disposable household income versus adjusted mobility footprint
95
All the consumption components show fairly different impacts. With the figures in Table 4-3, the
values for each consumption component are plotted against the adjusted disposable incomes with
the incomes on the x-axis and the footprints on the y-axis. From the scatter plot, the R2 and the
equation of the line are derived and used to estimate the footprints for the consumption
components for each neighborhood. Shown in figures 4-5 and 4-6 are the scatter plot diagrams
for the housing and mobility footprint components.
Plotting individual footprint against income showed a good correlation between
consumption and environmental impact. All the four consumption components had a R2 not less
than 0.9 which gives a good idea of how economic class influences a household’s consumption.
Adjusted disposable household income vs adjusted total footprint
18
16
Adjusted total footprint
14
y = 5e-5x + 5.912
R² = 0.98
12
10
8
6
4
2
0
0
40000
80000
120000
160000
200000
Adjusted disposable household income
Figure 4-7 Adjusted disposable income versus adjusted total ecological footprint
In figure 4-7, the scatter plot shows adjusted disposable household income versus adjusted total
ecological footprints which gave a R2 of 0.98. The equation y = 5e-5x + 5.912 is used to estimate
96
the ecological footprints for the 12 communities using the median after tax household incomes as
the x value.
4.3.3 Limitations and suggestions
It should be noted that the ecological footprint methodology as a tool for environmental impact
assessment is not a completely perfect procedure for revealing the consummate reality of human
impacts. The strength of the methodology even declines more when other parameters are
employed to modify the estimations and some can even simplify it to the extent that no
authenticity is achieved at the end. Though the consumption/income analysis has been tested in
several studies to correlate strongly with environmental impact, some few shortcomings could be
generated in the course of adjusting values and using nationwide averages for local estimations.
The ultimate benefit of the method used in this research is the calculation of the LIR which is
used to adjust the national figures from Mackenzie et al’s study to a more local domain. While
the LIR affords the advantage of drawing assessments to a local level, the methodology treated
income as if it is spent on a single consumption commodity since median household income after
tax is directly used as a proxy to estimate a footprint value that encompasses disparate
consumption components. The argument here is that, two neighborhoods with a median
household income of $70,000 does not imply that the households in both cases spend equal
proportions of this sum on the various consumption components.
It is obvious that people spend their money in different ways. For instance, when a person
spends $5,000 on improving his professional skills and another spends the same amount on
shipping goods from a distant country, the footprint produced from each spending will differ
though the fiscal quantity involved in both ventures is the same. Also, spending $2,000 on food
and spending the same amount on mobility will give different footprints. The indication is that,
97
assuming a common ecological footprint based on the fiscal quantity involved will conceal some
realities of the spending as related to environmental impacts. Hence, the footprint of an
individual/household depends highly on how income is distributed among the consumption
components. However, this methodology is a generalization of neighborhoods’ footprints
without much detail into how households within the neighborhoods spend their income.
To better use consumption as a proxy for estimating neighborhood footprint values,
undertaking a slightly detailed and disaggregated assessment for each consumption component
will improve the correlation between fiscal values and consumption, and subsequently ecological
footprint. That is, using local neighborhood spending statistics to estimate the average local
proportions of income spent by households on each consumption component; housing, mobility,
food, goods, and services. The average amount spent on transportation by a neighborhood can be
converted to its footprint equivalence using data from the GFN estimations (2007) and supported
with the national figures in Mackenzie et al (2008). Individual footprints for components can
then be aggregated to obtain a more detailed and localized impact value at the neighborhood
level. This modification to the methodology will require a categorized breakdown of
neighborhood median household income into the consumption components, which will reduce
the limitations in generalizing income as if it is spent on a single commodity. For instance, a
suburban neighborhood may have an average annual spending on mobility way higher than an
inner city neighborhood though the two have a similar median household income.
Household size in Canada has a somewhat balanced trend, with a couple-and-children
household usually having four persons or less. There are some households with both children and
seniors, and some only made up of a couple. Meanwhile, single-person households are also
gaining prominence in present Canadian household formation. Based on these differences in
98
household composition, consumption may vary drastically even when households make the same
annual income. A Canadian study found that vehicle-kilometers-travelled (VKTs) rise when
there is an increase in the number of cars owned, number of adults in the household, and
household income (Tomalty, 2010). Hence, one vital parameter to draw into the footprint
estimation based on consumption will be household size which Mackenzie et al (2008) noted in
their proposal but did not clearly figure it into their estimations.
Another improvement that could yield a fairer understanding of the influence of distance
and density on footprint is by sampling a reasonable number of households in designated postal
codes starting from the core area, through the inner city areas, to the suburbs, and estimating
detailed footprint values using the modified methodology recommended above. This could also
take into account the housing types of the households involved in the study, whether they live in
a single-family detached house or a multi-unit building. With both distance and housing
characteristics considerably captured in the assessments, a stronger link between urban form and
ecological footprint can be created to develop more realistic guidelines for proposing an urban
structure that poses the mildest impacts to the natural environment.
In future academic and professional careers, I intend to delve more into the relationship
between the urban form and ecological footprint. Using specific neighborhoods and a
disaggregated approach in footprint assessment will provide more comprehensive results on
environmental impact to guide policymaking and spatial planning in smaller settlement scales. I
also have the intention of formulating a matrix using the indicators of the urban form that have a
strong linkage to ecological footprint to guide impact assessment for existing urban
neighborhoods and also be useful in projecting the probable outcomes of proposed
developments. In the case of the latter, forecasted scenarios can be compared from the matrix to
99
determine the most eco-friendly urban configuration and subsequently make eco-oriented
planning have a more factual backbone than to largely rely on luck.
100
Chapter Five: Findings and analysis
The findings and analysis make use of the results found for the 12 communities in this study and
supported with the theoretical ideas from the literature reviewed in earlier chapters. Meanwhile,
some analyses will use the footprint findings for Calgary in general. The income value used for
the footprint estimations is the median household income after tax which has a stronger
correlation with household consumption and ecological footprint.
After adjusting the values with the LIR of Calgary, the research found that some
consumption components had a higher impact and stronger linkages to income size than others.
They can be noted as the major indicators in footprint estimation. Figure 5-1 shows the
comparison of individual consumption components in relation to disposable household income.
Adjusted footprints for consumption
components
Adjusted household income vs adjusted individual footprint values
5
4
Housing
3
Mobility
Goods
Services
2
1
0
0
40000
80000
120000
160000
200000
Adjusted disposable household income
Figure 5-1 Comparison of impact components for the Calgary municipality
The scatter plot comparison shows a strong correlation of income to all the footprint components
with all having R2 values between the 0.9 to 1 range. Housing and mobility are strong indicators
101
in estimating footprint and they characterize the urban form to a large extent. However, the
component for goods had the strongest coefficient of determination of 0.99 which could be
argued to be so by virtue of the availability of storage space and extra income which determine
the level of household goods expenditure3. These goods substantially include furniture, clothing,
electronic devices, and recreational vehicles; meanwhile the goods component explicitly
excludes the services component. In purchasing goods, people usually consider the availability of
space for keeping these commodities and this depends largely on the indoor and outdoor space
provisions in residential development. Obviously, households with lower incomes are less likely
to buy excess consumer goods on the basis of inadequate space and storage provision as well as
limited disposable income for buying extra commodities.
Housing types and mobility patterns are parameters that have been well investigated in
ecological footprint analysis; however, goods consumption may stand to have a more consistent
footprint impact with reference to income distribution. In multi-unit housing design, there is
usually a good economy of space with limited provision of storage spaces which apparently
hinders households from purchasing commodities that may not really be of need. In suburban
Calgary, as well as many other North American examples, houses are well endowed with space.
Uninhabited basements and two or three car garages give a clear idea of how much space
suburban households have at their disposal and consumption is further enabled by the extra
income for these households.
3
It should be noted that a graph with a high correlation between parameters does not explicitly mean it has a high
predictive power. A line can have a high R2 but if its slope is not significantly different from zero then it does not
afford a strong predictive power. For instance comparing lines for mobility and goods in figure 5-2 showed goods
having a higher R2 but mobility with a relatively lower R2 rather had a greater slope.
102
Another important aspect of urban ecological footprint revealed in figure 5-1 is the
significant increase in the mobility footprint as median household income rises. The line for the
mobility component starts from a very low impact value and rises to the highest footprint among
all the components. It underscores that the major impact component when related to income
distribution will be the mobility component. Personal choice on mobility could be noted as a
major factor in this trend but land use pattern and the convenience of private mobility are also
influential in the accretion of the mobility footprint. This means that when people have the fiscal
capacity and also access to extensive private mobility infrastructure, the tendency to expend high
quantities of energy for private transportation rises, and at the same time the choice to spend
their income on sustainable mobility is largely controlled by themselves.
In this study, the major indicators of ecological footprint have been found to be housing
and mobility as many other footprint studies have testified, however, another parameter of
relevance is the goods component which can be argued to be highly dependent on the provision
of space in residential design and the availability of excess income for purchasing goods. Thus,
the indication is that all the footprint indicators are to differing degrees reliant on the urban
structure of cities, yet in terms of recognition and interventions to curtail rising footprint, the
goods component has been less addressed in urban restructuring. Also, ecological footprint from
spending patterns is significantly dependent on all the four consumption components that have a
stronger connection to the urban form; housing, mobility, goods, and services which are shown in
the variations among the income decile groups.
