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Compact Cities Are Complex, Intense and Diverse but: Can We Design Such
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 Urban Planning (ISSN: 2183-7635)
2016, Volume 1, Issue 1, Pages 95-113
Doi: 10.17645/up.v1i1.535

Article
Compact Cities Are Complex, Intense and Diverse but: Can We Design
Such Emergent Urban Properties?
Hye Kyung Lim * and Jaan-Henrik Kain
Department of Architecture, Chalmers University of Technology, 41296 Gothenburg, Sweden;
E-Mails: [email protected] (H.K.L.), [email protected] (J.-H.K.)
* Corresponding author

Submitted: 16 December 2015 | Accepted: 8 March 2016 | Published: 30 March 2016

Abstract
Compact cities are promoted by global and local policies in response to environmental, economic and social challenges.
It is argued that increased density and diversity of urban functions and demographics are expected to deliver positive
outcomes. ‘Emerged’ urban area which have developed incrementally seem to exhibit such dense and diverse charac-
teristics, acquired through adaptation by multiple actors over time and space. Today, ‘design-based’ planning ap-
proaches aim to create the same characteristics here and now. An example of such is the City of Gothenburg, Sweden,
which strives to involve multiple actors to ‘design’ urban density and mixed use, but with unsatisfactory outcomes.
There is reason to investigate in what way current planning approaches need modification to better translate policy
goals into reality. This paper studied which type of planning approach appears to best deliver the desired urban charac-
teristics. Two cities are studied, Gothenburg and Tokyo. Today, these cities operate under different main planning par-
adigms. Tokyo applies a rule-based approach and Gothenburg a design-based approach. Five urban areas were studied
in each city, representing outcomes of three strategic planning approaches that have been applied historically in both
cities: 1) emergent compact urban form; 2) designed dispersed urban form; and 3) designed compact urban form. Plan-
ning outcomes in the form of density, building scales and diversity were analysed to understand if such properties of
density and diversity are best achieved by a specific planning approach. The results show that different planning ap-
proaches deliver very different outcomes when it comes to these qualities. To better support ambitions for compact cit-
ies in Gothenburg, the prevailing mix of ‘planning by design’ and ‘planning by developmental control’ needs to be com-
plemented by a third planning strategy of ‘planning by coding’ or ‘rule-based planning’. This is critical to capacitate
urban planning to accommodate parameters, such as timing, density, building scale diversity, and decentralization of
planning and design activities to multiple actors.

Keywords
compact city; density; diversity; emergent urban form; rule-based planning; urban adaptability; urban resilience

Issue
This article is part of the issue “Urban Forms and Future Cities”, edited by Luca D’Acci (Erasmus University Rotterdam, The
Netherlands), Tigran Haas (KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden) and Ronita Bardhan (Indian Institute of Technology
Bombay, India).

© 2016 by the authors; licensee Cogitatio (Lisbon, Portugal). This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribu-
tion 4.0 International License (CC BY).

1. Introduction challenges such as climate change, environmental is-

sues, economic development, social cohesion and at-
1.1. Compact City Policies tractivity. A number of recent UN-Habitat reports and
policy papers argue that compact city structures have
Global and European policies on urban development positive effects on citizen health, economy, resource
promote the ‘compact city’ concept as a response to efficiency, social cohesion and cultural dynamics (UN

