A Future of Polycentric Cities How Urban Life Land Supply Smart Technologies and Sustainable Transport Are Reshaping Cities 1St Ed 2020 Edition Cole Hendrigan Full Chapter

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A Future of
Polycentric Cities
How Urban Life, Land Supply, Smart

Transport Are Reshaping Cities
Cole Hendrigan
A Future of Polycentric Cities
Cole Hendrigan
A Future of
Polycentric Cities
How Urban Life, Land Supply, Smart
Transport Are Reshaping Cities
Cole Hendrigan
SMART Infrastructure Facility
University of Wollongong
Wollongong, NSW, Australia
ISBN 978-981-13-9168-2 ISBN 978-981-13-9169-9 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-9169-9
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Overview
Delightful, clean, equitable, economically diverse and safe cities are the
objective. Yet, despite the promise of walkable, transit-rich compact cit-
ies, there are gaps in knowledge and models. For example, the interac-
tions of local land-use plans with public transportation provision to
transform automobile-dependent metropolitan regions are largely
unknown or opaque to decision makers. The book aims to uncover the
capacity for redevelopment, both possible and necessary, to achieve a
long-ranged transformation from an Automobile-Dependent City to a
Transit-Oriented Region. It will prepare a replicable method based on
available data to more clearly see the pay-offs and trade-offs of policy
levers of sustainable transport and land-use planning. The results show
that depending on the building heights, mixes of land use, transportation
mode capacity and other factors, it is possible to build the next genera-
tions’ requirements of parks, housing, commercial and retail spaces along
high-capacity rail public transit corridors. The results demonstrate that
this may be accomplished while managing road congestion, housing the
expected growth in population, improving social equity and ecological
function and positively underwriting the fiscal position of governments.
The results reveal a method to understand metropolitan growth as a sci-
ence, to better inform the art of human-scaled urban design.
v
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank my academic supervisors, Peter Newman and Jeff

Kenworthy for their immense patience. I am very honoured to have
worked with both at Curtin University.
I am grateful for the generous support of the Curtin University
International Post-Graduate Research Scholarship (CIPRS) funded
through the Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery grants and
the Cooperative Research Centre for Spatial Information (CRCSI) for
their substantial Top-Up Scholarship.
I am pleased to work with Pascal Perez and the University of
Wollongong. The team has pushed me to new frontiers.
Last, my strong-willed wife and our perfect daughter deserve credit as
the reasons for this book. I want to actively promote better cities so they
can live better.
vii
Contents
1 Freedom in Cities 1
2 Smart Cities and Smart Citizens: Are They the Same? 17
3 Global City Shaping 37
4 Research and Results129
5 Analysis and Discussion265
6 Conclusion: The Transit-Oriented Region313
Appendix A: Developer/Amenity Calculator323
Appendix B: Urban Design for Public Transport325
Appendix C: Urban Design for Active Transportation329
ix
x Contents
Appendix D: Ecological Services331
Appendix E: Checklist for Landscape Architects335

Appendix F: U.S. Costs per Yearly Passenger Kilometre
Compared339
Appendix G: Transit Capacities and Urban Form343
Appendix H: Density Styles from Around the World345
Appendix I: Select Cities from the Global Cities Database347
Glossary353
Bibliography359
Abbreviations
BRT Bus Rapid Transit

CO2 Carbon Dioxide
GHG Greenhouse Gas
GLUTI Green Land Use and Transport Integration
LRT Light Rail Transit
LUTI Land Use and Transport Integration
OECD Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development
POS Public Open Space
SOV Single Occupant Vehicle
TOD Transit-Oriented Development
TOR Transit-Oriented Region
VKT Vehicle Kilometres Travelled
xi
List of Figures
Fig. 3.1 Spatial axiom: Open and enclosed urban environments

(Source: Author, 2014. The diagram begins to sort through
the competing ‘preferences’ for urban environments. An ‘Ideal
Density Gradient’ could be drawn through this diagram to
understand local preferences) 62
Fig. 3.2 Preconditions for successful land use and transport integra-
tion (Source: Author, 2104. Adapted from Evidence of Land
Use impacts of Rapid Transit Systems [163]) 96
Fig. 3.3 Canadian automobile dependence 99
Fig. 3.4 A potentially TOD rich city, after Kenworthy 101
Fig. 3.5 A transit-oriented region, author 101
Fig. 4.1 Spectrum of methods (Source: Author, 2014) 137
Fig. 4.2 Decayed urban, Albany Highway 143
Fig. 4.3 Underperforming urban, Canning Highway 144
Fig. 4.4 Deferred urban, Kenwick Station 145
Fig. 4.5 Brownfield urban, Scarborough Beach Road 146
Fig. 4.6 Transport mode capacities 149
Fig. 4.7 Perth as a petri dish for this experiment (Source: Author, 2013) 153
Fig. 4.8 Formula to LUTi policy snapshot 159
Fig. 4.9 A future Perth of a highly connected networked of rail lines
and urban development (Source: Author, 2014) (Color figure
online)165
xiii
xiv List of Figures
Fig. 4.10 GLUTIE model, area (Source: Author, 2014. This is the first
of 13 sheets) 167
Fig. 4.11 GLUTIE model, yields (Source: Author, 2014. Third of 13
sheets)168
Fig. 4.12 GLUTIE model, trips and parking (Source: Author, 2014.
Fifth of 13 sheets) 169
Fig. 4.13 GLUTIE model, VKT and transport costs change (Source:
Author, 2014. Eleventh of 13 sheets) 170
Fig. 4.14 LRT dimensions compared from selected cities (Source:
Author, 2012. International LRT Right-of-ways compared) 173
Fig. 4.15 Right-of-way dimensions and the LRT in the street (Source:
Author, 2012. Potential Rail Right-of-ways in the Perth
region)174
Fig. 4.16 Planned areas of expansion (Source: Author, 2012. Land Use
plans overlay of the Perth Region) 175
Fig. 4.17 Local planning scheme (Source: Author, 2012. From WAPC
files)176
Fig. 4.18 Residential codes (R-Codes) (Source: Author, 2012. From
WAPC files. Darkest areas are most likely to support density
and mixed-use) 177
Fig. 4.19 Current zoning and land optimal rail routes to leverage latent
opportunity179
Fig. 4.20 R-Codes and land optimal rail routes to leverage latent oppor-
tunity180
Fig. 4.21 Developable land across the Perth region near future transport
lines (Color figure online) 195
Fig. 4.22 Mix of land use 196
Fig. 4.23 Land-use yields 196
Fig. 4.24 Numbers of person activity (Color figure online) 197
Fig. 4.25 Trip generation and parking numbers 198
Fig. 4.26 Years of housing supply on all rail and BRT land redevelop-
ment199
Fig. 4.27 Percentage of targeted infill (Directions 2031) achieved 199
Fig. 4.28 Sprawl reduction from a region of transit-served communities 200
Fig. 4.29 Dollar value of infrastructure costs avoided over 50 years 201
Fig. 4.30 Total costs avoided per year 202
Fig. 4.31 Vehicle kilometres travelled change 203
Fig. 4.32 Transportation costs across Perth region 204
Fig. 4.33 Greenhouse gas reduction across Perth from TOD development 205
List of Figures xv
Fig. 4.34 Daily walking rates in km per day 206

Fig. 4.35 Health care and productivity dollars 206
Fig. 4.36 Costs avoided and value captured contrasted with capital
expenses207
Fig. 4.37 Perth from above. Redevelopment pods in white with heavy
rail lines in blue and LRT in green lines (Color figure online) 209
Fig. 4.38 Fremantle from above. Redevelopment pods in white. The
SCL runs along the marinas to the lower right on its way to
Jandakot and High Wycombe (Color figure online) 209
Fig. 4.39 Perth: Ring rail (blue, dashed), LRT (blue, thin), land re-
urbanisation (red) (Color figure online) 210
Fig. 4.40 Perth: Ring rail and LRT (blue) bus and BRT lines (light
green), bus (dark green) (Color figure online) 211
Fig. 4.41 Perth: Ring rail (blue) and priority cycle routes (red) (Color
figure online) 212
Fig. 4.42 Fremantle’s East End, before and after 213
Fig. 4.43 Scarborough Beach Road, before and after (Source for images:
Author, 2013) 213
Fig. 4.44 Victoria Park location 215
Fig. 4.45 Victoria Park: Train 216
Fig. 4.46 Albany Highway—Victoria Park’s shopping street 218
Fig. 4.47 Albany Highway—Perth’s used car lot zone 218
Fig. 4.48 Albany Highway—pedestrian crossings and historic post office 219
Fig. 4.49 Victoria Park: Tower in the park (This is but one more exam-
ple of an isolated residential tower which does not try to fit
into its setting, is surrounded by a very large parking area, has
poor connection to train station, has no shops and no jobs
connected to it) 221
Fig. 4.50 LSP and R-Codes overlay (Source, Author from Western
Australia Government files) 224
Fig. 4.51 Victoria Park in 3D 235
Fig. 4.52 Victoria Park: Mix of land use (at ground) 235
Fig. 4.53 Victoria Park: Volumes of residential, commercial and retail
space: 8 storey maximum 236
Fig. 4.54 Victoria Park: Compendium of units [This chart includes resi-
dential units at 14,724; years of housing supply for the region
(0.9); and a percentage of regional growth accommodated
(3.47%)]236
Fig. 4.55 Victoria Park: Parking rates and space 237
xvi List of Figures
Fig. 4.56 Victoria Park: Trip generation 237

