Just south of the
River Thames in the heart of London,
the whine and hammering of construction mingles with the laughter of children
playing in a park behind Elephant and Castle, one of the city’s largest and
ugliest road junctions.
اضافة اعلان
This is Elephant Park, a 1.2 hectare plot of fountains, swings
and slides, and open space at the center of a large redevelopment that has seen
the brutalist architecture of a 1,200-home public housing estate replaced by a
new neighborhood that by 2026 will hold about 2,924 apartments and townhouses.
About 2,000 units are already occupied, and the residents who
walk their dogs in the park or watch their children playing seem happy to chat
about the normal issues surrounding regeneration
projects, such as the fate of
the previous residents and whether the gentrification will drive away noisy
youths who still loiter in the park after dark.
One resident walking her dog complained recently that her rent
is becoming unaffordable, before quickly adding that she is delighted to have a
supermarket and gym in the same building as her one-bedroom apartment, with
rail and Underground stations right next door and shops, bars, a yoga studio, a
library, and medical facilities sprinkled through the development.
But another debate is drawing extra attention to Elephant Park:
the role of large-scale urban renewal projects like this in fighting climate
change.
“It is an absolutely exemplary example of what we need to be
doing to make cities greener, and we need to be doing it quickly and all around
the world,” said Kate Meyrick, a British-born urban consultant based in
Brisbane, Australia, who studies urban developments.
“The developers were primarily just trying to make a great place
for people to live, and they have achieved that with a really interesting mix
of spaces and services,” she said. “But a byproduct is that they have also
created real climate benefits.”
In April the latest report of the
UN’s Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change said one of the most effective ways to cut the carbon
emissions of cities was to stop the relentless expansion of urban sprawl by
promoting infill housing, the carefully planned creation of extra housing in
underutilized parts of cities to reduce car dependence and improve the
efficiency of infrastructure and energy use.
Meyrick is adamant that the biggest benefits of infill housing
come with neighborhood-scale developments like the Elephant Park project built
by developer Lendlease, rather than scattering new houses and units through
backyards and other empty city spaces.
Large-scale infill developments have reinvigorated cities from
New York to Milan over the past two decades, Meyrick said, “but they have
generally been driven by the need for housing, and now they need to be much
more recognized and promoted as a weapon against climate change.”
Hélène Chartier, the Paris-based director of urban planning and
design at C40, a network of 96 of the world’s leading cities, agreed that the
greatest climate benefits of infill housing come at the neighborhood scale. She
said there should be urgent public investment and revamped planning rules to
support such developments.
Planning officials from Melbourne, Australia, and Auckland, New
Zealand, to Paris have focused on the concept of five-minute neighborhoods or
15-minute cities, meaning denser housing in which people live closer to the
facilities they need instead of traveling for hours between separate areas to
sleep, work or go shopping.
Peter Newman, a professor of sustainability at Curtin University
in Australia, who has taught at universities in eight countries, including at
the University of Pennsylvania and the
University of Virginia, says many cities
are trying to stop urban sprawl by allowing property owners to build in their
backyards, “but tackling it one block of land at a time doesn’t work.”
The answer, Newman said, is precinct-level redevelopment in “the
greyfields”, or low-density suburbs of aging houses, a process that requires
innovative planning reforms and incentives to encourage the owners of 30 to 40
properties to work together.
It was local government resistance that led the
California state
Assembly to pass a bill in August promoting the development of infill housing
on commercial-zoned land. A dire housing crisis in the state has pitted local
authorities against the state, where legislators, Gov. Gavin Newsom, and other
officials are mounting a broad effort to address the so-called NIMBY-ism — “Not
In My Backyard” — of homeowners, communities and entire municipalities to block
more condensed development.
Dr Dan Silver, a physician
and executive director of a southern Californian conservation group, the
Endangered Habitats League, said the infill housing bill was needed because “no
matter how important it is to stop urban sprawl there will always be some
people who don’t want their own neighborhood changed.”
Read more Property
Jordan News
.jpg)
.jpg)
