Is Europe Sprawling?

Europe known for its Charming Villages castles Eurovision and maybe urban sprawl over the last couple of decades the European environment agency has been ringing the alarm Bells over an increase in the rate of sprawl in Europe's cities one study found that Europe is the most sprawled and most rapidly sprawling continent in the world now some of this obviously comes down to how you define and measure sprawl and the study goes on to say that sprawl per capita is still highest in North America and Australia so I hope my American viewers out there weren't celebrating too soon but the study does make two very important points first Europe is indeed sprawling and two sprawling Europe looks different than sprawl in other parts of the world in fact sprawl looks different country to country as sprawl is often a result of inefficient and ineffective federal land use and transportation regulations so why is Europe sprawling so much and what does it look like and how are they going to stop it before their castles turn into something like this let's talk about it after the bike belt the first thing I want to do is address the elephant in the room the comparison with sprawl in the United States and to be absolutely honest there is no comparison the Los Angeles region the greater Southern California area has a population density of about 200 people per square kilometer it's the second largest urban region in the United States so let's compare it to Madrid Spain Madrid is the second largest urban area in the EU with about 7 million people its density is 5,300 people per square kilometer there are all sorts of challenges associated with comparing regions across countries especially on things like sprawl uh but it's clear that there's an order of magnitude difference here now here's some more evidence for my visually inclined Learners out there this graph shows the density gradient for the City of Paris the largest city in the EU by population the vertical axis represents population and the horizontal axis represents distance from the city center where the city center is located on the far left you can see that Paris is denser near the city center and tapers off the first from the center you go by about 23 km from the center we're in the countryside this pattern is repeatable in most major European cities here's Barcelona for example now let's compare Barcelona to Los Angeles the lines are at the same scale Los Angeles is far less dense at every distance and the sprawl continues on beyond the bounds of the graph even the New York Region pales in comparison to Barcelona okay so I think we've established that the US is still the Undisputed king of sprawl go us but that doesn't mean that Europe doesn't have anything to be worried about Europe is a continent is incredibly dense and urbanized 72% of Europeans live in cities and the population density of the continent is 486 people per square kilometer that's a lot if Europeans get a taste for strip malls and streets like this then it won't take much for all those dense cities to melt into the Hinterlands covering much of the continent at the expense of farmland and forests and research suggests that Europeans who temporarily live in cities that have more sprawl are somewhat more likely to want a single family house when they return turn Europe is also more likely to have more dense small towns scattered across the countryside than in the United States us has small towns but they're typically already low density and in much of the country are emptying out in the US sprawl tends to congregate around large cities in Europe small towns are fairly dense and close together it wouldn't take much sprawl to start eliminating the green belts around them and merging the towns together maybe you've heard that European countries are losing population or at least their population is stagnating and it's true that fertility rates are low across many countries in Europe but immigration is still filling in the gaps and the population is still growing for now Europe May reach Peak population as early as 2026 and start declining from there but that doesn't necessarily solve the sprawl problem for example fewer people are coupling up and forming nuclear families these days which means that for the same amount of people you need more homes to accommodate everyone and while Europe is incredibly Urban rural to Urban migration is still occurring and those people need places to live with so many people on the continent it's kind of surprising that Europe hasn't already sprawled into one giant megal lopin region why hasn't it why isn't it turned into the United States well there are lots of reasons it's pretty complicated but I'm going to mention a couple right in this video for one thing European cities are much older so they designed their cities to hold many more people before the Advent of the car Rome was at a population of over a million during the Roman Empire and after it shrunk down during the Middle Ages there was still a lot of City to grow into not a lot of Need for new suburbs dense walkable cities were the norm for hundreds if not not thousands of years a more recent reason is that Europeans didn't adopt the automobile at the same rate as Americans did by the early 1900s the United States was producing automobiles at a fantastic rate making them affordable to the masses this was all happening as Europe was fighting the first world war after the second world war devastated many of the cities in Europe those residents didn't have the same post-war wealth to buy a couple of cars and a house like American GIS and their families Europeans had to rebuild their cities and to their credit they prioritized things like Transit and housing I do want to push back against the myth that Europeans don't own any cars and just ride their bikes everywhere 65% of Dutch people drive their car to work it's still impressive that 29% ride their bikes like extremely impressive but a majority of Dutch people drive but in the Netherlands as well as the rest of Europe driving is more expensive both for the car and the fuel and it's often just more convenient to walk bike or take transit sprawl is autod dependent so when you have a populace that isn't autod dependent sprawl just doesn't make as much sense okay so we know that Europe doesn't