Fig. 4.57 Victoria Park: Carbon saved per person in Victoria Park 238
Fig. 4.58 Victoria Park: Indicative value capture 238
Fig. 4.59 Victoria Park: Total costs avoided 239
Fig. 4.60 Victoria Park: Public services 240
Fig. 4.61 Victoria Park: predicted precinct total VKT 240
Fig. 4.62 Total SCC area and precincts (Source: Hassell Consulting) 246
Fig. 4.63 Total Stirling City Centre (SCC): Area, GLA and site FAR 247
Fig. 4.64 Total SCC: Dwelling size, density and units 248
Fig. 4.65 Total SCC: Jobs 249
Fig. 4.66 Total SCC: Parking 250
Fig. 4.67 Transport scenario yields 251
Fig. 4.68 Total SCC: Per cent developable 252
Fig. 4.69 Total SCC: Composite index score 252
Fig. 4.70 SCC with Southern (blue) and blocks 2G & 2H (red) out-
lined (Color figure online) 254
Fig. 4.71 Southern: Area, GLA and FAR 255
Fig. 4.72 Southern: Yields 256
Fig. 4.73 Southern: Per cent developable 257
Fig. 4.74 Southern: Composite Index 257
Fig. 4.75 2G 2H: Area, GLA, FAR 258
Fig. 4.76 2G 2H: Composite Index Score 260
Fig. 5.1 Perth’s location in south-west Australia 268
Fig. 5.2 Roe’s Swan River Colony survey (Source: ‘Swan River Colony
land grants map’. Licensed under Public domain via
Wikimedia Commons—http://commons.wikimedia.org/
w i k i / Fi l e : Sw a n _ R i ve r _ C o l o n y _ l a n d _ g r a n t s _ m a p.
png#mediaviewer/File:Swan_River_Colony_land_grants_
map.png. Accessed May 2014) 272
Fig. 5.3 Metropolitan regional scheme of Perth and Peel 276
Fig. 5.4 London, above, and Manhattan, below (Source: Author,
2012. For Perth, to provide housing alone, not including
work spaces, for the new ‘infill’ residents to live at a per person
basis of 100 m2 (ref ABS housing sizes) each equals eighty-
four million, six hundred thousand (84,600,000) m2 of sur-
face area. To compare, this is greater than the entire Island of
Manhattan of New York City at approximately 50.5 million
m2, but less than the entire urbanised area of Metropolitan
London, coming in at approximately 138.3 million m2)280
List of Figures xvii
Fig. 5.5 Capital cost to passenger Km in the United States 2013 285
Fig. 5.6 Operating cost to passenger KM—year (Source: Author.
From data by [279]) 285
Fig. 5.7 Costs avoided in the Perth region, expected 293
Fig. 5.8 Nested scales of a transit line (Source: Author, 2014. The first
three nested scales of a TOR) 297
Fig. 5.9 Nested scales: Reasons to invest in high capacity transit for
regional targets (Source: Author 2013) 298
Fig. 5.10 Hierarchy of urban needs (Source: Author. Adapted from ‘A
theory of Human Motivation’ [230] and the Hierarchy of
Human Needs diagram in which ‘Self-actualisation’ is reliant
on a support system of other needs being met and retained.
The best of cities have at least the tertiary level of services and
the very best of those qualities form a Liveable transit-oriented
region)303
Fig. 5.11 Backcasting diagram (Source: Author. The research will
Backcast from the past through to an anticipated future and
back to the present to better articulate the vision for transit-
oriented regions) 307
Fig. A.1 Developer/Amenity curve calculator (Source: Author, 2014) 324
Fig. B.1 Typical street hierarchy based on automobile travel speeds
(Source: Author, 2014. This diagram shows little to no regard
to the pedestrian, cyclist or transit user) 326
Fig. B.2 Best practice for multi-modal transport (Source: Author,
2014. This diagram shows high regard to the pedestrian,
cyclist or transit user as there are speed tables on streets
designed for between 20 and 35 km/h; with protected bicycle
infrastructure for streets over 35 km/h, landscape buffered
and separated bicycle and pedestrian realms for street designs
over 60 km/h. Public transport receives a separated RoW for
street designs over 25 km/h) 327
Fig. C.1 Best practice for active transportation (Source: Author, 2014.
Description of this diagram repeats from Fig. 95) 330
Fig. F.1 US capital cost per km by mode 340
Fig. F.2 US capital cost per passenger km by mode 341
Fig. F.3 US operating cost to total passenger km by mode (year) 342
Fig. G.1 Transit Capacities and Urban Form (Source: Author, 2019) 343
Fig. H.1 Styles of densities compared (Source: Author, 2019) 345
Fig. I.1 Private transport mode share, Metropolitan 347
xviii List of Figures
Fig. I.2 Urban density 348

Fig. I.3 Road metres per person 349
Fig. I.4 Density to road metre 350
Fig. I.5 Road to density ratio 350
Fig. I.6 Density and transit provision 351
Fig. I.7 Transit service ratios 352
List of Tables
Table 1.1 Admitted assumptions of this work 9

Table 3.1 Examples of re-urbanisation 63
Table 3.2 Research concerns related to rail transit benefits 115
Table 4.1 Scope, goals and aims 133
Table 4.2 List of available land types for urban infill 178
Table 4.3 Maximum heights for rail transit serviced urban land
redevelopments182
Table 4.4 Three principal building types used in this book 183
Table 4.5 Land-use mix by development types 184
Table 4.6 Benefits of transit investments 193
Table 4.7 Outcomes of Stirling City Centre literature 244
Table 4.8 Floor area ratio explained 248
Table 5.1 Parking issues and urban form 288
Table 6.1 Core of the book 319
xix
1
Freedom in Cities
Cites develop and change. This book is relevant to almost all developing
cities, except a few in decline or which are leading. This book will be
wide-ranging, as the topic is broad. Often the links between facets of city
life and growth are only alluded to. This book examines closely, numeri-
cally, the many links.
Fundamental to the role of changing cities is space. Cities are places
with a lack of space, or at least, less space than the countryside. This book
is about creating more space in cites for more economic and social life to
occur with lower travel time costs and many enumerated co-benefits.
This book will challenge the current engineering design of cities to
refocus, deliberately, around high-capacity transportation nodes. Such
development patterns will create a connected, semi self-organising [9]
polycentric city, and generate benefits accrued to the city government
and to the residents as the leading actors/citizens. It will also be about the
future of technology and the potential for gathering urban data to pro-
vide more quantity of knowledge on quality city life. Lastly, this book is
about residents having more choice and encouraging an emergence of
elegant options within the complexity of interesting urban life.
© The Author(s) 2020 1

C. Hendrigan, A Future of Polycentric Cities,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-9169-9_1
2 C. Hendrigan
The parts of city life urban planning should and must have a role in are
the public realm, the street, the parks and the city shaping benefits of
mass transit. As such, this book anticipates better living with better health
for more people most of the time.
Density creates amenities, but also amenities attract density. This is particularly
obvious when the amenities are associated with a public transport node. [8]
Urban mobility is the key to housing affordability. Improved urban transport

