The Compactness of Non-Compacted Urban Developments: A Critical Review on Sustainable Approaches to Automobility and Urban Sprawl

Abstract

This paper challenges the fact that the absolute freedom for residents to locate themselves wherever they want can lead to sustainable cities. Urban sprawl is the corollary to this freedom. Urban sprawl has become a controversial issue. Lines of thought among academics, practitioners, and local authorities have been diverse. Some academics advocate the compact city as an antidote to urban sprawl, some scholars doubt the ability of conventional notions of containments to create sustainability, and others are fascinated by urban technologies and believe in the feasibility of these technologies, whereas local authorities impose policies, one after the other, without effective results. The problematic point is the absence of a comprehensive approach to undermining the urban sprawl sustainably. On the other hand, the physical urban compactness alone cannot meet containment aims. The study therefore study poses a question: Is there a theory or policy that can accommodate all of these ideas? This study attempts to find a sustainable compromise through a critical review of the impact of auto-mobility on urban affairs and to solve the dialectical contradictions between the protagonists of compactness and their counterparts who advocate urban sprawl. The review ends with a comparison between urban initiatives and theories related to auto-mobilities, and highlights the approaches to sustainable urbanism. The conclusion is that all classic planning theories have neglected the sociocultural impact on the urban realm, and that the current initiatives and mutual debates consider the resident just as a physical object who cannot contribute effectively to sustainable urban syntax. The study concludes that urban sprawl can also be a compacted zone if authorities ensure the equity of loci-services. Then, the preference for housing locations will not be a challenge to urban residents’ movements to settle closer to their work. In the end, the inhabitants will share in making an integrated and real urban containment.