environment, asking such questions as how will urban planning alleviate their city’s
environmental impact, and how will it create a desirable environment. “Environment
as an output” is their main concern.
Cities, however, are situated in an ecological environment that is peculiar to their
physical location in terms of climate, geographical features, vegetation, and other
factors, and the form and historical path of development that any particular city takes
is influenced by these ecological environmental factors. McGee (1991), for example,
has pointed out the differences in the urbanization process between those cities in
East and South-east Asia located in intensive rice-growing regions and those located
in other kinds of ecological environments. He pointed out that urbanization in ricegrowing regions develops out from a city over a wide-ranging expanse that comes to
include farming villages on its perimeter, in a process that increases the likelihood of
producing a city mixed with farming villages. Therefore research of the association
between “environment as an input” in the form of the city’s ecological environment is required.
The limited research has been undertaken, however, which makes a quantitative
evaluation of what kind of association exists between an urban morphology
endorsed by a specific plan and a relevant city’s ecological environment. While it
did not deal directly with urban morphology issues, research by Cohen and Small
(1998) and Small and Cohen (2004) was pioneering for its quantitative and detailed
global examination of the association between world population distribution and
ecological environments. The aim of this research was to create a body of basic
knowledge for understanding the association between people and the global environment, and it identified the kinds of correlation that global population distribution
exhibits with geographical and climatic conditions. Cohen and Small’s analysis
showed that elevation and distance from a river or a coastline-regulated population
distribution patterns more strongly than climate, and the results of their research also
proposed a tendency that the regions with greater annual fluctuation in their monthly
rainfall have higher average population densities. In my analysis, in this research of
the influence that the ecological environment has on the urban morphology that is the
target of compact city policies, we referred to the environmental indicators that
Cohen and Small used in their research.
In the following section, a quantitative evaluation of the world’s larger cities
(those with more than four million people) is conducted to assess the influence that
the ecological environment has on the conditions for the particular urban morphology that is regarded as ideal for the “compact city,” before proposing a hypothesis
for the principal causes of that influence. Then, in Sect. 6.3, we will examine in detail
the applicability of the compact city concept in each particular region before
proposing based on that examination the importance in any urban planning activity
of taking “the environment as input” into consideration.
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environmental impact, and how will it create a desirable environment. “Environment
as an output” is their main concern.
Cities, however, are situated in an ecological environment that is peculiar to their
physical location in terms of climate, geographical features, vegetation, and other
factors, and the form and historical path of development that any particular city takes
is influenced by these ecological environmental factors. McGee (1991), for example,
has pointed out the differences in the urbanization process between those cities in
East and South-east Asia located in intensive rice-growing regions and those located
in other kinds of ecological environments. He pointed out that urbanization in ricegrowing regions develops out from a city over a wide-ranging expanse that comes to
include farming villages on its perimeter, in a process that increases the likelihood of
producing a city mixed with farming villages. Therefore research of the association
between “environment as an input” in the form of the city’s ecological environment is required.
The limited research has been undertaken, however, which makes a quantitative
evaluation of what kind of association exists between an urban morphology
endorsed by a specific plan and a relevant city’s ecological environment. While it
did not deal directly with urban morphology issues, research by Cohen and Small
(1998) and Small and Cohen (2004) was pioneering for its quantitative and detailed
global examination of the association between world population distribution and
ecological environments. The aim of this research was to create a body of basic
knowledge for understanding the association between people and the global environment, and it identified the kinds of correlation that global population distribution
exhibits with geographical and climatic conditions. Cohen and Small’s analysis
showed that elevation and distance from a river or a coastline-regulated population
distribution patterns more strongly than climate, and the results of their research also
proposed a tendency that the regions with greater annual fluctuation in their monthly
rainfall have higher average population densities. In my analysis, in this research of
the influence that the ecological environment has on the urban morphology that is the
target of compact city policies, we referred to the environmental indicators that
Cohen and Small used in their research.
In the following section, a quantitative evaluation of the world’s larger cities
(those with more than four million people) is conducted to assess the influence that
the ecological environment has on the conditions for the particular urban morphology that is regarded as ideal for the “compact city,” before proposing a hypothesis
for the principal causes of that influence. Then, in Sect. 6.3, we will examine in detail
the applicability of the compact city concept in each particular region before
proposing based on that examination the importance in any urban planning activity
of taking “the environment as input” into consideration.
108
Y. Uchiyama and K. Hayashi