Abstract: Australian cities are in a time of transition. There are new constraints emerging that mean new kinds of city development patterns are needed. This change includes: (a) awareness of the need for slowing down sprawl and providing alternatives to the car through better transit and better land-use planning, (b) demonstrations of new design options (better cities), and (c) introduction of new planning and management options such as urban consolidation, demand management and integrated strategic network development. All of these are moves towards the compact city. At the same time there is considerable momentum behind the traditional practices and institutions which produce our suburbs and transport patterns. Australians in general are happy with their cities as long as they can have a reasonable house and land package and can afford the multiple car ownership it generally assumes. There are two problems with this situation though: (a) There is increasing difficulty in providing the same kind of house/car package with escalating public and external costs. Unless reformed there will be increasing burden on the public purse or an unfortunate legacy for future generations. (b) There are increasing private costs (as well as the public and external costs) and hence growing inequities. This is not an acceptable future for Australian cities and hence there is a new challenge to provide traditional urban amenity with new urban form approaches. The compact city is thus firmly on the agenda in Australia.

Abstract: research and for planning practice (Owens and Rickaby, 1983). We also reported that urban and regional planners had little incentive to integrate energy considerations into their policies. Since then, the research which we previewed has been completed and reported (Rickaby, 1987, 1991), and popular, official and professional views of the subject have changed. In this paper we review the developments of the past ten years and take stock of the current situation. Perhaps the most marked changes since our previous contribution have been in the nature of popular concern and the focus of professional interest. Ten years ago, concern about environmental issues focused on

Abstract: sustainable cities have been and are likely to be compact cities, we have also concluded that compactness in and of itself is not a definitive indicator of sustainability. As we will try to show, the operative principle guiding the design and governance of sustainable cities is the striving for ecological and social sustainability. By contrast, the dominating element of compact cities is population and spatial density. While the sustainable city treats urban density as an enabling element, its distinctive design feature lies in its c mmitment to the principle of homeostatic balance within the city and between urban habitat and nature. What should become

Abstract: or transformed by new systems of production, notably by high technology manufacturing (see, for example, Castells, 1989), and by business and producer services (see for example, Sassen, 1991; Fainstein, et al, 1992). While of crucial importance, these new spatial forms do not seem to be the most dramatic representations of new urban and regional developments; at least in terms of population and labour force growth. In the United States, for example, centres based on consumption are now growing at the fastest rates. These are either residential

Abstract: Author(s): Handy, Susan L. | Abstract: The question of how particular forms of metropolitan development affect travel patterns has long been of concern to planners but has recently been at the centre of a heated debate. Much of this debate has focused on the effects of suburbanization in particular, with some arguing that the decentralization of housing and jobs reduces overall travel (for example Gordon et al., 1989; 1991) and most others arguing that the low-density development that is associated with decentralization leads to more automobile travel and gasoline consumption (for example Newman and Kenworthy, 1989; 1992). The debate has taken on a very practical form in proposals that address the problem of growing levels of travel, particularly non-work travel, by changing the way in which individual suburbs are designed. The sprawling, low-density suburban development that has proliferated in recent decades in the United States is defined as the problem and a new approach to design is put forth as the solution. This approach is commonly dubbed 'neo-traditional development'.Despite the popularity of the neo-traditional concept, the evidence on how effective these developments will be at reducing non-work travel is limited. This paper begins to remedy this situation, by providing both a framework through which these proposals must be evaluated and evidence from case studies of four communities within the San Francisco Bay Area as to the relationship between alternative forms of suburban development and the travel patterns of suburban residents. The question addressed is whether 'traditional' suburban forms engender less non-work travel than alternative forms, and the answer is ambiguous.