Urban Planning: Residential Location and Compensatory Behaviour in Three Scandinavian Cities

Abstract

Within the literature on sustainable urban development, the dominant view is that dense and concentrated cities produce lower environmental strain than do sprawling and land-consuming cities. But is there a danger that environmentally favourable urban planning solutions will be counteracted by oppositely working mechanisms? In the literature, two partly related main types of such effects have been particularly discussed: (1) A greater amount of leisure travel (including flights) when people save money and time from living in an urban context that does not require much daily-life travel; and (2) increased vacation home ownership and use as a compensation for dense daily living environments. These counteracting mechanisms include genuine rebound effects as well as compensatory effects resulting from perceived unsatisfactory characteristics of ‘eco-efficient’ residential environments. In practice, the demarcation between rebound effects and compensatory mechanisms resulting from ecological modernization strategies in urban planning is often blurred. This chapter draws on research carried out by the author in Norwegian and Danish cities and compares this against international literature on the topic. The paper concludes that rebound effects exist, counteracting to some extent the effects of resource-saving principles in urban planning. Avoiding such effects seems impossible unless the purchasing power decreases. The existence of rebound effects should, however, not prevent us from seeking to develop our cities in as environmentally friendly ways as possible.