Evolution of contemporary urban design theory.pptx

contribution of modern urban design theorists, New urbanism, TOD, smart cities

1. URBAN DESIGN MODULE – iii Overview of the contribution of Urban Theorists in understanding public spaces- Camillo Sitte , Jane Jacobs, Donald Appleyard, William H. Whyte, Le Corbusier, F.L.Wright , Edmund Bacon,Christopher Alexander, Peter Calthorpe , Aldo Rossi, Bill Hillier, Rob Krier , Richard Rogers, Charles Correa, Jan Gehl , John Lang etc. Emerging concepts in Urban Space Design: Neighbourhood concept; Space Syntax Theory, Transit-Oriented Development, New Urbanism, Mixed Use Developments, Smart City Concepts

2. Viennese architect Camillo Sitte published a book in 1889 which provided deeper understanding about the urban design in the past and delved into the principles of arrangement, proportion and scale. He criticized the emphasis on straight boulevards, public squares etc which were primarily constructed for traffic flow and contended that urban planners had neglected to consider the vertical dimension of planning. . His book defended the contrived, irregular and picturesque qualities of the medieval towns. He argued for the sensitive application of town planning principles. He advocated the design of irregular shaped plazas and asymmetrical placement of buildings which result in changing views and enhanced scenic capacity.

3. Sitte traveled extensively in Western Europe, seeking to identify the factors that made certain towns feel warm and welcoming. Sitte saw architecture was a process and product of culture. He made a forceful case that the aesthetic experience of urban spaces should be the leading factor of urban planning . He challenged, among other things, a growing tendency toward rigid symmetry in contemporary urban design . He also identified and advocates a host of traditional approaches to creating public spaces that had grown out of the town planning traditions of Europe. He illustrates these approaches with examples through sketches and diagrams of numerous neighborhoods.

4. Jane Jacobs was an American – Canadian writer who wrote about the social theory in urban design. She led the resistance to the replacement of urban communities by high rise buildings and the loss of community space to expressways. Along with lewis Mumford she is considered as the founder of the “new urbanism” movement. New urbanism is a planning and development principle based on walkable blocks and streets, housing and shopping in close proximity and accessible public spaces. She observed that “revitalization” often came at the expense of the community. After investigating urban development projects in Philadelphia & east harlem , she came to believe that much of urban renewal projects had little compassion for the people involved especially African americans . She became an activist and led the opposition to tear down existing buildings in Greenwich & replace them with high rises. She warned against the over expansion of newyork university. After relocating to Canada she continued her work in questioning conventional city planning ideas.

5. Donald Appleyard is an English American urban designer & theorist who taught at berkelEy . His 1981 book titled “livable streets” quantified the impact of traffic on social ties. It contained the comparison of three streets with similar morphology in san francisco which had different levels of car traffic per day – one with 2000 cars, the next with 8000 cars & the last one with 16000 cars. His research demonstrated that people living in low car traffic streets had three times more friends than people living in high traffic streets. William whyte is an American urbanist and journalist who wrote the book “ city: rediscovering its center”. He is considered as the mentor for project for public spaces because of his study on human behavior in public spaces. For sixteen years he walked the streets of newyork & other cities conducting pioneering research on street life, pedestrian behavior and city dynamics. He produced an exceptional study on how people used urban spaces.

6. Radiant city was an unrealized project by the French- swiss architect le Corbusier. It was envisaged for a population of 3 million people with the central business district comprising of 24 sky scrapers accommodating office spaces. These were surrounded by ten floor height apartment blocks with zig zag shape meant for housing the urban population. Finally on the periphery of the town were planned independent villas meant for the rich people. It represented the dream of reuniting man with a well ordered environment. There was a hierarchy of road system, from the major arterial roads to the ring roads which bye pass the city and the small neighborhood streets. The tall building blocks were lifted on massive concrete piers known as ‘ Pilotis ” so that the view of the green ground cover was not hindered in anyway. Le Corbusier wanted to have large expanses of lawn areas so that people felt that they were living in a large park area. Le Corbusier got the opportunity to manifest some of these ideas when he was commissioned to design the city of chandigarh .

