The Flipside of EcoDensity - Density & the Environment
February 22, 2008
By Erick Villagomez, re:place magazine
The EcoDensity initiative hangs its environmental hat on the idea that increased density ultimately leads to a more “sustainable” city. In the words of the City of Vancouver “EcoDensity is an acknowledgement that high quality and strategically located density can make Vancouver more sustainable…and…the right kind of quality density in the right places can help lower our ecological footprint.” More specifically, the idea is that density minimizes energy use through creating more compact buildings, and minimizes car use through making transit use economically viable in these locations as well as supporting local amenities that people can walk to.
Although there is truth to this belief, such statements are much too vague and vastly oversimplified. Yes, using land more effectively through creating denser settlements saves land, makes alternative transportation economically viable, and saves energy on an individual building basis. But this masks the greater complexity inherent to sustainability issues - which act at scales greater than buildings and individual cities. Furthermore, it simultaneously leaves key issues unresolved.
One of the most fundamental concerns is the failure to define and explain what the “right kind” of densities are. What is too much density? And what is too little? What does it look like? These are basic questions worthy of straightforward answers. This is a grave omission because it opens the gate for multiple interpretations – or misinterpretations – of the intentions, and works directly against the credibility of the City of Vancouver. How can citizens be expected to make an informed decision without any tangible information? Not to mention that there is a lot of research with hard numbers, figures, and precedents that can be used to ease the anxieties that naturally develop when dealing with change.
For example, densities similar to those surrounding our well-known commercial streets - West Broadway, Main Street, Commercial Drive, Kerrisdale – offer the range of densities within which local commerce and transit can thrive. To give this a quantitative value, net residential densities in these areas average between 12-20 dwelling units per net acre, and are often characterized by house types ranging from duplexes and homes with laneway cottages, to four storey walk-ups. Consequently, these also tend to be the most affordable house types to build since wood frame construction can still be used for their construction, rather than reinforced concrete which is much more costly.
As a member of the public, it would be comforting to know that there are a wide variety range of “EcoDense” neighbourhood options that can have viable community transit and economically sustainable local commerce. What these options are must be clearly defined, however.
The same vagueness holds true for the “strategically located” density called for within the EcoDensity documentation. As I’ve already argued in EcoDensity: Another Westside Swindle – and in accordance with 2006 Census data - density is already lopsided, with most of the density existing within Vancouver’s Eastside. Given that the regulatory framework that supports development in this city is skewed toward the latter, EcoDensity will surely just add more density in locations that already lie within the “sustainable” range mentioned above. This will ultimately preserve low-density Westside neighbourhoods at the expense of the larger sustainability of the city.
The above two issues focus primarily on semantics. And although these are important to the clarity and the proper understanding of EcoDensity’s intentions, a larger issue of density and growth as it relates to the ecological footprint remains wrongly unquestioned. Although increased density can decrease resource use per person, this may easily be offset by the increase of costs and resources (water, electricity, gas, etc.) demanded by the overall increase in population.
Using an extreme example to clarify my point, New York City is very efficient from the land-use perspective, but it comes at the cost of delivering 6.8 billion liters of water each day to its consumers from its reservoirs over 300 km away as well as constructing and maintaining the infrastructure to deliver it. This is accompanied by the environmental and economic costs of coordinating and disposing the 25,000 tons of garbage produced per day. In terms of electricity use, although the consumption per person is quite low relative to other North American cities (due to smaller living spaces and compact building types), the city as a whole consumes vast quantities. Additionally, nearby agricultural lands don’t have the capacity to feed such a large population. In turn, increased distances (and greater carbon emissions) are required to attain basic sustenance. The ultimate result is that New York has a giant ecological footprint as a result of its high population densities.
In Metro Vancouver, the balance between the capacity of the local environment and the region’s population was surpassed decades ago. Half of our one million tonnes of garbage is disposed over 300km away at Cache Creek. The food we eat comes from thousands of kilometers away from all over the globe. Our recycling is processed overseas. BC Hydro recently recorded a jump in electricity use of 1000 kwh per person - from 10,000 kwh to 11,000 kwh - within the past three years. This has put more pressure on them to find other (potentially destructive) means of generating this valuable energy source. Will increased density, alone, truly help this situation?
Touting the concept of “ecological footprint” in favour of densification is a precarious undertaking since “our footprint” encompasses relationships beyond Vancouver to include other larger lifestyle issues such as the types of food we eat, where they come from, and resource consumption beyond land, itself. In such cases, dense human populations are often more of a detriment.