Were there any disparities in comparing the footprint values of suburban and core area
communities? Aspen Woods (suburban) in the northwest was found to have the highest footprint
of 11.35 Gha/cap while the lowest impact community was East Village (core) with a value of
103
6.77 Gha/cap (40.4% lower) making a difference of 4.58 Gha/cap. Figure 5-2 shows the
ecological footprint values with the first eight being the suburban communities and the last four,
core area communities. The suburban communities had an average footprint of 9.86 Gha/cap
while the core areas had 7.71 Gha/cap (21.8% lower) with the difference being 2.15 Gha/cap.
The highest impact core community (Eau Claire) had a footprint greater than the lowest impact
suburban community (Bridlewood) by only 0.07 Gha/cap (0.77% higher).
In comparison, only two of the suburban communities (Bridlewood and Monterey Park)
had lower footprints than the highest impact core community (Eau Claire) but the other six
suburban communities all had footprints higher than Eau Claire in varying degrees. Contrary to
common belief, not all core area neighborhoods had lower impacts as two core communities
(Eau Claire and Downtown West End) both had footprints higher than the Canadian national
average of 7.5 Gha/cap. Chinatown and East Village had the lowest footprints of 6.78 Gha/cap
and 6.77 Gha/cap respectively, 9.7% lower than the Canadian average, which reflected their
respective median after-tax household incomes of $17,279 and $17,227.
104
12
10
8
6
4
2
0
Figure 5-2 Ecological footprints for the 12 communities
In Wilson et al’s (2013) footprint estimations for neighborhoods in the Town of Oakville, though
majority of the neighborhoods within the highest quintile of footprint were along the town’s
edges, other highest quintile communities were spread across the town’s land area. This draws in
the conjecture on the cause of the footprint size of such high-impact core area communities while
it is widely assumed that the core area is denser and residents expend less energy for
transportation. The compensation hypothesis states that people who have lower daily energy
expenditure (for instance due to certain housing characteristics) make longer journeys in their
leisure time to compensate for needs that are not fulfilled where they live (Holden, 2004).
By putting the ends together, it will be realized that when people make money, they spend it, as
the spending-versus-disposable income comparison rightly showed. For instance, when a
particular household makes a good income every year but spends less throughout the year
because they live in a core area neighborhood, the hypothesis postulates that they still spend the
105
surplus of the income anyway, and this may be largely spent on leisure activities and
international holiday travels. It will be essential, though, to note that these assumed air travels
and leisure spending are very infrequent and their impacts on footprint will be lower when
compared to the daily travels of suburban residents to access urban resources. The agreement is
that there are differences between suburban and core communities’ footprints but they do not
always have to do with the geographical location but the disposable household income as well.
These findings open new doors for viewing ecological footprint as a metric that is highly
dependent on disposable income and also suggest that since high income is a booster of suburban
growth, it has a significant impact on the city’s footprint rise as the results showed the six highest
footprint communities to be suburban. The high-income core communities also had larger
footprints which supported the compensation hypothesis but their environmental incentives in
relation to suburban areas are clear. Results from a study in Barcelona rather found the net effect
of density on the per capita footprint of housing and mobility to be negative but rather indicated
that there is a maximum degree of density beyond which the impact becomes positive due to the
increasing importance of compensatory behavior (Muniz et al, 2013). New spatial strategies for
confronting rising footprint should consider the most significant urban form indicators in
footprint assessment (mobility, housing, goods, and services) and how income can be integrated
with these indicators as an instrument for reducing ecological degradation. One major constraint
that hinders the implementation of sustainable models for urban development is fiscal constraint,
but policies to redirect local incomes from a less-private consumption pattern to a more
collective form can increase the feasibility of such strategies.
Will a transition of development to a more ‘urban infilling’ style be beneficial to the
natural economy and possibly reduce the footprint of cities? This question is in response to the
106
argument on distance being a determinant of ecological footprint in an era with a plethora of
proposals that advocate an extensive densification of the urban core. Responding to the first part
of the question, the essence of urban infilling to natural capital can be realized by empirically
observing the amount of land that will be saved by reversing population growth toward urban
core areas. That is more overt to look at, knowing that any increase in dwelling units in core
areas will benefit the fringes by saving a piece of a natural habitat. Thus, the extent of using
urban land as a renewable resource will determine the quantum of peripheral land appropriated
for the provision of residential units annually to meet the city’s housing demands.
The second part of the question is answered by plotting the estimated distances from the
urban core for the 12 communities against their respective footprint values. There is a weak
correlation between the distance of communities from core areas and their footprints; hence, a
household living within the boundaries of the urban core is not necessarily an incentive to the
broader concept of ecological footprint. A mobility footprint research in the Barcelona
Metropolitan Region (BMR) discovered that between 1986 and 1996, rise in footprint per capita
was greater in the central city than in the inner ring which was associated to the substantial
increase in household income in the central city than the inner ring while the satellite cities
showed almost 30% rise in mobility footprint than central Barcelona (Muniz and Galindo, 2005).
The coefficient of determination of the scatter plot for distance and footprint was 0.28 which
implies a divergence between distance and ecological footprint. Muniz and Galindo (2005)
argued that there is a paucity of inquiry into the impact of distance to urban transport axes on
travel pattern, however most researches have largely concentrated on distance to the city center
as a major determinant. Therefore, it is necessary to view ecological footprint resulting from
travel patterns as a measure that embodies not only the distance of neighborhoods from the urban
107
core areas but also the intricate indicator of accessibility to major transit axes in the city. Even
with these findings, the argument can still revolve around the fact that the frequency of the
assumed non-work travels by high-income urban core residents that consolidate the
compensation hypothesis is lower when related to that of suburban residents frequently
commuting in the reverse direction to the core.
In Holden’s (2004) study, he found that the size of a settlement is not very significant in
assessing housing footprint but the footprint increases as the location of a house moves further
away from the urban core. It is also clear that travel distances and the commensurate carbon
footprint resulting from greenhouse gas emissions will establish a distinct line between suburban
and core area communities in terms of footprint generation. Even so, the internal spatial
characteristics of a neighborhood may be of more significance; this means that a core area
neighborhood may still have high energy demands for its residents if its topology is essentially
handicapped. A study by Tomalty (2010) supported the claim that the design attributes of new
urbanist developments (NUDs) promote higher walking and biking modal shares compared to
conventional suburban developments (CSDs) but not a self-selection bias among respondents
living in NUDs. Therefore, distance may not be the only practical variable to confront in
structuring a sustainable urban form but rather the internal topology of individual or a collection
of related communities could be a stronger point of intervention. In a sense, the spatial
arrangement and relationships among the several urban components within a neighborhood
would be of much help in assessing and reconstructing the city from the community level.
108
30
25
20
Distance
from core
(km)
15
10
Ecological
footprint
(Gha/cap)
5
0
Figure 5-3 Comparing distance and ecological footprint for the 12 communities
30
25
20
Distance
from core
(km)
15
Mobility
footprint
(Gha/cap)
10
5
0
Figure 5-4 Comparing distance and mobility footprint for the 12 communities
109
In figure 5-3, the footprint of Aspen Woods is 11.35 Gha/cap though it is approximately
10.5 km from the core area. There is a high inconsistency when Aspen Woods is compared to
Copperfield which has a footprint of 9.23 Gha/cap while being a good 26.5 km away from the
urban core. Based on common assumptions, it would be expected that Aspen Woods would have
a much lower footprint but not the inverse. This suggests that the high disposable income of
Aspen Woods ($108,724) may not be much expended on only work/school-related travels
throughout the week, but rather on other travels that satisfy the needs of the residents but are not
available within the confines of Aspen Woods. Figure 5-4 also shows a significant divergence
between distance and the mobility footprints of the neighborhoods suggesting that ecological
impact from transportation does not depend solely on the distance of communities to the core
area but on other mobility factors like accessibility to major transit axes.
Nevertheless, generalizing this assertion will be a disservice to some households that
make huge incomes annually but spend it on lower-impact houses and hybrid vehicles that are
less ecologically detrimental but pricy to purchase and maintain. Environmental consciousness,
though, is not very popular among urban residents and as a result few households will be
expected to advertently live low-impact lifestyles while having the luxury of surplus income at
their doorsteps. Self-selection biases would also make location depend on individual preferences
on how daily mobility is conducted instead of the location inherently determining mobility which
undermines the strength of compensatory behavior as a concrete factor in urban mobility patterns
(Muniz et al, 2013).
The study by Tomalty (2010) that compared four new urbanist developments (NUDs) to
four conventional suburban developments (CSDs) located in both outer and inner suburbs in
Calgary, Montreal, and Markham revealed that 51 percent of NUD households reported walking
110
or biking to utilitarian destinations several times a week as compared to 19 percent for CSD
households. Additionally, the study compressed the built form into three synthetic variables
including high dwelling density and jobs within 5 km, public open space and high walkability,
and mixed land use with a denser street network. In relating these indicators to the findings, it
will be noted that the spatial structure of communities is significant in programming an energyefficient city than just concentrating on distance alone. In another sense, new urbanist
developments, regardless of their location, possess qualities that make people expend less energy
for mobility on a frequent basis and also demand less land appropriation due to densification.
In Calgary, the community-based case study for 8 neighborhoods by Natural Resources
Canada’s CanmetENERGY explored the connections between urban form, residents’ lifestyle
patterns, and energy consumption. Britannia recorded an average annual GHG emission of 15.5
tonnes while Tuscany recorded an average of 11.2 tonnes for different housing types (Natural
Resources Canada, 2009). Comparing the two communities, Britannia is only about 5.3 km from
the downtown area with a median household income of $137,402 (2005) as against Tuscany
which is about 20 km from the core with a median household income of $88,895 (2005). These
figures go ahead to intensify the divergence between distance and footprint generation while
income size appears to be a prominent factor in footprint analysis. Distance, therefore, may be an
overt indicator for assessing environmental impacts of neighborhoods, but income and urban
resource distribution could be really salient variables in the procedures for creating a sustainable
city. Apparently, an approach for integrating the urban form to control spending patterns can
contribute to mitigation strategies that aim at reducing ecological footprint.