7. LE CORBUSIERS RADIANT CITY LA VILLE RADIEUSE The ideas of Le Corbusier had the most profound impact which was the Radiant city. He accepted that cities would move towards high density living and proposed a plan for 3 million people in a new type of arrangement . He proposed 3 distinct areas – a central business district with 4 lakh inhabitants accommodated in 24 skyscrapers, an encircling residential zone of 6 lakh people occupying multistoried apartments rising to 10 floors and garden houses for 2 million people . The plan had a crisp geometric form with roads creating large rectangles interwoven with major diagonals. His major objectives were to decongest the central city, increase density, improve circulation and at the same time provide more light, air and greenery. In 1935 he proposed the La Ville Radieuse reforming many of his earlier concepts. Le Corbusier felt that pedestrian and motorable roads have to be segregated and he preferred the elevated road for the automobile. His plan advocated grid layout & hierarchy of road system.

8. F.L.WRIGHT – BROAD ACRE CITY BROADACRE CITY - A model of four square miles of a typical countryside developed on the acre as unit according to conditions in the temperate zone and accommodating around 1,400 families. THE PRINCIPLES OF BROADACRE CITY - Decentralization and redistribution Symmetry with rhythm, no standardization Architectural reintegration Free use of the ground Public utilities and government itself owned by the people of Broadacre City (the architect is the agent of the state)Economic independence. THE CHARACTERISTICS OF BROADACRE CITY - Quality of the buildings is the same - Coordination wherein all are employed. All public utilities are concentrated in the hands of the county government .Materials used at constructions: fireproof materials, glass, copper - Every citizen has his own car. THE COMPONENTS OF BROADACRE CITY - houses 4 types; farms; factories; markets -General park a flowered meadow Traffic multiple-lane highways; no grade crossing; no signals or lamp-posts -Trains only for long-distance; Schools placed in the interior of the city; include art galleries, concert hall, gardens, zoo, pools and green playground.

9. EDMUND BACON Design of Cities , first published in 1967, is an illustrated account of the development of urban form, written by Edmund Bacon. The work looks at the many aspects that influence city design, including spatial form, interactions between humans, nature and the built environment. Bacon identifies eight elements of 'Involvement' in Architecture and Urban Design - he argues the urban designer should be aware of these elements and use them as tools when developing a 'design idea' of what the city or place ought to look like. Meeting the sky - Bacon points to  akroterion  of Greek temples as an excellent example of how buildings and built form meet the sky. He points to a revival of this style in the Baroque and Victorian period, and comments that this element is an identical to a city skyline, which he identifies as a city's signature. Meeting the ground - Bacon argues that this second element is where built mass meets the ground to act as a pedestal for built form. This pedestal allows the involved to scale buildings and relate their size to one another. Bacon points to buildings that utilized staircases as pedestals in the Renaissance period, and notes that many of these were placed at the focal point of cities, such as city squares and town commons. Points in space - Bacon's third element is used to create tension and relief between elements. He argues great places have prominent points in space that are identifiable work to interplay with other elements.

10. Recession planes - Recession planes are used in urban form to heighten dramatic power of structures. This is done by allowing the involved viewer to have a reference to scale, frame and position relative to the viewer. Design in depth - Relating two arches to one another allows the involved viewer to understand the depth of buildings, provide scale for that depth, and identify egress areas. Ascent & Descent - By varying levels of floor, designers have the ability to toy with emotions of the involved viewer. Upward movement has can symbolize power, achievement, or anticipation. Downward movement can symbolize the depth and grandeur of space. Relationship to man - One of the most critical pieces of Bacon's work is the identification and reiteration of built forms relationship to man. Bacon argues that our urban built form should be reflective of our human scale and aid in establishing a connection between built environment and man.

11. Christopher alexander Alexander has proposed very stimulating theories about the harmony and beauty seen in natural and man-made artifacts. City structure is composed of primary entities called Centers. These centers support each other through repeated occurrences of 15 geometric properties – Levels of scale, Boundaries, Good shape etc as given above.