makes more land available for housing and therefore allows low-income people
to live in areas that are both affordable and accessible to most of the city. [10]
City Air
‘City air makes you free.’1 City life offers higher wages, an opportu-
nity to match skills with needs, to be open to new experiences in the
cosmopolitan setting; it frees you to associate with others and it frees
one to have choice. Though there are many reasons to imagine worse
outcomes, cities of the future will be better. Cities will become increas-
ingly freer as the digital air, the radio waves sending data, serves the
people. They will also become free as cities move further away from
automobile-oriented planning and towards walking and high-capacity
transit. Residents will be able to act upon the most rational choice
they may make, given more options. Walkable access to transit and
shops will increasingly be more important than motor-vehicle mobil-
ity as people choose neighbourhoods richly served with transit, public
services and amenity. City neighbourhoods, and especially those on
high-capacity public transit routes such as trains or bus, need to be
denser with residents, commercial retail, office space and public spaces
for any of the benefits to accrue. Cities will be places for more choice
and innovation combinations of choice to create the lives we wish, so
long as regulation doesn’t confound our innovation or choice making.
1
‘Stadluft macht frei’, a German phrase from the Middle Ages (500 to 1500 CE) denoting that a serf
could gain freedom from their bonds to a prince or lord if they lived in a city for a year and a day.
City air, while still questionable as to its quality, will once again
make us free.
As the world urbanises and persons flock to cities,2 there are patterns
of emergence we can observe or would be observable if current urban
planning rules permitted them. It grows tiresome to read or repeat con-
cerns about sprawl and the problems of automobiles in determining a
type of urban living. This book anticipates filling in the land area of cities
with the types of urban quality we want and deserve, but with the volume
of activity linked directly to the public transit capacity and active trans-
port facilities to serve the growth.
People are attracted to people [11]. In keeping with well-managed
growth, the cities of the future will be filled with people preferring the
company of others thriving in the city’s energy. This is further evidenced
in the heightened awareness or excitement of being somewhere with
activity and action, matched with the pleasure of the same place operat-
ing well and efficiently.
Cities will be the locations of social change, seeking new ways of using
resources while being test beds of innovation. Large-scale nutrient cycling,
product recycling, waste to energy, solar and wind electricity production
will occur near cites, as they will need to manage their wastes better. This
will be data generated. This data will need to be monitored and managed
and will be as important as actual energy and waste production. Likewise,
cities will forever be reliant on the hinterlands to supply water, forests,
soils for food and overall ecological services that they rely on. Managing
this flow of materials can be as much of a datascape as a factual landscape:
The physical and the digital are merging. City air, making people feel
free, will be reliant on a wide flow of resources and managed change. The
freedom of association to innovate is the unwritten goal—both a precur-
sor and an outcome.
But what of closer—in scales, at the level we experience the city, daily
or hourly?
2
Boids; theory tells us that motion—however temporal in an urban setting—can be described as:
(1) Collision Avoidance: avoid collisions with nearby flockmates (or, avoid conflict), (2) Velocity
Matching: attempt to match velocity with nearby flockmates (or, keeping up), (3) Flock Centering:
attempt to stay close to nearby flockmates (or, staying current).
4 C. Hendrigan
Building Blocks
To paraphrase Tolstoy: Excellent blocks of city life are somewhat similar,
but all disappointing blocks are disappointing in their own way.3
Zooming in to focus on the city’s more closely grained multitude of
site and corridors, we see that cities are composed of blocks. Blocks are
composed of streets, buildings, facades, lanes, sidewalks (or footpaths/
pavements), curbs (kerbs), street furniture and street trees. Cites and
blocks are built by people and for people. Everything we see in a city was
a deliberate choice made by someone with real money to satisfy some
short- or long-term objective. This is often forgotten.
The best of urban blocks—those blocks on which people meet, do busi-
ness, trade ideas, attend school, walk, play, remain cool in summer and
attractive in winter—have characteristics we might call ‘comfortable’. They
are well organised, perhaps even self-organised in details, but they offer
many amenities, services, destinations, attraction, jobs, retail turnover,
shade and other such, approximately in proportion to the needs of the
people there. The best of urban blocks do not offer too much space, making
a place seem too open, too business-like or too weighted to one purpose, or
too little of what attract humans. The best urban blocks have, by accident
or by planning, human uses of seating, walking slow or fast, waiting, eat-
ing, and watching each other. A disappointing block has few openings, is
long, has blank walls, few retail options, few facades, favours private mobil-
ity over public access, and there are few opportunities to meet other people.
We tend to avoid these places, except as places to speed past in private cars.
Yet, though we are speaking about cities, this could also describe a
medieval village in France, or a village in the mountains of
British Columbia.
What separates a village and a city, aside from a less personal space, is
the ability to move between one such space and another space with great
efficiency. A city will have mass transit, or mass frequency of transit
forms, so that all people can access other places to carry out more trade,
more visits with more idea exchange, more social life, to contribute and
receive the benefits of all that a city offers.
3
Leo Tolstoy (1878). Anna Kerenina. Moscow.
It is difficult to balance the wants of all people or their needs for eco-
nomic activity. Not all urban places need to be social or business-like;
some places are warehouses; some places are ports or road interchanges;
and occasionally, some are hospitals or schools. These are all important to
the functioning of a city as highways and rail transport people and goods
or care for the aged and vulnerable. What is at question here are the
places that can be more than what they are now, and the need to be more,
to achieve some of the goals set out before many cites. Housing quantity,
housing affordability, lower carbon footprint, increased ecological biodi-
versity, more education, more care of the infirm, more walking and
cycling, and much higher use of mass transit and less personal motor
vehicles are all goals that cities—globally—are trying to achieve.
We all recognise a lively street. Most of the time, we wish to be there,
among the crowd, sensing the fun, energy and delight. Sometimes, streets
can be too lively, with too little room for the people who need to be there
for travel or trade. This is a sign of success and urban vitality, but also one
of stress—with the city not coping. Often, a too lively street may be
described as ‘congested’, and when motor vehicles are the majority of
road users, we use the term ‘congestion’. While congestion may not be
convivial, it does represent two things: (1) economic vitality as the desti-
nations are evidently places people want to be in, and (2) congestion
signifies an opportunity to bring in another set of transportation options
for the masses. In this way, congestion makes cities find time for thinking
and action. In addition to the related local air quality concerns from fossil
fuels, the global atmospheric chemical conditions or the increase in car-
diovascular disease due to inactivity, the need to act on transportation
options can be compelling. Where to start? Start with people.
As Jan Gehl has stated, people attract people. We know we can do bet-
ter to make cities productive, low carbon, healthy and social. They can be
all these. They need not be separated. Though culture-specific and not
uniformly achieved or conceived around the globe, living with less air
pollution with longer and better health and with a rich social life is ‘living
well’. We will do well by ourselves, and our children, to encourage these
choices. Why not, then?
There is a gulf between what we know about cities and what is being
done in cities. Despite all the problems that face us, the future of cities is
6 C. Hendrigan
bright and full of promise. There has never been a time when so many live
so well.4 Yet, there are many who still do not live well, and could live
healthier and wealthier lives, with higher amenity and public services
such as public transport and increased open space. With improved health
and higher living standards flows the positive reduction in inescapable
poverty via increased educational opportunities, leading to more produc-
tive work in safer worksites. As more people prosper, more people will
want the best of life, more social time and more reason to seek out the
best of urban life. This is found as evidence in most world cities as the
healthy and wealthy cluster in enclaves. Yet, we cannot accept that only
the lucky shall have nice lives; we are all contributing and we all ought to
feel the upliftment from infrastructure investments. Better infrastructure,
wages and services are all part of why people are attracted to cites and
why they will continue to attract more people.
Having the desire to use skills and education requires a physical plat-
form of exchange, and this is what a city does. Inside this city, on this
platform, we aspire to make choices. Collectively, we contribute to the
benefit of the city so that the next best ideas may come forward from the
following generation or by newcomers. We all contribute and will con-
tinue to do so. Therefore, it is important to understand what of the Smart
Cities, transit-oriented development (TOD), walkable cities or sustain-
ability is impacting people’s daily lives. There is a gulf between what we
can measure and what we budget for to make the changes the data indi-
cates. This is a problem.
Datascapes
Though we are comparatively data-rich and have new tools for examining
the available data, there is still uncertainty about how best to provide future
urban living conditions at a scale commensurate with the issues facing
global cities. This is so whether in Sydney or Copenhagen. This is especially
4
While, certainly, there are grave disparities in access to education or health, the data provided by
Professor Hans Rosling at Gapminder indicates trends towards longer and better lives worldwide:
https://www.gapminder.org/data/.
the case with reducing car dependence. There is a gap in reflecting what
opportunities are revealed in the data in evaluating the impact of special-
ised transport-oriented precincts in the whole of the metropolitan region.
A second gap appears in recent literature, which may be described as
‘detail-free manifestos’. In these manifestos, the rhetoric is sound, but
there is little application to professional practice or governance structures
because the relevance to daily work is not made clear. For example, it is
important to know the square metres of sidewalk present in a walkable
short block/high intersection urban area with many destinations to
achieve region-wide goals for health or greenhouse gas abatement. Yet,
globally, few cities know such details or are able to make the improve-
ments necessary despite the direction of the policies. The same might be
said for transit use, density or reducing congestion.
Third, and most important for this research, there is a gap in both aca-
demic literature and professional practice between strategic and statutory
planning. Long-range strategic planning is often moderated by statutory
rules and transport engineering standards, which override vision and lead-
ership [12]. Strategic planning must learn from statutory and transport
planning ‘standards’ to reinforce the optimal vision of walkable, transit-
oriented, mixed-use, creative, knowledge-based urban transformations.
This research will fill some of these gaps with a systematic review of
literature and data preparation.
Tasks
The physical tasks grow larger daily. Excess carbon leads to climate change,
which is altering the world’s energy balance [13]. World trade is globalising
and the globe is urbanising [14]. Urbanism happens within the boundaries
of known cities, but also outside their jurisdiction, nested in a broader
region. Regions comprise interlacing topography and ecosystems, rivers
and lakes, transport networks linked to homes and parks, jobs and shops,
intersections and corridors, aspirations and opportunities. Global urban
regions, from small to large, are expected to provide—in no particular
order—jobs with high rates of productivity, well-located housing, right-
sized transportation technologies to suit the task of connecting jobs with
8 C. Hendrigan
homes, and deal with a host of matters such as clean water, fresh air, safe
public environments, restored ecosystems, food production, energy decen-
tralisation and overall lowered carbon footprint [15]. Culturally, cities are
no longer thought of as places to be escaped from as an act of resistance
[16–18]; rather, they bring us together to be more productive and innova-
tive in the company of our peers [19]. The pressing needs of daily life may
suture these gaps, but the wounds keep growing.
A triage-like response is required to keep up with mounting concerns
and also to keep up with the flow of data, studies, articles and manifestos.
The quest to build urban infrastructure to a suitable scale, right-sized
to the task, serving people, over the next 50 years is an enormous chal-
lenge. The challenge will include asking OECD (Organisation for
Economic Cooperation and Development) urban residents to live in
higher density, to walk to high-capacity public transport and to find as
much pleasure in public realm life as in the private realm. There is evi-
dence that this transition is underway [20, 21] worldwide. For govern-
ments this requires shifting investment priorities to re-urbanising the
urban footprint with upgraded infrastructure while incentivising the
housing market to help both reduce—through costs avoided—and con-
tribute, via taxes and rates, to the expenses of providing public services.
All of this is politically fractious. Meanwhile, in the non-OECD coun-
tries, the urban project is ripe with opportunity to improve the lives of
lower- and middle-income groups with better housing, schools, hospitals
and transport options, but with a lower carbon footprint, by implement-
ing current and expected best practices [165].
One widely proposed means to locating and providing these urban
services is via TOD [2, 4, 8, 22–25]. TOD, as a concept, but rarely
achieved, is intended to link new urban developments for housing and
jobs with public transport services in a complementary manner desirable
to most people. It is sometimes touted as a panacea to resolve many or
most of the problems, as listed earlier, facing the global urban regions at
a local level [26–29]. However, there are problems with the implementa-
tion and the potential outcomes.
Provided even a modicum of TOD can be constructed within current
planning constraints, while taking account of public and private financ-
ing mechanisms or public demonstrations against neighbourhood
change, when a certain amount of TOD is finally adequate has yet to be

