Transition neighbourhoods: re-imagining the suburb in a world without oil
Date
2015-05-28
Authors
Du Plessis, Riana
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Abstract
Transition Neighbourhoods: Re-Imagining
the Suburb in a World Without Oil
This research report was inspired by two urban concerns: the first being the
intrinsic structural and functional inefficiencies of the typical suburban
environment and secondly, building on that, what the future of these
environments will be in a scenario where cheap fossil fuels will no longer be
readily available.
A review of the literature available on the subject showed that although the notion
of peak oil and/or oil depletion is not necessarily universally acknowledged, there
is a growing group of scientists and scholars globally that believe that it is only a
matter of time before we will no longer have the level of access to oil that we are
used to. As a potential urban scenario it therefore warrants some consideration.
The central question of the research report is whether the built form and function
of existing suburban residential neighbourhoods can be retrofitted to become
more resilient and to enable its residents to adapt to a life without oil (or at least
drastically reduced availability of oil) while at the same time maintaining or
(where absent) introducing accepted norms for a liveable neighbourhood.
The purpose of this thesis was to investigate how the principles of localisation
and the Transition Movement can be made applicable to suburban environments.
The theory is that the more a community is able to survive locally the less it will
depend on external inputs and linkages. The outcome of the research is a model
for how to adapt a conventional suburb to become a Transition Neighbourhood
that will enable the survival of the suburban neighbourhood as a functional place
in the larger cityscape.
The research report uses Menlo Park, a centrally located residential
neighbourhood in the City of Tshwane, as a case study. An Urban Design
Framework was developed for the neighbourhood that applied various
dimensions of resilience, localisation, liveable neighbourhoods and the Transition
Movement to a practical context, and illustrated how the suburb will look and
function after such a transformation.