have a lot of sprawl at least compared to the United States but it is indeed sprawling and it's sprawling faster than before where is it sprawling the European environment agency put out a report to answer that very question the answer is Belgium the Netherlands and Western Germany with pockets of sprawl around most major cities they figure this out by dividing the entire continent into 1 km grid cells and computed something called weighted Urban proliferation or wup for each cell a rural area would have a low score as would a a dense urban area scattered low density development scored higher if you want more detail I've linked the report in the description here's a view of Paris so you can see what I mean Central Paris has a low wup score but it's higher on the outskirts of the urban center this shows where sprawl is but it doesn't show where sprawl is growing unless you do the study on different years and compare the results and that's just what they did the good news for Benelux is that sprawl is not growing rapidly there the countries of Malta Sweden and Spain saw the highest inre increases in sprawl score at the national level Stockholm was a sprawl leader as were the Swedish cities nearest to Denmark again go check out this report if you're interested in finding out where your European city ranks because this is Europe and they're not as good at sprawling as the United States some cities and regions actually reduced the amount of sprawl they had Paris Brussels Berlin Athens Vienna and Prague are all capitals that other WP scores decline how can a city reduce sprawl at least according to the study well let's look at Prague it happens from the inside out where less dense central areas become more dense with infill reducing their wup score this is a nice segue into how Europeans can actually curtail their sprawl and let's start right at the city center it can actually be a challenge because many of them feature historic City centers where it can be difficult to insert more housing but over an Eastern Europe there are plenty of cities with relatively unattractive City centers these are the postcommunist cities where many of the unattractive buildings need to be remodeled or replaced to keep up with modern tastes and sensibilities shout out to my video on communist urbanism if you want more information on that topic regardless of the city there are going to be areas that are already reasonably high density with lots of Transit that could be further densified of course the other big Improvement would be to restrict growth at the urban Edge a common way of doing this in Europe is through a green belt green belts operate a lot like an urban growth boundary it's meant to direct a new development inside of the belt and keep the area around the city as Farm or natural land this is particularly important in Europe because like I mentioned their land use pattern is often one of separate small towns in Villages maintaining these green buffers keeps those Villages separate preserving the character of the place in landscape but do green belts actually work at reducing sprawl well the answer is yes here's a nice graph showing the change in sprawl again using wup comparing cities without green belts and cities with green belts nearly all the green belt cities reduce their sprawl while only 37% of cities without a green belt reduce their sprawl some critics of green belts suggest that they may exacerbate sprawl by encouraging Leap Frog development meaning that new housing of businesses would just be built on the other side of the green belt instead of adjacent to the city the study refutes that claim and didn't find much Leap Frog development happening green belts when combined with infield development can be a solution for managing sprawl anywhere not just Europe but such restrictive land use policies can create scarcity and raise housing costs fortunately many European cities also have robust social or public housing programs that can reduced housing costs for low and moderate income households when you factor in better more complete Transit Networks you have a recipe for some pretty great cities it's all the more reason for Europe to cril sprawl and try to avoid being like the North American cities over here one of my first experiences with European suburbs was when I studied abroad in Rome as an undergrad at Cornell University we spent the semester learning about Italian and European urbanism and it was literally a life-changing experience Cornell's Urban study program has served me well throughout the years and I still use what I learned there today as a professor I'm a proud Alum of the program I'm really excited that Cornell summer programs offers great summer courses for high school and college students and these courses are available in person in Ithaca New York or online meaning you can take them anywhere in the world there are a great way for you to tackle some of the major challenges facing cities today topics like climate change and social justice you'll be learning from great instructors too they're offering two online courses the justtin sustainable City and Maps mapping in GIS they're also teaching an in-person course called introduction to Urban big data and machine learning I know that there are high school students who watch my videos who are interested in majoring in urban studies these courses will be a perfect introduction to the field and they help you chart your course for the future in these courses would also be great for college students who are considering a change of major or change of career or who were just interested in sharpening their abilities in urban data analytics and GIS mapping I chose Cornell because it was an elite institution dedicated to solving some of the world's biggest challenges the Cornell Urban studies program is a shiny example of this perspective I know you'll love their courses and get tons of value out of them applications for the high school program are due May 5th and admissions for the college program are open now go to the website for more information I'll put a link on screen and in the description

Channel: City Beautiful

Views: 163,590

Keywords: city planning, town planning, urban planning, urban design

Id: w9LtFqFBsxw

Length: 11min 1sec (661 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 27 2024