answered. How much TOD do we need to build to provide sufficient
housing for a stated target of population growth? What mix of land uses
is enough to provide the destination-rich walkable urbanism sought?
Which transport technology enables TODs to happen best? How do we
protect or rehabilitate ecosystems in this process? If we don’t place disin-
centives on automobile use and limit the land supply, will TODs create a
metropolis of opportunity?
The typical objectives—the task being assigned to this concept—of
TOD are, in no particular order: higher density to house a stated percent-
age of population growth, higher jobs/housing balance, lowered Vehicle
Kilometres of Travel (VKT), lowered carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and
improved liveability. How, though, do we know we are achieving sufficient
results to overcome regional automobile dependence [7]? Though single
TOD projects are an admirable start, a piecemeal approach may not be
sufficient to achieve all the goals for urban regions around the world.
The research presented here will seek to answer these questions by pursu-
ing a more complete regional approach to TODs. It will explore the third
gap presented earlier, the one between the promise of TOD in the literature
and TOD in implementation. This research expands the scope of strategic
planning from the limiting and hard-to-achieve TOD to a broader and
integrated transit-oriented region to achieve the goals of a walkable, transit-
oriented, liveable region for a growing population (Table 1.1).
Table 1.1 Admitted assumptions of this work
In the projected scenario of this work, urban land gets redeveloped towards a
higher use due to:
(a) a metro-region-wide effort (policy/zoning) to maximise returns on
infrastructure (especially rail) investments through property; and
(b) the amalgamation of lots into properly sized parcels a developer might be
interested in as the market forces move towards multi-family real estate.
All of this will become necessary in the future owing to a combination of three
causes:
(a) the city grows in population;
(b) highways are found to be an inefficient means of mass transportation
compared to rail; and
(c) people will increasingly prefer, evidenced through real estate purchases,
to walk to destinations in well-designed, amenity-filled, job-rich
environments.
Source: Author (2014).
10 C. Hendrigan
Context
If we have learned one thing from the suburban experiment, it is that you can’t
grow a green economy on bitumen. [30]
This section is not intended to take the place of the literature review, in
Chap. 2, but to place the project within two large camps. In the first
camp is the ‘urban debate’ about cities and the appropriate design for
human and ecological function, and in the second camp is the multi-
decennial ‘ecological discussion’ on large-scale resource use, the biosphere
and the quality of human life lived in a greener manner. These contexts
then lead the research towards the thesis statement and the approach that
promulgates the global, regional and local models for a transit-
oriented region.
Debates on Cities
The current debates regarding urban futures are wide-ranging, and sur-
prisingly, divisive [31–35]. The debates often seek to find an objective
truth about the way in which the individual lives in a community, along
with strong opinions on how they travel to work and play. As such, the
core of debate is about the permissive and restrictive policies that allow
urban growth, and the structure of a person’s lifestyle and livelihood, to
occur in one manner or the other. The debates range from the rate and
location of population growth, new innovative industries in the local
economy, aesthetics of density, the suitable mix of land uses to bring jobs
and homes closer together, the appropriate mode of transport to over-
come automobile dependence, local air quality and global climate change,
the role the landscape setting may have in shaping the urban form, and
many more [30, 35–39].
This book will not solve any one of these or examine them in detail.
Rather, the research offers a macro-model using human-proportioned
measurements to provide a reasonable ‘scale of the operation’ (the urban
systems scale) to achieve the anticipated benefits from compact-city
action (Smart Growth) and other land-use and transport integration
(LUTI) strategies (such as TOD), in regional metropolitan planning. It

will use a series of models to demonstrate options and opportunities for
transit-oriented patterns of living latent in the remnant urban fabrics of
the automobile-dependent OECD countries’ cities.
Framing the discussion is a range of monographs, journal articles,
blogs, presentations, websites, letters, tweets and conversations. Despite
all these resources, there tends to be very little overlap between the dispa-
rate professions concerned with analysing, designing and building our
cities. Due to the division of professional services and academic leanings,
there is a mismatch of talents and objectives in regards to the complexity
of urban potentials: the decision makers don’t design or calculate; the
designers don’t calculate; and the calculators don’t design. For example, at
design schools, no statistical formulas are prepared; in social sciences, it is
only statistical formulas with no design; and in engineering schools, there
are formulas to find rational value but not the value of urban vitality or
biological life. In short, there is a series of gaps between progressive policy
and on-the-ground action, between strategic planning and standards
implementation, which this research will attempt to fill with a transpar-
ent and globally applicable method.
To compound the issue, with rare exceptions [40–42], most academic
literature offers little clear physical design direction based on quantifiable
measurements as a means of reducing car dependence. The lack of profes-
sional overlap and the want of academic specificity lead to misinterpret-
ing the true complexity of the urban situation. Rarely in published
literature are there examples of clear and transparent modelling to dem-
onstrate—from the regional scale to the individual level—the capacity of
land and transport optimisation to create economically beneficial, com-
pact and polycentric, transit-oriented and walkable, mixed-use commu-
nities. While there are often plans that show the physical layout of places
[8, 41, 43–50], the long-term cost of over-engineering infrastructure [51,
52], calculation of carbon emissions [53], calculation of ecological foot-
prints [54], health in the obesogenic built environment [55, 56], analysis
of transit station precincts [23, 57, 58], equations to understand trans-
port networks [59–61], reviews of walkable cities [30, 56, 62–66] and
promises of a Green Economy [67, 68], rarely have these been brought
12 C. Hendrigan
together to form a complete projection of what may be achieved across a

metropolitan region.
This research will prepare a series of methods, presented as models, to
overcome these disconnects.
A New Way to Live in a Green(er) Economy
This research may also be placed in a broader, multi-decade discussion of

high-level strategies to reduce resource intensity while maintaining and
augmenting the quality of all life [69, 70]. While the issues of impacts on
the environment have been spoken of for many decades, and perhaps best
illustrated by the text and diagram in the book Our Ecological Footprint:
Reducing Human Impact on the Earth [54], the broader scale was clearly
identified in the 1986 Bruntland Commission.
the process must be accelerated to reduce per capita consumption and encourage
a shift to non-polluting sources and technologies. … Changing these patterns
for the better will call for new policies in urban development, … housing
design, transportation systems. [71: 62]
While this research does use such foundational sources as a basis, it

moves beyond the generalities of ‘changing … for the better’ to relating
the dimensioned and cost-estimated implications of altering ‘urban
development’ and ‘transport systems’. This research will provide a suite of
options, detailed via modelling and three-dimensional simulations of the
policy settings and physical massing of reduced resource-intensive life-
styles inside the existing urban footprints of global cities.
Another important fuel-saving strategy especially in the growing cities of devel-

oping countries is the organizing of carefully planned public transport sys-
tems. [71: 102]
However, it is no longer simply a question of reducing fuel use to clear

local air and save dollars as per the Bruntland Commission quote. Neither
is it a question of an economy measured in kilowatts of ‘green power’, as
this actually fits under a broader economy of increased consumption.
Neither is it a matter of local food production which, while a net-positive

