VIEWPOINT

Oil depletion is outlined as a process which needs to be accommodated in the worlds’ cities over the next 40 to 50 years. Due to the timescales in replacing urban structures it is essen- tial to start the process now. The huge variation in petrol use that is found in a global sample of cities, and their diffe- rent transport and land-use patterns provide the basis for policy directions. Examples of successful implementa- tion of such policies and their benefits are given.

The Author is Associate Professor and Director, Institute for Science and Technol- ogy Policy, Murdoch University, Perth, Australia 6150.

‘BP Statistical Review of World Oil, BP, London, 1990. ‘M. King Hubbert, a Shell geologist, pre- dicted in 1956 that US oil production would peak in 1970; his prediction for the world oil peak is either the early 1990s under conservative reserve estimates or around 2000 under optimistic reserve estimates; see M. King Hubbert, ‘Energy resources’, in Resources and Man, Committee on Re- sources and Man, National Academy of Sciences, Freeman, 1965; and P.S. Hall, C.J. Cleveland and R. Kaufman, Energy and Resource Quality: The Ecology of the Economic Process, Wiley, 1986, have ven- fied Hubbert’s approach. %Gee L. Walker and T. Kanak, ‘The reality of world oil production demand and future prices’, Chemical Engineering in Australia, Vol 14, No 4, 1989, pp 69.

170

Cities and oil dependence

Peter Newman

One of the few positive outcomes of

the Gulf War is that we have all once again been reminded of our depend- ence on oil. The invasion of Kuwait plunged the world into its third oil crisis despite the bland assurances of oil companies, who up till 2 August 1990 insisted that there was no prob- lem with supply. Are we seeing the signs of a future where oil dependence must diminish? What are the implica- tions for our cities? Are there any cities addressing this issue’? These are just some of the questions that are raised in our cities by the Gulf War.

Oil depletion

Oil depletion is a problem of time frames. The present price of oil is a response to stockpiles and supply sys- tems that operate in a time frame of one or two years. They were looking pretty healthy until Saddam Hussein upset the oil cartel. But even despite a war the oil system can manage quite well and so prices did not even reach those of the second oil crisis.

The problem is longer term. Oil company statistics show that on present rates of consumption the world has 45 years of oil left and recent experience has led to oil reserves being expanded at about the same rate as consump- tion.’ There are, however, two major problems with this generally rosy picture:

I. The Middle East has 66% of the world’s oil reserves. If OPEC oil were removed the world would have a mere I7 years of oil consumption left. Can we continue to base all cities on the assumption that oil will flow at ever

increasing rates from the Middle East? 2. A geotechnical factor governing oil depletion from all oil fields ensures that we will not suddenly run out of oil. Oil supply will rather increase, peak and then decline in a roughly symmetrical process. This has occur- red in US oil production, which peaked in 1970. and is currently occur- ring in the North Sea, Alaska and Australia. Thus the significant ques- tion for world oil supply is when the peak will occur. Estimates vary but it could be as soon as the 1990~.~ Evi- dence that this is likely is based on the fact that the world’s 37 biggest oil fields have all peaked and that all new discoveries since 1972 have been smal- ler fields.’ Even if these estimates are vastly wrong it is hard to push this out more than another IS years. From that peak point onwards the world must be using less and less oil not more and more.

My conclusion from these two factors, the political vulnerability and the in- creasing physical constraint, is that the next generation must be in a position to use far less oil than we are at present.

Altrrnutives to oil

Despite twenty years of intensive re- search no easy alternative to oil as a replacement liquid transport fuel has been found. Indeed, the research has only confirmed that getting transport fuels from coal or oil shale or plants is a very expensive business. The cost of oil will need to rise to around US$60 a barrel to make any significant differ- cnce.

CITIES August 1991

VIEWPOINT

40ECD, Substitute Fuels for Road Trans- port: A Technology Assessment, OECD, Paris 1990. 5Peter W.G. Newman and Jeffrey R. Ken- worthy, Cities and Automobile Depend- ence: An International Sourcebook, Gow- er, Aldershot, 1989; and Peter W.G. New- man, Jeffrey Ft. Kenworthy and Tom J. Lyons, Transport Energy Conservation Policies for Australian Cities: Reducing Automobile Dependence, Institute for Sci- ence and Technology Policy, Murdoch University, 1990.

