The Sustainability of Urban Form: Empirical Evidence and Political Trade-Offs

In line with the perennial aim to combat urban sprawl, the compact city is lauded by planners as a means to achieve sustainability, even though clear drawbacks exist. To investigate this tension, we drew up a framework to assess the sustainability of urban form. Applying this to the North American and European literature, we found inherent trade-offs between, but also within, sustainability dimensions, which signal limits to technical optimization. This finding has implications for planning practice as well as the ongoing debate on urban sprawl and sustainable urban development. Our model can also be applied to help assess the sustainability of urban development alternatives.