12. Christopher alexander A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction is a 1977 book on architecture, urban design, and community livability. It was authored by Christopher Alexander et al at Berkeley, USA. The book creates a new language, what the authors call a pattern language derived from timeless entities called patterns. The 253 patterns together form a language. Patterns describe a problem and then offer a solution. In doing so the authors intend to give ordinary people, not only professionals, a way to work with their neighbors to improve a town or neighborhood. The pattern language is  a set of inherited tried-and-true solutions that optimize how the built environment promotes human life and sense of wellbeing . It combines geometry and social behavior patterns into a set of useful relationships, summarizing how built form can accommodate human activities.

13. PETER CALTHORPE Developed in the early 1990's by  Peter Calthorpe , the concept of transit-oriented development (TOD) encourages the development of full and vibrant communities designed to be centered on transit facilities. A transit-oriented development (TOD) is  a mixed-use community within an average 2,000- foot walking distance of a transit stop and core commercial area . It provides moderate and high density housing, along with complementary public uses, jobs, retail and services. In essence, TOD integrates land use and transport planning and aims to develop planned sustainable urban growth centers, having walkable and livable communes with high density mixed land-use. Citizens have access to open green and public spaces and at the same time transit facilities are efficiently utilized. At first it was The city of Chicago which started building TODs around rail stations throughout the metropolitan area. Now in India the planning of Navi mumbai was based on TOD by Charles correa .

14. ALDO ROSSI Aldo Rossi was an Italian architect and designer who achieved international recognition in four distinct areas: architectural theory, drawing and design and also product design. He was one of the leading exponents of the postmodern movement. In his book titled “Architecture of the cities”, Rossi criticizes the lack of understanding of the city in current architectural practice. He argues that  a city must be studied and valued as something constructed over time ; of particular interest are urban artifacts that withstand the passage of time. Rossi gained international attention at the Venice Biennale in 1979 when he designed  the Teatro del Mondo, a floating theatre . The wood-clad structure, featuring an octagonal tower, recalled the Venetian tradition of floating theatres and, Rossi believed, tapped into the collective architectural memory of the city. He describes the architecture of the city with two different meanings; first, the city is seen as a gigantic man-made object, growing over time; second, as urban artifacts characterized by their own history and form. These two aspects relate to the quality and uniqueness of the urban artifact.

15. ROB KRIER Rob krier wrote the book 'Urban Space' in which he aims   to search how the traditional understanding of urban space has been lost within the modern cities . By explaining the terms of urban space and its structure, he has examined whether the concept of urban space retains some validity in contemporary town planning and on what grounds. Urban space is an open, unobstructed space for movement in the open air, with public, semi public and private zones. Furthermore, the ‘ concept of urban space’  is to designate   all types of space between buildings in towns and other localities as urban space. If we take the aesthetic criteria into consideration, every urban space has been organized according to its socio-political and cultural attitudes. The spatial forms of urban space derive from the three basic geometric shapes: (square, circle and triangle). These three shapes are affected by modulating factors which are angling, segmentation, addition, merging, overlapping and distortion. These factors can produce regular and irregular results on all three spatial types. 

16. RICHARD ROGERS Rogers devoted much of his later career to wider issues surrounding architecture, urbanism, sustainability, and the ways in which cities are used. One early illustration of his thinking was an exhibition at the Royal Academy in 1986, entitled "London As It Could Be” which put forth a series of proposals for transforming a large area of central London, subsequently dismissed as impractical by the city's authorities. In 1998, he set up the Urban Task Force at the invitation of the British government, to help identify causes of urban decline and establish a vision of safety, vitality, and beauty for Britain's cities. This work resulted in a  white paper ,  Towards an Urban Renaissance , outlining recommendations for future city designers. Design Philosophy - He  had a very environmental conception of designs . The notion of social integration is one of the other most important points of the Richard Rogers' architectural concept. According to him social problems can find solutions in the construction of “compact cities with multiple centers”. Architecturally he was famous for designing the Pompidou center, Paris, with Renzo piano & the Millennium dome.

