One Earth

Commentary

Urban Land Use:

Central to Building a Sustainable Future
Karen C. Seto1,* and Bhartendu Pandey1
1School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06511, USA

*Correspondence: karen.seto@yale.edu
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.oneear.2019.10.002

Urban land use has impacts spread across time and place. How urban areas are built and configured in the
coming decades will have long-term implications on the environment and the lives of billions of people. A sys-
tems approach that emphasizes the importance of science and the relevance of policy to understanding ur-
ban land use is vital to building a sustainable future.

Walking around our cities, we see only the
immediate surroundings: houses, com-
mercial buildings, streets, sidewalks, and
parks. The direct effects of urban land
use—such as our interaction with our
neighbors, our commuting or shopping
behavior, or our experiences with road
traffic—are immediately observable in
time and place. It would be easy to think
that the impacts of our cities are immedi-
ately experienced and end where the city
boundaries end. However, how cities are
built, such as their internal structure, lay-
outs, and the relative location of where we
live and work, has impacts on the environ-
ment and society well beyond city bound-
aries and can extend far in the future.
Between now and 2050, the world’s ur-
ban population will grow by about 2.5
billion, an addition of about 200,000 peo-
ple a day.1 It will take a lot of resources to
accommodate and serve this growing
urban population. The land requirements
alone are significant: urban areas are
expanding by 20,000 American football
fields daily.2 The kinds of cities, towns,
and municipalities that ultimately emerge
over the coming decades will be critical
to both local and global environments
and the quality of life for billions of peo-
ple. Once in place, basic urban structures
and patterns are not easily reversed;
what happens in the next several de-
cades will shape the social and physical
environment for generations to come.
Sound management of urbanization—
forward-looking urban growth strategies
informed by evidence and science—is
therefore of vital importance for the future
and central to protecting the world’s eco-
systems, fertile agricultural lands, and
biodiversity and to minimizing green-
house gas emissions.
Designing, constructing, and operating
cities requires massive amounts of hu-
man, natural, and financial resources.
Recent estimates suggest that worldwide
infrastructure needs will be $94 trillion be-
tween 2016 and 2040, $28 trillion of which
will be needed for China alone.3 If we are
to truly build sustainable urban futures,
then much, if not all, of future urbaniza-
tion, densification, expansion, urban revi-
talization, and all manifestations of the
built environment will need to be low car-
bon, energy efficient, and of healthier
design. Sustainable urban futures will
also require knowledge of how ecological
sustainability can further social equity and
cultural vitality.
Over 80% of future urbanization be-
tween now and 2050 is expected to occur
in Asia and Africa, with an average in-
crease of over 5 million people every
month.1 In Africa and South Asia, planning
institutions are limited, and as a result, the
capacity to shape urbanization trajectories
is also low, and much urbanization occurs
informally. For instance, expansion of
slums and increased urban poverty under-
mine the potential of urbanization as a
mechanism to foster economic develop-
ment and human well-being. Thus, there
is an urgent need to develop scalable solu-
tions that are based on sound evidence,
good design, the best science, and inno-
vative critical thinking about equity, culture
and society, and the environment—not
just for a few cities but for all cities, towns,
and regions worldwide.
Growing evidence from multiple disci-
plines shows that urban land use, form,
and structure are central to achieving
desirable sustainability outcomes.4 Pat-
terns of human movement and demand
for raw materials are shaped by urban ge-
ometries and the configuration of spaces
and transit corridors.5,6 Urban design can
foster—or prevent—accessibility, which
can reduce carbon footprints and build
social cohesion, walkability, which can
reduce chronic disease risks, and green
spaces that improve mental health and
reduce the urban-heat-island effect. For
some time now, we have had sufficient
knowledge to create general principles
for developing livable and vibrant commu-
nities: save land for nature directly and
indirectly, minimize non-local and unob-
servable consequences, understand that
the reach of urbanization is global, and
build for individuals and communities.7
Concepts such as accessibility, walkabil-
ity, connectivity, and a sense of place are
easy to support. But in order to implement
these principles, we will need to fill at least
three gaps in knowledge and policy.
The first gap is our knowledge about the
impacts of urban land use on other systems
and their combined sustainability out-
comes (Figure 1). We are accustomed to
thinking about urban impacts as local and
immediate; these are the effects we see
or experience. However, there are other ef-
fects that spread across time and place.
Take, for example, the materials that are
used for constructing and operating cities.
These materials often originate far from
the urban region, and their extraction can
affect communities and the environment
over long distances, such as in the Brazilian
Amazon, where trees are harvested for
timber, or Broken Hill, Australia, home to
one of the largest zinc-lead mines in the
world, where ore is extracted and used
for construction and manufacturing. These
urban land teleconnections can have
significant impacts on hinterlands.8
Similarly, single-use, low-density urban