We need to see what a magnificent resource oil is and how privileged our generation is in its use. It is like some of the early soils found in the USA and Australia, which produced boun- tifully for a generation and then blew away. The generation living through the period 1960 to 2020 will see SO% of the world’s oil being used up. We must recognize our responsibility to plan for reduced oil use, particularly in our cities.

Oil and cities’ replacement times

The past generation of urban planning has implicitly assumed the availability of cheap oil and has increasingly been building our cities as physical expres- sions of this assumption. If we work on a time frame that suggests we have 40 to 50 years of oil left and that we will need to begin phasing down virtually immediately then we can say we have a replacement time for oil of 40 to 50 years. If we look at our cities we are making planning decisions now that will last well up to and past that dead- line. Cities can change rapidly but the replacement cycle for urban areas is rarely less than 40 to 50 years. Thus, being fairly optimistic with regard to oil supply and to urban processes, we can conclude that the replacement time for our cities is roughly the re- placement time for oil - if we start now. If we want our cities to move viably through this transition period then we are going to have to begin sooner rather than later.

So what can we do?

Oil prices, carbon taxes and cities

The central role of oil in our cities, and hence our economies, means that the price of fuel is highly contentious. To say that the price should be raised in order to benefit our economies is not likely to impress many economists or politicians who are interwined with our present oil dependent system. But that is what is needed if we are to tackle this long-term issue. The price of petrol should be set at the replace- ment value of oil ie around $60 a barrel to encourage the kind of tech- nological, social and economic adjust- ments that we need.

There is much talk of carbon taxes

to make the kind of structural adjust- ments needed to reduce greenhouse gases. This concept overlaps neatly with the oil replacement concept. In- deed, it should not be suprising that as the world begins to enter the phase of the depletion of a major carbon source that it is also entering a phase where

the end product of that source is signi- ficant in the biosphere. Thus it is necessary to have a price which re- flects oil’s depletion and its environ- mental impact, as well as raising the capital necessary for investing in new technology and rebuilding cities to be less oil dependent.

Automobile dependrnce and cities

Rebuilding our cities for lower oil dependence will require us to make cities which are less automobile de- pendent. Most oil is now used in trans- port and most of this is in cities. The automobile era has enabled planners to make cities on the assumption of cheap, easily available car travel and cities have thus tended to disperse and to deconcentrate leading to the sprawl of modern, car based suburbia.

In our detailed studies of 31 global cities’ we found that those cities which had most developed these dispersed suburbs used considerably more petrol than those which had retained a more compact urban form. What suprised us most when we had collected these data was the enormous variation in petrol use between cities. The US and Australian low density car based cities were between two and five times more petrol consuming than compact Euro-

pean cities. Despite variations in the economic function of European cities they tended to be uniformly low in their petrol consumption when com- pared to US and Australian cities, and this still held when adjustments were made for income, petrol price and vehicle efficiency. Many European cities in our sample are doing better economically than US and Australian cities. Asian cities (Tokyo, Hong Kong and Singapore in our sample) are found to be even more extreme than European cities having a further order of magnitude lower petrol con- sumption.

There is therefore considerable

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VIEWPOINT

Source: Peter W.G. Newman and Jeffrey R. Kenworthy, Cities and Automobile Dependence: An lnternafional Sourcebook, Gower, Aldershot, 1989.

6D.M. Nowlan and G. Stewart, ‘The effect of downtown population growth on com- muting trips: some recent Toronto experi- ences’, Journal of American Planning Association, forthcoming, 1991. ‘L.E. Keefer, ‘Joint development at transit stations in the United States’, Transporta- tion, Vol 12, 1985, pp 333-342. *Transportation Research Board, Light Rail Transit: New System Successes at Affordable Prices, TRB, Washington, DC, 1989.