17. CHARLES CORREA In 1960s, Correa began working as an urban planner and built  Navi Mumbai , which is an urban centre that caters to three million people. Mumbai is built on what was once a set of seven islands: Bombay Island, parel , Mazagaon, mahim , colaba , worli , and Little Colaba . Formerly Bombay, is the commercial and financial centre of India, with a population of about twelve million at 2010. Mumbai‘s particular topography – it is a long, narrow peninsula – meant that the constantly needed extension of the city limits was possible in one direction only, northwards. The prominent authors of the twin city concept were Charles Correa, & Shireesh patil who proposed Navi mumbai on the eastern mainland, creating living space and setting up Mass transportation system.

18. CHARLES CORREA Navi mumbai covers an area of 344 sq.km and was based on polycentric model of growth where there are many nodes which are connected by a MRTS. The central nodes indicated in blue colour were the Central Business (CBD)district areas around which the residential nodes were planned. The principles were 1. Decentralization by the design of self sufficient townships (nodes) & 2. Residential neighborhoods (sectors) comprising of low rise housing blocks. Each node is self-contained for 100,000 to 200,000 people. The nodes contain residential, commercial, infrastructure and recreational uses. At a larger scale, nodes share some common facilities such as water reservoirs and transport facilities. The structural plan of New Bombay: three linear spines arranged in a pinwheel around the CBD(Central Business District) at one end tied to the regional transport network at the other, anchoring the new city into the surrounding region..

19. JAN GEHL Jan Gehl is a danish architect who is the author of the book “Life between buildings: Using public space”. According to him, Public space should be a place for everyone that includes unique qualities and benefits of a particular urban environment, open to a variety of activities and opportunities. A good public space should be conceived with common vision between the Architect & the community and should incorporate qualities such as Aesthetics, Sociability, Comfort, Flexibility, Accessibility, Safety while including landmark elements. There is an unique work methodology which has been proposed by Jan gehl : 1. Space can be planned according to the parameters of the desired route, destination, user groups and activities as part of a vision. 2. The basis of planning has to be a vision of public life in the given area. Who are its potential users? What activities would take place in it? 3. data should be collected in the form of counting of people & traffic, mapping of activities, Tracing of movements & photographing natural & manmade elements. Gehl concentrated on Making cities for people and some of his theories were put into practice in the city of Copenhagen, the danish capital.

20. NEIGHBORHOOD CONCEPT The neighborhood concept is one of the major planning ideas of 20 th century - A cluster of superblocks was to form a self-contained neighborhood & a group of neighborhoods together formed the city. The concept of the neighborhood unit, crystallized in early 1900s by Clarence Perry, was diagrammatic planning model for residential development in metropolitan areas. It continues to be utilized as a means of ordering and organizing new residential communities in a way which satisfies contemporary "social, administrative and service requirements for satisfactory urban existence”. Perry’s concept was influenced by separation of vehicular & pedestrian traffic and cellularization of planning units. It would contain housing for 5000 -9000 residents with school & community facilities at the center & arterial streets along the perimeter with 10% open space for recreation and parks. Shopping area also should be in the periphery.

21. SPACE SYNTAX THEORY Space Syntax is a set of theories and methods for modeling and analyzing cities, using space as the fundamental generator of the city. A major virtue of this approach is that it is supported by a powerful social theory of space. Space Syntax models explain existing movement patterns and forecast future scenarios by demonstrating the relative influence of a number of key factors. The modeling process begins by transforming the street pattern of an area, or room layout of a building, into a network 'graph'. The theory focuses on analyzing the spatial structure in all its diverse forms, cities, settlements and buildings, to investigate the relationship between human societies and space organization. The theory was formally introduced in 1984 by Hillier and Hanson in their book “The Social Logic of Space”. It refers to a set of principles and techniques to investigate and reveal the characteristics of urban settlements via concrete measures.

22. TRANSIT ORIENTED DEVELOPMENT Transit-oriented development, or TOD, includes  a mix of commercial, residential, office and entertainment centered around or located near a transit station . Dense, walkable, mixed-use development near transit attracts people and adds to vibrant, connected communities. The following principles are general guidelines for planning TOD districts and neighborhoods.  Put stations in locations with highest ridership potential and development opportunities. Designate 1/2 mile radius around station as higher density, mixed-use, walkable development. Create range of densities with highest at station, tapering down to existing neighborhoods. Design station site for seamless pedestrian connections to surrounding development by creating a public plaza directly in front of any side of the station. 5.  Create retail and cafe streets leading to station entrances along main pedestrian connections.

