Philipp Rode

Cities and Energy: Urban Morphology and Residential Heat-Energy Demand

Our aim is better understanding of the theoretical heat-energy demand of different types of urban form at a scale of 500 m × 500 m. The empirical basis of this study includes samples of dominant residential building typologies identified for Paris, London, Berlin, and Istanbul. In addition, archetypal idealised samples were created for each type through an analysis of their built form parameters and the removal of unwanted ‘invasive’ morphologies. The digital elevation models of these real and idealised samples were run through a simulation that modelled solar gains and building surface energy losses to estimate heat-energy demand. In addition to investigating the effect of macroscale morphological parameters, microscale design parameters, such as U-values and glazing ratios, as well as climatic effects were analysed. The theoretical results of this study suggest that urban-morphology-induced heat-energy efficiency is significant and can lead to a difference in heat-energy demand of up to a factor of six. Compact and tall building types were found to have the greatest heat-energy efficiency at the neighbourhood scale while detached housing was found to have the lowest.

Accessibility in Cities: Transport and Urban Form

This paper focusses on one central aspect of urban development: transport and urban form and how the two shape the provision of access to people, goods and services, and information in cities. The more efficient this access, the greater the economic benefits through economies of scale, agglomeration effects and networking advantages. This paper discusses how different urban accessibility pathways impact directly on other measures of human development and environmental sustainability. It also presents the enabling conditions for increasing accessibility and low-carbon mobility in cities. This paper is one of three papers by LSE Cities that form part of the cities research programme of the New Climate Economy (NCE) project for the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate. The two other contributing papers cover ‘Cities and the New Climate Economy: the Transformative Role of Global Urban Growth’ (NCE Paper 01) and ‘Steering Urban Growth: Governance, Policy and Finance’ (NCE Paper 02).

Urban planning and transport policy integration: The role of governance hierarchies and networks in London and Berlin

ABSTRACT This article investigates how the integration of urban planning and transport policies has been pursued in key case study cities since the early 1990s. Focusing on the underlying institutional arrangements, it examines how urban policymakers, professionals, and stakeholders have worked across disciplinary silos, geographic scales, and different time horizons. The article draws on expert interviews, examination of policy and planning documents, and review of key literature from 2 cities, London and Berlin. The article presents 2 main findings. First, it identifies converging trends as part of the institutional changes that facilitated planning and policy integration. Second, it argues that rather than building on either more hierarchical or networked forms of integration, planning and policy integration are linked to a hybrid model that combines hierarchy and networks.

Trends and Challenges: Global Urbanisation and Urban Mobility

Throughout the world, urban policymakers continue to struggle balancing the ever-increasing levels of activity in cities against the need for more-sustainable forms of urban development. City-making challenges are exacerbated by the global environmental crisis and concerns about climate change, resource depletion, increased levels of pollution, and the loss of biodiversity. These concerns are directly related to current unsustainable patterns of urbanisation. This chapter first focuses on the overall context of global urbanisation and its connections to the challenge of urban transport. With reference to the current growth of cities and the ongoing urbanisation evident in many parts of the world, it details three main components of this growth: people, urban land, and transport. The chapter moves on to highlight the problems, challenges and risks that cities are facing today by looking at the central environmental, economic and social concerns that have emerged in relation to the systemic, spatial component of cities and its linkages to urban transport and access to the city. The chapter concludes by highlighting the importance of working productively with the interrelatedness of urban systems, particularly with regard to land use and urban transport.

Cities and the Green Economy

This chapter is a condensed version of the Cities Chapter of UNEP’s seminal publication ‘Towards a Green Economy: Pathways to Sustainable Development and Poverty Eradication’. It analyses the particular role that cities play in the context of a transition to a Green Economy. Cities account for a substantial proportion of global greenhouse gas emissions, mostly due to the intense concentration of people, economic activity and transport in urban centers. But just as cities are the source of many environmental problems, they offer many of the solutions. Firstly, this chapter assesses the particular potential of cities for a transition to a Green Economy. Secondly, it argues the case for greening cities, in terms of the economic, social and environmental benefits that a Green Economy can bring to cities and their inhabitants. It then analyses various urban sectors and how these should be greened in order to create a green city and a greener urban economy. Keys to achieving this are the required enabling conditions which are imperative in order to overcome institutional and financial barriers. Setting the required enabling strategies and a regulatory framework is the foremost challenge for national, regional and local governments in terms of greener cities.

Strategic Planning for London: Integrating City Design and Urban Transportation

Over the last decade, London has reformed strategic planning more than any other mature western city of similar size. In 2000, the U.K. government created the Greater London Authority (GLA), including a directly elected mayor, ending a 15-year period without any citywide government. As a consequence, urban planning and transport have been upgraded by a strategic citywide plan, the London Plan, and a multi-modal transport agency, Transport for London. Both offer an interesting example of how a city that had abandoned citywide planning is rediscovering strategic planning as an important tool for sustainable urban development. The city’s congestion charge is as much part of this strategy as are more progressive approaches to implement higher residential density levels. This essay examines London’s current urban development strategies, which aim to achieve greater integration of urban planning, design, and transportation and offers reflections on the successes and problems that have emerged since implementing this important reform.

New urban governance: A review of current themes and future priorities

ABSTRACT This review article explores some of the key concepts, trends, and approaches in contemporary urban governance research. Based on a horizon scan of recent literature and a survey of local government officials, it provides a big picture on the topic and identifies areas for future research. Bridging the gap between the scholarly research focus and the perceptions and requirements of city administrators represents a major challenge for the field. Furthermore, because global and comparative research on urban governance is confronted with an absence of systematically collected, comparable data, the article argues that future efforts will require experimenting with methodologies that can generate new empirical insights.

Governing urban accessibility: moving beyond transport and mobility

Abstract Access to people, goods, ideas and services is the basis of economic development in cities. The better this access, the greater the economic benefits through economies of scale, agglomeration effects and networking advantages. The way in which cities facilitate accessibility also impacts directly on other key aspects of human development, social inclusion and well-being. Accessibility is created through a complex interplay of urban form and transport systems. Thus, governing urban accessibility requires moving beyond conventional urban transport considerations linked to mobility and movement. Such a re-framing implies a far greater recognition of urban form characteristics like land use, distribution of densities and urban design, in addition to transport characteristics like infrastructures, service levels and travel speeds. A new interface between these characteristics has emerged as a result of shared mobility systems, putting additional pressure on city governments to act as system integrators. Based on a literature review, empirical insights from a global survey and the case-study cities of London, NYC and Berlin, this paper explores the institutional capacities of shifting from governing urban transport to urban accessibility. The evidence shows that there are entrenched misalignments which may impact negatively on the capacity to pair planning and policies essential for delivering better accessibility. Furthermore, it is clear that “hierarchies” and “networks” are not mutually exclusive when it comes to integrated governance of accessibility. The findings also suggest that cities may be better equipped to integrate shared mobility and consider mobility as a service than to pursue more wide-ranging metropolitan accessibility policies.