Urban Planning, 2016, Volume 1, Issue 1, Pages 95-113 95

Habitat, 2011, 2014a1, 2014c, 2015) and that low popu- the bigger income gaps, increased ecological footprint
lation density is the most environmentally harmful ur- due to higher consumption (Heinonen & Junnila, 2011),
ban form in both mono-centric and polycentric urban decreased living space for low income groups and acces-
structures (UN Habitat, 2014b). sibility issues to green space and nature areas (Burton,
This line of argument is picked up by European Un- 2001). Still, negative social problems related to density
ion policy documents, arguing that a compact and di- may be due to the characteristics of the urban areas
verse city structure has positive effects on citizen where poverty is concentrated, rather than to the urban
health, economy and efficient use of resources (Com- form itself (Bramley & Power, 2009). Increased con-
mission of the European Communities, 2011), and that sumption rates and larger income gaps might be linked
cultural, social and political dynamics are promoted by to the incidents of accumulation of wealthy population
density, proximity and diverse choices available within as well as low income population in dense urban areas,
compact cities (Commission of the European Commu- not to the urban form itself (Glaeser, 2011). Since
nities, 1990). The OECD, claims that compact city poli- crowding is a problem of perception of urban space, this
cies will result in lowered CO2 emissions and reduced may also be attributed to a design problem and not in-
energy consumption in transportation, not only on the trinsically linked to urban compactness (Kearney, 2006).
metropolitan scale but also on the neighbourhood The correlation between urban problems and urban
scale, but also in conservation of farmlands and biodi- form is thus unclear. There is a risk that generic prob-
versity, and in reduction of infrastructure cost and in- lems of urbanization are criticized as being problems of
crease of labour productivity (OECD, 2012). compact cities. As Edward Glaeser puts it: ‘Cities do not
In Sweden, the City of Gothenburg’s visions and poli- make people poor; they attract poor people. The flow
cies are developed along these lines, promoting dense of less advantaged people into cities from Rio to Rot-
and mixed use urban patterns to reduce socioeconomic terdam demonstrates urban strength, not weakness’
segregation and increase liveability, e.g. in the Rivercity (Glaeser, 2011, p. 9).
Gothenburg Vision (Gothenburg City Council, 2012) and One explanation of the contradictory findings is the
the Development Strategy Gothenburg 2035 (Planning persistent lack of clear definitions for what a compact
and Building Committee of Gothenburg, 2014). city actually is (Neuman, 2005). The classifications listed
in the UN-Habitat’s and other policy papers are general,
1.2. The Compact City Paradox and do not provide concrete guidelines for global im-
plementation. Even if several attempts have been made
As we can see, urban development policies at all levels to establish ‘compact city’ or ‘sprawl’ indexes, the het-
favour dense and diverse urban patterns. Such policies erogeneity of the concepts of density (Churchman, 1999;
are supported by the proponents of the agglomeration Manaugh & Kreider, 2013), and diversity (Manaugh &
effects (e.g. Glaeser, 2011) rendered by the proximity Kreider, 2013), and prevalence of different indexes (Lee,
of diverse urban components, leading to mixed land Kurisu, An, & Hanaki, 2015) is problematic for the practi-
use, diversity of demographics and diversity of scales. It cal implementation of policy. Another explanation is that
is claimed that such qualities provide better economic the positive properties of compact cities are found in re-
output (Quigley, 1998) and higher invention rates by search on urban economics (Bettencourt, 2013; Glaeser,
providing fertile ground for knowledge spillover (Car- 2011) while research showing negative effects focus on
lino, Chatterjee, & Hunt, 2007; Glaeser, 2011), reduced psychological impacts (Haigh et al., 2011), lowered satis-
energy use through employment density (Mindali, faction (Bramley & Power, 2009), and higher consump-
Raveh, & Salomon, 2004), and alleviate social segrega- tion rates (Heinonen & Junnila, 2011).
tion (Burton, 2001). It is also argued that dense and di- Due to such inconsistencies in research, there is a
verse urban patterns are more resilient forms of urban risk that the notion ‘compact city’, ends up as a
structure, providing a redundancy of functions (Betten- ‘boundary object’ similar to concepts such as ‘resili-
court & West, 2010), networkability and response- ence’ (Wilkinson, 2011) and ‘sustainable development’
diversity to disturbances (Bristow, 2010; Glaeser, 2011; (Muraca & Voget-Kleschin, 2011), vague enough to jus-
Offenhuber & Ratti, 2014). tify any type of urban development (Leffers, 2015).
However, compact city policies are also contested in However, seeing the notion of the ‘compact city’ as a
research. It is argued that neighbourhood density might boundary object also shifts the focus towards urban
impact negatively on neighbourhood satisfaction (Bram- transformation as a process (Brand & Jax, 2007). Leav-
ley & Power, 2009), sense of attachment and sense of ing the critique offered by Neuman regarding the bene-
quality of public utilities (Dempsey, Brown, & Bramley, fits of more compact cities aside for the moment, his
2012), and psychological health due to overcrowding argument that ‘form is both the structure that shapes
(Haigh, Ng Chok, & Harris, 2011). Furthermore, critics of process and the structure that emerges from a process’
‘Compact city’ argue against the concept, highlighting (Neuman, 2005, p. 22) merits further consideration. If
form ‘is an outcome of evolution’ (Neuman, 2005, p.
1 23), then the arrangement of how to undertake plan-
Urban planning discussion note3.

Urban Planning, 2016, Volume 1, Issue 1, Pages 95-113 96

ning in ways that support and guide such an evolution- term (Chelleri & Olazabal, 2012). In the urban context,
ary process becomes a key issue. Assuming that dense evolutionary resilience appears appropriate (Davoudi
and diverse urban patterns may be beneficial, we need et al., 2012), denoting the ability of a system, not only
to understand more regarding what types of planning to bounce back from events causing a shock through
approaches can best promote such properties. There is robust behaviour, but also to adapt and learn from the
a need to focus planning evaluation on the implementa- past behaviours to surpass the previous state by ex-
tion of plans, not least in the context of the growing in- tending its capacity (Gunderson & Holling, 2002). Such
terest in urban form as the spatial concretization of ur- an evolutionary and adaptive view of resilience empha-
ban sustainability (Oliveira & Pinho, 2010). This paper sizes characteristics of discontinuous change, chaos
therefore aims to contribute to such evaluation efforts and order, self-organization, and nonlinear system be-
by responding to the question: What are the differences haviour (Gunderson & Holling, 2002).
in outcome of different planning approaches in relation Self-organising in conjunction with nonlinear sys-
to urban characteristics, such as density and diversity? tem behaviour, might increase an urban system’s ca-
Note that this study will only deliver a partial an- pacity for adapting and learning through complex in-
swer to this question, due to the limitation of the con- teractions of the rational behaviour of individual
ducted study. The following section introduces the un- ‘micro’ agents to adapt to changes, collectively render-
derstanding of cities as complex systems which will be ing a ‘macro’ adaptive urban emergence that is unin-
used as the theoretical underpinning for the study. tentional (Manesh & Tadi, 2011; Rowley, 1994).
Thereafter, the methods used to gather and analyse Such emerging complexity is seen as beneficial com-
data are described and the two case cities are intro- pared to simplification, as it increases (Marshall, 2012):
duced. The next section presents the results from the
study. Finally, the results are discussed and some con- 1) Perceptual richness, where humans fare better
clusions are presented. psychologically in complex environment;
2) Functional capacity through properties such as
2. Cities as Emerging Complex Systems hierarchy, flexibility, redundancy and
specialization of different parts;
The challenges facing cities are increasingly more com- 3) Synergy, where the entirety is greater than the
plex due to the dispersion of power, the divergence of sum of the parts.
agents, increasing information flows and channels, and
the prevailing processes of globalisation (Homer-Dixon, When compared to the guidelines found in global poli-
2011). This complex urban condition is continuously ex- cy on urban development, the evolutionary resilience
acerbated by the unpredictability of internal and exter- approach to urban planning seems to deliver the out-
nal factors, such as climate change, sudden demographic lined characteristics of compact cities. This is achieved
changes and financial crisis (Davoudi et al., 2012). through system properties, such as multi-functionality,
Resilience studies pay particular attention to the redundancy and modularization, biodiversity and social
problematic of unpredictability, although with a variety diversity, multi-scale networks and connectivity, and
of interpretation of the meaning and application of the adaptable planning (see Figure 1).