This particularly hit home a while back when I decided to do an online ecological footprint quiz and found my footprint to be 3.4 planets. For a person with a family who lives in a 11oo sq.ft half duplex, rarely drives, and is a pretty environmentally conscious in all respects, I have to admit that I was pretty surprised. Being self-professed map geek, this shock instigated the creation a map depicting the distances (as the crow flies) of a random sample of everyday products that lay within a 10ft radius of my computer…no further explanation is needed.
From this holistic perspective, then, increased densities can raise a city’s overall ecological footprint. This comes as a result of continually increasing its population further from the carrying capacity (water, energy, food, etc.) of their local environment. This isn’t to downplay the importance of lowering individual land consumption levels or densification as a small step towards reducing our footprint. These are extremely important, no doubt. But misusing a clearly defined term such as “ecological footprint” serves to give the public a false impression of the degree to which densification, alone, serves towards creating a more sustainable city. Other initiatives - such as encouraging urban agriculture within Vancouver and corresponding implementation strategies - are equally (if not more) important. Furthermore, it calls into question the definition of “right density”.
With regards to density increasing transit use, minimizing car use and increasing walkability, many questions and concerns also arise. Although density can increase transit use and decrease car use, this by no means is the rule. Other factors such as transportation logistics and larger socio-economic settlement patterns carry equal, if not more, weight. For example, if the majority of jobs lie outside high density areas not efficiently fed by transit lines (as is the case in Metro Vancouver), the overall decrease in automobile use and traffic can be negligible. That 70% of downtown Vancouver’s inhabitants work beyond 5km away – as reported by Statistics Canada – is a case in point.
But one might argue that increasing density combined with mixing uses – commercial and residential – would at least make people more likely to walk to obtain their daily needs. This can be true, but it is greatly dependent on what basic amenities are available locally (more on this in The Flipside of EcoDensity: Density and Livability). In order to follow through on their promises, the City must ensure these basic amenities are provided in anticipation of the desired densification. A convincing implementation plan, therefore, must be included as a part of their proposal in order to avoid people needing to drive to get their groceries or drop their children off at school. A failure to do so would have the opposite effect to those outlined in the EcoDensity documentation - simply creating more traffic congestion and pollution.
So, although there is some truth to the claims brought forth regarding the environmental benefits of packing people together, EcoDensity’s information cherry-picking - the failure to acknowledge higher level dependencies as well as its lack of targets and definitions - ultimately paints a deceivingly simplistic and inaccurate picture of what the environmental benefits of densification truly are and to what degree density, alone, contributes to its larger sustainability goals.
We often fail to remember that, to-date, cities have an extremely low survival rate. Most of our best urban experiments have failed and collapsed at some points in their existence. This has often been due to a failure to strike the delicate balance between population densities and environmental capacity. In light of the how far our knowledge of human and ecological systems has progressed, one would hope an important initiative such as EcoDensity would follow suit and tell the story like it is…..warts and all.
Other series articles:
The Flipside of EcoDensity - Introduction
The Flipside of EcoDensity - Density & Affordability
The Flipside of EcoDensity - Density & Livability
The Flipside of EcoDensity - Epilogue
While I find your example of New York interesting, would the ecological footprint not be even worse if that population was spread across a much larger region? I think you are trying to illustrate the case of diminishing returns. I agree there must be a point where more density begins to result in less efficiency, where that point is I’m not sure anyone knows yet.
Hi Joe,
I completely agree that spreading the population in low densities across a landscape has many negative implications regarding ecological footprint locally (”locally” being the key word) and combating the latter through density is very important. The diminishing returns comment is bang on, too.
Numerically, larger scale issues regarding food, manufacturing, and production as a whole, are the biggest culprits contributing to our giant footprint. The distances, carbon emission, and overall impacts of these are much more significant than local issues. My random sample of 12 products travelled approx. 80,600 km - the equivalent, for example, of about 4 years of driving in typical low-density suburban conditions. In essence, we’ve global suburb, getting the basics of our daily needs from thousands of kilometers away - well beyond our individual cities.
Tipping a hat towards this larger problem and attempting to engage the issue in its entirety seems the least that we can expect from our leaders. Not to mention defining where the diminishing returns of growth and density lie.
I had very little problem with anything you said in this piece until I got to the line “From this holistic perspective, then, increased densities can raise a city’s overall ecological footprint.”
Hold the phone! What you had actually shown in the paragraphs preceding this was that increased _populations_ had increased New York’s ecological footprint. You would only be able to make the claim you did if had been able to show that the ecological footprint of New York as dense as it is is greater than the ecological footprint of a similar population spread out in a less dense fashion.
Moreover, while there is no doubt that increased human population creates an increased ecological footprint; and while it is equally true that a density in and of itself helps to mitigate that footprint, it remains equally true that density is not a panacea in this regard. Best practices in waste management, water management, community and alternative energy and social service provision need to be embraced in any community these days to reduce our ecological footprint. But, again, they all work best in denser contexts.
