Urban sustainability: is densification sufficient?

ABSTRACT

Urban densification has for some decades been considered as the most relevant strategy for ecological modernization within the field of urban spatial development. Compared to outward urban expansion, densification has important environmental merits, but is not without negative environmental impacts. This paper critically examines how urban densification policies contain an assumption – implicit or explicit – that continual growth, expressed in per capita consumption of building stock and infrastructure, should be accommodated. This is argued to lead to a weakening of environmental sustainability. The Norwegian capital Oslo is used as an example, illustrating the environmental achievements and limitations of the densification strategy. These achievements and limitations are then discussed in the light of theoretical literature on tensions between economic growth and environmental sustainability. The paper concludes with a call for further critical scrutiny of how growth assumptions influence/subtly shape urban sustainability policies.

KEYWORDS:

• Urban sustainability
• ecological modernization
• densification
• economic growth
• degrowth

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Petter Næss http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8571-8326

Tim Richardson http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3570-2830

Notes

1 Understood as GDP growth (in total and/or per capita).

2 Increasing longevity and a higher proportion of females belonging to birth-giving cohorts are, however, the most important components of Oslo’s forecast population growth until 2035.

3 In a Norwegian context, consumption growth has for a long period been higher than population growth, also in the largest city regions. For example, per capita household expenditures in Norway’s three largest municipalities (Oslo, Bergen and Trondheim) increased by 53% from 2000 to 2012. In comparison, population growth in these municipalities was 19% over the same period (Statistics Norway, 2019).

4 For example, the degrowth movement and critical scholars such as Nicolas Georgescu-Roegen, Herman Daly, Tim Jackson and Joachim Spangenberg.

5 This is evident, for example, in the actual environmental policies of governments around the world, the kinds of arguments put forth by the majority of ‘green’ political oppositional parties and environmental organizations, and the media coverage on environmental issues. It is also indicated by the shares of research funding allocated to development of ‘green’ technologies compared to research on the causes of environmental unsustainability and societal conditions for transition toward sustainability.

6 The Norwegian legislation about energy requirement partially counteracts the inherent tendency of buildings with large enveloping surfaces to require more heating when it is cold and more cooling when it is hot, since more insulation is mandatory for single-family houses than for apartment buildings. But this could be changed just by requiring the same insulation standard for all housing types.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Academy of Finland.