Figure 1. Policy characteristics of compact cities with properties delivered by a resilience approach to urban planning.
Based on Ahern (2011), OECD (2012), and UN-Habitat (2014a).

Urban Planning, 2016, Volume 1, Issue 1, Pages 95-113 97

Resilient urban properties that relate to increased di- 2) Planning by coding: Use of generative codes to
versity, networks and increased number of agents define generic components or relationships of
through density and proximity are often seen in emer- building blocks. Non site specific. Their use can
gent urban areas that have developed incrementally be generative with specification to how
through time, such as European medieval cities (Mar- elements can be combined to generate an
shall, 2012; Scheurer, 2007), certain districts of Asian aggregate urban form;
mega-cities and various informal settlements, for ex- 3) Planning by development control: Enabling
ample Dharavi in Mumbai (Echanove, 2013). public authorities’ influences on what is allowed
Emergent systems are defined as systems with a to be built or not by approving or rejecting
simpler higher order behaviour, that arises from under- specific designs or layouts proposed by private
lying complex interactions; similar to cells emerging individuals or master planners.
from interactions of atoms, society emerges from in-
teractions of people (Page, 2011). Such micro-agent in- Marshall describes the role of the ‘code’ in ‘planning by
teractions and adaptations at the individual networking coding’, as a generative code that ‘provides a frame-
level continually create new emergence and increase work within which individual designers can work’ (Mar-
the robustness of the whole system (Alexander, 1965; shall, 2011, p. 230). Here, the use of codes for recording
Bettencourt, 2013). Also, an urban fabric created by landownership in European traditional urbanism have
multiple actor layers, incrementally developed with a been noted ‘as of the earliest and most constant form of
diversity of building types, scales and functions, is of- written urban memory-structure’ (Shane, 2005, p. 25).
ten seen as having the attributes of a more intense and In summary, four main outcomes of planning can be
livelier street lives (Eom & Cho, 2015; Jacobs, 1961; distinguished that are helpful for analysing how differ-
Merlino, 2011). ent planning types relate to the processes of develop-
In contrast, modernist planning has focused on ide- ing dense and diverse urban patterns (see Table 1).
alized plans developed top-down to deliver perfection
at the moment of creation, based on control systems Table 1. Four outcomes of two main planning types.
correcting ‘problems of yesterday’ with a ‘conventional Adapted after Marshall (2012).
toolkit’ (Taylor, 2003, p. 157; cited in Davoudi et al., Approach Planning by Planning by
2012; Batty & Marshall, 2012). This planning approach Form coding design
has been criticized for creating simplified and rational- A. C.
ized urban forms out of diverse agendas, including re- Low density and Functional Functional
duced density and separation of urban functions (Alex- diversity simplicity separation
ander, 1965; Marshall, 2012). Alexander (1965) argued Continuous Ready-made
that ‘planning’ cannot reproduce the complex charac- adaptation neighbourhoods
teristics of urban forms and interactions that have de- B. D.
veloped incrementally and interactively. Still, attempts High density and Functional Simulated
have been made to emulate compact city characteris- diversity complexity complexity
tics in post-modern contexts, i.e. diversity of functions Continuous No adaptive
and density. Typically, this has been attempted by try- adaptation capacity
ing to shape emergent characteristics or forms through
site specific designs (Marshall, 2012; Neuman, 2005). A. Emergent dispersed urban form: Planning by
However, Marshall (2012) points to the difficulty of coding with no compact city ambitions leads to
planning the kind of urban complexities which are seen sprawling patterns and uniform uses. Although
in traditional emergent urban forms, through interven- continuous adaptation takes place, low diversity
tion and organization. Large open systems, are impos- decreases the capacity to quickly evolve into
sible to plan without having a complete knowledge of new emerged states.
the consequences of such interventions, which evi-
dently is impossible (Marshall, 2012). Marshall and Bat- B. Emergent compact urban form: Planning by
ty (2012), instead, argue that the challenge is to devise coding aimed at high density and diversity
the sort of plan or design which creates the desired facilitates incremental and individual micro
functional complexity. Here, Marshall (2012) identifies interactions through time and space by multiple
three planning types that, when combined into a sys- actors. Since emergence is continuous and
tem of planning types, can promote urban complexity: diversity is high, such urban systems have the
possibilities to change and adapt to create new
1) Planning by design: Master planning, urban emerged states.
design, or outlines of design, with a
preconceived conception of the finished state of C. Designed dispersed urban form: Planning by
a specific whole entity; design, where rationalization and simplification