effort, is not sufficient to alter high consumption lifestyles. Rather, it is a
much deeper and broader question about how we may promote the
opportunity to live a higher quality life with walking to local shops and
patronising public transport over automobile dependence.
The measurable greening of the economy has much more to do with
density and location of residents, distance to jobs, transport options and
adjacency of services [1, 72] than with architectural style, local produce
or electric cars, for example. We must begin to validate the budgets and
space for mass retrofitting of urban environments to support walking and
cycling through amenity-rich places in which the provision of cycle ways,
footpaths and public transport renders the private automobile the least
needed or desirable means of transportation. The Green Economy sup-
ports the restriction of practices such as Greenfield developments, which
remove ecological services and functions in the farms and forests on the
city edge, limiting the outward march of automobile-dependent life-
styles. In so doing, we preserve the productive capacity of the land to
provide natural habitat, food, fresh water and air to the urban dweller,
while the urban dweller maximises their personal potential for creativity
by collectively innovating new opportunities. All of these co-benefits to
be accounted for in a quantifiable measure of hectares, dollars and per-
sons. This gap in enumerating the benefits is the one that lies between
policy and practice, strategy and construction of the urban environment.
One of the best means to achieve these objectives is to plan for com-
plete communities with high enough density to support local shops, jobs
and public transport services commensurate to needs. From the inside,
these precincts will have walkability and public transport planning val-
ues, rather than automobiles, and be arranged so that the public trans-
port service may link these nodes with an efficient accessibility provider
taking people to services, amenities and jobs. All of this has largely been
agreed upon by many of today’s planners and designers for particular
precincts and broad strategies; there is nothing new in stating so, but
there is novelty in showing how to do it and with what quantitative results.
What is missing most of all are the hard quantifiable numbers: dollar
costs to construct public transport modes versus highways, numbers of
persons who may find residences and jobs, hourly throughputs per lane
14 C. Hendrigan
or rail track, health and economic benefits of so living. These are rarely
enumerated. Into this gap the research will present a method by which—
not just the case study of Perth or Australian cities—but global cities of
the OECD and non-OECD countries may come to better understand
their capacity and potential to become transit-oriented regions. Below is
a review of the relevant literature on the topic.
Smart(er) Cities
We could refer to older cities built on walking and talking as ‘analog’, as

opposed to digital. The traditional successful city operates at a frequency
and waves of activity that are predictable and tell a fairly standard story
about city life and living. The analog wavelength is long and strong.
Social interactions and pace of days are actually quite uniform among
most humans, with excess speed often countered with quicker physical
deterioration. Were life mapped as an analog wave, the days, weeks and
years smoothly display sleep hours, work hours and in-between hours of
activity. However, digital waves, of the digital age, are less smooth and
predictable. They are more stepped, squared and angular. Will our life
and way of living in the digital age match the rougher edges of a digital
signal, with packets of data being sent and received? In the Smart Cities,
what will be changed? Will people be without care or comfort? Does the
new means of monitoring, measuring and recording data mean that we
will change as humans? Will we not still always want the hearth and heart
of ‘fire and storytelling’? If monitored, for a better collective city, do we
lose something of the unpredictable that makes life fascinating?
The rise of the digital economy is already here. We live in the future.
We tap on and off the trains with our boarding cards, we top up accounts
and pay bills electronically, we shop for groceries with one-touch pur-
chases on screens, we walk and are measured as a number combined with
all other walkers, we are guided by satellite via our phones, we share
experiences instantly around the world with our friends, and when we
drive, we are noticed and placed in an algorithm to help cars drive closer
to the speed limit. All of these are data points—from the millions of
people doing mundane things every hour of every day. As cities become
larger in geography and population, it becomes more difficult to manage

the flows and needs of people satisfactorily. We can harness these data
points to understand what people want, as expressed by patterns, identify
the outliers as subtle pulses towards changing perceptions and move our
cites towards the common good and current goals.
2
Smart Cities and Smart Citizens: Are
They the Same?
As of 2018, or so, Smart Cities is the current planning theory of the day.
There have been many such ambitions before, attempting to create an
encompassing unified practice to deliver better results with new tech-
nologies. Despite the very fixed character of a city, its slow-to-change
‘personality’, and the revealed preferences of people which are resistant to
change, there are trends in city planning (see Global City Shaping chap-
ter). Though a concept for at least two decades [73], in less than a decade,
it will likely be incorporated under a new model much as Smart Growth,
New Urbanism, Sustainability or Resilience has been subsumed in earlier
decades. Indeed, going back further in time, concepts such as Garden,
City Beautiful, New Town or Radiant cities have all been tried, tested and
informed larger movements. Though each of the trends reached out to
meet a real or perceived need in society, to promote a safer, more secure
or light-filled-with-greenery way of living, each has been found to be not
repeatable on large scales. The reasons for this lack of broad uptake has
little to do with the intuitive intelligence of each proposal and much
more to do with economics. Buildings, land, tools, and processes that are
low cost to develop and low cost to purchase, along with providing high
private amenity, is significantly appreciated in a free market.
© The Author(s) 2020 17

C. Hendrigan, A Future of Polycentric Cities,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-9169-9_2
18 C. Hendrigan
It must be underlined that most of the world cities, where most of the
urban residents live, suffer none and have never suffered these concepts:
many live in tenuous housing with uncertain ownership and with barely
a public service—such as a park—to be found. To call the conceptualisa-
tion of city planning ideals and the debates between ideologues as a First
World problem is an understatement. Yet, even most First World citizens
do not live in a city with a techno-philosophical underpinning. What,
then, will Smart Cities deliver to us as tangible improvements and for
whom? For the elites in elite cities to live better, or for many people any-
where to live better too? What fear is Smart Cites, as a unified concept,
trying to assuage?
The promise of an interconnected city, with streams of useful data—
numbers—on people’s activity to the benefit of the same citizens is prom-
ising. The easiest and already most used is to measure the large objects
scurrying about the largest areas of public space: Not kids on bicycles but
rather cars on public streets. Many cities use a centralised office with a
large dashboard to process the streams of either camera images or sensory
data to understand the flow of motor vehicle traffic and adaptively assign
signal coordination to hold back or release a ‘platoon’ of cars onwards.
The two most widely used are the SCATS (Sydney Coordinated Adaptive
Traffic System) and SCOOT (Split Cycle and Offset Optimization
Technique) [74].
In such a reactive model roads are heavily monitored for groups or
‘platoons’, or waves, of automobiles. Individual autos are of almost no
consequence, drivers even less so. The models behind the monitoring put
more value on the road segments (links) along which large volumes of
vehicles travel along, their average speed and any blockages to the smooth
flowing of autos. Monitoring, tweaking and adjusting the model’s algo-
rithm so the platoons travel smoothly is the goal to overcome traffic con-
gestion through signal light operation. For example, the algorithm, as
adjusted, will hold one set of lights open longer, delay another set of
traffic signals to build up a ‘platoon’, then release these while delaying a
‘side street’ signals to let this newly formed platoon continue.
These are remarkable in their prescience and detailed analysis of motor
vehicle operations with reams of data, but yet, still have little to offer the
city citizens not currently—or would prefer not to be—driving. Despite

the talent that has gone into the design and operation of the models, they
say nothing about how best to invest to provide the greatest societal ben-
efit. It is be widely anticipated that in the near future, walking, cycling
and transit mode networks will be equally valued as car roads. The quali-
ties of city life matter, as most cites are learning. Quantities can be mea-
sured, managed and acted upon, but without the spaces and places for
active enjoyment, the residents will choose to reside elsewhere.
With all that is known of the benefits of walking and exercise [42, 63,
65, 75–77], how smart is a city which is unsafe to walk in? Or, a city in
which trains or buses are unreliable, in which children cannot play in parks
suited to their age or skills, entrenches unaffordability, or which already
does not arrange its priorities around helping the most vulnerable? That
would be more accurately described as a dumb—not smart—city. In short,
a city with improved human flourishing (i.e. skills learned and applied,
affordable and social life and safety) and natural life (ecosystem restoration
and wildlife presence) must be the goal of a Smart City. Further, a Smart
City must enable citizens to do more of what they like (i.e. use parks), do
more of what they don’t know they are doing which is positive (saving
energy), do better what they need to do (recycle waste) and enjoy more of
their life with family and friends. Anything less than that is neither using
the technology well nor benefiting the data generators—the citizens.
What is a Smart City then? There are as many definitions of a Smart
City as there are prognosticators, each looking for a new angle through
biased lenses. Before falling into the same mistake of redefinition, the
most concise definition of what is a Smart City is may be:
Smart city: effective integration of physical, digital and human systems in the
built environment to deliver a sustainable, prosperous and inclusive future for
its citizens.1
To achieve this state, we will need some tools.
1
ISO/IEC 30182:2017 ‘Smart city concept model’ Terms and definitions: 2.14. https://www.iso.
org/obp/ui/#iso:std:iso-iec:30182:ed-1:v1:en. Accessed January 2019.
20 C. Hendrigan
Technology Hard
Some of the following will be a review of the current—2019—technol-
ogy. In a few years this list will be antiquated or prescient, depending on
the uptake and application of these technologies and their apparent use
in the daily life of cities. It is anticipated that much of the hard technol-
ogy will become increasingly ready like consumer retail, with users able
to not only purchase but modify the products opening new innovation
pathways. Undoubtedly, the open-source software trend will increasingly
prepare developers to create new applications and process with
available data.
Online sources have more complete lists than presented below. In
time, this list will grow as more hardware is developed. Most of the tasks
being measured are quite mundane, such as temperature, and even the
more specialised ones have been operating in the aeronautic industry for
decades. Many of these sensors, in themselves, are not new. What is
important is the ability of the sensors to continuously send packets of
data, to ‘speak’ to each other, react to others’ data, send and receive data
all day, every day, and ultimately create an unbiased impression of what
is transpiring in a city.
• Camera technology to take and process (anonymous) images

