BEST PRACTICE IN URBAN DESIGN

UNIT-III

CASE STUDIES
Contemporary case studies from developing and developed economies that offer
design guidelines and solutions to address various issues/ aspects of urban space.
URBAN DESIGN THEORIES:

Accepted current urban design principles:

 It is Council policy to ensure that development is designed to a high

qualitative standard and promotes the creation of good places.

 The Council will apply the guidance set out in the Urban Design Manual – A
Best Practice Guide (2008), and will seek to ensure that development
proposals are cognisant of the need for proper consideration of context,
connectivity, inclusivity, variety, efficiency, distinctiveness, layout,
public realm, adaptability, privacy and amenity, parking, and detailed
design.

 Current urban design principles emphasise design criteria summarised well by

Bentley et al (1985) in their design manual “Responsive Environments”.
They suggest qualities such as permeability, legibility, varied or mixed uses
and visual appropriateness are of foremost importance in urban design.

Permeability or accessibility:

 Its refers to the number of choices people have for routes that can be taken to
travel through an area. Both visual and physical permeability is considered
important for well designed areas.

 A successful place is easy to get to and move through. Places should

connect to their surroundings. A successful place gives people the
maximum amount of choice of how to make a journey and takes into account
all forms of movement (foot, cycle, public transport and car).

 Where possible connections should emphasise sustainable forms of

transport over individual car use. A successful place also makes clear
connections from new development areas to existing roads and facilities.

 This will give users more choices of route when making their journeys.
Permeability must be considered early in any planning or development
process because streets are the most permanent element of any built
environment
Legibility:
 It is the quality which helps people read and understands where things are in
an area. In traditional cities, the biggest buildings were the most important
buildings and had the biggest spaces reserved around them.
 It was easy to distinguish the major public buildings from the less relevant
private buildings. In modern cities, there is often little difference between
important public facilities such as public administration buildings and even
railway stations, from private office buildings.
 A successful and ‘legible’ development is a place that has a clear image and
is easy to understand. Five features, which create this kind of place, have
been identified:

 Paths – the routes of movement such as alleys, streets and railways

 Nodes – focal places such as market squares which connect the paths
and roads.

 Landmarks – buildings or places that provide local character and act as

reference points.
 Districts – areas of the County with distinct or recognisable characteristics
such as the business district.
 Edges – linear elements not used as routes like busy roads, walls of
buildings and railway lines.

Vitality:
 Places that are vibrant, active, safe, comfortable and varied are said to
have vitality. Places are more active when they have windows and doors
connected to the street. Inactive edges are blank walls, badly placed
entrances, tunnels, places where you don’t feel safe, which are not
overlooked.
 Places feel safer with buildings overlooking them.

Variety/Diversity:
 A successful place also offers a mix of activities to the widest range of
possible users.
 The most connected streets usually have a wider variety of uses because
they are easier to get to and more people go there.
 Variety is desirable because it provides a choice of activities for a wider range
of people, things to do and places to go, making the place more exciting.
 In commercial areas, a variety of uses will also attract larger numbers of
consumers to the area and therefore make it more economically successful.
 It is important to get the right mix of uses. A successful mix is achieved when
uses create a balanced community with a range of services without increasing
the need for the car.
  The most prominent sites are no longer reserved for the most important
public buildings, but are awarded to the highest bidder. Skyscrapers
dominate the landscape and look the same regardless of whether they are
publicly relevant buildings or office buildings owned by either private or
institutional interests.

Robustness:
 This refers to a place’s ability to be used for many different purposes by
different people, or its potential for change and adaptation for different uses
over time.

 A robust place, whether outdoors or indoors, has many possible uses. A

robust building’s function can change over time.

 The whole building can take on a new use, or function, an industrial

warehouse, for example, can become new office space. Or a small space
within a building can change use, such as a garage into a sitting room.
 A robust place takes advantage of climatic conditions such as daylight,
sunlight and wind, by, for example, placing solar panels on south facing
buildings.

Road Layout ‘Shared Spaces’:

 One of the legacies of residential layout design in the recent past has been
that design considerations have often been dominated by provision for motor
vehicles.
 A key challenge of urban design is to successfully promote the other functions
of streets including providing a ‘sense of place’, facilitating social interaction
and encouraging walking and cycling.
 Road alignments should discourage speed and give priority to the safety and
convenience of pedestrians and cyclists.
 Road widths in general should be sufficient to accommodate two vehicles
passing, but not so generous as to encourage speeding or excessive on-
street/kerbside parking.
 The concept is essentially traffic calming interweaved with urban design in
residential and town/ village areas, so that cars do not dominate in terms of
street use and are required to manoeuvre at lower speeds.
 In terms of translating these concepts into a design methodology, the ‘Urban
Design Manual - A Best Practice Guide’ sets out 12 criteria to cover the range
of design considerations for residential development. The criteria are
subdivided into three groups reflecting the sequence of the design process:
Neighbourhood:
1. Context: How does the development respond to its surroundings?
2. Connections: How well connected is the new neighbourhood?
3. Inclusivity: How easily can people use and access the development? 4. Variety:
How does the development promote a good mix of activities?

Site:
1. Efficiency: How does the development make appropriate use of resources,
including land?
2. Distinctiveness: How do the proposals create a sense of place?
3. Layout: How does the proposal create people friendly streets and spaces?
4. Public Realm: How safe, secure and enjoyable are the public areas?