23. TRANSIT ORIENTED DEVELOPMENT 6. TOD, it's the creation of compact, walkable, pedestrian-oriented, mixed-use communities centered around high quality train systems. This makes it possible to live a lower-stress life without complete dependence on a car for mobility and survival. 7. TOD  enables a city to be more corridor-oriented , making it easier to provide infrastructure and is instrumental in preventing Urban sprawl. 8. It enables the planner to increase densities in potential areas , facilitates walkability and bicycling for commuting.

24. NEW URBANISM New Urbanism is an urban planning and design movement that began in the United States in the early 1980s. Its goals are to reduce dependence on the car, and to create livable and walkable, neighborhoods with a densely packed array of housing, jobs, and commercial sites. The principles of new urbanism include  walkability, mixed-use development and diversity, quality urban design, environmental sustainability, and smart transportation . There are 10 characteristics that every new urbanism neighborhood has in common – Walkability - The street grid is interconnected to encourage walking, not driving, Mixed Use developments prevent escalation of real estate cost , Diversity results in strong sense of place, Quality architecture & urban design, Traditional neighborhood structur e, Increased density , Green Transportation & Sustainable quality of life, Preserve open space, farmland, natural beauty, and critical environmental areas , & create a range of housing options . New Urbanism has been  criticized for being a form of centrally planned, large-scale development , "instead of allowing the initiative for construction to be taken by the final users themselves".  Criticism of New urbanism - its effective area is confined to the neighborhood boundaries, it may be used as a marketing scheme by developers, and it is hard to implement in existing neighborhoods.

25. SMART CITY CONCEPTS  In many ways, the smart city concept is simply good urban planning that incorporates both advances in digital technology and new thinking in the age-old city concepts of relationships, community, environmental sustainability, participatory democracy, good governance and transparency. In general, a smart city is a city  that uses technology to provide services and solve city problems . A smart city does things like improve transportation and accessibility, improve social services, promote sustainability, and give its citizens a voice. Smart cities  bring together infrastructure and technology to improve the quality of life of citizens and enhance their interactions with the urban environment . ... Created as part of the smart technology movement, the IoT enables various objects and entities to communicate with each other through the internet. The set of key performance indicators (KPIs) for smart sustainable cities, allowing cities to set goals, collect data and measure progress in five major areas:  the use of ICTs; physical infrastructure; social inclusion and equity of access to services; quality of life; and environmental   sustainability. The Government of India has launched the Smart Cities Mission on 25 June 2015. • The objective is  to promote sustainable and inclusive cities that provide core infrastructure and give a decent quality of life to its citizens , a clean and sustainable environment and application of 'Smart' Solutions.

26. SMART CITY CONCEPTS Giffinger and Gudrun define the smartness of a Smart City with six characteristics, where the city should perform well, that can be considered general smart city application domains:  (1) smart economy, (2) smart people, (3) smart governance, (4) smart mobility, (5) smart environment and (6) smart living. Accordingly, the purpose of the Smart Cities Mission is  to drive economic growth and improve the quality of life of people by enabling local area development and harnessing technology , especially technology that leads to Smart outcomes. Smart cities  use IoT devices such as connected sensors, lights, and meters to collect and analyze data . The cities then use this data to improve infrastructure, public utilities and services, and more. Four components to a smart city are 1. Putting data Analytics to work 2. Smart transportation solutions 3. Health – building safer & healthier communities 4. creating resilient Urban environments. GIFT City  is India's first smart city in India which is a joint venture among BSE Institute Mumbai, Ryerson University and Simon Fraser University, Canada. Smart City is a  concept of utilizing technologies and connected data sensors to enhance and become powerful in terms of infrastructure and city operations . Bhubaneswar & Pune are ranked as the Number 1 And 2 smart cities in India.