It is quite clear that shorter distances are imperative to both reduce the frequency of
motor travel and also encourage active transportation within communities to improve ecological
111
footprint. However, in the findings discussed, income keeps on surfacing as a major parameter in
footprint generation, energy dependency, and carbon emission. In attempting to improve the
urban form, certain lapses of planning that contribute to excessive urban growth and hence
increasing travel distances can be improved by optimally incorporating household income as an
integrator. Calgary’s municipal infrastructural base is hugely unbalanced in favor of private
transportation with figures in Chapter Three showing a tremendous movement of populations to
the low-density suburbs as well. The indication is that concurrently, travel distances are
increasing among Calgary’s growing population while the infrastructure to enhance a more
sustainable lifestyle is fundamentally denied in the city’s growth. In this view, concrete policies
to decline the provision of infrastructure that facilitate private-oriented mobility and low-density
suburban dwellings due to consumer demand need to be put in place. However, with ample
improvements in housing and mobility footprints through mechanisms that exclude income, the
compensation hypothesis will still make the general footprint impact insignificant. Hence,
utilizing income will enhance the efforts made in the urban form to reduce impact and reduce
consumption per capita, thereby affording a more holistic result in footprint moderation.
In this thesis, it has been observed that there are indicators that have greater influences in
ecological footprint valuation which are the housing, mobility, goods, and services components
with mobility and housing having the highest impacts. The housing and mobility components
have attracted more attention in terms of formulating policies to confront urban footprint rise, but
the goods component which also had a strong connection to income and also related to the
configuration of residential designs has been partly ignored in such policies. Within the goods
component, the car as a classified portion has gained ample recognition in research and policy
but is widely an infrequent household purchase as compared to other consumer goods that are
112
bought all year long. Suburban and core neighborhoods also showed differences in ecological
footprint but that had weaker linkages with the distance between communities and the urban
core. This afforded the idea that core areas could still have high-impact communities which has
been attributed to the compensation hypothesis. Finally, due to the inconsistency between
distance and ecological footprint, urban infilling may not be the single trajectory to building a
sustainable city, though green edges will clearly benefit from such growth patterns. Practically,
an urban form that possesses low-impact commodities, be it housing or other consumer goods,
coupled with a restructuring of urban growth patterns in the form of densification and
diversification of land uses will be stronger approaches to saving greenfields and improving
ecological footprint in the midst of rising incomes and population.
The linkages among these findings in relation to the theoretical and historical foundations
of extensive urban growth and its associated impacts on footprint, as well as involving the
glorified remedy of ‘urban infilling’ as an ultimate panacea for a sustainable city should be
emphasized. One principle in systems thinking is that “today’s problems come from yesterday’s
solutions.” To quote Krieger (2006, 23), “…..ignoring the metropolitan periphery as if it were
unworthy of a true urbanist, or merely limiting one’s efforts to urban ‘infill,’ may simply be a
form of problem avoidance.” Ebenezer Howard’s Garden City concept proposed a more compact
town system, but its isolation from the problem it was confronting (the ‘great city’s’ congestion)
only contributed to the creation of another paradigm of urban nemesis. Though Krieger argued
from a more urban design perspective, essentially, the denounced suburb cannot be completely
overlooked in programming a sustainable urban form. Urban infilling alone would not stand as a
resilient solution to sprawl but rather the very incremental outcomes of reducing footprint
through urban form reformation may be found within both peripheral and core area interventions.
113
The historical backdrop of the postwar city saw a close-to-absolute rejection of the urban core to
create a new residential territory for the people, but by learning from the results of such
solutions, a more ecologically-benign urban form can rise from positive outcomes that are
engendered by both core and suburban areas.
114
Chapter Six: Recommendations
6.1 Income and urban form
Although income and consumption are strong proxies for footprint estimation while household
consumption seems to be a better point of intervention to reduce impact, it will certainly be a
hard nut to crack at any policy level to influence ecological impact by controlling household
spending patterns. Since people personally decide on how to spend their income based on their
discretions on what is best, and to a considerable extent, the urban fabric of where they live,
incorporating household income and urban form in restructuring the city can result in a more
feasible strategy in influencing people to spend less on impact-oriented commodities. Also,
pertaining the consumption part of footprint generation, stringent regulations can control the
production and consumption of commodities through full cost accounting that substantially
captures certain externalities (such as ecological cost) involved in manufacturing and
consumption. Several measures to confront footprint escalation have been suggested by studies
that usually have close relationship with the methodology used for the analysis as well as the
scope of the study. Table 6-1 compares the methods and conclusions/recommendations in six
footprint studies and assists in synthesizing the linkages between footprint estimation methods
and their appropriate mitigation measures. This chapter continues with policy and spatial
planning options intended to improve ecological footprint from the neighborhood level to reflect
in the city-wide context.
115
Author(s) and
Location(s)
Scope
Holden (2004)
Housingrelated
consumption
Greater Oslo
and Førde
Muniz and
Galindo (2005)
EF from
intrametropolitan
commuting
Barcelona
Metropolitan
Region (BMR)
Kuzyk (2011)
General
proposal for
Canadian
settlements
(with emphasis
on Calgary)
Wilson et al
(2013)
Oakville, ON
Total EF,
and
individual
EF for food,
housing,
mobility,
goods, and
services
Total EF
Methodology
Using a stratified probability
sampling method to select 537
households, housing-related
consumption assisted EF estimation
based on housing-related consumer
behavior, house characteristics,
relation of house to significant
destinations, socio-economic and
sociodemographic background data,
and environmental attitude.
Regional data was used to estimate
EF of commuting consisting of
energy used in traction, vehicle
manufacturing, construction and
maintenance of transport
infrastructure, and land occupied by
transport infrastructure. The EF was
estimated for only trips made by car,
bus, motorbike, bicycle, and train.
Equations derived from scatter plots
using EF and income data from
secondary sources adjusted with a
local income ratio (LIR) were used to
estimate the total EF and individual
components’ EF at different
settlement scales.
A disaggregated approach was used
to estimate EF for 249 neighborhoods
by categorizing EF components into
shelter (energy), shelter (non-energy),
consumer goods and services,
mobility, food, and government.
Using data from a range of sources, a
direct estimation was done for the
shelter component while a top-down
calculation approach used to adjust
Oakville’s EF for respective
categories based on differences in
average per capita consumption levels
between each neighborhood and the
Oakville average.
………continued on next page
116
Conclusion/Recommendation
Integration of decentralized concentration
into a policy that encourages smaller
compact urban towns and cities
throughout the country, or policy that
promotes decentralized concentration
within existing cities.
Urban form characterization is based on
the intensity of land used for residential
purposes (population density) and
accessibility (distance to the centre and
distance to major transport axes). Also,
socio-economic factors at the household
level and job ratio (ratio of jobs to
residents) play an important role in EF
generation, but the urban form has a
much clearer impact on EF.
Income and consumption, though being
sensitive phenomena at both the personal
and political levels, their ability to
represent EF instils insight into the
portion of ecological sustainability that
they represent. In terms of local policy,
there may be a minimal influence of
government and policy planners on
income to improve sustainability; though
tax hikes on suburban homes and tax
rebate on homes with better ecological
cognisance may be possibilities.
The surprising degree of variability
(footprint range: 5.4 to 15.2) confirms
that policy makers are provided with finer
data at the neighborhood level to develop
more specified programs to reduce EF.
Also, reducing household consumption,
shifting spending patterns, and improving
efficiency in household energy
consumption are essential, and can be
achieved by redesigning urban form,
rethinking how our communities work,
and adjusting government policies to
afford opportunities for households to
lower their EF.
Thorpe (2013)
Beddington
Zero Energy
Development
(BedZED) in
South London
Muniz et al
(2013)
Barcelona
Metropolitan
Region (BMR)
Carbon
footprint
Post-occupancy evaluation of carbon
footprints by occupants compared to
footprints of people living close to
the BedZED housing project.
Money saved from the occupants’ ‘green’
lifestyles was spent elsewhere supporting
the compensation hypothesis.
Housing and
mobility
footprint to
test the
compensation
hypothesis
440 personal surveys with
questionnaires collecting data on
family profile, attitude towards
sustainability, housing
(characteristics), and mobility
(choices).
The net effect of density on the per capita
ecological footprint of mobility and
housing is negative which questions the
total validity of the compensation
hypothesis. The results further indicated
that there is a maximum level of density
beyond which the impact becomes
positive due to the rising importance of
the compensatory behavior.
Table 6-1 Comparison of six ecological footprint studies
The problem of sprawl as seen earlier is like a tumor that is incessantly growing due to
urbanization and powered by decisions of urban stakeholders who only concentrate on dwelling
provision at the expense of the health of the city’s peripheries. Endowed with the power to
promote the growth of this tumor, stakeholders including City Hall and planning professionals
can equally heal the tumor without undermining the anthropocentric part of the equation. There
is the need for a transition of housing types to more sustainable styles regardless of where the
development is taking place, and a more equitable distribution of municipal resources to be
accessible to a greater part of the population within shorter commuting distances. This idea
suggests two basic inputs in peripheral development: that fringes are not only suitable for singlefamily housing, and that no absolute rule in planning has precisely agreed on tagging the urban
fringe as a mandatory land-use zone designated as purely residential. The discussion below will
throw more light on the basic indicators in urban morphology that can improve the
117
impermeability of fringe land to excessive encroachment and reduce motor travel through
interventions in policy and physical development starting from the core towards city edges.