168 One Earth 1, October 25, 2019 ª2019 Elsevier Inc.

One Earth
Commentary
Figure 1. Impacts of Urban Land Use across Time and Place
Points show where and when hypothesized impacts of urban land use occur, including large uncertainties
in both time (x axis) and place (y axis).
development has been shown to be corre-
lated with cardiovascular disease, hyper-
tension, and stroke.9 A sedentary lifestyle
is correlated with certain types of urban
land use, yet these effects are not immedi-
ately apparent and often unfold over longer
timescales.
Increasing density and urban land-use
mix can reduce some of the impacts out-
lined above but can lead to greater
congestion and higher risk of communi-
cable diseases. It implies that there are
tradeoffs and synergies between effects
on other systems, as well as between
their manifestation across time and
place, all emerging from urban land use.
We would like to have win-win strategies
for sustainability, but sometimes there
will be winners and losers spread across
systems, as well as tradeoffs in different
sustainability dimensions.10
The second knowledge gap is our lack
of understanding of how urban form and
structure shape sustainability outcomes
(Figure 2). General guidelines such as
building compact and high-density urban
areas are insufficient to know how to build.
Although there is a general consensus that
higher densities of co-located activities are
necessary for certain desired outcomes
(e.g., lower transport emissions), research
shows that the same urban density could
be manifested in many different ways.
Thus, density alone is insufficient for
achieving sustainability outcomes.11 One
way forward is to develop ‘‘blueprints’’ of
urban land use and lots of them for
different types of cities, neighborhoods,
and urbanization trajectories. In order to
understand these blueprints and their sus-
tainability implications, we need consis-
tent taxonomy and nomenclature to
describe the function and structure of
urban landscapes and to understand their
relation to other systems and sustainabil-
ity. A key requirement for research is to
move away from a language that is context
specific and to acknowledge the multi-
scalar manifestations of urban land use
(i.e., across individual sites, neighbor-
hoods, blocks, urban areas, and regions).
Urban land use is multi-dimensional and
complex, and different fields use different
nomenclature to describe and quantify it.
Here, we deconstruct urban land use into
seven different dimensions that encapsu-
late ideas of materiality, configuration,
inter-relational attributes, and use of
time4,12 (Figure 2). A single blueprint could
be produced from measuring each of these
dimensions at the neighborhood or city
level. Using several blueprints, scientific
investigations can inform how these multi-
dimensional and multi-scalar manifesta-
tions of urban land use lead to tradeoffs
and synergies with respect to other
systems and sustainability outcomes. A
key question that remains unanswered
is, which characteristic dimensions and
scales of urban land use are more linked
with the tradeoffs and synergies than
others?
Third, countries need national and sub-
national strategies for sustainable urban
futures. Urban areas are under the purview
of local and regional urban and land-use
planning. However, the consequences of
urban land use are beyond local and often
out of sight or take longer to manifest. The
good news is that in 2016, UN member
states adopted the New Urban Agenda
(NUA), of which a key principle is to pro-
mote sustainable use of land and re-
sources and protect ecosystems and
biodiversity.13 The bad news? A UN report
has found that 18 months after the adop-
tion of the NUA, unsustainable models
of urbanization persist and that some
urban challenges have intensified.14 These
include growing inequality, continued
informal and unplanned growth, and a
persistent lack of basic services, such as
clean water and energy.
Most countries still don’t have a national
strategy for urbanization, which raises a
number of issues: how can we prioritize
which agricultural lands, wild lands, and
pastures should be saved for nature?
How should land, one of the most precious
and finite resources, be managed? Should
new urban populations be accommodated
into existing or new urban areas? And, if
new urban areas need to be constructed,
where and how should they be designed
and built? How can we preserve biodiver-
sity and not fragment habitats while
designing and constructing towns and cit-
ies from scratch?
When countries lack an explicit national
urban policy, other priorities become de
facto urban policies, often with unintended
consequences. For instance, policies sur-
rounding the US National Highway System
One Earth 1, October 25, 2019 169

