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Feature

Building people- and climate-friendly cities

18 October 2022
New Zealand has one of the highest car ownership rates in the world. Policies made it so and policies can change it, say Waipapa Taumata Rau, University of ߣߣƵexperts.

Driving to work, driving to supermarkets, driving to big-box stores and parking there for free – a lot of Kiwis have trouble imagining life any other way. But in a historic sense, life in New Zealand hasn’t been like this for all that long. 

Professor and Senior Lecturer  come from different backgrounds but their interests converge when it comes to dealing with the biggest problem facing the planet: the climate crisis.

Woodward started out as a doctor. The desire to prevent his patients’ health problems before they started got him into population health and environmental health. For more than 20 years, he has been working with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change on the effects of climate change on health.

Welch trained as a lawyer before getting into urban planning, then climate policy. Both researchers want to shape the urban environment to get people using active transportation more and cars and planes less.

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Tim Welch and Alastair Woodward

Building a car culture

In the 1950s and early ‘60s, New Zealand had one of the lower car-to-population ratios in the developed world, says Woodward.

“Cities and individuals did function without cars. I grew up in Christchurch in a family without a car and we got by just fine because there were extensive public transportation systems.”

Starting in the mid-20th century, though, policies were enacted that prioritised cars. Electric tramlines were ripped up and more roads built, which encouraged families to move to the suburbs, where they could buy bigger, more affordable houses. This in turn created further demand for big motorways and reduced density in the city centre, lowering demand for public transport.

“Cities and individuals did function without cars. I grew up in Christchurch in a family without a car and we got by just fine because there were extensive public transportation systems.”
Professor Alastair Woodward

Car ownership shot up and today, New Zealand has about 900 vehicles per 1,000 people, one of the highest rates in the world. Transportation is the second largest and fastest growing source of emissions in New Zealand – and the experts say simply working to replace existing cars with electric vehicles wouldn’t solve all our problems.

“EVs still involve a lot of emissions in their production, they still stretch our cities out further and further, they’re still involved in crashes that are rising every year and they still lead to more sedentary lifestyles,” says Welch.

Building a people-centred culture

“[Copenhagen] built affordable, high-quality housing that could accommodate families and young people started moving back to the city and having their kids in the city. They converted car parks into playgrounds and, from the 1950s when the city centre population was cut in half, they were able to re-densify the city by luring people back in.”
Senior Lecturer Tim Welch

Some cities have made different policy choices that have shaped their urban environment differently.

In Copenhagen, more than a third of all trips are taken by bike. This compares to about one percent in Auckland, says Welch. There was, however, a time when Denmark’s capital might have gone a different route. In the mid-20th century, North American-style suburbanisation was all the rage and Copenhagen too had plans to build a motorway cutting through the city centre.

However, the initial elevated section of road was met with protests and Copenhagen cancelled the project. Instead, it invested not in transportation but in centrally located housing.

“They built affordable, high-quality housing that could accommodate families and young people started moving back to the city and having their kids in the city,” says Welch. “They converted car parks into playgrounds and, from the 1950s when the city centre population was cut in half, they were able to re-densify the city by luring people back in.”

Setting up cities for the future

One clear lesson from Copenhagen is that making it affordable and attractive for more people to live in the city centre is a good way to make cycling and public transportation more efficient, says Welch.

Investment to make cycling safe and public transportation convenient is also necessary, the researchers say. This means familiar solutions such as more dedicated and separated bike lanes and more funding for public transportation. It also means implementing creative solutions.

Electric bikes, for example, can be a real game changer, reducing barriers such as hills and distance while still enabling people to get enough exercise to improve their health.

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“We’re currently dedicating millions and millions of dollars to slightly reducing the cost of petrol for cars and we’re giving people massive rebates when they buy an electric vehicle,” says Welch. “We could easily carve out just a small fraction of that money and subsidise people to buy e-bikes.”

Measures to discourage driving, such as congestion pricing, which charges people more to drive at peak hours or in central areas, could also help fund climate-friendly infrastructure.

“We really under-price the cost of driving, especially if you factor in the cost of adapting to climate change,” says Welch. “The more we spend now on mitigation, the less we’ll have to spend on adaptation.”

Huge cost savings could result from people driving less – individuals would need to spend less on petrol and could even cut back on the cost of housing if they don’t need a car park. Societally, needing to dedicate less space to car parks would make it easier to build affordable housing. Getting people more active would also reduce healthcare costs.

Increased cycling reduces emissions more than you might think because it’s not just a matter of replacing every kilometre of driving with a kilometre of cycling, says Woodward.

“People who take their kids to school on e-bikes or cycle to work tend to live more local lives. They do fewer long trips.”

Building cities for health and wellbeing

As cities become less car-centric and encourage people to live more locally, there could be big payoffs for people’s health, say the experts.

In addition to cars encouraging sedentary lifestyles, air pollution from vehicles can negatively affect children’s development and learning as well as their lungs. Car crashes also cause significant injury and death – some 350 deaths a year in New Zealand. Plus, there’s a mental health toll.

“Sitting in a car for an hour, surrounded by fumes, stressed and agitated – that’s not conducive to anyone’s health,” says Woodward.

Living more locally improves quality of life, says Welch.

“The more people are out of their cars, the more they understand their city on a local scale. They realise there’s a great local restaurant, they stop at the local market and buy their groceries from people they get to know. It’s not just a more sustainable model – it makes neighbourhoods more attractive and liveable for people.”

“It creates opportunities for flourishing,” says Woodward. “Biking to work or school gives you an adventure to start your day. Walking gives you opportunities for casual social interactions with all manner of people along the way. We know these are important elements of well-being. It’s up to us to build cities and transport systems to bring play, adventure and engagement back into people’s lives."

“Biking to work or school gives you an adventure to start your day. Walking gives you opportunities for casual social interactions with all manner of people along the way. We know these are important elements of well-being. It’s up to us to build cities and transport systems to bring play, adventure and engagement back into people’s lives.”
Professor Alastair Woodward
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