In policymaking, economic mechanisms to control income levels can be tested to reduce
disposable income since it seems to be a major indicator in footprint generation. For example,
through taxing policies, high incomes can be cut down to generate more revenue for improving
the urban form while reducing disposable income for consumption concurrently. It has been
observed that intensifying and diversifying the city along its length will be a better way of
equitably spreading urban resources to be easily accessible to people. On the other hand, raising
such issues like income reduction could yield a bigger problem arising from political and social
forces, particularly in cases where there are trust issues between populists and political powers.
Environmental conservation through income control and urban form transformation is a
collective action, but its true advent can only be sparked by a local government ‘with teeth.’ If
there is policy to increase density within urban core areas, there can equally be guidelines to
raise the density of new developments on fringes to desirable levels.
A less-privatized urban setting will be the one with a higher dependency on public transit
than the car coupled with a high patronage of multi-unit housing, but an efficient urban transit
network significantly requires a reasonable scale of land mass to function desirably. Hence,
boosting growth within settled inner-city areas and intensifying new suburbs will be practical
tools for constructing a manageable city size for efficient transit to thrive. When average
spending on mobility decreases through high transit ridership, there will be a significant control
of the mobility footprint but then this kind of change demands a collective approach to mobility
expenditure. Thus, household income merges in as the point of departure for sparking a lessprivate urban setting through revenue generation, and lower goods consumption will
118
subsequently be an offshoot trade-off when households have lower surplus incomes to spend on
goods.
In Calgary, based on current short term projections of growth rates applied against
supply, it is estimated that the amount of land that is available presently or will be available for
residential use will last between 32 to 40 years (Calgary Snapshots, 2013). Mahogany is a
council-approved community in southeast Calgary with a proposed overall density of 10 upa:
that is, 10 percent of the land area will have multi-unit buildings with a density of 56 upa while
the remaining 90 percent will contain single-family houses with a density of 5.4 upa (ibid). The
forecasts on Calgary’s land resources for residential development use densities in such approved
communities like Mahogany and a larger ACP like the Symons Valley which will possibly have
a lower overall density than Mahogany. Roughly, doubling suburban densities along the city’s
edges will have a multiplier effect on the life span of Calgary’s residential land.
The City Council has the power of controlling these densities which are clearly
inadequate for a municipality that is expected to run out of land in the next four decades by
growing along the lines of traditional patterns. More essentially, in relation to income size, the
mechanisms for reducing consumption can be rightly built into the urban structure. The urban
form has the potency to control people’s choices of housing, mobility, and the commodities they
choose to spend their incomes on. It is well acknowledged that technologies and concepts do not
determine what people opt to accept into their cultural fabric as David Nye (2006) argued, but
there is also the possibility of implementing a workable spatial concept that will direct people’s
behavior. When suburbs are filled with more multi-unit housing than single-family units, the
consumer demand will passively shift to a more desirable form.
119
In Albuquerque, the mayor in 2006 approved green purchase policies to import only
energy-efficient goods into the city in an attempt to shift demand toward more sustainable
products (The World Bank, 2009). Such approaches to socioeconomic control are more
reasonable and face weaker protests from populism than policies that lurk around more sensitive
targets like income. Additionally, the idea of denser ‘bedroom communities’ needs more
attention from authorities because even if the suburbs are made denser with only housing without
any other auxiliary uses, the whole concept of environmental conservation will be flawed. With
only residential-intensified suburbs, ecological footprint from motor travel may not be improved
though there will be a more efficient use of greenfields. It will end up that people will still have
to commute longer distances to work, school, shopping and leisure.
Job sprawl in many postwar cities is pulling employment opportunities further away from
urban centres; yet, high residential density could be a catalyst for building sustainable suburbs
when high-density edges are properly interlaced with job sprawl. When business enterprises have
the assurance of becoming accessible to a wider population, they will surely invest anywhere
regardless of the distance from the urban core. These assertions are popularizing the fact that
fringe lands will always be appropriated but a paradigm shift to densification and diversification
of greenfield developments will curb the need to consume large land masses for housing
annually. Calgary, however, offers a unique situation with its dominant central business district
(Morrall et al, 1995) accommodating a relatively large number of enormous corporations which
will inhibit the prospects of essentially decentralizing employment to other parts of the city.
In the pursuit for a sustainable city, the automobile has functioned really well as an
apparent barrier to transforming the structure of mainstream cities. The construction of new
highways as well as widening existing ones has extensively promoted the growth of the suburbia
120
and it has been observed that the ‘smart’ addition of extra lanes to reduce traffic jams on
congested highways has only resulted in a phenomenon termed induced traffic (Litman, 2014).
Sustainability has lately been expected to gracefully rise from the promotion of hybrid vehicles
(Hawken et al, 1999) that are more efficient and emit less greenhouse gases than their traditional
counterparts; a measure intended to compensate the ecological stress imposed by massive
infrastructure that aid private mobility.
The beginning of the century saw the birth of the hybrid car when the Toyota Prius and
Honda Insight were released into the market. Since that time, sales of hybrid vehicles rose from
less than 12,000 in 2000 to about 350,000 seven years later with the Prius accounting for over 50
percent of the number (Li, 2010). Through federal income tax deductions and later federal
income tax credits (after 2006), the United States government has been supporting the purchase
of hybrid vehicles. However, federal income tax credit sizes begin to phase out for a given
manufacturer at a point when over 60,000 eligible vehicles are sold out; Toyota and Honda ran
out of credit in 2007 and 2008, respectively (ibid). Such federal incentives have a sturdier
buttress to safeguarding sustainability policies for continuity while creating a platform for
exploring new innovations for further intervention.
Will hybrid vehicles be a more robust bridge leading to the sustainable city? As Hawkens
et al (1999) agreed, a proliferation of energy-efficient vehicles such as the hypercar will not
eliminate some undesirable effects of the traditional automobile, since traffic congestion and its
associated losses in time and energy wastage will still be in existence. Looking further is also the
material consumption for manufacturing hybrid cars at a time when both population and the
demand for private vehicles are on the rise. Efficiency can rather be raised by investing in
energy-efficient high-occupancy vehicles (HOVs) that are designed to service a type of urban
121
structure (macro-community) that will be discussed later in this chapter. Energy-efficient HOVs
will generate lower impacts, and when denser communities increase public transit ridership and
substantially eradicate the automobile from the highways, the sustainable city could be in its real
nascence.
A study in Calgary found that housing choice and affordability in large Canadian cities
can be improved if municipal transportation is developed from the right options (Keough, 2011).
The research estimated that within the decade of 1998 and 2007, private mobility expenditure in
Calgary was over ten times the money spent by the municipal government on transportation
($52,500,000,000 against $5,200,000,000). On different income scales, it further proved how a
car-free lifestyle would be an inducement for urban residents in buying houses from a wider
range of choices and within a variety of locations. This further suggests that while an extensive
privatization of urban transportation increases footprint, it also goes a long way to impact the
quality of life of urban residents that manifests in convenient house-buying. Somehow, there
should be a reconsideration of how income is spent on urban mobility, whether it should remain
largely private or otherwise, turn to a collective effort of channeling incomes into public
investments that end up producing incremental benefits in both housing and transportation.
Transportation as an adhesive force between urban form and ecological footprint can be
achieved in two compatible patterns: either by pulling populations back into core areas or
allowing growth to happen in satellite-like communities. Both forms of development have in
them merits and demerits but a logical synergy of the two approaches will provide a more
equitable urban form along the city’s length. For instance, the first option will be refuted by
critics from the perspective of congestion issues while the latter will raise questions on how
residents will access other urban resources that are only available within core areas. In the latter
122
case, satellite communities can take a new form in larger scales that are endowed with a variety
of resources and possibly making travels to the core areas almost unnecessary; or rather, a novel
approach of public investment could develop a more reliable public transit system while
reducing investments in road construction. In this scenario, municipal taxes will be hugely
invested in HOV modes of transportation while denying the extensive provision of infrastructure
that foster more privatized modes of mobility. Subsequently, the emerging multiple transit
corridors created will catalytically promote mixed-use developments along them to fill the voids
left between core communities and the satellite communities arising on the edges.
In figure 6-1, a framework for managing income to foster a collective municipal approach
to reduce ecological footprint by improving the urban form is shown. Through increased revenue
generation, the municipal government can build its capital base to fund infrastructural
developments that promote a more public-based city in terms of housing and mobility. Public
investments should concentrate on improving the urban form in both the city’s core and suburban
locations through adequate transit provision and mixed-use communities. Transformations
should be made more evident in suburban developments where jobs, higher housing densities
and an efficient transit network are incorporated. The government can support this type of urban
development by giving incentives to developers who promote higher densities through land price
reductions or fiscal support for development. While better consumer preferences will essentially
be maximized, more developers will be induced to change their development styles with these
incentives from the government. Moreover, increased revenue generation will also afford a tradeoff by reducing private consumption pattern since the income households spend on consumer
goods will be decreased. Eventually, both housing and mobility footprints will be improved
through new local forms that are tactically enforced in the city regardless of the location of the
123
communities, thus undermining the limitation of making only core neighborhoods sustainable.
Private consumption will also be reduced to improve the goods and services footprint.
Figure 6-1 Framework for utilizing income as an instrument for improving ecological
footprint in a less-privatized urban setting
An essential part of the framework is public awareness. Sustainability in its complete
form will require a stronger approach that involves the general public and takes ecological
responsibility down to the consumer level. Hawkes (2001) stated that the achievement of
sustainability can only be possible when it becomes an enthusiastically embraced part of culture.