• Temperature sensor to measure change
• Proximity sensor to note presence
• Accelerometer to note change in speed and direction
• IR Sensor (Infrared Sensor) to measure travel past
• Pressure Sensor for travel over
• Light Sensor for changing light of day
• Ultrasonic Sensor to measure distances and velocity
• Smoke, Gas and Alcohol Sensor for safety
• Touch Sensor to activate an action, such as to call an elevator
• Colour Sensor
• Humidity Sensor
• Tilt Sensor to note change in position
• Flow and Level Sensor for fluids or gas
Many of these already exist in isolation and operate to direct a spe-

cific action in a device. They do not necessarily—out of the factory—
stream the data outwards, make connections with other sensors via
dashboards or create a narrative for a city to respond to. To function as
a Smart City sensor, they need to have several other characteristics.
They need to be widely deployable to gather a large amount of compa-
rable data. They need to be relatively inexpensive or to be able to come
down in cost as developed in volume, to blend in with the surroundings
so as to be either unobtrusive or be a target for vandals, be wirelessly
connected via one of several means (see below), require low amounts of
power on a rechargeable battery (most likely, on solar) as electric con-
nection is not to be taken for granted or complicated due to metering
and connection, able to withstand falls/wind/heat/rain so that mainte-
nance is less of a concern, to be self-identifying and self-reporting if
damaged, self-calibrating or able to accept recalibration of an algo-
rithm, and able to pre-process the data on a small computer on the
sensor before sending small packets of data. A Smart City sensor must
achieve all or most of these to be useful.
Then to send the data we require another set of radio wave tools, such as:
• LoRaWAN and the open source The Things Network (Long Ranged
Wireless Area Network). LoRaWAN is a communication protocol
which can create a network of overlapping signals of about 10 km
radius. Key to its utility is low power consumption.
• SigFox, a competitor to LoRa, which is used in many proprie-
tary devices.
• Narrowband IoT, another type which transmits only in the
200 kHz band.
• 4G (or soon, 5G) technology, deployed by large telecommunication
companies, will be in control of a wide swathe of this data but for a fee
and not ‘open source’.
• UHF/VHF or other preceding radio wave technology may have
increasing utility (these are the waves we use for WiFi), but the band-
widths are often fully used and controlled by protocols.
22 C. Hendrigan
Fax machines, beta max video, cassette music, floppy disk and CD
ROM are all recent examples of technology which couldn’t develop in the
following iterations of improvement. Similarly, there is currently a lack of
standardisation between most of the sensors and the radio wave transmit-
ters which may indicate—and often does in such circumstances—tech-
nological dead-ends. Currently, one series of ‘Smart City’ sensors may
not speak with others via the same means, go out of date and require
entire re-purchasing of equipment to satisfy a new requirement. To over-
come this, there will evolve standardisation. Indeed, this is underway
with the ‘ISO 30182:2017 Smart City Concept Model—Guidance for
establishing a model for data interoperability’ and/or a new 3rd
Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) type standardisation so that just
as with our cell phones, the various sensors, pre-processing chips and
radio wave signals can all operate together no matter the city, data needed
or dashboard software for analysis. This leads to the next aspect of Smart
Cities—the software.
Technology Soft
An array of open source and proprietary software is emerging to process,
analyse and display the data. However, using various computer pro-
gramming languages, such as Python or R, it is possible to create any
format of customised ‘software’ one might conceive of to process any
data. This can lead to highly customised means to demonstrate or pro-
duce yet more information for humans, or the other machines, which
love them. There is much to write about this aspect, but, to note, com-
puter language codes are behind all of it. Writing the code on a com-
puter is what makes all of the software appear visible and useful. So,
whether it is a vector graphics program (Adobe, AutoCAD or a GIS
platform) or a statistical package (excel, R or SPSS) or word processing
(Word, InDesign), it almost is inconsequential: It is all programming
code with an interface. The proliferation of customisable plug-ins is
being created for an ever-widening open-source and evolving suite of
useful platforms by individual actors and not large corporations always
first. Removing the tendency of a product to be monopolised is a revolu-

tion in product evolution. The evolution will ideally mean more possible
ways of accessing and processing data as well as distribution and displays.
Dashboards of Data
It is about synthesising knowledge into a useful package to guide a way
forward with new understanding.
Being able to display the great new correlation between, say, transit
riding uptake and costs to park private vehicles in key locations, or
weather patterns and traffic accidents, is key to being Smart. It is the
synthesis, the narrative, the meaning that is Smart; not just the hard or
soft technology. These ‘dashboards’ of information need to be made
around the needs of the user, not the programmer or to merely facilitate
the data. Though the digital and physical are intersecting, it is the physi-
cal outcomes of improved city service delivery that—literally—count.
The data dashboards need to be intuitive, accessible, customisable and
able to bring comparable data together seamlessly for someone who is not
particularly adept at ‘reading’ screens or data. Having the data—the
numbers—by which to see the impacts of small increments in power sav-
ing or where to guide necessary changes in traffic patterns is of great util-
ity to individuals as to the whole city. This is especially so if it is real-time
data and readily used by citizens to provide a feedback loop of action/
reaction to city staff responsible for fine-tuning the services provided. For
example, many workers leaving work and heading towards the train plat-
forms may lead to a favourable signal timing set to the walking speed of
a wave of pedestrians so that they may walk, mostly unimpeded by the
signals, and thereby clear the intersections consistently at a quicker pace.
Or, there could be real-time data delivery on parking, payments for park-
ing, rubbish bins (garbage cans) needing emptying, potable water pres-
sure, transit capacity and a hundred other such services from
transportation, health, security, education and other.
The great gap in knowledge is still interpretation of the data. What to
do with the information received, digital or paper? Even for the most
24 C. Hendrigan
intelligent among us, there are a series of intellectual thresholds to over-

come, be it for a power (electricity) bill or advice on which park to visit
on a winter day. ‘Should we do this or that?’ There may be statistically
correct responses revealed in a dashboard, but this will still need to over-
come disregard of information, fear of interaction with the data (what if
it says something negative?), emotional responses to the data, political
realities (no one will vote for that!) or fiscal capacity. Unless it is pressing
and directly consequential, such as a train timetable and the possibility of
a long wait on a train platform, we often are unsure about what is being
told to us today as advice for actioning tomorrow.
The ‘story creation’ is what is lacking in most dashboards. There need
to be, at minimum, a few cues to values to weigh options to give the citi-
zens the opportunity to become ‘smarter’ by being a part of the ‘smart
city’. Without some guidance as to what to do with the reams of informa-
tion, the average citizens—as much as the City Managers—will be yet
more uncertain as to causation, correlation and meaning.
Narrative creation sounds like a humanities faculties type concern,
and it is. A degree in English, Sociology, Geography or other will serve
in good stead as the data—the numbers—are rolled around, edges
removed and letters emerge, forming language. Numbers will form
meaning to those who are looking for meaning in numbers, but the
meaning is not without cultural baggage. Recognising that a filtering
of the data being collected and distributed is also a key part of the cul-
tural story being told. Without our stories, humans lack motivation.
Rarely can we focus on a task, or see what we are doing for whom and
how we fit into an arc of interactions without some sort of reasons.
Certainly, some are happy to be quite mechanical in their evaluation of
life as a ‘numbers game’, only being motivated by shedding seconds of
inefficiency, but they will be quite alone. Most people want, need, to
feel they belong and are necessary to the family and community around
them close by. A dashboard can help with this, especially in anony-
mous large cities, but only of well envisaged, conceptualised and dis-
played data. Begin with the user in mind, especially if they are the
generator of the data. This is akin to ‘taxation and representation’ being
linked, but even more directly, and perhaps even more vigorously.
Nowhere is this more directly experienced than in how an individual
plans and acts on their travel each day from their residence to place of
work or study. For this, the data needs to be mapped.
Mapping the Data

In the last decade there has been a great democratisation—if loss in the
old art—of cartography. There has been an increase in the use of vector-
based graphic design from the Adobe Suite, AutoDesk, ESRI GIS, and
lately, many open-source platforms to display the terrain, human action,
outcomes and possible futures.
‘Open source’ refers to a software that is collaboratively developed, in
which the source code is released for others to alter, study and redistribute.
Open source enables a development method for software that harnesses the
power of distributed peer review and transparency of process. The promise of
open source is higher quality, better reliability, greater flexibility, lower cost, and
an end to predatory vendor lock-in. (https://opensource.org/about. Accessed
January 2019)
One such free software used widely is QGIS, or Quantum

