The sustainable urban neighbourhood (SUN) is an urban design model which is part of 21st-century urban reform theory, moving away from the typical suburban development of the UK and US towards more continental city styles. It emerged in the UK in the 1990s, specifically from pioneering work by URBED (The Urban and Economic Development Group), an urban regeneration consultancy and research centre in Manchester.Rudlin, D. and Falk, N. (1999) Building the 21st Century Home: The Sustainable Urban Neighbourhood. Oxford: Architectural Press.
This page looks at SUN theory, addresses the background to the emergence of the SUN, its defining characteristics, looks at a real life example, and finally outlines some criticisms of the concept.
About the SUN A SUN is a small-scale, urban area within a city that comprises social, economic and environmental sustainability. The term "SUN" is significant; sustainable relating to its longevity and reduced environmental impact, urban relating to its location and physical character, and neighbourhood constituting the social and economic wellbeing of the area.
The SUN concept is significant to UK urban design, as it is based on the actual experiences of living and working within a city and is located within existing towns and cities. It recognises that cities are inseparable from the historical processes that formed them and works with the complexity and disorder of existing urban areas, rather than proposing a radical new vision. Advocates claim it is the answer to anti-urban post-war planning principles that have fed urban decline.
The SUN concept is one of many urban theory models in the ongoing process of understanding what sustainable urban form actually is.Williams, K., Burton, E., and Jenks, M. (2000) Achieving Sustainable Urban Form. London: E&FN Spon
SUN theory is broadly influenced by:
the smart growth movement of the US – a concept specifically opposed to urban sprawl, it advocates high density, mixed-use development, sustainable resource use, and open space conservation. It aims to foster a sense of community, a sense of place, and promotes denser residential development, housing being a significant part of the built environment.Danielsen, K., Lang, R., and Fulton, W. (1999) Retracting suburbia: smart growth and the future of housing, Housing Policy Debate 10:3, 513–540. the compact city arising from the European Commission's Green Paper on Urban EnvironmentCommission of European Communities (1990) Green Paper on the Urban Environment. Brussels. – opposes the ‘dispersed city’,Brindley, T. (2003) The social dimension of the urban village: a comparison of models for sustainable urban development, Urban Design International 8:1, 53–65. aiming to combat car dependency, CO2 emissions, energy consumption levels, and overall accessibility issues, it reuses existing infrastructure, promotes green space, and rejuvenates existing urban areas to produce a higher quality of life and dynamic sites of economic interaction.De Roo, G. (2000) Environmental conflicts in compact cities: complexity, decision-making, and policy approaches, Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design 27:1, 151–162.
It is more specifically influenced by:
the new urbanism movement (early 1980s US) – central concept is the importance of local place within the globalising world.Smith, N. (2002) New globalism, new urbanism: gentrification as global urban strategy, Antipode 34:3, 427–450. It also refers to a coalition of innovative architects, developers and builders reacting to suburban sprawl and failed urban development by providing urban communities with culturally-diverse housing, easy access to work, play and schools, efficient transportation, and generally creating liveable urban areas.Katz, P. (1994) The New Urbanism: Toward an Architecture of Community. Portland, OR: Vision. the urban villages movement (late 1980s UK) – originally relating to a dense node of development embedded in a wider pattern of dispersal, it has come to entail the repopulation and reintensification of existing cities by increasing densities.
The SUN is specifically linked to David Rudlin of URBED, involved in the redevelopment of the Hulme estate in Manchester. Similar ideas were subsequently applied throughout the local area and other parts of the city, facilitated by political intent to redevelop Manchester in the image of the European cities that had been visited as part of the city's 1996 Olympic bid.
Background
Flight from the city The Industrial Revolution had a devastating effect on the British city, with phenomenal population growth in industrial cities like Manchester, stretching their capacity beyond breaking point. They were overcrowded, had limited sanitation, and were characterised by pollution, crime and congestion, becoming a dystopian symbol. As a result, there was a mass exodus from cities throughout the 19th century.
The 20th century British city was no longer home to a cross-section of society and urban populations became characterised by those unable to escape, whilst the leafy, low density suburb became the residential aspiration. The growth of the private car fed the expansion of the Anglo-American city into sprawling suburbia. As mobility increased, not only people but commercial activity fled to leave a deserted inner city surrounded by sprawling industrial estates, business parks, and suburban residential areas, termed ‘edge cities’.Garreau, J. (1992) Edge City. NY: Doubleday.
Continental cities In sharp contrast to the Anglo-American city is the continental model. The typical example is Paris, with its grand boulevards, as designed by Georges-Eugène Haussmann in the 1860s. They carved up the city and were lined with large, six storey buildings, providing high density, mixed-use structures, with copious amounts of spacious, middle-class housing. This continental trend meant the cities and towns kept their form, density and vitality over the 19th and 20th centuries as people aspired to an urban apartment, rather than leaving the city for suburban villas. As a result, continental cities continue to be thriving hubs where people simultaneously live, work and play.
