Do we need well functioning neighbourhoods rather than well functioning urban environments?
As the RMA reforms take shape (or not), the question of the purpose of urban planning is no doubt going to be debated. Currently, the proposed objective of the new planning act appears to be well functioning urban environments. Whether this is well functioning in social, economic and environmental terms is yet to be sorted.
But is the ideal of a well functioning city too broad to offer much guidance as to what is the rationale for much urban planning and asscoiated interventions?
While spatial planning may deal with the big picture items of city structure, it is down at the neighbourhood level that things happen. It is at this level that many small, incremental changes occur, some for the better, some for the worse.
Should the proposed Spatial Planning Act deal with well functioning urban areas and the Natural and Built Environment Act aim to support well functioning neighbourhoods? At the neighbourhood level, urban planning is more about urban design, cumulative effects and people’s day to day interactions with their environments. It is not about urban expansion versus intensification, or about nodes and corridors.
The neighbourhood has long been a core element of city planning. The concept of the residential neighbourhood could be said to be one of the greatest inventions of urban planning. The amenity (and stability) benefits provided by a neighbourhood where potentially incompatible activities are constrained or actively excluded are important and shouldn't be taken for granted. But neighbourhoods are complex things. We need a more sophisticated understanding of neighbourhoods and how to manage them.
There are many signs that neighbourhoods are important to social and economic outcomes:
- Well functioning neighbourhoods build social capital
- Covid has given a boost to working from home and probably soon for many, working for part of the week at least in your neighbourhood.
- As the population ages, then the neighbourhood needs to accommodate people as they age in place
- As economies decarbonise and travelling longer distances gets more expensive, then people are going to become more reliant on their local environment in meeting their needs
- Mental health is supported by a high qaulity public realm in the neighbourhood.
But how do we define what is a well functioning neighbourhood and how do we get across the notion that for all neighbourhoods, there will always be a degree of change?
Two concepts with some contemporary currency are:
- The complete neighbourhood
- The 15minute neighbourhood
These can be described as neighbourhoods where one has safe and convenient access to the goods and services needed in daily life. This includes a variety of housing options, local stores and other commercial services, public open spaces and recreational facilities, affordable active transportation options and civic amenities. An important element of a complete neighbourhood is that it is built at a walkable and bikeable human scale, and meets the needs of people of all ages and abilities.
The 15 minute neighbourhood is all the rage at the moment. The new London Plan has the concept as a core idea - people should be able to access most services and activities they need within a 15 walk, bike or bus ride. The core principles of a 15-minute city are said to be:
- Residents of every neighbourhood have easy access to goods and services, particularly groceries, fresh food and healthcare.
- Every neighbourhood has a variety of housing types, of different sizes and levels of affordability, to accommodate many types of households and enable more people to live closer to where they work.
- Residents of every neighbourhood are able to breathe clean air, free of harmful air pollutants, there are green spaces for everyone to enjoy.
- More people can work close to home or remotely, thanks to the presence of smaller-scale offices, retail and hospitality, and co-working spaces.
But perhaps this is too much of an insular view of neighbourhoods. Neighbourhoods need to interconnect and overlap. The big benefit of cities is the agglomeration benefits of many people coming together from many different neighbourhoods. But nevertheless people identify with their neighbourhood. As Jane Jacobs says:
But for all the innate extroversion of city neighbourhoods, it fails to follow that city people can therefore get along magically without neighbourhoods. Even the most urbane citizen does care about the atmosphere of the street and district where he lives, no matter how much choice he has of pursuits outside it, and the common run of city people do depend greatly on their neighbourhood for the kind of everyday lives they lead.
Well functioning neighbourhoods have a degree of self organisation to them - people look out for one another. They invest time in their local house, street and local community to the benefit of all.
Planning for well functioning neighbourhoods is different from handing planning over to the locals (neighbourhood planning). It is also not about stopping change. But here is one of the great paradoxes of neighbourhoods - how to build social capital through stability while allowing for the inevitable ebb and flow of city growth. Back to Jane Jacobs:
To be sure, a good city neighbourhood can absorb new comers into itself, both newcomers by choice and immigrants settling by expediency and it can protect a reasonable amount of transient population too. But these increments or displacements have to be gradual. If self government in the place is to work, underlying any float of population must be a continuity of people who have forged neighbourhood networks. These networks are a city’s irreplaceable social capital. Whenever the capital is lost, from whatever cause, the income from it disappears.
What are the remedies to maintain social capital while allowing change:
- Good streets
- Active frontages
- Mix of uses
- Older and newer buildings
- Gradual change.
How does planning support these qualities? Perhaps the biggest issue to get right is the last one. To quote Jane Jacobs yet again:
City building that has a solid footing produces continual and gradual change, building complex diversifications. Growth of diversity itself is created by means of changes dependent upon each other to build increasingly effective combinations of uses. All city building that retains staying power after its novelty has gone and that preserves the freedom of streets and upholds citizens self management, requires that its locality be able to adapt, keep up to date, keep interesting, keep convenient and this in turn requires a myriad of gradual, constant, close grained changes.
So rather than have policies that say:
“that the planned urban built form in … RMA planning documents may involve significant changes to an area, and those changes: (i) may detract from amenity values appreciated by some people but improve amenity values appreciated by other people, communities, and future generations, including by providing increased and varied housing densities and types; and (ii) are not, of themselves, an adverse effect”
Perhaps they should say:
“that changes to urban built form that involve gradual, constant adjustments that increase the diversity and complexity of uses and buildings in communities are not, of themselves, an adverse effect, but rather are a positive effect that should be supported”.