the best climate activist is a good urban planner

This phrase, coined by Helene Chartier, is one that stayed with Karen long after she heard it at a Venice Architecture Biennale conference titled 'Gone with the (Hot) Wind? Cities and Artistic Heritage Facing the Climate Crisis.' It's one of those ideas that feels immediately true, and yet doesn't get nearly the attention it deserves.

In our industry, sustainability tends to be discussed at the scale of the individual project: the materials selected, the construction practices adopted, the performance of a single dwelling. These conversations are important. But when we step back and ask how the shape of an entire city affects our collective environmental footprint, a much larger picture comes into view.

Good, compact urban design can achieve a 25% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions—a scale of impact that careful material selection at the project level simply cannot reach on its own.

Dezeen.

What Does a Compact City Actually Do?

A compact city uses land efficiently. It leverages density and mixed-use zoning to make the most of existing space, limiting the sprawl that consumes land, infrastructure, and energy at an extraordinary rate. This approach reduces emissions in three key ways.

Reducing travel distances. In a well-designed community, the things people need daily are within reach: shops, schools, parks, libraries. When walking or cycling is a practical choice rather than an effort, car dependence starts to erode. Less driving means lower emissions, and it also reduces the pressure to build more car parking into new developments, freeing up space for better uses.

Reducing dwelling size. Compact cities encourage homes that use space efficiently. Through thoughtful design, a home's footprint canbe significantly reduced without any sacrifice in liveability or function. A smaller footprint requires less energy to keep comfortable year-round, particularly when the design also incorporates passive temperature control.

Conserving greenfield areas. When cities grow inward rather than outward, we hold onto the green space that surrounds them. Every patch of land that remains undeveloped helps cool the urban environment, supports biodiversity, and relieves pressure on drainage systems—benefits that extend well beyond any individual site.

A Return to What Already Works

What strikes us most about this thinking is that the answers aren't new. The qualities that make cities sustainable—walkability, density, mixed uses, strong public spaces—are the same qualities found in countless historic, well-planned cities around the world. Cities built before the car, before sprawl was normalised, before land was treated as an infinite resource.

In many ways, the path forward is a considered U-turn: back toward the urban forms that have always worked, reimagined for the present.

This is why urban planning and architecture matter so much beyond the boundaries of any individual project. The decisions made at the city scale—how land is zoned, how density is encouraged or resisted, how public and private space is balanced—shape the behaviour of everyone who lives within them. And that behaviour, aggregated across millions of people, is where the real climate numbers are made.