Role of Planners in Sustainable Living

Role of Planners in Sustainable Urban Living
The debate over sustainability is prompting the society to rethink what changes that can be made to attain a more sustainable future. The Urban Planner need to balance the need of planning to preserve resources for the future generation with other land use needs. Thus, to realise their aim of providing for sustainable urban living, the role of Urban Planners is to create built environment that will encourage walkability and reduce car dependency, to optimise land use by raising densities and alleviate urban sprawl, to balance the need to preserve more public open spaces against other competing land use needs so that there is enough social and community infrastructure to promote active, healthy lifestyle; and the development of communities within a sustainable urban fabric.
Most people who prefer to drive in suburbs do not believe in the benefits that comes with walkability as it can be a challenge for people to walk around, especially for people who walks long distance with narrow roads or some without any proper walk way (see picture 1).

For example, the path to a corner store could be without any proper footpath, or the sidewalks are too narrow, cracked and uneven and covered with long grass, making the journey uncomfortable at the best, and dangerous at worst (Lavey and Hill 2014). Their reason to drive is justifiable when the distance to walk to their destination is too far, for example, in the less dense suburbs where the houses are separated quite far from the town centre where most facilities are located. Too many vehicles travelling at high speed along the pedestrian route is also a deterrent to walking as it does not feel safe. Furthermore, the journey to the town centre or transit transport is so boring and nothing much of interest along the way of the cycling or walking path. In Australia, only 380,000 residents live in a very walkable suburb, all of them in the inner city (Davies, How Walkable are

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