Multifunctional territories in-between offer tremendous opportunities for sustainability
Areas around cities are often referred to negatively with the term 'urban sprawl'. But it is precisely in these territories in-between that we can achieve many of our sustainability goals, says PhD researcher Alexander Wandl. We just have to learn to plan them better.
There are cities and there is countryside. And in between is a sort of…well, what? ‘Zwischenstadt’, ‘tussenland’, ‘città diffusa’ and ‘sprawl’ are well-known international terms. But Wandl feels these terms should only be used for local situations. He wants to introduce a new umbrella term – ‘territories-in-between’ (TiB) – which according to him is more appropriate to the shared similarities and general aspects of such areas. TiBs are dynamic, multifunctional areas with huge potential that demand special attention, including in the aspect of spatial planning. “They are undervalued areas that we associate with functions that we don't want in the city, but we don't want in the countryside either. We need to step away from that mentality.”
In his research, entitled ‘Territories-in-between. A cross-case comparison of dispersed urban development in Europe’, Wandl examines ten diffuse urban areas in five European countries. The differences are great, but there are also many similarities. Each of them lies close to a large city yet remains strikingly independent of it. The Westland, in close proximity to Rotterdam and The Hague, is directly connected to the global economy and has no need of its neighbouring cities. The same can be said of the aeronautical cluster in South Wales (Cardiff), the electronics and defence industry in Ile-de-France (Paris), the pharmaceutical cluster of Lower Austria (Vienna-Bratislava) and the industrial conglomeration surrounding Swarovski in Tyrol.
Atlas
In these territories-in-between, Wandl sees barely any gradual transition from urban to rural in the spatial structure. He points out that the idea of diffuse transitional areas between city and countryside is outdated.
But what are the similarities? In any case fragmentation and diversity, if we look at the Atlas of Territories-in-Between that he compiled. Housing and work are rarely located close together. Yet more Europeans live in territories-in-between than most people realise. For this reason, interactions between social, technological and ecological networks are of vital importance for territories-in-between to function well.
Territories-in-between, with all their green areas and variety, offer plenty of opportunities for reaching our sustainability goals, says Wandl. “But this requires good planning based on a careful analysis. It's no good installing a street network and the infrastructure for smart automation for the future without first examining the relationships and possible synergies between living, working and ecological functions. Otherwise these interests are bound to clash.”
Unfortunately this is still far too often the case. TiBs are seen as ‘shadowlands’ or even the Wild West of spatial planning. This is one of the reasons why the territories-in-between in the Netherlands have been so hard hit by the Dutch nitrogen crisis. Throughout Europe, short-sighted spatial planning is also leading to the ‘boxification’ of the landscape: in the territories-in-between, giant distribution centres are mushrooming, closely followed by extensive shopping centres. The latter has a negative knock-on effect on city centres: the life is sucked out of them as city dwellers drive in their cars to out-of-town shopping areas in the territories-in-between.
It is just as unsustainable to locate ‘dirty’ functions such as sewage treatment plants and recycling centres further away from our cities. “If you want to move towards circularity, you need these dirty functions, because they form part of a local economy”, says Wandl.
So does this mean compaction is the right strategy for territories-in-between? No, it is precisely the typical mixed functions and over-abundance of open spaces that you find here that offer such great opportunities for ecosystems and pleasant living and working spaces, he feels. “Let us harvest the potential that these areas offer us so plentifully. There is no sustainable future for us if we continue to think only in terms of ‘city’ and ‘countryside’.”
In a follow-up study, Wandl wants to make the ‘metabolic economy’ of territories-in-between transparent. Mapping out all the energy, material and people flows should make rational planning in territories-in-between far simpler.