Compact City - Sprawl City. Two interacting urban forms

FREDIANI, JULIETA; GIACOBBE, NORA; RAVELLA, OLGA; PISTOLA, JULIANA

Dalian, China

Congreso; 44th International Planning Congress -ISOCARP-.; 2008

ISOCARP

Urban sprawl, in occidental societies, is a defined characteristic of the new urbanization process. Nevertheless, in Latin-American cities, this characteristic is part of the historical process of its construction where the compact city/sprawl city dichotomy interacts in a same time/space equation. The irruption of gated communities and new polarities in the nineties empowers and contributes to modifying the original model. From the perspective of the relation between mobility and urban model, the car constitutes the core problem of compact city/sprawl city. The insustainability, inherent in mobility behaviour, is associated with the exponential increase in car and crossed distances.The paper analyzes the role of urban transport in unsustainable urban areas, and focues on energy consumption. The hypothesis is based on the idea that higher energy consumption produced by urban transport depends on the expansion of the urban form.The case of La Plata city in Argentina (800.000 inhabitants) is studied according to the concepts of compact and sprawl city, and sustainability/insustainability guidelines. Urban compacity is related to the decrease of public and private vehicle journeys and also to energetic economies and pollutant emission reduction.Three areas of the diffuse periphery and two central compact areas are compared in relation to:Socioeconomic level of population;Type of consolidation and structure;Energy consumption derived from the global functioning of every sectorIn this paper, it was proposed that the generalizations mode on the diffused city vs. compact city should be reinterpreted according to the degree of interdependence and relative significance of analysed variables.