Urban containment strategies: A case-study appraisal of plans and policies in Japanese, British, and Canadian cities

Urban containment strategies: A case-study appraisal of plans and policies in Japanese, British, and Canadian cities


By Hugh MillwardLand Use Policy 23 (2006) 473–485 
Resumed by Pindo Tutuko

Content

• A comparative assessment of the nature and impact of urban containment policies in Japan, England, and Canada
• Examination of strategic plans.
• Comparison a conceptual model of strategic options for urban containment.

Introduction

• Research provides a conceptual model of growth management options, which is then employed in a comparative assessment of the nature and impact of urban growth management policies in Britain, Japan and Canada. 
• Conduct an evaluation of typical containment strategies and urban development patterns, and an assessment of the spatial linkages between them. 
• The focus of enquiry is on how planning policies control and re-direct development, rather than completely halt it: some peri-urban development must be allowed, and even encouraged in appropriate locations. 
• The questions are how much development, where, and at what densities. 

Strategies for containment of sprawl

• Regional or structure planning was born of the need to control and direct urban development, and it is therefore no surprise that planners and the planning literature regard it as axiomatic that sprawl is bad. 
• There is much less support or empathy for sprawl, even when re-labelled as ‘‘country-estate’’ or ‘‘large-lot’’ development. 

A variety of strategic options for urban containment

• Options C and D show less rigid containment, as the development boundary is relaxed outward, and the size of the urban envelope(s) is increased. 
• Options A and B both incorporate strong bounding through the use of a tight development boundary surrounding a small ‘‘urban envelope’’. 
• Options C and D show less rigid containment, as the development boundary is relaxed outward, and the size of the urban envelope(s) is increased. 

Example cities, and methods of enquiry

• Britain was a world leader in the development of urban containment policies
• Britain and Japan have severe land- pressure problems (real or perceived), and hence stringent urban containment legislation and policies.
• Canada has extremely low land pressure and, until recently, lax containment policies.
• There is an extensive literature in English on the national planning frameworks of both Britain and Japan.
• In all three countries regional or strategic planning is often employed for metropolitan areas. 

Population Data

Derby and Plymouth (Britain)

• In Local Plans, the search sequence for earmarking of housing sites must start with re-use of brownfields, followed by urban extensions, followed by new or expanded settlements beyond the urban peri- meter. 
• The more traditional concern with preservation of better agricultural lands. 
• Housing development should not occur in the open countryside away from established settlements, and settlement expansions ‘‘should avoid creating ribbon development or a fragmented pattern of development.’’ 
• The housing policies explicitly concentrate development in existing urban areas, minimize greenfield development, minimize ‘‘intrusions’’ into the countryside, require new development in villages to be ‘‘in keeping’’ with village scale and character, and effectively prohibit new housing in the open countryside, whether within the Green Belt or not. 

Asahikawa and Hakodate (Japan) 

• There is a three-pronged and somewhat disjointed approach, since there are separate laws for urban and rural planning, and for ‘‘land re- adjustment.’’ 
• Urban planning laws are administered by the Ministry of Construction, and divide the City Planning Area (CPA) into an Urbanization Promotion Area (UPA) and an Urbanization Control Area (UCA).
• Rural planning, administered by the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries, impinges on this system by defining Agricultural Promotion Areas (APAs) 
• There are a variety of loopholes in the system, and government agencies can develop even in the UCA without permission. 
• The right of farmers to build extra houses on their smallholdings, supposedly for family members, but then sold onto the general housing market.
• Over- all, Japan’s urban containment system is both less rigid and less effective than the British system.

Kitchener and Halifax (Canada) 

• Fundamentally, land use controls in Canada owe their genesis and key characteristics to United States zoning (which assumes a right of development on all property) 
• Metropolitan regional (or structure) planning is frequently either entirely absent in Canada, or present only in the form of guiding or advisory documents.
• Planners enable to require new development to be added incrementally to existing serviced areas. 

Discussion and conclusions

• Growing cities are like inflating balloons: if you hold them in on one side, they will expand more on another. 
• Even the strictest urban containment policy, therefore, may be viewed as encouraging development in selective locations. Indeed, the greater the containment, the greater the re-direction of growth. 
• By distorting the land market, containment typically reduces competition between landowners and developers, raises land values and development densities, and raises housing prices. 
• By controlling urban sprawl and fragmentation, however, it can produce a wide range of economic, social, and environ- mental benefits. 
• As the conceptual strategies suggest, effective urban containment requires the drawing of a development boundary 

Source: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264837705000098