Tuesday, April 7, 2015

From TheCityFix
Why planning for expansion helps
build sustainable, equitable cities

São Paulo has historically struggled to expand fast enough to match rapid population growth, resulting in many informal favelas housing residents in the city’s periphery. Photo by Gabriel Cabral/Flickr.
 Consensus is building around the many benefits of compact cities. Overall, compact cities use fewer resources, produce fewer carbon emissions, and provide better quality of life for their inhabitants than their sprawled counterparts. In rapidly urbanizing countries in the global south, however, many medium-sized cities are expected to double their populations in the coming decades. This increase will strain efforts to achieve compact urban development. While some of these cities have densities three times higher than those of cities in industrialized economies, some degree of urban land expansion is inevitable. If current trends continue, the amount of developed land in these cities could triple between 2000 and 2030. Read more: Why planning for expansion helps build sustainable, equitable cities | TheCityFix

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