With regard to urban development, cultural preferences have to shift toward the principles that
guide sustainable patterns of growth while ignoring and gradually eroding conventional methods.
In order to generate more revenue from household incomes for implementing sustainable policies
that incorporate new forms of urban housing and transportation, the need to extensively inform
124
the public about the consequences of current lifestyles and the possible outcomes of remedial
strategies cannot be underestimated. Drawing the public’s attention to these approaches of
growth and consumption through information and education will complement the efforts made in
physical planning to achieve sustainability.
The essence of public awareness is even more critical in this framework to inform people
about how the high taxes they pay will be used to sustain the planet from the local level. At the
household level particularly, private goods consumption is one aspect of sustainability people
have to be aware of to advertently minimize the ecological footprint generated from private
consumption. Public awareness requires both the non-formal (non-governmental organizations,
agricultural extension agents) and the informal (mass media) education sectors to work hand in
hand with the more organized formal education sector to educate people of all generations and
all walks of life (Tilbury et al, 2002). Social media as an efficient information dissemination tool
can also be involved in this process of making people aware of their impacts and how a transition
to a collective expenditure on housing and mobility will be beneficial to nature and themselves.
Public awareness has to be well addressed to suppress the inhibitors that diffuse the potentials of
sustainable physical strategies due to consumers’ selection biases and also fill the voids left
between broader ecological footprint strategies and the intricacies at the consumer level.
A critical look at the disparities in household choice-making and the sporadic nature of
urban transformation suggests that it will be as challenging to confront consumption behavior at
the individual household level as it will be to implement a city-wide approach of improving
ecological footprint. Hence, it appears that the neighborhood level stands to be the ultimate and
more pragmatic scale for interventions to improve a city’s ecological footprint. As several works
have suggested, some with realistic projects, high-density development affords a more rational
125
use of land and poses less impacts on the natural environment since a relatively smaller land
mass is appropriated to accommodate a considerable number of people (Gabor, 1997; Holden,
2004). However, some questions high-density development poses are: What is the optimal
density for achieving a good neighborhood and reducing impact at the same time? How can
density be well incorporated into the existing cultural orientation of the average Canadian
regarding choices in housing type and location? Will suburban densification improve ecological
resilience?
Three ideologies in urban development can be integrated to facilitate the production of a
sustainable urban form that poses lower impacts on the green hinterland and be of benefit to the
entire ecosystem without eroding the cultural preferences of people. Decentralized concentration
(Holden, 2004), hyperdensity (Chakrabarti, 2013), and the complete community concept
(Sustainable Suburbs Study, 1995) are integrated to form the conceptual framework for a more
sustainable urban form. Decentralized concentration refutes the idea of converging populations
in mega urban centres and proposes a more decentralized urban structure that has smaller
compact towns around a large metropolis. Hyperdensity as defined by Chakrabarti (2013) is
density sufficient to support subways. This strategy promotes the transit-oriented development
style in which transit stops are intensified with housing and jobs, and well programmed with
street-level commercial activities that activate the streetscape. The complete community
encourages new suburban developments to be more diverse in land use pattern in a way that
commuting distances to utilitarian destinations will be considerably reduced.
In considering the city as a whole, three indicators can be highlighted as the driving
forces in ecological footprint assessment as related to the urban form; density, heterogeneity, and
proximity and connectivity. The three indicators to varying degrees are all embedded in the
126
urban development concepts noted above. Density and heterogeneity are prerequisites to
achieving optimum proximity and connectivity. Housing and mobility are influential components
in footprint determination when related to income distribution, and they can be rightly placed
within the domains of density and heterogeneity. When there is a high diversity of land use in
communities, travelling distances could be significantly affected for the better. The findings in
this thesis showed clearly that suburban communities averagely had higher footprints than core
communities hence the policy options to reduce footprint may be situated around integrative
strategies that increase core area development and afford new forms of suburban development.
Decentralized concentration will only be beneficial if the densification is not
homogenous like in sprawling communities but rather accompanied by other land uses. If new
developments on edges are made denser (say 70 upa or more), the only ecological benefit will be
the efficient use of land that will reduce the housing footprint of neighborhoods. The other part
of ecological footprint that will rather be disadvantaged will be the mobility footprint resulting
from the concentration of huge populations on peripheries that will have to commute longer for
work, leisure, and school. In this view, the more efficient urban form will make it irrational for
people to purposefully decide to live in one mixed-use community while working or schooling in
another similar community. If there are dwellings close to people’s workplaces, the assumption
is that a majority of them would prefer to live just close by because the urban form has been
structured in a way that a maximum number of the city’s communities have diverse land uses.
Peng (1997) however asserted that at the macro level (municipal or metropolitan), jobs and
housing may be well mixed to reduce travel distances but residents may still work in different
locations from their local neighborhoods. Hence, suggesting that economic activity as a regional
127
phenomenon results in people changing jobs more frequently than houses and this may
potentially stand in the way of achieving such goals of distance reduction in urban development.
Figure 6-2 illustrates the possible outcomes of diversifying land use in communities. In
urban mobility, the major destinations are the home, work, school, shop and leisure; hence
spreading these resources along the length of a city will reduce travel distances. A research in
Calgary revealed the expectation that a majority of walking trips are within 5 kilometres
(Martinson, 2014); and it is clear that any reduction in this distance will increase the frequency
of non-motor travels as well as increase the number of people that choose active transportation.
As the diagram shows, residents in both communities will have access to basic infrastructure
which would reduce the travels between them while also within each community shorter
distances will reduce the mobility footprint that is generated from excessive car travels.
Figure 6-2 Inter-community travels will be less if communities have high heterogeneity
128
Realistically, it is nearly impossible to make every individual community self-sufficient
in terms of urban resource provision due to fiscal constraints on municipal governments while
there will also be a ruthless suppression of the zoning that people have become accustomed to. A
further study of intensifying and diversifying urban form informed the generation of a concept
that will be called macro-communities. The idea strongly complies with the urban village
concept that embodies a set of principles advocating well designed, mixed use and sustainable
urban areas, with a sense of place and strong community commitment (Aldous, 1992). This
would be more efficient on urban peripheries in new developments though can be tested in
existing communities through infilling and redevelopment. Plate I shows a detailed illustration of
this concept while Plate II is a representation of improving density and heterogeneity along the
length of the city from the core to the peripheries.
In Plate I, an urban form close to the multi-centered city will be achieved. The analysis
showed distance to core areas not to be a major determinant of ecological footprint, thus the
internal structure of neighborhoods could also have a strong impact and more to that, distant
neighborhoods from the core area can be programmed to generate lower footprints. Based on
transit-oriented development recommendations on the distances and residential densities that
encourage more active transportation (600m, 800m, up to 1,000m), the idea of macrocommunities was developed. The concept can be achieved through a strategic selection of related
communities to form a rational transit network for routing the local bus system.
Macro-communities with diversified uses will encourage people to live, work and school
within the boundaries of the community and most travels during working days will be within the
macro-community. This proposal is close to the multi-centered city concept but from a spatial
perspective will not happen by extensively spreading the city outward since it advocates urban
129
infilling as well. It also fosters the reduction in capital costs for providing transportation
infrastructure. The IBI Report (Plan It Calgary, 2009) that compared two growth scenarios found
that the Recommended Direction would reduce transportation costs for the Dispersed Scenario
by $600 million due to the inclusion of dedicated busways in existing parts of the city that will
reduce LRT extensions. Similarly, the local bus route in the macro-community can cut down
costs on LRT extensions for servicing all the city’s communities.
The findings revealed that suburban communities had an average footprint 21.8% more
than the core area communities which suggest that the physical structure and composition of core
communities have better incentives to the environment. Plate II combined residential density, job
density, and recommended density levels of major transit stops to conceptualize an urban
structure with a good spread of density. The estimations considered densities from the City of
Calgary’s recommendations and other densities elsewhere recommended for creating sustainable
communities. It also used transit-oriented development guidelines for job densities and gross
densities for transit points. Residential density in Plate II decreases outward from the centre of
the city coherent with the existing trend of population spread but even the territory with the
lowest density (new suburbs) have a sustainable size of density. Job density is rather higher in
the new suburbs than the established suburbs to create an outer job territory that will encourage
suburban residents to live closer to their workplaces and make peripheral communities more
stable to reduce greenfield consumption.
The ideas in Plate II can be achieved through a city-wide planning policy that
concentrates on prescribing the location of new developments depending on their use. At this
point, urban land should be more renewable than it is now, and inner city area redevelopments
should concentrate on mixing residential units with other uses which will reverse population
130
growth from the peripheries to the core. Peripheral land consumption cannot be totally
eliminated in urban growth, however, it can now occur with a more diversified and intensified
approach. Practically, the fringes cannot attain the density of the core, but a rise in density will
be of major benefit by changing housing preferences which will be a long-term strategy for
instilling ecological consciousness at the consumer level.
In support of burgeoning propositions for a more rational pattern of urban development,
decentralized concentration, hyperdensity, and the complete community concept are feasible
principles for exploring a more sustainable urban form that will improve footprint. As shown in
figure 6-3, mid-rise development on urban fringes will capture the energy that is wasted as
entropy in conventional low-density housing while land area will be saved by providing more
dwelling units on a much smaller land mass.
