Conceptualising urban density, energy demand and social practice

Jenny Rinkinen,Mattijs Smits,Elizabeth Shove

doi:10.5334/bc.72

Jenny Rinkinen, Mattijs Smits + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.5334/bc.72

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Abstract

In urban studies and in energy policy there is much debate about the relationship between energy demand and the density of residential areas, measured in units such as those of population/ha or population/km2. A different approach is presented in this paper. Rather than evaluating the relative merits of compact or sprawling urban forms, the focus is on the spatial configuration of the infrastructures, appliances and systems of provision on which city life depends. An interview-based study of households living in the same extremely ‘dense’ neighbourhood in Hanoi, Vietnam, shows how practices of cooling, laundering and cooking (and the energy demands associated with these practices) are shaped by material arrangements that exist within the home and that also stretch far beyond. The conclusion that supply and demand are constituted across multiple spatial scales has practical implications for urban design, and for how the relation between energy demand and density is defined and understood. Practice relevance Energy demand is a consequence of how social practices are distributed and organised across space and time. By contrast, metrics of density can be counter-productive and tend to obscure potentially crucial questions regarding the constitution and the transformation of energy demand. A practical approach is presented to conceptualise relations between material arrangements and energy demands at different scales: from the layout of the home to more extensive infrastructures and systems of provision. The implications of these ideas can influence debates about urban density and design by focusing attention on infrastructures, appliances and the layout of the spaces that influence how they are actually used, and for the practices they accommodate and enable.

Highlights

Measures of urban density do not provide any insight into the ways in which different building layouts and urban designs hardwire aspects of energy demand into daily life, and into the more extended networks of sewerage, gas and electricity that cut across the cityscape (Duan et al 2019)
The present authors are not the first to consider the relation between urban density and social practice
Tonkiss (2014: n.p.) suggests that: the kinds of physical and environmental strategies offered by both advocates and critics of urban density or compactness are at bottom concerned with social practices: they bear on norms of household formation, patterns of living and working, consumption and travel behaviour, and attitudes towards the proximity of others

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Measures of urban density do not provide any insight into the ways in which different building layouts and urban designs hardwire aspects of energy demand into daily life, and into the more extended networks of sewerage, gas and electricity that cut across the cityscape (Duan et al 2019) As a result, they indicate little about how supply and demand connect, or about how the practices of households, consumers and providers are inscribed in the material form of cities, of neighbourhoods and of homes. They depend on a substantially different method of conceptualising the spatial organisation of supply and demand

SOCIAL PRACTICES AND THE SPATIAL ORGANISATION OF ENERGY DEMAND

DENSITY IN DAILY LIFE

DWELLING A

DWELLING B

RECONCEPTUALISING THE SPATIAL ORGANISATION OF ENERGY DEMAND