ABSTRACT
Introduction Urban forms in the West are under scrutiny after a century of dispersed urban development. It is often advocated that urban form should be more compact and humane, in contrast to the increasingly dispersed forms of metropolitan development (Bourne, 1992). There is evidence of a strong but complex link between urban form and sustainable development. Significant relationships have been found between energy use in transport and the physical characteristics of cities, such as density, size, and amount of open space (Banister et al., 1997). It has been argued that land development will bring about a series of costs that are related to the consumption of capital, resources and energy. It is also claimed that compact development will reduce development costs in providing infrastructure to new development sites as well as transportation costs. Compact urban form can be a major means of guiding urban development to sustainability, especially in reducing the negative effects of the present dispersed pattern of development in Western cities (Jenks et al., 1996).