Figure 6-3 Comparing efficiency in the use of land and space on urban peripheries
Moreover, material consumption for housing per capita will be reduced as a result of using
common walls to separate family units but not two separate walls and a 900-1200 sq.ft of land
space. Residential design can delve more into innovative design approaches that do not
131
undermine the cultural preferences of people but produce a good deal of density while made
compatible with other land uses to improve heterogeneity and reduce the footprint from mobility.
In advocating for densification, a major point of focus is to prevent kitschy high-rise
developments that mar the public realm and suppress cultural perceptions of a good urban
environment as such interventions will only fall to the rage of NIMBYism. When cultural
determinism conflicts modern sustainable urban development practices arising from parochial
community activists who are extremely concerned with antiquity, the cracks between them strain
the prospects of ecologically-driven ideas like densification and mixed-use developments. It is
somehow clear that when policies significantly deviate from the choices of the people, they only
end up as futilities. A reasonable attention to people’s preferences coupled with a local
government that optimally uses its municipal power to control growth can transform urban
fringes into a more efficient territory and eliminate the almost-accepted norm that the peripheries
are fundamentally single-family residential zones.
6.2 The bigger picture
In the context of the urban form proposed, a forecasted scenario can be such that macrocommunities will contain residents who spend less on transportation within the city and hence
reduce the mobility footprint. It also appears that weakening the correlation between disposable
income and the mobility and housing footprints will be a more coherent process of creating an
equitable urban environment and this can be accomplished by affording moderately similar
opportunities for all people regardless of their income classes. Indeed, the housing footprint
component can be effectively improved within the city’s limits which will demand the efforts of
municipal governments and the various stakeholders involved in urban growth. However, the
132
mobility footprint comes in two categories: the local and global impacts. The local impact can be
considerably curbed in a macro-community where there is less demand and reliance on private
transportation due to the shorter distances provided by neighborhood diversification and the
accompanying local bus (ideally hybrid buses) transit system. Thinking globally, the pertinent
question arising here is about how people will spend the money thus saved spending less within
their local environments.
Basing on the compensation hypothesis (Holden, 2004), the surplus income will still be
spent in one way or another with the principal example usually being international holiday
travels. This implies that at the end, the local ecological intervention of improving the urban
form is neutralized by the carbon expenditure stemming from excessive international travels due
to surplus household income. A typical example of this hypothesis is the Beddington Zero
Energy Development (BedZED), an energy-saving housing project in South London that
included several sustainable state-of-the-art features in its construction. However, a postoccupancy evaluation by BioRegional found that the carbon footprint of the occupants was not
significantly lower than that of the other residents in the vicinity. It was realized that the money
occupants saved through their ‘green’ lifestyles was eventually spent elsewhere, usually for air
travels (Thorpe, 2014). The platform is then set to argue that the totality of sustainability is found
in a more holistic approach of confronting the problem drawing in multi-disciplinary strategies
and innovations to act with synergy towards the common goal. This underscores that the
proposed urban form and many other urban growth strategies for reducing ecological footprint
will still remain deficient if the impacts beyond the single city’s domain are not well addressed.
It will however be impractical to approach this new outgrowth by making policy to limit
people’s international travel annually since this will demand a consensus from all nations to
133
enforce a common legislation within their geopolitical confines. In relation to a global
contribution to sustainability, the International Air Transport Association’s (IATA) Sustainable
Aviation Fuels Strategy set a major ambition to achieve a 50 percent net emissions reduction by
2050 compared to emissions for 2005 (IATA, 2014). With such strategies, energy-efficient
technologies will hugely reduce impact even if there are more air travels, but such issues
arguably depend on serendipity and the political will of governments to redirect global evolution
in such directions by taxing the people for the planet’s sake.
The bottom line of sustainability is that people have to commensurately pay for their
impacts on the natural environment, but unfortunately in reality, sustainable commodities tend to
cost more than their conventional high-impact counterparts. For instance hybrid cars cost more
than traditional fossil fuel vehicles but by considering real externalized costs (including the
ecological costs) of these two commodities, the latter should be pricier than the former. Efforts
by governments to generate higher revenues from the people to promote sustainable strategies
including housing and all modes of transportation from a broader context will project a better
image of the quest for sustainability. Although such approaches will seem to be punitive on the
people, growing toward such directions will produce a better quality of life and significantly
efface the traces of doom marked on humanity and the planet by existing lifestyles.
In Calgary, housing contributes 17 percent of the ecological footprint, 18 percent from
mobility, and 23 percent of energy is expended to manufacture, transport, and sell the goods and
services Calgarians consume (City of Calgary, 2010b). Moreover, Calgarians owned 22 percent
more vehicles than the national average of 597 vehicles per 1,000 population (City of Calgary,
2010b) which also goes on to confirm, in relation to income levels, that Calgary has a large
median household income compared to other CMAs in Canada as shown in figure 4-4. The
134
indication is that restructuring Calgary’s urban form to manage footprint by reducing annual
spending in local transactions will increase households’ surplus income as discussed above.
Thus, by thinking global and acting local, Calgary as a city would be contributing its quota to the
general quest for sustainability but the efforts of other cities and disciplines outside urban
planning cannot be compromised if true sustainability is to gain a stronger foundation.
More so, the excess income remaining in the coffers of households has to also be
managed to be spent on low-impact commodities and activities which will possibly be happening
beyond the city’s limits. The City of Calgary’s Triple Bottom Line policy has a goal of
addressing decision-making from the social, economic, environmental, and smart growth impacts
in all city business. In this view, decisions will possibly encompass all these thematic areas so
that spending patterns are directed towards the lines of ecological conservation while people are
made to pay for using high-impact commodities, and socio-cultural liberties are minimally
undermined. The spatial interventions on the neighborhood level, if well implemented, will be a
springboard for commencing a transition that will breed a positive cumulative ecological effect
from the community, municipal, regional, national, and to the international level. At the end,
with complementary interventions at different locations and scales, the generic picture of
sustainability would be clearly defined making footprint mitigation strategies more reliable and
feasible irrespective of the scale at which they are implemented.
135
136
137
Conclusion
In the human environment, adversity can erupt at any possible time and the ideal mechanism for
surviving our everyday is rooted in three cumulative principles – how to improvise, adapt and
overcome. Impoverishment is a difficult task for any living form to suddenly conform to
standards that are way below what it has cognitively deemed as ‘natural’ and ‘traditional’ for a
long period of time. In fact, psychological studies have shown that probable gains have to
overweigh threatened losses threefold before people willingly transit from their current lifestyles
to new ways of living (Wackernagel and Rees, 1996). The quest for sustainability is laden with
consumer level intricacies that may build a strong barrier to the efforts of stakeholders in
transforming the urban form.
As the study revealed, ecological footprint is highly influenced by housing, mobility, and
goods consumption which are all parameters related to the urban form in different ways and also
dependent on household disposable income. Moreover, in creating the sustainable city,
restructuring the urban form on a city-wide scale may produce healthier results than only
concentrating on intensifying core areas through urban infilling or conversely, intensifying
suburbs through decentralized concentration. This study suggested policy and spatial planning
options that support the idea that promoting compact urban core development is relevant in
reducing ecological footprint but the suburbs can support the completeness of footprint
mitigation by taking a new form of growth. Moreover, household income appeared to be
significant in footprint generation, particularly in the case where the two high-income core
communities had larger footprints than the Canadian average. Therefore, income should be
structured into policies that attempt to improve ecological footprint through urban reformation.
While revenue generation from household income will augment the local government’s capital
138
base to implement sustainable strategies, a reduction in surplus income for goods consumption
will simultaneously curtail the footprint generated from private consumption. The revenue
generated can be invested in a more inclusive urban growth pattern that undermines private
housing and mobility but spreads the ecological impacts of urban activities across a wider range
of population in a more sustainable core and supportive suburban communities.
It is somehow convincing that the contemporary suburb cannot always be treated as a
condemned dystopia if municipal power is still invested in local government bodies that control
spatial growth. Without a paradigm, a revolution can never be set on wheels. Future peripheral
developments can create a new utopia to impact the undesirable consequences of sprawl on
urban peripheries and save the natural habitats degraded every year in the name of dwelling
provision. Since income affects footprint significantly, municipal policies should address issues
of encouraging people to spend their income on lower impact commodities including housing,
mobility, and even further to change goods consumption to low-impact products. But then, as the
psychological study revealed about the expectations of people on new concepts and policies,
there should be a convincing message that although the new urban form will not afford a
threefold benefit of the old convenient motor-oriented city, it is a step toward saving green urban
fringes and the biophysical environment in general for posterity.
Sadly, popularizing intergenerational altruism may sound absurd to the expansionist;
nonetheless, some people living now could metaphorically be part of posterity when the future
Earth begins to react to the hefty strains it has been subjected to for centuries. Projections show
that Calgary roughly has forty more years to consume all its residential land resources, so the
bleak future is not very distant from Calgarians who are teenagers today. But hopefully, when
people start to improvise in high-density mix-use communities, in a few decades there will be a
139
close-to general adaptation to this new urban concept. Overcoming the fear of raising children in
the midst of high populations and actively or passively giving up certain conveniences like the
automobile in favor of public transit will ideally take the city closer to the shore of sustainability.
To a large extent, these desired transitions in people’s choice-making depend on how the urban
morphology is programmed to be a principal determinant in daily urban life. In the formulation
of the sustainable urban form, we have to create tolerances that will aid us to improvise, adapt
and overcome – and even further, we have to gather more magic as we go.
140
References
Aldous, T. 1992. Urban Villages: A Concept for Creating Mixed-use Urban Developments on a
Sustainable Scale. Urban Villages Group, London.
Barnett, J. 2011. City Design. Routledge, London – New York.