Urban Planning, 2016, Volume 1, Issue 1, Pages 95-113 98

 create compartmentalized urban patterns. or realized through, the compact city. However, build-
Typical for modernistic and top-down planned ing footprints represent the building coverage ratio of
urban systems, these plans are often executed a site and can indicate both street level density and
through large-scale site interventions with long- diversity in the form of urban grain sizes and rhythm,
term projections into the future. diversity of building types, and diversity of urban par-
cel distribution. As an example, the size of individual
D. Designed compact urban form: Planning by plots of land play a role for promoting subsidiarity in
design—often in combination with planning by decision making to better satisfy local needs (Hoff-
development control—are often applied in mann-Axthelm, 1993, 1996, cited in Scheurer, 2007).
new initiatives to emulate emergent compact Nevertheless, a remaining limitation is that building
city characteristics. They are initiated top- footprints never can include building volume and re-
down and focuses on functional diversity, lated intensity of land use, a weakness common to
density as well as on diversity of property any analysis solely based on land use.
ownerships. As designed urban systems, they The assessment was applied to three different kinds
often include large site areas and of planning outcomes (urban fabrics) resulting from
incrementality is negligible. two types of planning approaches as seen in Table 1
above. These were ‘emergent compact urban form’
Of these four planning outcomes, C and D are the most achieved through planning by coding, ‘designed dis-
relevant for analysing initiatives to produce more com- persed urban form’ achieved through planning by de-
pact cities, while outcome B is relevant to include in sign, and ‘designed compact urban form’ achieved
any analysis due to the persisting legacy into current through planning by design in combination with plan-
days of the modernistic approach to urban planning ning by development control. Both ‘emergent compact
and development. urban form’ and ‘designed compact urban form’ are
expected to deliver some degree of density and diversi-
3. Method ty while ‘designed dispersed urban form’ is seen as a
control indicator for comparison purposes.
According to UN-Habitat (2015), density is measured As case material, we selected urban fabrics corre-
in terms of the density of built areas and population, sponding to the abovementioned planning outcomes in
and of the concentration of urban functions. When it one city, where the socio-cultural and historical context
comes to diversity, both mixed land use and social is similar. The result is then compared to similar urban
makeup are included. Mixed land use is defined as a fabrics in another city with other contextual relation-
variety of compatible land uses and functions and ships. The expectation was that identifying similarities
provision of a cross-section of residential, commercial and disparities within a city and between both cities
and community infrastructure in neighbourhoods. So- would give insights into how density and diversity in
cial mix is defined as the presence of residents from more absolute terms are influenced by what planning
different backgrounds and income levels in the same approach has been applied. The study thus analysed
neighborhood, and suggested to be achieved by the three housing areas in Gothenburg and Tokyo, respec-
availability of different housing options in terms of tively, chosen to represent:
price ranges, tenure type and building types, and the
availability of diversity of jobs in the proximity (UN 1) Emergent compact urban form (Type 1): An
Habitat, 2015). inner city urban fabric evolved through time by
However, as urban planning takes place in open multiple actors’ interactions;
systems with many purposeful parts (i.e., people and 2) Designed dispersed urban form (Type 2): A
organizations pursuing their interests), it is difficult to modernist urban fabric from 1960-1970’s where
link planning activities to outcomes in the urban reali- the ideology was clearly to separate and create
ty (Laurian et al., 2010). Therefore, this study has cho- separation between the functions and to give
sen two highly institutionalized planning systems—in uniform characteristics and standards;
Sweden and Japan—to increase the likelihood that 3) Designed compact urban form (Type 3): An inner
planning has in fact affected the urban reality. Three city urban fabric where density and diversity has
indicators for compact city urban form were used for been designed by a number of developers
the assessment of dense and diverse built environ- simultaneously.
ments: the density of built objects, the scales of built
objects and the distribution of the diversity of the The two cities are evidently incomparable both in scale
built objects. Data on these indicators was developed and in sociocultural, political and historical contexts.
through analysis of building footprints. Analysis of However, in this study, the comparison was undertaken
building footprints is evidently insufficient for repre- regarding relative proportions of density and diversity
senting the wide spectrum of qualities to be found in, across the urban areas.

Urban Planning, 2016, Volume 1, Issue 1, Pages 95-113 99

3.1. Gothenburg and Tokyo 3.2. Study Areas

The city of Gothenburg has 544,261 in population and The ten study areas in Gothenburg and Tokyo (see Fig-
1,209 persons/km2 in population density (Gothenburg ure 2) were chosen according to the applied planning
City Council, 2015). approaches these include:
In Gothenburg, as in many other European cities,
much of the development has been planned top-down Type 1: Emergent compact urban form, evolved
by planners and architects through large-scale devel- incrementally by multiple actors through time and
opments. However, the small city core developed be- space
fore the 19th century has been left largely untouched.
The period from 1961-1980 has produced 42% of the A) Gothenburg Central area: Two areas developed
building stock constructed from 1931 until 2014 (Statis- from the 17th century representing one of the
tics Sweden, 2015). The city districts created during the oldest neighbourhoods in the city.
Million Program period are identified as problem areas 1) Inom Vallgraven: Until 1864, when the city
ridden with segregation issues (Lilja & Pemer, 2010). extended southwards, this area was the core of
Today, the City of Gothenburg is direly needs to in- Gothenburg and still is a very central area of the
crease its level of housing and to reduce socio-spatial city (Stadshem, 2015b), with a population of
segregation. The lack of housing and a constant in- 3,917 (Gothenburg City Council, 2014).
crease of the population leads to a waiting period, 2) Järntorget/Haga: Previously developed with
counting from start of the search to a rental contract, small wooden houses where port workers
reaching almost 4 years (Boplats, 2014). The persistent resided. Larger buildings were built densely in
socio-economic spatial segregation coupled with a divi- the area from around the 1840’s when industry
sion into ‘immigrant’ and ‘native Swedish’ populations began attracting larger numbers of workers
is also highly problematic (Lilja & Pemer, 2010). Inte- (Stadshem, 2015a). The population is 5,718
gration proceeds slowly and the quality of urban life is (Gothenburg City Council, 2014).
very much inferior to that in the Million Program areas
where the immigrating population consists of up to 80% B) Tokyo Central areas: Two mixed
of the total population (Gothenburg City Council, 2013). neighbourhoods with diverse functions located
As a response to these problematic issues, Gothen- in the central districts of Tokyo, selected to
burg is currently adopting a strategy based on involve- represent typical urban patterns found in the
ment of multiple actors, e.g. by employing a diversity central areas of the Tokyo metropolis. Both
of firms to ‘design’ new urban areas with mixed tenan- areas have been developed since the Edo period
cy types and functions (Gothenburg City Council, 2011, of the 1600’s.
2012, 2014). Although this strategy needs to be as- 1) Nishiazabu: Located in Minato ward, in central
sessed further after a longer time period, it has so far Tokyo, with a population of 10,523 (Minato City,
been criticized for failure to produce the desired com- 2012).
pact dense and mixed urban areas, especially with con- 2) Ebisu: Situated in Shibuya ward, also located in
troversial issues concerning gentrification (Thörn, 2013). central Tokyo, with population of 13,019
Tokyo houses more than 13 million people (Tokyo (Shibuya City, 2010).
Metropolitan Government, 2012). Its 23 central special
wards have a population of 9.2 million and a density of Type 2: Designed dispersed urban form, reductionist
14,818 persons/km2.. and top-down
Most of the urban areas of Tokyo has emerged
through continuous incremental adaptation over time. C) Gothenburg Million Program Area. The ‘Million
The post WWII land reform, saw 19,180 km2 of land Program’ refers to a Swedish public housing
force-purchased from 2,341,000 landlords and sold to program operated between 1965–1974 to
4,748,000 tenants significantly reducing the individual deliver one million housing units
size of holdings. This led to piecemeal development (Nationalencyklopedin, 2015).
with rather un-organized individual development initia- 1) Hjällbo: Among the 7,273 residents, around 60%
tives and composite mix of building types (Kawagoe, are born outside of Sweden. 15% are foreign
1999). The city is seemingly chaotic with a rather form- citizens and 45% have Swedish citizenship.
less urban structure due to it piecemeal developments Statistics show a persistently higher percentage
on narrow streets, but it still keeps its traditional urban of population on social security benefits in the
patterns quite intact. According to a study on residen- district, on average 8–10% from 2000–2007,
tial class segregation, Tokyo demonstrates low class compared to a 1–2% average in Gothenburg
segregations based on occupation distribution, providing during that period (TILLIT, 2012).
a juxtaposition of demographics (Fujita & Hill, 2012).

