Cities for a Small Planet by Richard Rogers, Faber & Faber, 拢9.99,
ISBN 0571179932
SUSTAINABLE cities are compact cities, according to Richard Rogers, the
British architect best known for building the Pompidou Centre in Paris. In
Cities for a Small Planet, an expanded version of his 1995 Reith lectures,
Rogers argues that compact cities solve the problem of how to design a city with
both a thriving community and personal mobility. Rogers pinpoints the car as the
enemy of the compact city. 鈥淭he car . . . has played the critical role in
undermining the cohesive social structure of the city.鈥� Cars, he says, 鈥渉ave
eroded the quality of public spaces and encouraged suburban sprawl鈥�.
His analysis is spot on. The antithesis of the compact city is sprawl. For
example, in Arizona, Phoenix occupies an area larger than Los Angeles yet has
only a third of LA鈥檚 population.
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His theoretical solution is also spot on. In the compact city, building
development is concentrated around centres of public transport such as railway
stations. This reduces the need for people to drive. It not only cuts traffic
and curbs greenhouse gas emissions and pollution, but also increases the number
of people travelling on foot, making public spaces more secure and more
convivial.
The distinction is between a city based on driving and one based on people.
Compact cities can save energy in many ways. As Rogers points out, it is only
really practical to develop district heating schemes if the city is a relatively
densely developed.
Rogers makes a cogent argument for developing more compact cities. However,
the thesis begins to falter when Rogers comes to his case study鈥擫ondon.
Rogers鈥檚 firm came up with the idea of a Millennium Dome at Greenwich, which is
now under construction. He says that the lottery-financed development will
transform the capital. It certainly will. With some 12 million people expected
to visit it, the dome will be the capital鈥檚 biggest car park. Is that
sustainable development?
The main weakness of this book is that the practical examples, drawn from
Rogers鈥檚 architectural work, are peripheral to the intellectual argument.