Lost urban visions The great theorists of the 20th century city were Utopian academics and their ideas have had a lasting effect on modern town planning. Below are the ideas of what FishmanFishman, R. (1982) Urban Utopias in the Twentieth Century: Ebenezer Howard, Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. calls the three most important visionaries of the last century:
Ebenezer Howard and his Garden City – a decentralised approach where the final development of the city is left to the citizens themselves. A high density agglomeration of numerous garden cities of voluntary, self-governing communities expands across the rural landscape. It is linked with municipal railways and canals, thereby offering the economic and social opportunities of the giant city, with the benefits of being in the country.Hall, P. (1988) Cities of To-morrow. Oxford: Blackwell. Termed the Social City, it was the realisation of Howard's third magnet: town-country (see :File:Howard-three-magnets.png). However, Howard's vision has often been misinterpreted as a singular garden city, and confused as a garden suburb. Howard was not a planner yet his vision inspired a city planning movement which informed the post-war New Towns policy of the UK. Frank Lloyd Wright and his Broadacre City – containing a similar rejection of the big city and radical application of decentralisation to Howard's, this vision comprehensively weaves together American anti-urban thinking, with a belief in technology's liberating effect and the free individual. Broadacres merges but keeps town and country separate: a man-made environment of individual homes spreads out across the countryside, each one a separate inward-looking unit of domestic and economic life. Interspersed are all the institutions of advanced society, but with no central point for power to congregate around. Instead, his vision of a radically dispersed city is made possible by the automobile in the Machine Age. Although Broadacre City has not enjoyed popular success or implementation, it influenced the rise of the sprawling American suburb. Le Corbusier and his Ville Radieuse – initially the 'contemporary city', becoming the 'radiant city', Le Corbusier created a direct celebration of city as the site of centralised power, in contrast to the two former theorists. Seeing chaos and inefficiency in 20th-century cities, he sought order and calm, entailed in his vision of skyscrapers set out in parks, forming a beautiful yet efficient business district. At its centre is a complicated central interchange of all transportation systems, with the rest of the city classified by function into sectors. A decidedly ordered city, it is built upwards in magnificent skyscrapers so it is compact but not congested, with much green space. It is a city built around administration and power-from-above where the planner can create social harmony through urban design. Brasília, capital of Brazil, is an example of a quasi-Corbusian city planned and built in 1956.
The 20th century utopian visions responded to the technological opportunity of the modern age. At the beginning of the 21st century, urban visions are required that address the unsuitable patterns of development that technology has produced.
Urban renaissance As the British city degenerated through the 20th century, the principles of suburban development became institutionalised in professional, academic and public spheres, posing a powerful inhibiting force to urban reform. Yet since the late 1980s the UK has seen a gradual renaissance of its urban areas, and in particular, since the Government's Urban Task Force report.Urban Task Force (1999) Towards an Urban Renaissance. London: DETR.
The heavy industry and overcrowding that caused the initial flight from the city are gone, whilst their role as transport hubs and the sites of activity, creativity and face-to-face interaction feeds the newly-dominant financial, knowledge and cultural sectors. The boom in consumer-led service employment for people with a wide range of skills led to the rise of the yuppie and a process of gentrification, where young professionals move back to inner city areas.Smith, N. (1996) The New Urban Frontier: Gentrification and the Revanchist City. London: Routledge. However, many argue that gentrification focuses on a specific new urban middle-class, marginalising and excluding the urban poor and lacking in any environmental sustainability concerns.Sassen, S. (1994) Cities in a World Economy. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press.
Rudlin and Falk argue that in the 21st century, it is not enough to remake the city as counterfeit suburbs or to cling to outdated 20th century urban visions. New urban models are needed that promote humane and environmentally-aligned urban areas.Jabareen, Y.R. (2006) Sustainable urban forms: their typologies, models and concepts, Journal of Planning Education and Research 26:1, 38–52. As the European Green Paper for Urban Environment detailed, ‘the multifunctional, creative city, which is also the liveable city, is the one that pollutes least’. The SUN is one such model, and its key characteristics are outlined below.
Defining elements These points set out the characteristics of urban, as opposed to suburban, design. Environmental pressures and social and demographic changes have reawakened the importance of city living in the 21st century. Rudlin and Falk argue that if the UK urban renaissance is to be successful then the techniques of city building must be recognised, allowing an urban district to become a neighbourhood.
Location The SUN is located within existing cities, and is an urban vision that works with the complexity and disorder of existing urban areas.
High density