Community Planning and Development Challenges: Energy, Environment, Water. International New Towns Association (Fourth Annual Conference) Summary and Annotated Proceedings

摘要

Annotated proceedings of the 1980 Fourth Annual Conference of the International New Towns Association are presented. The conference focused on the challenge facing world nations in environment, water supply, and energy. Participants included representatives from Egypt, Australia, Belgium, France, Great Britain, Mexico, Spain, the United States, and Switzerland. These annotated proceedings were drawn from four sources: questions asked about papers, key points made in papers, comments made about workshops, and other sources such as selected data. No votes were taken at the end of the conference, nor was any consensus sought. However, many delegates expressed certain common themes. They noted that the Egyptian Government's commitment to a massive new towns program was impressive, but stated that it was too early to determine the success of the Egyptian national urban policy. The most vulnerable projects were likely to be the free - standing new towns, which were solely dependent upon employment growth. Second, delegates saw national energy conservation policies as effective only through price mechanisms. Third, research and development programs on new technologies were considered more effective on smaller rather than larger scales. Fourth, governments were seen as not facing up to the political problems of rapid urbanization. They were unwilling to deal with water problems or to control the distribution of employment and population. Fifth, the capacity of the infrastructure of existing cities was seen as not keeping up with growing demand in developing countries. Footnotes and appended materials, including a bibliography of about 50 references are provided with the proceedings.