Urban Planning, 2016, Volume 1, Issue 1, Pages 95-113 100

 D) Tokyo New Town areas, referring to satellite North of the Göta river represent ongoing urban
districts developed around major cities by the intensification projects developed by the
Japan Housing Corporation to provide modern municipal agency, Älvstranden Development
affordable apartments to the masses of workers Ltd.
migrating to the cities during the 1960’s. The 1) Kvillebäcken: 2,000 new apartments and
features of the New Towns were attempts to offices/commercial functions are recently
emulate Western and modern ideal living with finalized, where seven firms were hired to
greenery and parks (Yokohari, Amemiya, & design designated sites with a mix of tenancy
Amati, 2006). Both New Towns in this study face types and functions in incremental development
challenges due to decreasing populations stages.
(Ducom, 2008; The Japan Times, 2013). 2) Eriksberg: 2,200 housing in different forms and
1) Chiba New Town: This suburb was developed tenure types are to be built on a disused
from 1969 and onwards and contains a shipyard from 2006 to 2019. A consortium of six
population of approx. 143,300 people (Chiba construction firms and the municipal agency is
Prefecture Government, 2013). involved in the planning and development of
2) Tama New Town: This development took place this area.
from the mid 60’s until the mid 80’s (Ducom,
2008). According to the sensus in 2010, Tama F) Tokyo Central area:
New Town hosts 216,400 people (Bureau of 1) Roppongi Hills: Tokyo metropolis’ response to a
urban development Tokyo Metropolitan compact city within the central special wards.
government, 2010). This urban intensification project was
constructed by Mori building corporation and
Type 3: Designed compact urban form, diversity- was completed in 2003. The complex with total
oriented to emulate emergent characteristics floor area of 724,000 m2 contains offices,
commercial activities, residential units and
E) Gothenburg Waterfront: Two areas on the cultural activities.

Figure 2. The ten study areas in Gothenburg and Tokyo.

Urban Planning, 2016, Volume 1, Issue 1, Pages 95-113 101

3.3. Analytical Tools red(R), green(G) and blue(B) in the RGB scale reduced
to 0%. Through this measure, the density of BCR could
Each chosen study area was overlaid with a grid of 25 be derived as 100-RGB %=x% where ‘RGB’ is the re-
cells measuring 100 by 100 meters, thus covering maining space excluding the building footprints.
10,000 m² each. The cells were numbered from 1 to 25
starting shown in image 4 in Figure 3. Each cell was an- 3.3.2. The Scale and Distribution and Diversity of
alysed individually. Applying the analysis on cells pro- Building Footprints: Phase 1
vided results based on a continuous urban fabric, i.e. not
based on project sites. The reason for implementing this The assessment of scale was done by measuring the
approach was to gain understanding of the areas as con- size of the footprint of each building. To do this, the
tinuous space, including transitional points between dif- vector polygons representing the building footprints of
ferent quarters, blocks or projected sites, encompassing the study areas were imported to the Adobe Illustrator
urban patterns from various time periods. software and consequently, a vector analysis script,
The subsequent analysis of density and mixed use ‘SelectPathBySize.jsx’ was executed for the analysis
was based on three indicators: the density of built ob- scales of built objects.
jects; the scale of building footprints; and the distribu- 1. The script analysed areas smaller (or in ‘f’ below
tion and diversity of building footprints. identical or bigger) than a certain surface area. The pa-
rameters of the building footprint areas used for the
3.3.1. The Density of Built Objects calculation were:

The building footprints were used as indicator for den- a. smaller than 300 m²
sity. The study of the built environment was achieved b. smaller than 750 m²
through analysis of open source maps retrieved from c. smaller than 1,500 m²
openstreetmap.org. The assessment of density was d. smaller than 2,250 m²
performed by analysing the raster image pixel count- e. smaller than 3,000 m²
ing. The vector shapes, which identify the borders of f. bigger than 3,000 m²
buildings, were separated from the rest of the infor-
mation, such as roads, paths and site boundaries (see Each identified built object for a scale was removed
image 3 in Figure 3). This gave a gross density including and color-coded (see Figure 4), leaving only those larg-
public and private streets as well as unbuilt surfaces. er than the values already analysed to be assessed fur-
Then the colour scale of the vector polygons represent- ther. The built objects larger than 3,000 m² were
ing building footprint was reduced to black, i.e. with grouped together without further subdivision.

