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First stage: Denial

‘this can’t really be happening’

Business as usual – continue to cul-de-sac(k) the city

The first stage of grief is denial. According to Kübler-Ross, denial is a healthy part of dealing with the uncomfortable and painful situation of their impending death. Denial functions as a buffer after unexpected, shocking news, allowing people to go on functioning as if nothing has changed. While they slowly come to terms with the shocking news, they go on with ‘business as usual’. For the patients described by Kübler-Ross, denial allowed them to not face the truth that their way of life was coming to an end, a hard-fact that they were not ready to hear.

Among the over two hundred dying patientswe have interviewed, most reacted to theawareness of a terminal illness at first withthe statement, “No, not me, it cannot betrue.”

One of our patients […] was convincedthat the X-rays were “mixed up”; she askedfor reassurance that her pathology reportcould not possibly be back so soon andthat another patient’s report must havebeen marked with her name. When none ofthis could be confirmed, she quickly askedto leave the hospital, looking for anotherphysician in the vain hope “to get a betterexplanation for my troubles.” This patientwent “shopping around” for many doctors,some of whom gave her reassuring answers,others of whom confirmed the previoussuspicion. Whether confirmed or not, shereacted in the same manner; she asked forexamination and re-examination, partiallyknowing that the original diagnosis wascorrect, but also seeking further evaluationsin the hope that the first conclusion wasindeed an error (Kübler-Ross, 1973).

As we mentioned in the previous chapter, architects, urban designers and associated urban professionals are anguishing over the death of urbanism while also experiencing poignant sorrow over a series of concurrent urban losses including the loss of environmental stability, biodiversity, urban health, social diversity and urban amenity. Many have responded in ways that closely resemble the denial stage de-scribed by Kübler-Ross. The response is ‘this is not happening’, ‘these losses cannot be real’, ‘the diagnosis is incorrect’.

They then proceed with business as usual which involves continuing to facilitate 20^th Century planning procedures of uncontained lateral urban expansion using low density, single-land-use zoning, car-dependent development pushing endlessly into cities’ surrounding agricultural areas. The result of these planning procedures is sometimes called urban sprawl. As architectural historian Spiro Kostof pointed out, in sprawling development, residential areas are surrounded with moats of major roads and barricaded with noise walls with a single-entry road (1991). This form of suburbia is in a way a return to the walled medieval city, where the stone walls are replaced with concrete sound barriers, and the ‘scatterbrained pack donkey’s way’ is reproduced by traffic engineers and town planners with asymmetrically planned streets and cul-de-sacs designed to slow traffic. Unfortunately, unlike the medieval fortress cities, markets and other civic buildings are not to be found within the suburban enclosure due to land-use zoning, a concept that we discuss later in this chapter.

In an ironic and somewhat tragic way, the symptoms of the losses the urban professionals are experiencing are worsened by many of the business as usual procedures they continue to apply in their state of denial. For those in denial, maintaining the current practice of suburban sprawl as though nothing is wrong, is like the patient with terminal lung cancer sitting in their wheelchair out the front of the hospital, just beyond the painted ‘exclusion area’, chain-smoking cigarettes. It is heartbreaking to see.

Climate change denial – denying the loss of environmental stability

To understand the urban design paradigm of denial, and the response of ‘business as usual’ we need to understand the current standard practice of lateral urban growth, and to understand lateral urban growth’s link with the environment, energy use, CO₂ emissions and climate change.

The theory of climate change, which put simply, is that a build-up of greenhouse gases (predominantly CO₂) in the atmosphere traps the sun’s heat, causing the earth’s temperature to rise and altering the climate in different parts of the world. For a popular culture explanation of climate change, see ‘Crimes of the Hot’ Futurama (Avanzino, 2002). One of the major contributors of CO₂ and perhaps one of the apparent symbols of denial is the use of the car. In the US, 33% of CO₂ emissions come from cars and light trucks (US EPA, 2015). Australian sustainability researchers Peter Newman and Jeff Kenworthy have, over the past thirty years, documented evidence that increased density and improved public transport reduces ‘car dependence’, CO₂ emissions, and reliance on oil.

Density reduces transportation energythrough several mechanisms: it shortensdistances for all modes and makes oftransit, bicycling, and walking more viableas alternatives to the car; it also reducesthe number of journeys, since when transitis used, many journeys are combined –forexample, shopping on the way to or from thetrain (P. G. Newman & Kenworthy, 1989).

US cities generate an average of 4,405 kg of CO₂ per person from passenger transport, whereas denser Western European cities generate lower at averaging 1,269 kilograms, and high-income Asian cities considerably lower at 825 kilograms (Kenworthy 2003). According to Mike Batty, Professor of Spatial Analysis and Planning at University College London, one of the critical problems with sprawl is ‘environmental: low-density cities use more energy’ (2003). This is supported by Stern, who states ‘Spatial and strategic planning can affect patterns of energy consumption. Higher-density urban environments, for example, typically consume less energy for transport and in buildings’ (2006).

Despite warnings by scientists such as Professor Peter Newton^‡‡