Comment: Don’t make cities more compact, but make the countryside more compact

What is the value of human happiness in relation to the climate gains we achieve through compact urban planning? It depends on the climate gains we can achieve through small urban planning. Lines are thought provoking. Instead of cities, rural areas should be densified. Above all: capture CO2 by converting farmland to forest. At The Line we can grow food better.

As a planner and journalist I have been promoting very small towns for years. There are many advantages to having more people in a smaller area. This increases support for facilities and high address density prevents unnecessary movement. Furthermore, high density can contribute to an attractive urban environment with a mix of complementary activities and small, but high-quality public spaces.

High-quality public transport is only at the mercy of high density. There’s also an economic motive: high address density means a larger supply of potential workers and offers other benefits to companies looking to settle in densely built cities.

It is not yet a motive against new urban interpretations. But it is precisely this prevention of ‘green building’ that has often been invoked as a motive for further intensification of the existing city. A recent argument for density touches on this. Massive urban sprawl is not good for the climate, former US President Barack Obama told the American Association of Architects (AIA) annual conference. Obama mainly associates urban sprawl with driving and therefore pollution. According to the former president, we need to think about creating ‘livable density’ that allows for ‘mass transit’ and cycling.

I want my own yard with a putting green

All true. But a workday at home in my porched apartment in the city increasingly ends in Funda. Not to look for a new apartment in the dense city districts that I had campaigned for, but to look for one with more space around me.

I want my own yard with a putting green. I wanted a garden where I could receive family and friends without feeling part of a public event. I like to pick apples to bake and mess around in my garage with mopeds and bicycles. I want more than a floor and four walls around me. After all, I want to have it all to myself so I don’t have to leave my yard to be happy in my old age.

Should I feel guilty about my latent suburban need? Statistics on global land use put things into perspective. According to the official Science Online publication ‘Our world in data‘ (OWID) In ​​2019, 50 percent of all habitable Earth’s surface is agricultural land, 37 percent is forest, 11 percent is shrubland and grassland, 1 percent is fresh water, and only 1 percent of Earth’s habitable surface is used as urban, which includes cities. , roads and other human infrastructure. Hence the ratio of agricultural land to urban area is 50 to 1.

In the Netherlands, two-thirds of the land area is used for agricultural purposes. Intensive animal husbandry recycles 78 percent of this, while the sector generates only a small fraction of the calories. The Netherlands imports a lot of calories in the form of soy to feed animals raised elsewhere. Nutrient value is largely lost in our environment in the form of methane and nitrogen.

In terms of greenhouse gas production, cities are not the biggest polluters, unless indirectly exposed to meat consumption. The built environment generates 6 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, and transportation 14 percent. The global food system accounts for 24 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.

Architects, and certainly planners, have well-defined ideas about an ideal society, and it often takes on dogmatic aspects. In the past this has sometimes changed dramatically, in modernist high-rise buildings in Bijlmermeer where everyone has to be equal, and not even a flat at the end of a building is allowed to have windows. Because what was that one citizen entitled to?

Consistency is now the dominant doctrine, which recently resulted in The Line. A dystopian representation of a linear city 170 kilometers long, 200 meters wide and half a kilometer high rising in the desert of Saudi Arabia. According to the designers, it is a response to the livelihood and environmental crises in conventional cities. Eventually, the car-free city will have nine million people. Everyone lives in apartments, so vertically, in very high density. So everyday amenities are close at hand. The entire city will run on renewable energy and high-speed rail will allow residents to travel from one end to the other in twenty minutes.

A change in our food production chain could really help.

The media threw themselves into this new utopia. Popular in professional circles, it is a line-inspired animation where all the buildings and infrastructure of Manhattan are transformed into a small line in the middle of a forest. Because the more you focus, the more space there is.

As an art project, The Line is certainly a success. Thought provoking. But the line is not human-friendly. For a more stable world, it’s also a good idea to start outside the city. Instead of messing around at the edges of the built environment to prevent 1 percent land use from becoming 1.1 percent and avoid unnecessary migration, a change in our food production chain will actually help.

If the agricultural sector is encouraged to switch to plant-based alternatives to meat and milk, this will save a lot of emissions, but you can also free up a lot of space for nature.

If the land needed by the agricultural sector in the Netherlands could be reduced by 50 percent, CO2 capture the size of the province of Gelderland would be freed up for forests and natural habitats for animals. If we grow crops in a vertical, closed system under conditioned conditions, we free up even more space. This is already happening in practice. In Amsterdam, a new crop of fresh lettuce rolls off the production line at PlantLab every sixteen days.

Let’s set aside The Line and other towers where people don’t want to live for agricultural production, and let people choose where they want to live. In the city, or beyond. Perhaps in such a new forest environment.