IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/urbstu/v58y2021i6p1176-1192.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Towards a relational conception of the compact city

Author

Listed:
  • Kristin KjærÃ¥s

Abstract

Compact city strategies have become central to the development of urban sustainability politics. Cities across the globe are pursuing high-density, mixed-use developments and energy-efficient transportation systems. However, the correlation between compact city strategies and achieved sustainability is largely taken for granted in public and academic debates. Providing a spatial critique of the theory guiding compact city policy and practice, this article demonstrates how the prioritisation of urban form and territorial boundaries in measuring sustainability ultimately ignores the societal and environmental effects and foundations of current compact city approaches. Building upon this critique, I argue for a relational orientation that can attune research and practice to the compact city’s intensive and extensive constitution and consequently to its actual and potential (re)production. Analysing Oslo’s involvement in the EU network ‘Sub>Urban: Reinventing the Fringe’, and work that has followed from this network, the article develops three critical perspectives to advance compact city theorisation beyond traditional frameworks: (1) the relational topographies of the compact city; (2) the relational intensities of the compact city; and (3) the planetary constitution of the compact city. In doing so, a critical geography of how the compact city is produced – discursively and materially – is proposed.

Suggested Citation

  • Kristin KjærÃ¥s, 2021. "Towards a relational conception of the compact city," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 58(6), pages 1176-1192, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:urbstu:v:58:y:2021:i:6:p:1176-1192
    DOI: 10.1177/0042098020907281
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0042098020907281
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0042098020907281?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jennifer Robinson, 2011. "Cities in a World of Cities: The Comparative Gesture," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 35(1), pages 1-23, January.
    2. Reid Ewing & Robert Cervero, 2010. "Travel and the Built Environment," Journal of the American Planning Association, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 76(3), pages 265-294.
    3. Graham Haughton & Phil Allmendinger & Stijn Oosterlynck, 2013. "Spaces of Neoliberal Experimentation: Soft Spaces, Postpolitics, and Neoliberal Governmentality," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 45(1), pages 217-234, January.
    4. Stijn Oosterlynck & Sara González, 2013. "‘Don't Waste a Crisis’: Opening up the City Yet Again for Neoliberal Experimentation," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 37(3), pages 1075-1082, May.
    5. Ståle Holgersen, 2015. "Crisis and the Post-Industrial City: Or is Malmö Building Yesterday's City Tomorrow, Again?," Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, Royal Dutch Geographical Society KNAG, vol. 106(3), pages 231-245, July.
    6. Neil Brenner & Nik Theodore, 2005. "Neoliberalism and the urban condition," City, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 9(1), pages 101-107, April.
    7. Marcial Echenique & Anthony Hargreaves & Gordon Mitchell & Anil Namdeo, 2012. "Growing Cities Sustainably," Journal of the American Planning Association, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 78(2), pages 121-137.
    8. Jamie Peck, 2015. "Cities beyond Compare?," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 49(1), pages 160-182, January.
    9. Timothy Blackwell & Sebastian Kohl, 2018. "Urban heritages: How history and housing finance matter to housing form and homeownership rates," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 55(16), pages 3669-3688, December.
    10. Judith Westerink & Dagmar Haase & Annette Bauer & Joe Ravetz & Françoise Jarrige & Carmen B.E. M. Aalbers, 2013. "Dealing with Sustainability Trade-Offs of the Compact City in Peri-Urban Planning Across European City Regions," European Planning Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 21(4), pages 473-497, April.
    11. Gareth A S Edwards & Harriet Bulkeley, 2017. "Urban political ecologies of housing and climate change: The ‘Coolest Block’ Contest in Philadelphia," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 54(5), pages 1126-1141, April.
    12. Aidan While & Andrew E. G. Jonas & David Gibbs, 2004. "The environment and the entrepreneurial city: searching for the urban ‘sustainability fix’ in Manchester and Leeds," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(3), pages 549-569, September.