Figure 3. Process of analysis of building footprints in site areas with grids.

Figure 4. Analysis process of scale proportions: Phase 1.

Urban Planning, 2016, Volume 1, Issue 1, Pages 95-113 102

3.3.3. The Scale and Distribution/Diversity of Building ly, 29%, while both areas in type 2 showed the lowest
Footprints: Phase 2 density of 15%.
The median values of density of the two cities
Subsequently, each cell with the categorically color- showed that both the highest and the lowest density
coded vector polygons were imported to the Adobe clusters were found in Gothenburg (in the 50%–60%
Photoshop software as separate layers and analysed and 0%–10% spectra), while the distribution was more
with a histogram function to calculate the number of evenly clustered in Tokyo (between 10%–40%) (see Fig-
pixels of the combined area of a given scale object ure 7 and Figure 8). It was also notable that the number
within a cell. The proportion of each building scale was of unbuilt neighbourhood areas represented by the cell
then derived in relation to the total number of pixels in on the 0% axis were much higher in Gothenburg.
each cell (see Figure 5). Figure 9 illustrates the first phase of analysing the
scale and distribution/diversity of building footprints.
4. Results Through colour coding it facilitates the visualisation of
the variation of building types and the street patterns.
Displayed below (Figure 6), are the results of the analy- The second phase of analysing scale and distribu-
sis of density, scale and distribution/diversity of build- tion/diversity of building footprints is illustrated in Fig-
ing footprints. ure 10, showing the differences between Gothenburg
Figure 6 illustrates the analysis of the density of and Tokyo in terms of scale distribution of the building
built objects. It shows the building coverage ratio in the footprints. Smaller scale buildings were much more
ten areas in Gothenburg and Tokyo. It showed that in frequent in Tokyo for all urban types. Building foot-
Gothenburg the highest density of 37% and 31% in type prints of under 750 m² consisted of 32% and 24% of all
1 and the lowest, 12% in type 2 and low density, 19% buildings in Tokyo, while in Gothenburg the percent-
and 14% in type 3. In Tokyo, the study areas in type 1 ages for those scales were 4% and 22%, respectively.
and 3 showed similar density, 29%, 26% and respective-

Figure 5. Analysis process of scale proportions—Phase 2.

Figure 6. Graph over building footprint densities in the ten study areas. The horizontal axis shows the density as a per-
centage of the total area.

Urban Planning, 2016, Volume 1, Issue 1, Pages 95-113 103

Figure 7. Graphs showing the distribution of the density of each cell in the study areas.

Figure 8. Four graphs showing the distribution of density trends in both cities. The images to the left show the median
level density while the images to the right show the general pattern of density distribution between the cells.

Figure 9. Building footprints in the ten study areas color-coded according to their scale; first phase of analysis.

Urban Planning, 2016, Volume 1, Issue 1, Pages 95-113 104

Figure 10. Diagrams showing the scale distributions of building footprints as well as the total proportions including un-
built surfaces for each cell in the ten study areas; from the second phase of analysis.

However, looking at the proportions between the types configuration of Gothenburg’s Type 3 areas exhibited
within the same cities, we observed a gradual decrease resemblance to the reductionist oriented Type 2 areas
of smaller scale buildings from Type 1, and to Type 3, of both cities, rather than the intended compact city
and then to Type 2. Also, more vacant lots are observed type seen in Gothenburg Type 1 areas (see Figure 9).
in Type 2 in both cities. However, when looking at the distribution/diversity of
the building footprints only, the results told a some-
5. Discussion what different story (see Figure 12). A comparison of
the scales of building objects within each city showed
The graph displaying the density analysis of the study an increasing scale from Type 1 to Type 2 and then to
sites showed generally higher density in Type 1 areas in Type 3. Also, the relative number of buildings found in
both cities. Gothenburg showed even higher density in the respective study areas was highest in Type 1 areas
those areas than Tokyo. The designed compact city ar- and lowest in Type 2 areas in both cities, while Type 3
eas of Type 3 in Gothenburg showed a much lower areas remained in-between. However, assuming that
density, which was rather similar to that of the mod- the whole of a Type 3 area would be developed in the
ernist designed Type 2 areas of Tokyo. The study of the same manner as the individual intensification projects,
median levels of density showed a much more even Gothenburg’s Type 3 actually began to resemble Type
distribution of density in overall Tokyo, with a more 1, while in Tokyo, this adjusted value of Type 3 resem-
consistently clustered density distribution throughout bled that of Type 2 areas (see Figure 12). The density
(see Figure 8). In Gothenburg, the highs and lows of the and mixed-use oriented design approach in Tokyo
density were greater, with urban areas varying signifi- (Type 3) had thus resulted in a lower quantity of build-
cantly from larger unbuilt sites to extremely dense ings in a dense composition, emulating the density of
sites. Type 1 Gothenburg areas showed much higher Type 1 but the building scale and distribution of Type 2.
density than that of any other Type in both cities. Also In Gothenburg, it was unclear if the densities or build-
here, extreme highs and lows were observed, com- ing scales exhibited any characteristics similar to the
pared to the more contained distribution of the Tokyo emerged urban form of Type 1. The slight increase of
sites (see Figure 11). density was rather insignificant. However, the increase
When looking at the scale and distribution/diversity of the number of buildings found in the two Type 3 ar-
of building footprints across the study areas, including eas, almost to the level found in Type 1 areas, seemed
streets and unbuilt surfaces, the building shapes and to indicate some of the characteristics found in Type 1.