1. Increase land-use intensity: this is the most dominant factor, for without changes here there is little potential for reducing automobile and oil de- pendence. Most cities have recognized the importance of efficient land use and better usage of urban infrastruc- ture and many cities are implementing programmes of redevelopment to in- crease densities. High density, mixed use urban villages built with attractive landscaping and with most urban faci- lities nearby have been very successful in cities like Vancouver (False Creek), Munich (Arabella Park and Zamilla Park), Freiburg (Der Seepark), Stock- holm (Kista), Portland (River Place)

and San Francisco (Mission Bay). 2. More central and subcentral de- velopment: when development occurs in concentrated nodes public transport becomes much more viable; within the

nodes much transport is by walking and biking. The opposite of this is scattered dispersal serviceable only by car. Toronto has substantially re- versed its auto dependence in recent years through the growth of its central city and a series of subcentres all linked by public transport. In each of the centres residential development is a key feature; the 20 000 new housing units built in Toronto’s downtown in the past 13 years are not only making the city more vital and efficient, they are also lowering its oil dependence.6 3. Higher priority to non-automobile modes: Toronto’s growth in centres and subcentres would not have occur- red without a commitment to upgrad- ing and extending its public transport. The provision of a good rail service facilitates the concentration of land use. This process needs to be creative- ly managed and can include joint de- velopment and value capture to share the cost burden.’ Even the Class 1 cities, Los Angeles, Houston and Perth, have recognized this in recent years and made commitments to new rail systems. Each rail trip replaces a multiple of car trips as auto dependen- cy declines, and with electric power as their source cities can begin to tap into the renewable fuels of the future. Many cities invested in the 1980s in new light rail designed to redress the balance in their transport systems.x Their success will depend largely on how well they can build up adjacent land use and continue to invest in other extensions. Cycling and walking

172 CITIES August 1991

Table 1. Categories of automibile dependence for 31 cities based on factor and cluster analysis.

Class 1

Very high automobile dependence, almost no role for public transport, walking or cycling, very high petrol use

Phoenix Houston Denver Detroit Perth Adelaide Los Angeles Brisbane

Class 2

High automobile dependence, minor though significant role for public transport, walking and cycling, high petrol use

Washington Melbourne Boston Chicago San Francisco Sydney

Class 3

Moderate automobile dependence, important role for public transport, walking and cycling, moderate. petrol use

Toronto New York Copenhagen Hamburg Zurich Brussels

Class 4

Low automobile dependence, public transport, walking and cycling equal with cars, low petrol use

Amsterdam Frankfurt West Berlin Vienna London Stockholm

Class 5

Very low automobile dependence, public transport, walking and cycling more important than cars, very low petrol use

Munich Singapore Paris Hong Kong Tokyo

scope for using less oil in future cities, and this need not mean having to suffer economically. Strategies for re- ducing oil use in the past have concen- trated on improving vehicle technol- ogy, though this is a limited gain if city sprawl just builds in greater vehicle use. The focus of attention needs to shift to the structure of our cities.

Features of a Less oil dependent city

Table 1 sets out the categories of automobile dependence we found for our 31 different cities. The factors central to this analysis give us some clues as to how we can move towards less automobile dependence in our cities.

VIEWPOINT facilities can also change the nature of a city and its oil dependence. In Am- sterdam and Copenhagen around 30% of work journeys are by bike. Traffic calming techniques have been em- ployed in many European cities in recent years to give higher priority to non-auto modes; not only does this reduce oil dependence but it has been found to improve economic performance.”

Conclusion

It may seem highly simplistic to sug- gest we should rebuild our cities be- cause of an inferred depletion of oil

‘TEST, Quality Streets - How Traditional over the next 40 to 50 years. However,

Urban Centres Benefit from Traffic Calm- oil has become the most significant

ing, TEST, London, 1989. resource for modern cities and there is

much evidence to suggest the next generation must use considerably less than we are at present. Our vulner- ability is heightened by events like the Gulf War which has highlighted the limited and strategic extent of re- serves. The huge variation in oil use between cities shows that there is a large potential for reducing oil de- pendence, and that urban structure is more important than improving vehi- cle technology. As the reduction in automobile dependence has many economic and environmental benefits there seem to be increasingly cogent reasons why oil use should come high- er on the agenda of those who think about, plan and decide the future of our cities.

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