So let’s not put the blame for increased ecological footprint on urban densities. And if your real problem is increased human population (as it ultimately seems to be) then please show everybody the ethically tolerable way of either limiting or reducing global population.
Erik,
I think what you are saying is that there is a point of diminishing returns for the size of a city. It seems to me (as a previous commenter pointed out) that spreading the density of NY out over a larger area would cause a much greater footprint.
So, it seems like you are saying one of two things:
1. Our large footprints are caused by our overconsumption and our population that is too large for the planet.
2. Our large footprints are caused by urban/suburban areas that have too many people relative to the carrying capacity of surrounding land.
I hope you are saying #2 (because #1, although true, is trite and cannot be solved with better urban design). What #2 means is that we need to make cities as dense as possible, but also without too much population. Ie, compact, mid-sized cities, where the population is limited by the available local farmland and other resources.
Oops…pressed send too early.
The problem is that for Vancouver, we have people jumping on top of each other to try to move here. Can we reasonably say “sorry, guys. Too many people already, find some other place to live”?
Good comments….
Firstly, and very importantly, we have to remember that I’m talking specifically looking at the claims of the EcoDensity initiative. My argument was intended to focus on the fact that without defining what “right density” is EcoDensity can’t truly make a strong argument for it. I’m definitely a fan of compact communities, but not of simplistic generalizations.
The issue of population vs. density is an interesting one, since they are both intrinsically interconnected - one must house a population. The question is how to do this (what density, etc.). The New York example was intended to bring up the question of how much is too much. Is New York sustainable due to its higher density? The statement that “density is not a panacea” and that it must be taken among other important issues (waste water, etc.) is very important here. For it suggests that EcoDensity’s must include these key issues in their proposal.
That said, not all things work better in dense urban environments. Suburbia vast tracts of open space (in the form of yards, setbacks, etc.) have many ecological advantages….particularly when viewed from the water infiltration and wildlife corridors perspective.
I often wonder what things would look like if we took the best of both environments - urban/suburban - and tried to mesh them together.
The issue of limiting population influx is also an important one. I’m not sure whether we could “reasonably” tell people they can’t come but, at the very least, it is worth a consideration given our current ecological predicament.
James Howard Kunstler’s book The Long Emergency lays out the argument that peak oil will ultimately bring force the expulsion (through mass deaths, migration, etc.) of the population of from cities as they try to attain a more locally sustainable economy. Interesting thought…and he has a pretty strong argument if you read the book. If one takes his assumptions to be valid…Vancouver will be worse off for densifying. I’m still trying to come to terms with things….
“Suburbia vast tracts of open space (in the form of yards, setbacks, etc.) have many ecological advantages….particularly when viewed from the water infiltration and wildlife corridors perspective.”
Uhh, I don’t want to be a density fetishist here but you are going to have to do better than this in terms of defending suburbia. As far as stormwater management is concerned, many good dense developments have their own management systems based entirely on ground water absorption (mediated by retention areas).
As well, the ratio of footprint versus # of occupants would suggest that it is single family housing that has a much more deleterious impact in this regard (i.e. there is a comparatively wasteful spread of build form/occupant over that land that unneccessarily impedes water filtration).
The same can be said as regards wildlife corridors.
Finally, if you want to caution your readers that you are speaking about EcoDensity in particular, then it is the “simplistic generalizations” about density in places like New York that is the problem, here.
Hi Craig,
….no defense of suburbia was intended. Just an acknowledgement that there are certain spatial characteristics that work in its favour.
I agree that there are denser development that do a decent job at managing stormwater. But, as you rightly point out, they rightly require costly infrastructural moves (i.e. properly engineered retention areas, etc.). That is the trade-off for increased density. Fair enough….but still a trade-off.
This begs an interesting question: what density provides a good balance between water infiltration and human occupation? A question not even mentioned within the EcoDensity document.
I think that it is pretty difficult to argue that landscapes with less population (and hence less density) perform better in terms of simple rain water infiltration - water infiltrating directly into the ground without specialized engineering system that channelize and direct the water - despite the increased impermeable area for roads, etc. common to typical suburban neighbourhoods.
Same for wildlife corridors, the mathematical sum of grade=level open space - and its inherent interconnectivity necessary to support wildlife migration - within low density areas is much greater than in higher density neighbourhoods. This number, of course, must include yards, etc. Numbers don’t lie…this is mathematical fact.
As is New Yorks “ecological footprint” (in the true sense of the word). The numbers (garbage, electricity, etc.) above were taken directly from their data. As a result of the cities high population (and population is related to density), it must necessarily draw upon resources beyond its local environment. The numbers tell the tale.
E