Variability in and between different aspects of urban land use
Density
Layout
Land use mix
Connectivity
Accessibility
3D structure
3D use mix
Complexity or Variability
Figure 2. Unpacking the Form and Structure of Urban Land Use
Adapted from the ‘‘Human Settlements, Infrastructure, and Spatial Planning’’ chapter in the Fifth
Assessment Report of the IPCC.11
have led to population declines in many
smaller towns while increasing inequality
in many metro areas. For countries in their
initial stages of urbanization, strategies for
facilitating economic development and
industrialization similarly become urban
policy, sometimes with deleterious effects
on urban residents. Overcoming such con-
sequences while utilizing the potential of
urbanization to steer development toward
170 One Earth 1, October 25, 2019
Work Home
sustainability demands multi-scale urban-
ization strategies with effective local
engagements.
If we fill these three gaps, we can better
understand and address the tradeoffs and
synergies that result from urban land use.
Ultimately, a systems approach to under-
standing urban land use is vital for sus-
tainability success or failure. Maybe
sometime in the future, more sustainable
One Earth
Commentary
urban systems will allow us to walk
around our city and assure us of being
the stewards of the planet, that we are
not pushing problems to the future or to
other places, and that by making the local
sustainable, we are not doing it at the
expense of the global.
REFERENCES
1. United Nations (2018). World Urbanization
Prospects 2018: Key Facts (United Nations
Publications).
2. Seto, K.C., Fragkias, M., Gu €neralp, B., and
Reilly, M.K. (2011). A meta-analysis of
global urban land expansion. PLoS ONE
6, e23777.
3. Oxford Economics (2017). Global Infrastructure
Outlook. https://www.oxfordeconomics.com/
recent-releases/Global-Infrastructure-Outlook.
4. Stokes, E.C., and Seto, K.C. (2019).
Characterizing and measuring urban land-
scapes for sustainability. Environ. Res. Lett.
14, 045002.
5. Batty, M. (2008). The size, scale, and shape of
cities. Science 319, 769–771.
6. Kennedy, C.A., Stewart, I., Facchini, A.,
Cersosimo, I., Mele, R., Chen, B., Uda, M.,
Kansal, A., Chiu, A., Kim, K.G., et al. (2015).
Energy and material flows of megacities.
Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 112, 5985–5990.
7. Katz, P., Scully, V.J., and Bressi, T.W. (1994).
The New Urbanism: Toward an Architecture
of Community, Volume 10 (McGraw-Hill
New York).
8. Gu €neralp, B., Seto, K.C., and Ramachandran,
M. (2013). Evidence of urban land teleconnec-
tions and impacts on distant hinterlands. Curr.
Opin. Environ. Sustain. 5 (5), 445–451.
9. Ewing, R., Meakins, G., Hamidi, S., and
Nelson, A.C. (2014). Relationship between ur-
ban sprawl and physical activity, obesity, and
morbidity - update and refinement. Health
Place 26, 118–126.
10. Stokes, E.C., and Seto, K.C. (2018). Tradeoffs
in environmental and equity gains from job
accessibility. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 115,
E9773–E9781.
11. Seto, K.C., Dhakal, S., Bigio, A., Blanco, H.,
Delgado, G.C., Dewar, D., Huang, L., Inaba,
A., Kansal, A., Lwasa, S., et al. (2014).
Chapter 12 - Human settlements, infrastruc-
ture and spatial planning. In Climate Change
2014: Mitigation of Climate Change. IPCC
Working Group III Contribution to AR5
(Cambridge University Press). http://pure.
iiasa.ac.at/11114/.
12. Wentz, E.A., York, A.M., Alberti, M., Conrow, L.,
Fischer, H., Inostroza, L., Jantz, C., Pickett,
S.T.A., Seto, K.C., and Taubenböck, H. (2018).
Six fundamental aspects for conceptualizing
multidimensional urban form: a spatial mapping
perspective. Landsc. Urban Plan. 179, 55–62.
13. United Nations (2017). New Urban Agenda.
http://habitat3.org/wp-content/uploads/NUA-
English.pdf.
14. United Nations (2018). Progress on the
Implementation of the New Urban Agenda:
Report of the Secretary-General.