    13. Maarten Hajer & Wil Zonneveld, 2000. "Spatial Planning in the Network Society-Rethinking the Principles of Planning in the Netherlands," European Planning Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 8(3), pages 337-355, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Hirte, Georg & Rhee, Hyok-Joo, 2016. "Regulation versus Taxation," CEPIE Working Papers 05/16, Technische Universität Dresden, Center of Public and International Economics (CEPIE).
    2. Chih-Hao Wang, 2020. "Does compact development promote a seismic-resistant city? Application of seismic-damage statistical models to Taichung, Taiwan," Environment and Planning B, , vol. 47(1), pages 84-101, January.
    3. Cesare Di Feliciantonio & Cian O’Callaghan, 2020. "Struggles over property in the ‘post-political’ era: Notes on the political from Rome and Dublin," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 38(2), pages 195-213, March.
    4. Carolyn Cartier, 2017. "Contextual Urban Theory and the ‘Appeal’ of Gentrification: Lost in Transposition?," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 41(3), pages 466-477, May.
    5. Martin Scoppa & Rim Anabtawi, 2021. "Connectivity in Superblock Street Networks: Measuring Distance, Directness, and the Diversity of Pedestrian Paths," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(24), pages 1-18, December.
    6. Özgür Sayın & Michael Hoyler & John Harrison, 2022. "Doing comparative urbanism differently: Conjunctural cities and the stress-testing of urban theory," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 59(2), pages 263-280, February.
    7. Michael Storper & Allen J Scott, 2016. "Current debates in urban theory: A critical assessment," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 53(6), pages 1114-1136, May.
    8. Papa, Enrica & Bertolini, Luca, 2015. "Accessibility and Transit-Oriented Development in European metropolitan areas," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 70-83.
    9. Michael Hoyler & John Harrison, 2017. "Global cities research and urban theory making," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 49(12), pages 2853-2858, December.
    10. Christian Schmid & Ozan Karaman & Naomi C Hanakata & Pascal Kallenberger & Anne Kockelkorn & Lindsay Sawyer & Monika Streule & Kit Ping Wong, 2018. "Towards a new vocabulary of urbanisation processes: A comparative approach," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 55(1), pages 19-52, January.
    11. Alexander Lord & Yiquan Gu, 2019. "Can the market be tamed? A thought experiment on the value(s) of planning," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 51(1), pages 11-24, February.
    12. Byron Miller & Kevin Ward & Ryan Burns & Victoria Fast & Anthony Levenda, 2021. "Worlding and provincialising smart cities: From individual case studies to a global comparative research agenda," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 58(3), pages 655-673, February.
    13. Shenjing He & Junxi Qian, 2017. "From an emerging market to a multifaceted urban society: Urban China studies," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 54(4), pages 827-846, March.
    14. Jennifer Robinson, 2022. "Introduction: Generating concepts of ‘the urban’ through comparative practice," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 59(8), pages 1521-1535, June.
    15. M. Reza Shirazi & Ramin Keivani, 2021. "Social Sustainability of Compact Neighbourhoods Evidence from London and Berlin," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(4), pages 1-20, February.
    16. Anderson, John E. & Wulfhorst, Gebhard & Lang, Werner, 2015. "Energy analysis of the built environment—A review and outlook," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 149-158.
    17. Paul Waley, 2016. "Speaking gentrification in the languages of the Global East," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 53(3), pages 615-625, February.
    18. Vincent Viguié, 2015. "Cross-commuting and housing prices in a polycentric modeling of cities," Policy Papers 2015.03, FAERE - French Association of Environmental and Resource Economists.
    19. Byron Miller & Samuel Mössner, 2020. "Urban sustainability and counter-sustainability: Spatial contradictions and conflicts in policy and governance in the Freiburg and Calgary metropolitan regions," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 57(11), pages 2241-2262, August.
    20. Lee, Sungwon & Lee, Bumsoo, 2014. "The influence of urban form on GHG emissions in the U.S. household sector," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 68(C), pages 534-549.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:urbstu:v:58:y:2021:i:6:p:1176-1192. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.gla.ac.uk/departments/urbanstudiesjournal .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.