What do you prefer – living in the economic hub of the city close to work, or driving long distances to work in dense traffic with what you believe to be the trade-off of having, for example, a bigger house on a larger plot, or a quieter, safer neighbourhood?
Or is there more to this question than may at first seem?
Study findings have drawn a direct link between what researchers in the US refer to as ” efficiency” – a measure of the transport costs in a given area – and mortgage foreclosure rates.
Location-efficient communities are simply those in which it is easy to live without a private car – easy to walk, cycle or take public transport to work, the shops, friends and family, school, recreation, hospitals or other places where we need to be. They are what we’d probably call mixed-use, compact, medium-density developments in South Africa.
Looking at data from more than 40 000 mortgages throughout San Francisco, Chicago and Jacksonville in the US, the study, “Location efficiency and mortgage default”, by Jennifer Harry and David Goldstein, shows that factors such as neighbourhood compactness, walkability, access to public transport and rates of vehicle ownership are key to predicting whether a homeowner will default on bond repayments.
“These factors should be taken more seriously by mortgage underwriters, policymakers and real-estate developers,” say Harry and Goldstein.
Able to be less reliant on their cars, people living in walkable, connected neighbourhoods have the flexibility to save money on transport, a household expense that can account for more than 17 percent of American homeowners’ total costs.
In South Africa, at least 60 percent of households don’t have cars on which to be reliant, says Jeremy Cronin, Deputy Minister of Transport. “And while that’s a good thing, it’s also a terrible thing for those who don’t have the car, because it makes them immobile.”
This 60 percent of people travel long distances to earn a wage, sharing transport that is largely unsafe, overcrowded, unreliable, a danger to other road users and expensive.
Far from granting users that flexibility to save money on transport, public transport here requires that up to 40 percent of the income users have earned is spent on taxi, bus or train fare. And they are not returning home to safe, walkable, connected neighbourhoods.
South African cities developed because people wanted to be closer to economic opportunities, other people, food, markets, and an urban lifestyle. Yet with sprawling, low-density, spatially segregated cities such as Cape Town, quite the opposite has occurred – resulting in social exclusion, long commuting distances, high transport costs and poor-quality urban environments.
Higher-density townships in the north have the numbers to make public transport viable, but without the urban quality associated with ” efficiency” and without the quality public transport.
Low-density, more expensive suburbs to the south, where residents have to rely on private cars, have the drawbacks of ” inefficiency” and what economists call “the commuting paradox”.
Most people who choose to travel these long distances do so with the idea that they will accept the burden for something better, be it a house, salary, school, a quieter neighbourhood or more security. They presume that the trade-off is worth the traffic, and console themselves with drive-time talk shows, podcasts or otherwise elusive time to think.
But studies show commuters are, on average, much less satisfied with their lives than non-commuters.
An elective commuter who travels one hour, one way, would have to make 40 percent more than their salary to be as fully satisfied with life as a non-commuter, say economists Bruno S Frey and Alois Stutzer of the University of Zurich’s Institute for Empirical Research in Economics.
People overestimate the value of the things they will get by commuting – more money, more things, more status – and underestimate the benefit of what they are losing: social connections, leisure and health. “Commuting is a stress that does not pay off,” says Stutzer.
If Cape Town is to become a city in which it is easy to access opportunities, it must shrink.
It must break away from its radial pattern that focuses on the central city as the economic hub, and create a strong network of cross-city roads, public transport and walking and cycling routes that connect and link homes, workplaces, shops and social facilities.
We have to respond to the challenge of inefficiency not with debt counselling, more cars, more road fatalities, more freeways or more parking, but with intelligent public transport, non-motorised transport, accessibility and urban redesign.
Urban redesign means more housing choices – smaller homes on smaller plots in more walkable neighbourhoods, closer to economic opportunities. It also means higher densities.
Such neighbourhoods, with a good mix of land-use and interconnectivity, facilitate walking and cycling and sustain public transport. They also cost less to live in, are more energy-efficient, more water-efficient, generate less stormwater run-off and are more resilient and more able to survive system-disrupting disasters.
And while it is true that the built environment is not easy to change, Cape Town’s built environment is far from finished: housing backlogs, development churn, new developments, subdivisions and infrastructure projects mean opportunities for infill and transitions to mixed use.
We need to implement the art of placemaking, with dense communities and thriving public open spaces, vibrant local retail and a real sense of place.
Urban planning has been used to a startlingly effective degree to engineer social injustice. So it is not too much of a stretch to see how quality, safe, affordable, accessible and largely sustainable mass public transport (such as the proposed Integrated Rapid Transit – IRT – system), better walking and bike-commuting facilities, and more public open spaces in vibrant neighbourhoods can lay the foundation for a sounder economy and more sustainable, equitable society.
Cape Argus