Geographical Information System. It was commenced in 2002 by
Gary Sherman and has been maintained, adapted, improved on by
volunteer developers2 since. It has brought together most of the func-
tionality of other GIS programs and other cartography/graphic design
functionality to the benefit of any or all who take a few hours of
instruction from online tutorials, also free. The combination of being
able to bring known data from various providers together with novel
approaches to display new data as gathered (say, bird counts or vehicle
travel patterns with other phenomena) is truly revolutionary. This has
never really been possible before. It calls to mind the promise of the
‘overlay methods’ of McHarg [78] to uncover other correlations, per-
haps unseen or unnoticed before, but that anyone can access the
potential is entirely ‘democratic’. Anyone can do it.
2
QGIS on Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QGIS. Accessed January 2019.
26 C. Hendrigan
Yet, to be truly revolutionary and functional, two things must occur

within this new graphic mapping capability:
1. The mapped data must mean something. The great promise of McHarg
in the overlay method was that it showed what we should not do, but
never really was clear on what we should do. A common critique goes:
We know, scientifically, that flood-prone lands shouldn’t support
houses due to the risk, so where then must we put houses, and does
that answer satisfy transport/schools/fire services or the fickle
market?
2. The data must become richer, more available and more open to query-
ing. As we will see, the maxim of garbage in/garbage out (GIGO) still
is as true today as ever.
Open Data Cities

In God we trust; all others bring data.3
Data is a source of knowledge. But if the data is not complete, or of

high resolution, or inaccurate, with too many holes in the data, or trying
to uncover something it cannot, then we may refer to it as garbage.
Garbage in and garbage out (GIGO) is a prevalent a problem today as
ever. At the beginning of digital mapping, GIGO was a common prob-
lem as all old maps were not yet digitised, information was not known or
not shared, neither correlation nor causation could be established, and
so, the potential power of data mapping was simply under-utilised. The
data was often garbage, or at least inaccurate, and so, the output was
often as misleading—if not more—than perfectly biased subjective intu-
ition. Data quantity may now be higher and the data quality might be
finer than earlier, but if it is not shared or made to be useful or has no
meaning, then it fails to be of utility. It will be long before we can avoid
3
Unknown origin. Attributed to W. Edwards Deming, but certainly, New York City Mayor
Bloomberg said this in 2014.
reification, or what has become a colloquial statement—‘mistaking the

map for the territory’.
The possibility that cities might be able to share data with its citizens,
hopefully not garbage, is relatively new. The reasons this is new is two-
fold. First, cities are gathering data from many sources and aren’t sure
what to do with it. Meanwhile, those among the lay public who are
unconstrained by a fear of doing something wrong on the job, or inter-
agency bitterness, can readily take the data and run experiments to see
what comes of the data. Second, we now have the capability to develop
the data from the increase in hard technology (sensors), software and
human intelligence. Neither of these situations truly existed before.
Previously, the best data available still was crude hand counting or
reported observations by staff (sewer line break) or residents (rubbish
bins are full). The only reliable data were known knowns about capacity
limits and breakdowns. This ‘database’ was maintained within individual
memory as ‘institutional knowledge’, rather than on servers or true data-
bases. While the institutional knowledge must still be regarded as a very
important source to augment the database, we cannot solely rely on it.
We now can make inferences based on data, actions based on data and
policy based on data, whereas previously, we simply did not.
Though we have the quantitative numbers of things, we still often do
have the qualitative characteristics of these same items to know what
gives residents greater satisfaction. Quality of the cities we are building
matters if we want citizens to use, enjoy and love the city they work in.
Some things are taken for granted, such as potable water quality and
quantity, rubbish removal on set schedules and other. But what of the
trade-offs such as dollars to be spent on transport solutions to build what
kind of city? A city made for fast cars is not pleasant with—or with-
out—the cars.
These questions are often left to political actors to resolve through
budgets. A budget represents a distinct willingness to follow through on
a policy or design, up to a hypothetical maximum. Whether the options
analysis was completed, communicated or analysed to uncover what
people value remains unsure. The numbers of users will be modelled,
but rarely are the post-projects evaluations compared for what else
might have been. An example may be billions of dollars allocated to
28 C. Hendrigan
achieve a major new automobile thoroughfare, but what residents truly

wish for is millions spent on hundreds of smaller civic improvements to
parks and streets.
When Mayor Bloomberg asked for data on city streets before commit-
ting to street lane markings to favour pedestrians and cyclists, he asked
for data [79]. But even then, a decade ago in 2008, he was likely not able
to gather the data he could have now. Camera counters have advanced
greatly. Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) Security Cameras are now
able to use the data stream not to find just the criminals, but also to count
the perfectly legal ways all people use the city. Using computer code to
deploy and algorithm to count people, cars and buses, but not an indi-
vidual, safeguards privacy.
This echoes the work accomplished in the 1970s by William H Whyte,
published in the 1980s [80]. He complied an extensive review of how
urban space is used, documented by film and with handwritten notes to
make interpretations about how and why some urban spaces are safe
social places and why others are not. Today, we can do this study any-
where, with reams of data, employ machines which have ‘learned’ to rec-
ognise patterns of activity and reflect an unbiased set of results. Whereas
New York was fortunate due to one William Whyte, who worked for
decades on this topic, we can now have any space in any city equally
evaluated and reported on with a high grade of consistent data. Ideally,
the anonymous data is shared.
Leading the way on this aspect of data sharing for Smart Cities are
Barcelona and Helsinki. Surprisingly, neither Silicon Valley nor Seattle
lead prominently in the application or reveal of data as a part of this
global trend despite being hubs of computer programming and develop-
ment. Helsinki has long prepared census data—numbers—for its citizens
to estimate needs and placements of services. Both these cities unasham-
edly present the data they have. For example, Helsinki has the following
webpage titled Helsinki Open Geographic Data,4 listing all the data
available.
4
Helsinki Open Geographic Data. https://www.hel.fi/helsinki/en/maps-and-transport/city-maps-
and-gis/geographic-information-data/open-geographic-data/. Accessed January 2019.
Barcelona has undertaken a major effort to synthesise the available

data to the benefit of the city operations for the residents. Barcelona has
also developed a ‘transparency agreement’ with its citizens. This reveals
the data they have on volumes, area, amounts and speed by which the
city functions, as created by the citizens.5
Despite the transparency and lists of data, without meaning, a person
will still be led by trained impulse. They will resume their patterns to
shop for lettuce locally, ride a bike to work, check the weather and shop
online for woodworking tools as they would without a city data stream.
Unless the information can demonstrate the price of lettuce versus spin-
ach, the road blocks on the typical route to work delaying her ride, that
the weather will be cold and rainy and that the local retail environment
she enjoys rely on her to purchase the hammer from the store as a part of
maintaining a diverse economy at all scales. This sort of narrative needs
to be communicated, or at least, available for communication daily. It
also must be convenient.
Open data for citizen science, integration of data, and development of
unique applications to better display or even solve some of the city’s
issues. This can be done with measured quantitative data—for example,
counting the number of cyclists—or sensed qualitative data, such as pho-
tos showing the places in the bicycle network which do not feel safe
to cycle on.
The data should belong to the people and serve the people. The aim is
to provide the best information so that individuals may choose among
the best options for themselves, so that collectively, the services of the city
may be distributed appropriately. There will be profit motives to cities as
much as to enterprises in having this data. The data—made by us—is
what is for sale. Effectively, then, we are the product for sale. But not in
bondage or servitude but more that our actions are measured and noted,
reflecting patterns and preferences. We are being enticed to buy more
sandwiches, buy bigger houses, faster cars and to make ourselves happier
through apparent—though often illusory—wish fulfilment.
5
English version of ‘Ajuntament de Barcelona’: https://www.barcelona.cat/en/. Accessed January
2019.
30 C. Hendrigan
One issue with all data—even the best—is that it can become stale. If
not frequently updated, it becomes seen as static, out of date and no lon-
ger relevant. This creates another set of resources—human labour—to
continuously compile and update at great training and salary expenses.
Unless, that is, another facet of the Smart Cities opportunities is
employed—Artificial Intelligence.
achine Learning, Artificial Intelligence

M
and Neural Networks
‘Please sir, I want some more.’ So asked Oliver Twist in Dickens’ epony-
mously titled book. ‘Computer say No’ responds the Artificial Intelligence
machine, which knows precise amounts of food required by children,
based on calories expended by task and child weight, with data it has
been taught.
Artificial Intelligence sounds scary. It possibly could be. We will have
to harness the trained intelligence to be a force of good, with sympathetic
concern for the well-being of the humans who did not train it, but rely
on it. Artificial intelligence, or AI, is changing rapidly as Machine
Learning (ML) processes are already becoming commonplace, especially
on social media platforms.
A recent British Broadcasting Corporation online article6 lists how AI
is already changing our lives as:
• Banks detecting fraud

• Insurance companies to generate quotes and to assess claims
• Helping police interpret grainy security camera footage
• Helping doctors to spot disease
• Aiding the navigation of self-driving cars
• Helping to decipher lost languages
• Human Resources candidate screening
• Flight control of commercial airplanes
6
BBC, ‘Why Artificial Intelligence is changing our world’. http://www.bbc.com/future/
story/20181116-why-artificial-intelligence-is-shaping-our-world. Accessed January 2019.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
1. GOOD King Wenceslas looked out
On the Feast of Stephen,
When the snow lay round about,
Deep and crisp and even.
Brightly shone the moon that night,
Though the frost was cruel,
When a poor man came in sight,
Gathering winter fuel.
2. “Hither, page, and stand by me