Behan, K., Maoh, K., and Kanaroglou, P. 2008. Smart Growth Strategies, Transportation and
Urban Sprawl: Simulated Futures for Hamilton, Ontario. The Canadian Geographer, 52(3),
291-308.
Benfield, F.K., Terris, J., and Vorsanger, N. 2001. Solving Sprawl: Models of Smart Growth in
Communities Across America. Natural Resources Defense Council.
Bier, T. 2001. Urban Sprawl and Decline: Prospects for Change. Public Works Management
and Policy, 6(2), 83-87.
Bolen, R.C. 2008. “The Virtual Key to Portland’s Growth Management Success: Metro’s
Regional Land Information System” (Retrieved on September 13, 2013, from
http://www.esri.com/news/arcnews/summer08articles/summer08gifs/p39p2-lg.jpg)
Brueckner, J.K. 2000. Urban Sprawl: Diagnosis and Remedies. International Regional Science
Review, 23(2), 160-171.
Bruegmann, R. 2000. The Paradoxes of Anti-Sprawl Reform. In Freestone, R. 2000. Urban
Planning in a Changing World; The Twentieth Century Experience. E & FN Spon, London.
Burchell, R.W., and Mukherji, S. 2003. Conventional Development Versus Managed Growth:
The Costs of Sprawl. American Journal of Public Health, 93(9), 1534-1540.
Calgary Economic Development. 2014. Demographics. Calgary [online]
Carruthers, J.I., and Ulfarsson, G.F. 2003. Urban Sprawl and the Cost of Public Services.
Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design, vol. 30, 503-522.
Chakrabarti, V. 2013. A Country of Cities: A Manifesto for an Urban America. Metropolis
Books, New York.
City of Calgary. 1995. Sustainable Suburbs Study: Creating more Fiscally, Socially and
Environmentally Sustainable Communities. Calgary.
141
City of Calgary. 2007. Toward a Preferred Future: Understanding Calgary’s Ecological
Footprint. Calgary.
City of Calgary. 2009. Municipal Development Plan. Calgary.
City of Calgary. 2010a. Developed Areas Growth and Change 2010. Monitoring Growth and
Change Series, Calgary.
City of Calgary. 2010b. State of the Environment Report. Environmental and Safety
Management, Calgary.
City of Calgary. 2012a. Suburban Residential Growth 2012-2016. Calgary.
City of Calgary. 2012b. Community Social Statistics: Dalhousie. Community and Neighborhood
Services, Calgary (Available on www.calgary.ca).
City of Calgary. 2013. Calgary Snapshots 2012. Calgary.
City of Surrey. 2009. Housing Types and Land Use Background Handout. Surrey, BC.
Clark, P. 2013. The Oxford Handbook of Cities in World History. Oxford University Press,
Oxford.
Commoner, B. 1974. The Closing Circle: Nature, Man and Technology. Bantam Books, New
York.
Cooper, M. 2006. Demographic Trends and Implications for the City of Calgary. Canadian
Policy Research Networks Inc, Ottawa.
Couroux, D., Keough, N.G., Miller, B., and Row, J. 2006. Overcoming Barriers to Sustainable
Urban Development: Toward Smart Growth in Calgary. Calgary Citizens’ Forum, Calgary.
Cranston, G.R., Hammond, G.P., and Johnson, R.C. 2010. Ecological Debt: Exploring the Facts
that Affect National Footprints. Journal of Environmental Policy and Planning, 12(2), 121140.
Crawford, J.H. 2002. Carfree Cities. International Books, Utrecht.
142
Daniels, T. 1999. When City and Country Collide: Managing Growth in the Metropolitan
Fringe. Island Press, Washington, DC.
Davis, K. 1965. The Urbanization of the Human Population. In LeGates, R.T., and Stout, F.
2011. The City Reader. Routledge, New York.
Dijst, M. 2000. Compact Urban Policies in Randstad Holland. In Roo, G. d. and Miller, D. 2000.
Compact Cities and Sustainable Urban Development: A Critical Assessment of Policies and
Plans from an International Perspective. Ashgate, Burlington – Sydney.
Edwards, M.M., and Haines, A. 2007. Evaluating Smart Growth: Implication for Small
Communities. Journal of Planning Education and Research, vol. 27, 49-64.
Engels, F. 1845. “The Great Towns”. In LeGates, R.T., and Stout, F. 2011. The City Reader.
Routledge, New York.
Ewing, R. 1997. Is Los Angeles-Style Sprawl Desirable? Journal of the American Planning
Association, 63(1), 107-126.
Fishman, R. 1987. Beyond Suburbia: The Rise of the Technoburb. In LeGates, R.T., and Stout, F.
2011. The City Reader. Routledge, New York.
Foran, M. 2009. Expansive Discourses: Urban Sprawl in Calgary, 1945-1978. AU Press,
Edmonton.
Frank, L.D., Andresen, M.A., and Schmid, T.L. 2004. Obesity Relationships with Community
Design, Physical Activity, and Time Spent in Cars. American Journal of Preventive
Medicine, 27(2), 87-96.
Franklin, A. (Eds.). 2010. City Life. Sage Publications Ltd, Los Angeles – London.
Freeman, L. 2001. The Effects of Sprawl on Neighborhood Social Ties: An Explanatory Analysis.
Journal of American Planning Association, vol. 67, 69-77.
Frenkel, A., and Ashkenazi, M. 2008. Measuring Urban Sprawl: How can we deal with it?
Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design, vol. 35, 56-79.
Frumkin, H. 2002. Urban Sprawl and Public Health. Public Health Reports, vol. 117.
143
Frumkin, H., Frank, L., and Jackson, R. 2004. Urban Sprawl and Public Health: Design,
Planning, and Building for Healthy Communities. Island Press, Washington, DC.
Fumega, J. 2010. Urban Sustainability and the Emergence of New (Old) Concepts: Analysis of
the Sustainable Communities Concept through the Component of Transportation. Journal of
US-China Public Administration, 7(9), 53-67.
Gabor, P. 1997. Low Impact – High Density Residential Development. Urban Design
International, 2(3), 169-180.
Galli, A., Kitzes, J., Niccolucci, V., Wackernagel, M., Wada, Y., and Marchettini, N. 2012.
Assessing the Global Environmental Consequences of Economic Growth Through the
Ecological Footprint: A Focus on China and India. Journal of Ecological Indicators, vol.
17, 99 – 107.
Gertler, L.O., and Crowley, R.W. 1977. Changing Canadian Cities: The Next 25 Years.
McClelland and Stewart Limited, Toronto.
Global Footprint Network. 2010. National Ecological Footprint and Biocapacity for 2007.
(Retrieved on September 29, 2013, from www.footprintnetwork.org).
Greater Copenhagen Authority. 2004. Copenhagen Transport Plan 2003. Available:
www.hur.dk/117AFA2E-D434-4ED6-AEA8-31CB803849DB.
Greed, C. 2000. Introducing Planning. The Athlone Press, London – New Brunswick.
Hall, P. 1996. 1946-1996 – From New Town to Sustainable City. Town and Country Planning
(November), 295-297.
Harris, L.M. 2004. Slavery, Emancipation, and Class Formation in Colonial and Early National
New York City. Journal of Urban History, 30(3), 339-359.
Haughton, G., and Hunter, C.1996. Sustainable Cities. Jessica Kingsley, London.
Hawken, P., Lovins, A., and Lovins, L.H. 1999. Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next
Industrial Revolution. Little, Brown and Company, Boston – New York – London.
Hawkes, J. 2001. The Fourth Pillar of Sustainability: Culture’s Essential Role in Public
Planning. Cultural Development Network, Victoria (Australia).
144
Holden, E. 2004. Ecological Footprints and Sustainable Urban Form. Journal of Housing and
the Built Environment, vol. 19, 91-109.
Howard, E. 1902. Garden Cities of To-morrow. Swan Sonnenschein & Co. Ltd., London.
IATA (International Air Transport Association). 2014. Alternative Fuels. (Retrieved on March 6,
2014, from http://www.iata.org/whatwedo/environment/Documents/sustainable-alternativeaviation-fuels-strategy.pdf)
Innes, J.E., and Booher, D.E. 2010. Planning with Complexity: An Introduction to Collaborative
Rationality for Public Policy. Routledge, Abingdon – New York.
Jackson, K.T. 1985. The Drive-in Culture of Contemporary America. In LeGates, R.T., and
Stout, F. 2011. The City Reader. Routledge, New York.
Jacobs, J. (Eds.). 1961. The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Random House, New
York.
Jenks, M., Kozak, D., and Takkanon, P. 2008. World Cities and Urban Form: Fragmented,
Polycentric, Sustainable? Routledge, London – New York.
Jerke, D., Porter, D.R., and Lassar, T.J. 2008. Urban Design and the Bottom Line: Optimizing
the Return of Perception. Urban Land Institute, Washington, D.C.
Jun, M-J. 2004. The Effects of Portland’s Urban Growth Boundary on Urban Development
Patterns and Commuting. Urban Studies, 41(7), 1333-1348.
Keating, A.D. 1988. Building Chicago: Suburban Developers and the Creation of a Divided
Metropolis. Urban Life and Urban Landscape Series, Ohio State University Press,
Columbus.
Keough, N. 2011. Action Research on Transportation Housing Affordability. External Research
Program, CMHC, CR File No.: 6585-K090.
Kitzes, J., and Wackernagel, M. 2009. Answers to Common Questions in Ecological Footprint
Accounting. Journal of Ecological Indicators, vol. 9, 812-817.
Kolb, D. 2008. Sprawling Places. The University of Georgia Press, Athens – London.
