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“Learning Sustainability” is a six-year programme of research being undertaken to identify how getting the right forms for our settlements will enable them to deliver the best mix of environmental, economic, and social performance.
Background
New Zealanders, in common with many communities across the world, are increasingly aware that their settlements are having serious impacts on the environment. These impacts are many, and include, for example, impacts on natural ecosystems, and the loss, through settlement, of productive land or areas of quiet natural beauty that are of importance to us. Yet while we have these environmental concerns, we need our settlements to provide employment and we want to lead lives with a good standard of living, rich in social, cultural, and recreational opportunities. “Settlement form” is a technical term, not often used by most New Zealanders, but they may quite often discuss some of the parts that go to make up settlement form. For example:
- The shape of a settlement as seen from the air or on a map, and the street pattern.
- The density of housing, such as the quarter acre section, the inner city apartment block, or the small lifestyle block.
- The amount of open space within each settlement, such as town belts, parks and reserves, coastal esplanades or reserves.
- The extent that a settlement is single-centred, for example, with one large central business district, or multi-centred with more than one activity hub. Councils have always had a number of policies and rules in place that ultimately influence form. However in recent years there has been a move to manage the form of the settlement, with the aim to improve sustainability and especially to limit environmental impacts. There is however considerable debate around this issue, both as to which forms should be adopted, and their effectiveness in promoting sustainability. One move has been to more compact forms (also described as densification or intensification) particularly in the context of lessening transport’s large environmental impact, by making public transport more effective and making walking and cycling more viable. The benefits of compaction are, however, disputed by those taking a wider perspective. Intensification may provide residential styles at odds with how the majority expect to live, and social conditions are not necessarily improved by intensification. In other situations, a council’s policies and rules are targeted to ensure dispersion. This occurs particularly in areas where the natural ability of the land to absorb impacts is very limited.The research programme aims
This research programme “Learning Sustainability” recognises that for each settlement there may be a number of pathways for sustainability. The research will enable communities to recognise those different pathways and will be relevant to both settlements as they currently exist and to new future forms that may be developed. The research programme will provide the evidence of the extent that settlement form determines settlement performance, and develop tools by which communities can first, modify their settlement towards more sustainable forms, and second, monitor the settlement performance.
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