“THE BIG CHALLENGE IS TO DESIGN A PLAN WITH THE RESOURCES NECESSARY TO PROVIDE FOR AN INCREASING POPULATION – ONE THAT IS GOING TO GROW EXPONENTIALLY IN THE NEXT 10 YEARS”
And that’s the key point: sustainable development has at
its centre the idea that what works now – the rail network can carry the desired number of passengers, say – may not work in ten years’ time. Flexibility of design therefore becomes just as important as keeping costs under control. In White’s view, the vibrancy of a transitional city can be both a blessing – no successful city can continue to thrive without attracting new migrants – and a curse. “The big challenge is to design a plan with the resources necessary to provide for an increasing population – one that is going to grow exponentially in the next 10 years.” The twin issues of housing and transport pose the most complex challenges. Providing sustainable housing is one thing, but it is complicated by the demographic changes that most developing countries are experiencing. Increased economic activity inevitably leads to a growth in the professional class. “The key with transitional cites that act as honeypots is dealing with the housing issue,” says White. Given the predominance of rural-to-urban migration (in some cases caused by civil war or unemployment), people have flocked from other parts of the country and from the countryside into cities. As a result, a large proportion of those people are housed in poor conditions often in suburbs with little transport or sanitation to serve their needs. “What we really have to do is to produce a plan for
the future development of the city,” says White. That plan begins to take shape during the “optioneering” phase, where a number of scenarios are explored. “We have a workshop while we’re doing that, and we get stakeholders to help formulate those options. Then we evaluate and develop a range of criteria in terms of the environmental impact, transport benefits, socio-economic effects, financial side-effects and so on,” White explains. This is refined so that a plan emerges which has a fair
measure of support from the various stakeholders. Take housing, for example: in previous years, the approach to tackling widespread slums would be to demolish them. A look at how some urban development has proceeded in some parts of China would give an illustration of the temptation to do that. But that is only a short-term solution. What happens in 10 years when more slums have grown in their place? White believes that a more sustainable and integrated approach must be taken. “The plan presents a combination of keeping the existing slums in situ but upgrading them, with some demolition and redevelopment where we thought it was necessary to, for instance, put in new transport routes,” White says.
“What we were trying to do was to strike a balance between maintaining communities and the necessary modernisation that the city needs to undergo,” he adds.
Setting an example
The Middle East, and the UAE in particular, is leading the way with many cutting-edge economic and urban advances. Suhar in Oman is a compelling example of how sympathetic development planning can produce robust solutions that last. Previously the ancient capital of the sultanate, Suhar sits some 200km north of Muscat. As a coastal city it offered developers the chance to build on existing transport links and, in common with other Atkins sustainable development projects, the plan was based on extensive consultation with community representatives. Suhar is primarily a trading city, a port with historic links and significant opportunity to expand. Any plan to develop it would need to take this into account. The main drivers would be the development of downstream industries linked to the port, as well as forthcoming infrastructure such as
Suhar, Oman: a sympathetic and sustainable approach to planning for population growth.
the Gulf Cooperation Council railway linking the major UAE hubs, which is under construction.
For Atkins, the key challenge of Suhar has to be
preserving its appeal to the population as a place to live while allowing as much room for the port and the associated industries to flourish. So far the signs are positive: trade volumes continue to grow at the port while a few blocks to the north the foundation stone for the city’s new university has been laid. Suhar’s sustainable approach to growth – putting flexible transport and industrial development at its heart – is mirrored elsewhere in the Middle East. Bahrain, for example, has recently kicked off its national planning and development strategy, which will see the kingdom build 180,000 housing units in the next 20 years to cope with the kingdom’s projected population growth. It’s a clear indication that authorities in the region are aware that sustainable, flexible development strategies are needed to harness and capitalise on growth – and planners are waking up to the need to plan for 2050 and beyond.
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