Urban Planning, 2016, Volume 1, Issue 1, Pages 95-113 105

Figure 11. Graph showing the density of each cell in all four Type 1 areas. Highs and lows in Gothenburg are shaded grey.

Figure 12. Comparisons of scale distributions of the building footprints in the two cities. Numbers of buildings found in
each study area is shown. As a comparison, for Type 3 the figure also shows the projected number of buildings as if the
whole study area would have contained the same number of buildings as the intensification development sites. The
percentage of building footprint density is provided for reference.

Furthermore, it might be speculated that wider roads It is not surprising that the results showed reduced
and existence of larger public areas are contributing density and less diversity in areas designed with the
factors to the variation of density in Gothenburg seen reductionist approach (Type 2) compared to the areas
in Figure 11. A quick tracking of visible parking spaces designed with a density and diversity oriented ap-
in two of the areas in Gothenburg and Tokyo showed proach (Type 3) in both cities. However, the observa-
larger parking spaces distributed less evenly in the tion that areas designed compact city areas in ongoing
Gothenburg Type 1 area (see Figure 13). urban intensification programs in Gothenburg have a

Urban Planning, 2016, Volume 1, Issue 1, Pages 95-113 106

density that was closer to that of the suburban Million the density and the scale distribution and compared
Program area, than to the density of the city core the results with the total study area and also to the
seems more remarkable. This might be due to the fact other areas studied in Tokyo (see Figure 15). The ex-
that these intensification plans were subjected to a wa- tended analysis showed that also in this case, the pro-
terfront development where the ‘Compact city’ motto ject area had an increased density. However, it also
is immediately followed by a ‘Close to green areas’ showed a reduced proportion of smaller scale build-
motto (Gothenburg City Council, 2012). To confirm this ings, resulting in less buildings with footprints of un-
assumption, an additional analysis was carried out, fo- der 1,500 m² than in both Type 1, Type 2, and the rest
cusing only on the project development areas, thus dis- of the Type 3 area. The secondary analysis of the Type
regarding previously existing green areas and sur- 3 areas in both cities seemed to indicate that an in-
rounding housing areas (see Figure 14). When the crease of the density was possible to engineer
result was compared to the total scale distribution and through urban design, while the design of diversity of
density of the study areas, it displayed slightly in- building scales was not.
creased density. However, the building scale distribu- To sum up the findings on density and diversity, it
tions in the newly built intensification areas were much was only in Gothenburg that density distinguished Type
simplified, resulting in less diversity of scales compared 1 from Type 3. An increase of building scales and uni-
to what was found in the total areas. This seemed to formity of scale distribution was observed in Type 3 ar-
indicate that while the density efforts emulated Type 1 eas in both cities. The analysis of quantity of built ob-
areas, the scale distribution followed the pattern ob- jects was showed contrasting results in the Type 3 in
served in Type 2 areas. both cities. However, higher density, a higher quantity
For Tokyo, the results showed designed compact of small-scale built objects and a more even distribu-
city of Type 3 actually displaying an overall density tion between the scales seemed to indicate the pres-
similar to the Type 1 areas. Once again, we singled ence of a kind of compact city form in Type 3 areas in
out the Roppongi Hills project area and re-analysed both cities, compared to Type 2 areas.

Figure 13. The bird’s eye-view of Type 1 study areas in both cities with marked ground level spaces designated for parking.

Figure 14. Proportions of scale distributions of building footprints of Type 3 areas in Gothenburg re-analysed focusing
only on the newly developed parts of the study area.

Urban Planning, 2016, Volume 1, Issue 1, Pages 95-113 107

Figure 15. Re-analysis of the Type 3 area in Tokyo. The overall Roppongi area is divided into the Roppongi Hills project
area and the surrounding area.

Figure 16. Images show the information regarding the phasing of the project development. (Kvillebäcken, retrieved 2015).

If we apply Ahern’s (2011) resilience characteristics strategies with varying phases of construction assigned
shown in Figure 1, increased density and number of to multiple actors, Figure 16 shows that this incremen-
built objects potentially indicate the required multiplic- tality is designed already during the initial master plan-
ity of elements and components required for redun- ning process.
dancy and modularization. Benefits of multiple, diverse The images in Figure 16 also show how the planned
agents for resilient and adaptive urban systems have diversity of employed design firms and of urban func-
been pointed out by many researchers (Bettencourt, tions is already extant at this early stage. A certain de-
2013; Bettencourt & West, 2010; Glaeser, 2011; gree of density and variety of scales may possibly be
Quigley, 1998), and the characteristics of the emerged emulated in planning processes if the parameters are set
Type 1 seem to concur with those characteristics, if we to achieve such characteristics. However, it seems that
consider a parcel as an individual agent (Hoffmann- true diversity of scales as consequences of emergent de-
Axthelm, 1993, 1996, cited in Scheurer, 2007). For Type sign processes through adaptation and incremental de-
3 this is less obvious. An emergent system could be re- velopment is not delivered by pre-designed incremental-
garded as a process of incremental adaptivity by di- ity with a pre-assigned and controlled diversity.
verse agent’s self-modification, and interaction, and One critique of the Kvillebäcken and Eriksberg areas
the characteristics of emergent urban form is the out- in Gothenburg concerns the high rents and purchase
come of this process. Even though the urban intensifi- fees in the project areas. The average rent per m² per
cation projects in Gothenburg waterfronts, represent- year in Gothenburg for a one room apartment is 1,251
ed by the two Type 3 study areas Kvillebäcken and SEK (Statistics Sweden, 2015), while the lower rent
Eriksberg, aim to implement incremental development scale for a one room apartment is 2,101 SEK per m²

