DURING the 1973 oil crisis when Professor Peter Newman was a post-doctoral fellow at Stanford University, he noticed that cities around the world responded very differently to the potential fuel shortage.

In some cities in the United States, panicked people stole petrol from their neighbours and queued for five hours at petrol stations, and yet in other places like Holland, people rollerskated on the freeways and simply got on with living.

“Nobody could understand at the time what made cities different from each other and I realised that this was a huge new research area, particularly with respect to their use of energy,” said Professor Newman.

Professor Newman’s interest in city dynamics grew into a lifelong campaign, based from 1974 at Murdoch University, to reduce the world’s car-dependency.

“To make changes and understand the processes, we needed data on the layout and transport characteristics of different cities,” said Professor Newman.

One of Professor Newman’s students Jeff Kenworthy, collected the data on Australian cities for his Honours year in 1979.

Convinced about the value of comparing this data to other cities in the world, Jeff and his wife spent eight months of the following year collecting information on 32 cities around the world.

Professor Newman was hot on his heels, filling in the gaps of the 32 cities later that year.

“We were collecting information using 50 parameters, such as the population density, use of public transport and the average commuting distance for people to work,” said Professor Newman.

“At this point, funding bodies started realising that we were serious.”

Professor Newman and Dr Kenworthy have been working together within the Institute of Sustainability and Technology Policy at Murdoch ever since and have published two editions of a text collating all of this data. Their work has been funded by the Federal Government and the World Bank.

Groups around the world use this reference for town planning, comparative tests and policy change.

Adding to this body of reference material, the team has also published An International Sourcebook of Automobile Dependence in Cities, 1960-1990, which provides data on 46 cities using the same methodology.

“This sourcebook is the premier source of reliable urban land use and transport data around the world,” said Dr Kenworthy

They are now working on their third edition, funded by the International Union of Public Transport (UITP), detailing 100 cities.

This edition will be brought out as an interactive CD database.

Professor Newman said that priorities had changed considerably over the past 25 years, and that understanding city dynamics had become critical.

“Our recent text Sustainability and Cities – Overcoming Automobile Dependencies was launched in the White House last year, which would never have occurred a few years ago,” he said.

“We are increasingly being invited to speak about ways to break auto dependence in cities all over the world, and have been active campaigners about the issue in Perth, especially over the upgrading of the rail system.”