If thou know’st it, telling,
Yonder peasant, who is he?
Where and what his dwelling?”
“Sire, he lives a good league hence
Underneath the mountain;
Right against the forest fence,
By St. Agnes’ fountain.”
3. “Bring me flesh, and bring me wine,

Bring me pine-logs hither;
Thou and I will see him dine,
When we bear them thither.”
Page and monarch forth they went,
Forth they went together
Through the rude wind’s wild lament
And the bitter weather.
4. “Sire! the night is darker now,

And the wind blows stronger;
Fails my heart, I know not how,
I can go no longer.”
“Mark my footsteps, good my page;
Tread thou in them boldly;
Thou shalt find the winter’s rage
Freeze thy blood less coldly.”
5. In his master’s steps he trod

Where the snow lay dinted;
Heat was in the very sod
Which the saint had printed.
Therefore Christian men, be sure,
Wealth or rank possessing,
Ye who now will bless the poor
Shall yourselves find blessing.
[Listen] [MusicXML]
As Joseph was a-walking
[Listen] [MusicXML]
1. As Joseph was a-walking

He heard an angel sing,
“This night shall be the birthtime
Of Christ, the Heavenly King.
2. “He neither shall be born

In housen nor in hall.
Nor in the place of Paradise,
But in an ox’s stall.
3. “He neither shall be clothed

In purple nor in pall,
But in the fair white linen
That usen babies all.
4. “He neither shall be rocked

In silver nor in gold,
But in a wooden manger
That resteth on the mould.”
5. As Joseph was a-walking,

There did an angel sing;
And Mary’s child at midnight
Was born to be our King.
6. Then be ye glad, good people,

This night of all the year,
And light ye up your candles,
For His star it shineth clear.
Christmas Day in the Morning
[Listen] [MusicXML]
1. I saw three ships come sailing in,

On Christmas Day, on Christmas Day;
I saw three ships come sailing in,
On Christmas Day in the morning.
2. And what was in those ships all three

And what was in those ships all three
On Christmas Day in the morning?
3. Our Saviour Christ and His lady

Our Saviour Christ and His lady
4. Pray whither sailed those ships all three

Pray whither sailed those ships all three
On Christmas Day in the morning?
5. O they sailed into Bethlehem

O they sailed into Bethlehem
6. And all the bells on earth shall ring

And all the bells on earth shall ring
7. And all the angels in Heaven shall sing

And all the angels in Heaven shall sing
8. And all the souls on earth shall sing

And all the souls on earth shall sing
9. Then let us all rejoice amain

Then let us all rejoice amain
God rest you merry, Gentlemen!
1. GOD rest you merry, Gentlemen!
Let nothing you dismay;
Remember Christ our Saviour
Was born upon this day,
To save us all from Satan’s power
When we were gone astray.
O tidings of comfort and joy,
O tidings of comfort and joy.
2. In Bethlehem in Jury
This blessèd Babe was born,
And laid within a manger
Upon this blessèd morn:
The which His Mother Mary
Nothing did take in scorn.
3. From God, our Heavenly Father,

A blessèd angel came,
And unto certain shepherds
Brought tidings of the same,
How that in Bethlehem was born
The Son of God by name.
4. “Fear not,” then said the angel,

“Let nothing you affright:
This day is born a Saviour
Of virtue, power, and might;
So frequently to vanquish all
The friends of Satan quite.”
5. The shepherds at those tidings

Rejoiced much in mind,
And left their flocks a-feeding
In tempest, storm, and wind,
And went to Bethlehem straightway
This blessèd Babe to find.
6. But when to Bethlehem they came,

Where this dear Infant lay,
They found Him in a manger
Where oxen feed on hay;
His mother Mary, kneeling,
Unto the Lord did pray.
7. Now to the Lord sing praises,

All you within this place,
And with true love and brotherhood
Each other now embrace;
This holy-tide of Christmas
All others doth efface.
[Listen] [MusicXML]
The Holy Well
1. A S it fell out one May morning,
On a bright holiday,
Sweet Jesus ask’d His mother dear,
If He might go to play.
“To play, to play, sweet Jesus go.
And to play now get you gone,
And let me hear of no complaints,
At night when you come home.”
2. Sweet Jesus went down to yonder town,

As far as the Holy Well,
And there did see as fine children
As any tongue can tell.
He said, “God bless you ev’ry one,
May Christ your portion be:
Little children, shall I play with you?
And you shall play with Me.”
3. But they made answer to Him, “No,”

They were lords’ and ladies’ sons;
And He the meanest of them all,
Was born in an ox’s stall.
Sweet Jesus turned Him around,
And He neither laugh’d nor smil’d,
But the tears came trickling from His eyes
Like water from the skies.
4. Sweet Jesus turned Him about,

To His mother’s dear home went He,
And said “I’ve been in yonder town,
As after you may see.
I’ve been in yonder town,
As far as the Holy Well;
There did I meet as fine children
As any tongue can tell.
5. I bid God bless them ev’ry one,

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A Future of Polycentric Cities How Urban Life Land Supply Smart Technologies and Sustainable Transport Are Reshaping Cities 1St Ed 2020 Edition Cole Hendrigan Full Chapter

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Copyright:

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A Future of Polycentric Cities: How

Urban Life, Land Supply, Smart

How Urban Life, Land Supply, Smart

ISBN 978-981-13-9168-2 ISBN 978-981-13-9169-9 (eBook)

Cover illustration: © Alex Linch/shutterstock.com

I would like to thank my academic supervisors, Peter Newman and Jeff

2 Smart Cities and Smart Citizens: Are They the Same? 17

3 Global City Shaping 37

4 Research and Results129

5 Analysis and Discussion265

6 Conclusion: The Transit-Oriented Region313

Appendix A: Developer/Amenity Calculator323

Appendix B: Urban Design for Public Transport325

Appendix C: Urban Design for Active Transportation329

Appendix D: Ecological Services331

Appendix E: Checklist for Landscape Architects335

Appendix G: Transit Capacities and Urban Form343

Appendix H: Density Styles from Around the World345

Appendix I: Select Cities from the Global Cities Database347

BRT Bus Rapid Transit

Fig. 3.1 Spatial axiom: Open and enclosed urban environments

Fig. 4.34 Daily walking rates in km per day 206

Fig. 4.56 Victoria Park: Trip generation 237

Fig. I.2 Urban density 348

Table 1.1 Admitted assumptions of this work 9

© The Author(s) 2020 1

Urban mobility is the key to housing affordability. Improved urban transport

change, when a certain amount of TOD is finally adequate has yet to be

(LUTI) strategies (such as TOD), in regional metropolitan planning. It

together to form a complete projection of what may be achieved across a

A New Way to Live in a Green(er) Economy

This research may also be placed in a broader, multi-decade discussion of

While this research does use such foundational sources as a basis, it

Another important fuel-saving strategy especially in the growing cities of devel-

However, it is no longer simply a question of reducing fuel use to clear

Neither is it a matter of local food production which, while a net-positive

We could refer to older cities built on walking and talking as ‘analog’, as

larger in geography and population, it becomes more difficult to manage

© The Author(s) 2020 17

city citizens not currently—or would prefer not to be—driving. Despite

To achieve this state, we will need some tools.

• Camera technology to take and process (anonymous) images

Many of these already exist in isolation and operate to direct a spe-

first. Removing the tendency of a product to be monopolised is a revolu-

intelligent among us, there are a series of intellectual thresholds to over-

Mapping the Data

One such free software used widely is QGIS, or Quantum

Yet, to be truly revolutionary and functional, two things must occur

Open Data Cities

Data is a source of knowledge. But if the data is not complete, or of

reification, or what has become a colloquial statement—‘mistaking the

achieve a major new automobile thoroughfare, but what residents truly

Barcelona has undertaken a major effort to synthesise the available

 achine Learning, Artificial Intelligence

• Banks detecting fraud

2. “Hither, page, and stand by me

3. “Bring me flesh, and bring me wine,

4. “Sire! the night is darker now,

5. In his master’s steps he trod

1. As Joseph was a-walking

2. “He neither shall be born

3. “He neither shall be clothed

4. “He neither shall be rocked

2 Smart Cities and Smart Citizens: Are They the Same? 17

3 Global City Shaping 37

4 Research and Results129

5 Analysis and Discussion265

6 Conclusion: The Transit-Oriented Region313

Appendix A: Developer/Amenity Calculator323

Appendix B: Urban Design for Public Transport325

Appendix C: Urban Design for Active Transportation329

Appendix D: Ecological Services331

Appendix E: Checklist for Landscape Architects335

Appendix G: Transit Capacities and Urban Form343

Appendix H: Density Styles from Around the World345

Appendix I: Select Cities from the Global Cities Database347

Fig. 4.34 Daily walking rates in km per day 206

Fig. 4.56 Victoria Park: Trip generation 237

Fig. I.2 Urban density 348

Table 1.1 Admitted assumptions of this work 9

A New Way to Live in a Green(er) Economy

Mapping the Data

Open Data Cities

achine Learning, Artificial Intelligence