Home:
1. Adaptability: How will the buildings cope with change?
2. Privacy and Amenity: How does the scheme provide a decent standard of
amenity?
3. Parking: How will the parking be secure and attractive?
4. Detailed Design: How well thought through is the building and landscape design?
CASE STUDIES:
Garden city:
 The garden city movement is a method of urban planning that was initiated
in 1898 by Sir Ebenezer Howard in the United Kingdom. Garden cities were
intended to be planned, self-contained communities surrounded by
"greenbelts", containing proportionate areas of residences, industry, and
agriculture.

 His idealised garden city would house 32,000 people on a site of 6,000 acres
(2,400 ha), planned on a concentric pattern with open spaces, public parks
and six radial boulevards, 120 ft (37 m) wide, extending from the centre
 The garden city would be self-sufficient and when it reached full population,
another garden city would be developed nearby. Howard envisaged a cluster
of several garden cities as satellites of a central city of 250,000 people,
linked by road and rail.
 “three magnets”
-town (high wages, opportunity, and amusement)
-country (natural beauty, low rents, fresh air)
-town-country (combination of both)
-separated from central city by greenbelt
 Ebenezer Howard recognised that a Garden City should be carefully designed
in relation to the site it occupies, and he gave an indication of how a cluster
of towns (Garden Cities) would operate.
 Howard set out a vision for a Garden City that would reach an ideal population
of around 32,000 people Once this planned limit had been reached, a new city
would be started a short distance away, followed by another, and another,
until a network of such places was created, with each city providing a range of
jobs and services, but each connected to the others via a rapid transport
system, providing all the benefits of a much larger city but with each resident
having easy access to the countryside.
 Howard called this network of connected settlements the ‘Social City’
UTOPIAN MODEL:
 Contemporary City- Le Corbusier is considered one of the utopias which
have been partially realized.

 He compared the medieval town planning in Europe to “Pack Donkey way” ,

the meandering streets, high density low rise built fabric, the squares and
plazas were a limiting factor to further growth of cities in Europe according to
Le Corbusier.

 He saw death as the only solution to the cities which were full of “capillaries”
and no “arteries.

 an ideal, self-contained community of predetermined area and population

surrounded by a greenbelt

 was intended to bring together the economic and cultural advantages of

both city and country life while at the same time discouraging metropolitan
sprawl and industrial centralization

 land ownership would be vested in the community (socialist element)

 The garden city was foreshadowed in the writings of Robert Owen, Charles
Fourier, and James Silk Buckingham, and in the planned industrial
communities of Saltaire (1851), Bournville (1879), and Port Sunlight (1887) in
England

 Howard organized the Garden-City Association (1899) in England and

secured backing for the establishment of Letchworth and Welwyn

 Neither community was an entirely self-contained garden city

Fundamental Principles:
 The site should be level, this would aid smooth traffic Flow

 River should be away from the city.

 Population would consist of ; City Dwellers, Suburban Dwellers and

Garden City Dwellers.

 Increase the density at the center of the city.

 Increase the open spaces and reduce the travel time, hence construct
vertically.

 The transport and service lines shall not be buried beneath the road but
exposed.

 Three sets of roads should be constructed: One for heavy traffic at the ground
or one level below, ground level traffic should access all ground floors of
buildings, and the major arterial roads are at a higher level crisscrossing the
city.

 There would be only one station, in the center of the city, this would be a hub
for multi modal public transport.

 The city would consist of 24 sky scrapers housing 50,000 employees, this
would be the center of the city.

 Corridor Streets, with abutting internal court houses should be completely

banned.

 Residential block shall be divided into two sections; large vertical blocks and
garden cities away from city. The garden cities are accessible through rapid
transit metro lines.

 Population Density; Business District = 1200 per acre, Residence 1= 120 per
acre and Residence 2 = 120 per acre
 Open space; BD= 95 %, RD1= 85% and RD 2= 48%.
 Industrial zone should be away from the entire city. Educational and other
civic amenities should be one corner.
 Geometry, standardization and mechanization should be the governing frame
work .
Derivations
 The vertical neighborhoods, not in the center but at the periphery
 Central business districts with sky scrapers.
 Suburbs with subsidized housing which are typical in form and geometry.
These suburbs connected by rapid transit system.
 Planning of Chandigarh, Brasilia and other smaller capitals

WALKING CITY BY RON HERRON:

The city was supposed to be self propelling and change location as the need be
the city would be divided functionally among the many mega capsules with
connecting tubes, the entire structure would “walk”. The city could “walk” on water.

Plug In City:

 The city consisted of large support structures which could support

individual plug in dwelling components.

 Cranes would be mounted at the apex of support towers to lift and place the
modules in place. Hover crafts with elaborate built structures (which are
essential self functioning barges) would move from place to place.

Cities in Buildings:

Number of theoretical proposals has been postulated to the house considerable

number of people within a building, with work-home-recreation built at various levels.
Although none of the schemes have been implemented, the offshoot of such theory
has been the multi use skyscrapers prevalent in number of cities.

Cities of Sweat Equity:

Cities which are built by people; by squatting, by cooperation, by community

action or as a result of a common belief, are called as cities of sweat equity.

 Cities of sweat equity have taken many forms;

 Squatter settlements which were a small part of the city became
autonomous self governed entities.

 Small self help communities based on the concepts of sustainable present

and future.

 The cities of sweat equity grow on the need based affordability of its
inhabitants.

 They are normally a collection of smaller groups of settlements which reflect

the cultural roots of the group. Advocacy Planning, Community
Architecture, and Citizen Participation have been the result of early cities
of sweat equity.