145
Krieger, A. 2006. Territories of Urban Design. In Moor, M., and Rowland, J. 2006. Urban
Design Futures. Routledge: Taylor & Francis Group, London – New York.
Kuzyk, L.W. 2011. Ecological and Carbon Footprint by Consumption and Income in GIS: Down
to a Census Village Scale. The International Journal of Justice and Sustainability, 16(9),
871-886.
Lang, J. 2005. Urban Design: A Typology of Procedures and Products. Architectural Press,
Oxford – Burlington.
LeGates, R.T., and Stout, F. 2011 (Eds.). The City Reader. Routledge, New York.
Li, S. 2010. What Motivates People to Buy Hybrids? In Parry, W.H.I., and Day, F. 2010. Issues
of the Day: 100 Commentaries on Climate, Energy, the Environment, Transportation, and
Public Health Policy. Resources for the Future, Washington, DC.
Litman, T. 2014. Generated Traffic and Induced Travel: Implications for Transportation
Planning. Victoria Transport Policy Institute.
Mackenzie, H., Messinger, H., and Smith, R. 2008. Size Matters: Canada’s Ecological
Footprint, by Income [online]. Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, Toronto.
Martinson, R. 2014. Non-work Travel Characteristics in Calgary with a Focus on Trips made on
Foot and by Bicycle. University of Calgary (Masters’ thesis), Calgary.
McGran, K. 2005 (November 21). Traffic costing us $6B every year. The Toronto Star.
McMahon, A. 2013. Mesopotamia. In Clark, P. 2013. The Oxford Handbook of Cities in World
History. Oxford University Press, London.
Meadows, D.H. 2001. Edited by Wright, D. 2008. Thinking in Systems: A Primer. Chelsea Green
Publishing, Vermont.
Miron, J.R. 2003. Urban Sprawl in Canada and America: Just how Dissimilar. University of
Toronto at Scarborough.
Moffatt, I. 2000. Ecological Footprints and Sustainable Development. Journal of Ecological
Economics, vol. 32, 359-362.
146
Monfreda, C., Wackernagel, M., and Deumling, D. 2004. Establishing National Natural
Accounts based on Detailed Ecological Footprint and Biological Capacity Assessments.
Journal of Land Use Policy, vol. 21, 231-246.
Moore, T.G. 2008. Global Warming: The Good, the Bad, the Ugly and the Efficient. EMBO
Reports (Special Issue), vol. 9.
Morrall, J., Hubbell, J., Colquhoun, D., and Bolger, D. 1995. Light-Rail Transit in Calgary, 1981
– 1995: A Retrospective Review. In Transportation Research Board. 1995. National
Conference on Light Rail Transit, Baltimore. National Academy Press, Washington, D.C.
Moughtin, C., Cuesta, R., Sarris, C., and Signoretta, P. 1999. Urban Design: Method and
Techniques. Butterworth-Heinemann, Oxford – Boston.
Mumford, L. 1961. The City in History; Its Origins, Its Transformations, and Its Prospects.
Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., New York.
Muniz, I. and Galindo, A. 2005. Urban Form and the Ecological Footprint of Commuting: The
Case of Barcelona. Journal of Ecological Economics, vol. 55, 499 – 514.
Muniz, I., Calatayud, D., and Dobano, R. 2013. The Compensation Hypothesis in Barcelona
Measured Through the Ecological Footprint of Mobility and Housing. Journal of Landscape
and Urban Planning, 113(2013), 113-119.
Natural Resources Canada, 2009. The Urban Archetype Project – Community Case Study: The
City of Calgary. Cat. No. M154-15/3-2009-PDF, Ottawa.
Newman, L. and Waldron, L. 2012. Towards Walkable Urban Neighborhoods. In Dale, A.,
Dushenko, W.T., and Robinson, P. 2012. Urban Sustainability: Reconnecting Space and
Place. University of Toronto Press, Toronto – London.
Nguyen, D. 2010. Evidence of the Impacts of Urban Sprawl on Social Capital. Environment and
Planning B: Planning and Design, 37, 610-627.
Nijkamp, P. 2007. The Role of Evaluation in Supporting a Human Sustainable Development: A
Cosmonomic Perspective. In Deakin, M., Mitchell, G., Nijkamp, P., and Vreeker, R. 2007.
Sustainable Urban Development, Vol 2: The Environmental Assessment Methods,
Routledge, Abingdon –New York.
147
Nikiforuk, A. 2012. The Energy of Slaves: Oil and the New Servitude. D & M Publishers Inc.,
Vancouver – Toronto.
Nye, D.E. 2006. Technology Matters: Questions to Live With. The MIT Press, Cambridge –
London.
Olewiler, N. 2004. The Value of Natural Capital in Settled Areas of Canada. Ducks Unlimited
Canada and the Nature Conservancy of Canada.
Olivier, J.G.J., Janssens-Maenhout, G., and Peters, J.A.H.W. 2012. Trends in Global CO2
Emissions: 2012 Report. The Hague, PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency;
Ispra: Joint Research Centre.
Olson, S. 2000. Form and Energy in the Urban Built Environment. In Bunting, T., and Filion, P.
(Eds.). 2000. Canadian Cities in Transition: The Twenty-first Century. Oxford University
Press, Oxford – New York.
Ontario Medical Association. 2005. The Illness Costs of Air Pollution. Toronto: OMA.
Peiser, R. 2001. Decomposing Urban Sprawl. The Town Planning Review, 72(3), 275-298.
Peng, Z-R. 1997. The Jobs-Housing Balance and Urban Commuting. Urban Studies Journal, 34
(8), 1215 -1235.
Plan It Calgary. 2009. The Implications of Alternative Growth Patterns on Infrastructure Costs.
IBI Group, Calgary.
Population Reference Bureau. 2007. 2007 World Population Data Sheet [online].
Rees, W. 1992. Ecological Footprints and Appropriated Carrying Capacity: What Urban
Economics Leaves Out. Environment and Urbanization, 4(2), 121-130.
Sloterdijk, P. 2006. Architektur als Immersionskunst. Arch+, 178(June), 58-63. Translated by
Engels-Schwarzpaul, A-C. Architecture as an Art of Immersion.
Smart Growth Network. 2013. (Retrieved
http://www.smartgrowth.org/network.php)
on
September
10,
2013
from
Smith, P.J. 2000. Suburbs. In Bunting, T. and Filion, P. 2000. (Eds). Canadian Cities in
Transition: The Twenty-first Century, Oxford University Press, Oxford – New York.
148
State of Our City Report. 2009. Sustainability in a Generation. Sustainable Calgary, Calgary.
Statistics Canada. 2006. Earnings and Incomes of Canadians Over the Past Quarter Century,
2006 Census. Catalogue no. 97-563-X, Ottawa.
St. Antoine, T.J. 2007. Making Heaven out of Hell: New Urbanism and the Refutation of
Suburban Spaces. Southern Communication Journal, 72(2), 127-144.
TCRP (Transit Cooperative Research Program: Report 39). 1998. The Costs of Sprawl –
Revisited. National Academy Press, Washington, DC.
The Southern California Studies Center. 2001. Sprawl Hits the Wall: Confronting the Realities of
Metropolitan Los Angeles. Los Angeles.
The World Bank. 2009. Climate Resilient Cities: A Primer on Reducing Vulnerabilities to
Disasters. A TIBRD Report, Washington, DC.
Thorpe, D. 2014. What is the Cheapest Way to Save Carbon Emissions in Cities? (Retrieved on
February 18th, 2014, from www.sustainablecitiescollective.com)
Tilbury, D., Stevenson, R.B., Fien, J., Schreuder, D. 2002. Education and Sustainability:
Responding to the Global Challenge. Commission on Education and Communication,
IUCN, Gland – Cambridge.
Tomalty, R. 2010. Comparing Canadian New Urbanist and Conventional Suburban
Neighborhoods. Research Highlights: Socio-economic Series 10-003, CMHC.
Tourism Calgary. 2013. Calgary, Alberta, Canada. (Retrieved on October 17, 2013, from
http://www.visitcalgary.com/sites/default/files/calgary-backgrounder-2012.pdf).
UNHSP (United Nations Human Settlements Programme). 2009. Planning Sustainable Cities.
Global Report on Human Settlements 2009. Earthscan, London – Sterling, VA.
United Nations Environmental Programme. 1997. Global Environmental Outlook. Distributed by
Oxford University Press.
Wackernagel, M., and Rees, W. 1996. Our Ecological Footprint: Reducing Human Impact on
the Earth. New Society Publishers, British Columbia.
149
Walters, P. and Pawluk, C. 2013. Population Outlook 2013-2018 (Forecast). City of Calgary,
Calgary.
WCED (World Commission on Environment and Development). 1987. Our Common Future.
Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Wheeler, S.M. 2004. Planning for Sustainability: Creating Livable, Equitable, and Ecological
Communities. Routledge, London – New York.
White, R.R. 1994. Urban Environmental Management: Environmental Change and Urban
Design. John Wiley & Sons, New York – Toronto.
Wide Urban World. 2011. Are Shantytowns a Normal Form of Urban Residence? : online on
http://wideurbanworld.blogspot.ca/2011_03_01_archive.html
Wilson, J., Tyedmers, P., and Grant, J. 2013. Measuring Environmental Impact at the
Neighborhood Level. Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, 56(1), 42-60.
WWF. 2012. Living Planet Report 2012 : Biodiversity, Biocapacity and Better Choices. World
Wide Fund for Nature, Gland.
Zeigler, D. J., Hays-Mitchell, M., and Brunn, S. D. 2012. Cities of the World – World Regional
Urban Development. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. Lanham – Boulder.
150