Urban Planning, 2016, Volume 1, Issue 1, Pages 95-113 108

and year in Kvillebäcken (Kjellberg, 2013). The rent in quake, a prevailing lack of resources resulted in a lack
Roppongi Hills residence is also much higher than the of centralized planning, leaving the city to be recon-
average of the same ward, costing 7,480 JPY per m² per structed by citizen efforts, neighbourhood by neigh-
month (Moriliving, 2015) compared to the 4,409 JPY bourhood, mimicking structures existing before the de-
average per month (REINS, 2015). Newly built apart- struction (Hein, 2010; Okata & Murayama, 2011).
ments being expensive is not a new phenomenon. Second, land reform policy of post WWII forced agricul-
However, when large neighbourhoods are solely com- tural landlords to sell land to smaller farmers, resulting
posed of costly new apartments, any diversity of the in piecemeal land divisions with a diversity of smaller
socio-economic demography can hardly be achieved. scale independent actors (Kawagoe, 1999). Third, as
Kvillebäcken is especially criticized for negative gentri- railways were constructed the areas were developed
fication, not least since the development of the site in- around each station, so that the next station could be
volved the removal of existing buildings and activities expanded with the capital gains from the real-estate
(Thörn, 2013). In this case, an incremental ‘adaptive development, incrementally expanding the city station
process’ through time and space could proven to con- by station (Okata & Murayama, 2011).
tribute more to the resilient characteristics of urban
form rather than what was achieved through the pre- 6. Conclusions
designed and pre-determined processes only mimick-
ing incrementality (Alexander, 1965; Neuman, 2005). This paper sets out to answer the question: What are
In comparison with Gothenburg, the Type 1 study the differences in outcome of different planning ap-
areas with emergent urban form in Tokyo showed proaches in relation to urban characteristics, such as
slightly lower but more uniform rates of density, with density and diversity?
higher proportion of smaller buildings and overall We have shown how different planning approaches
quantity of buildings (see Figures 8 and 10). The distri- seem to deliver very different outcomes when it comes
bution of this type is prevalent in the overall Tokyo density and diversity of built objects. While the process
metropolitan area. It is interesting to discuss whether of Type 3 development (designed compact urban form)
the less problematic class segregation issues observed to some extent emulates Type 1 (emergent compact
in Tokyo (Fujita & Hill, 2012) might relate to these ur- urban form), some of the differences seem to be criti-
ban-form characteristics. It is speculated that contrib- cal to the detriment of Type 3 planning:
uting urban form factors might be a well-networked
public transportation, renewability of aged buildings 1. The time factor. By completely eliminating the
and housing stocks, smaller scale real-estate develop- existing building stocks and activities on site, as
ment, and less strict land use which create micro pattern was done in the Kvillebäcken area, the planners
of land-use with mixed functions (Fujita & Hill, 2012). also eliminated the time factor, leading to a
Presumably, such patterns of multi-functionality, redun- total lack of incrementality and with no
dancy, modularization and diversity (Ahern, 2011) can remaining population to engage in post-
be seen to increase socioeconomic resilience to the destruction piecemeal reconstruction.
benefit of less affluent citizens.
Tokyo is operating under an overarching ‘rule- 2. The lack of diversity of building scales and
based’ planning approach with a highly mixed accumu- absence of smaller estate patterns. Even with
lative zoning, where building standard laws are con- the efforts to involve multiple design and
sistent to ‘planning by coding’ (Marshall, 2012). The development companies to create diversity, the
implementation of the zoning codes is top-down, thus uniformity of overall scale still remains. Also,
indicating, also the ‘planning by development control’. higher costs in larger scale development
Compared to Type 2, shaped through ‘planning by de- projects seems to contribute to a less diverse
sign’, and Type 3, delivered through ‘planning by de- mix of socio-economical demographics.
velopment control’, and ‘planning by design’, the ques-
tion whether ‘planning by coding’ generates more 3. Employment of a top-down planning hierarchy.
emergent behaviour with incremental adaptive chang- The main planning body analyses and draws up
es as seen in Type 1 needs to be further studied. Also, a form plan, which is then approved by the city
our understanding of how Tokyo’s rule-based planning council. Multi-actor participation is only served
approach—and its outcomes—came into being would through designing individual buildings assigned
be further strengthened from understanding more to them centrally, through ‘planning by design’
about how the historical background of urban devel- and ‘development control’ (Marshall, 2012).
opment processes in Tokyo plays into this. First, the
lack of centralized planning can be explained by the Here this study might be able to contribute in relation
post WW II situation. After the destruction of the city to the how planning is carried out in Gothenburg, cur-
structure during the war and the great Kanto earth- rently mixing ‘planning by design’ with ‘planning by de-

Urban Planning, 2016, Volume 1, Issue 1, Pages 95-113 109

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About the Authors

Hye Kyung Lim
Hye Kyung Lim is a PhD candidate in the department of architecture at Chalmers University of Tech-
nology, Gothenburg, Sweden and is affiliated with Mistra urban futures Gothenburg. Her current re-
search focuses on compact city strategies based on comparative studies of urban systems, and devel-
opment of collaborative urban planning tools using both digital mapping on mobile devices and
augmented reality based urban design methods.

Urban Planning, 2016, Volume 1, Issue 1, Pages 95-113 112

 Dr. Jaan-Henrik Kain
Jaan-Henrik Kain is Professor in Urban Transformation and Planning Processes at Chalmers Architec-
ture, Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden. Current research topics include digital
tools for inclusive planning, planning for urban ecosystem services, reviewing qualities, drivers and
strategies for urban densification, and building democracy through waste management in develop-
ment settings.

Urban Planning, 2016, Volume 1, Issue 1, Pages 95-113 113

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