ISSUES OF URBAN SPACE

UNIT-IV

• Understanding and interpreting of urban problems/issues

• Place making and identity

• Urban Morphology, sprawl, generic form, incoherence, privatized

public realm

• Effects/role of real estate, transportation, zoning & globalisation

• Ideas of sustainability, heritage, conservation and renewal

contemporary approaches

• Idea of Urban catalyst, transit metropolis and community

participation
 PLACE MAKING
 Place making inspires people to collectively reimaging and reinvent public
spaces as the heart of every community.

 Strengthening the connection between people and the places they share,
placemaking refers to a collaborative process by which we can shape our
public realm in order to maximize shared value.

 More than just promoting better urban design, placemaking facilitates

creative patterns of use, paying particular attention to the physical,
cultural, and social identities that define a place and support its ongoing
evolution.

Most great places, whether a grand downtown plaza or humble neighborhood park,
share four key attributes:
1. They are accessible and well connected to other important places in the
area.
2. They are comfortable and project a good image.
3. They attract people to participate in activities there.
4. They are sociable environments in which people want to gather and visit.
again and again.

 Place making is a multi-faceted approach to the planning, design and

management of public spaces.

 Place making capitalizes on a local community’s assets, inspiration, and

potential, ultimately creating good public spaces that promote people’s health,
happiness, and wellbeing.

 Place making is both a process and a philosophy

 The concepts behind Place making originated in the 1960s, when writers like
Jane Jacobs and William H. Whyte offered ground-breaking ideas about
designing cities that catered to people, not just to cars and shopping centers.

 Their work focused on the importance of lively neighbourhoods and inviting public
spaces. Jane Jacobs advocated citizen ownership of streets through the now-
famous idea of “eyes on the street.” William H. Whyte emphasized essential
elements for creating social life in public spaces
Access & Linkages:
 You can easily judge the accessibility of a place by noting its connections to
the surroundings, including the visual links.

 A great public space is easy to get to, easy to enter, and easy to navigate.
It is arranged so that you can see most of what is going on there, both from a
distance and up close.

Comfort & Image:

 A space that is comfortable and looks inviting is likely to be successful.

 A sense of comfort includes perceptions about safety, cleanliness, and the

availability of places to sit. A lack of seating is the surprising downfall of
many otherwise good places.

Uses & Activities:

 A range of activities are the fundamental building blocks of a great place.

 A carefully chosen range of activities will help a place attract a variety of

people at different times of the day.

Sociability:
  This is the most important quality for a place to achieve—and the most
difficult.

 When a place becomes a favourite spot for people to meet friends, greet
their neighbours, and feel comfortable interacting with strangers, then you
are well on your way to having a great place..

Benefits of place making:

 + Visually pleasing
 + Generally stimulating
 + Sense of belonging
 + Greater security
 + Better environmental quality
 + Feeling of freedom
 +Greater community organization
 + Sense of pride and volunteerism
 + Perpetuation of integrity and values
 + Less need for municipal control+ Self-managing
 More walkable
 + Safe for pedestrians and bicyclists
 + Compatible with public transit
 + Reduces need for cars and parking
 + More efficient use of time and money
 + Greater connections between uses

IDENTITY AND PLACE

 Place identity refers to a cluster of ideas about place and identity in the
fields of geography, urban planning, urban design, landscape architecture,
environmental psychology, and urban sociology/ecological sociology.

 It concerns the meaning and significance of places for their inhabitants and
users.

 Methodologies for understanding place identity primarily involve qualitative

techniques, such as interviewing, participant observation, discourse
analysis and mapping a range of physical elements.

 Some urban planners, urban designers and landscape architects use forms of
deliberative planning, design Charette and participatory design with local
 communities as a way of working with place identity to transform existing
places as well as create new ones. This kind of planning and design process
is sometimes referred to as place making.

 Place identity is sometimes called urban character, neighbourhood

character or local character.

 Place identity has become a significant issue in the last 25 years in urban
planning and design.

 Related to the worldwide movement to protect places with heritage

significance, concerns have arisen about the loss of individuality and
distinctiveness between different places as an effect of cultural globalisation.

URBAN MORPHOLOGY

 Urban morphology is the study of the form of human settlements and the
process of their formation and transformation.

 The study seeks to understand the spatial structure and character of a

metropolitan area, city, town or village by examining the patterns of its
component parts and the process of its development.

 This can involve the analysis of physical structures at different scales as well
as patterns of movement, land use, ownership or control and
occupation.

 Typically, analysis of physical form focuses on street pattern, lot pattern

and building pattern, sometimes referred to collectively as urban grain.

 Analysis of specific settlements is usually undertaken using cartographic

sources and the process of development is deduced from comparison of
historic maps.

 Special attention is given to how the physical form of a city changes over
time and to how different cities compare to each other.

 Another significant part of this subfield deals with the study of the social forms
which are expressed in the physical layout of a city, and, conversely, how
physical form produces or reproduces various social forms.

 The essence of the idea of morphology was initially expressed in the writings
of the great poet and philosopher Goethe (1790); the term as such was first
used in bioscience.
  Recently it is being increasingly used in geography, geology, philology and
other subjects.

 Urban morphology is also considered as the study of urban tissue, or fabric,

as a means of discerning the underlying structure of the built landscape.

 This approach challenges the common perception of unplanned environments

as chaotic or vaguely organic through understanding the structures and
processes embedded in urbanisation.

 The tool for analysing the Urban Morphology has some theories such as
Space syntax, Figure and Ground cities

Three Theories of Urban Spatial Design:

(i) Figure and Ground
(ii) Linkage theory
(iii) Place Theory

URBAN SPRAWL

 Urban sprawl is basically another word for urbanization.

 It refers to the migration of a population from populated towns and cities to

low density residential development over more and more rural land.

 The end result is the spreading of a city and its suburbs over more and
more rural land.

Causes of Urban Sprawl:

o Lower Land Rates:

cost of land and houses in the outer suburbs of the cities is less, because the
centers of urban development have really made people want to stop settling in
these areas and want to venture further out.

o Improved Infrastructure:
There is increased spending on certain types of infrastructures, including roads
and electricity. This is something that hasn’t always been available, and there
are still some areas that don’t have these luxuries.

o Lack of Urban Planning:

People love to find areas that have less traffic and more calm, which leads them
to sprawl out to other sections of the town. Unprecedented development, cutting
of trees, loss of green cover, long traffic jams, poor infrastructure force people to
move out to new areas.
o Lower House Tax Rates:
Cities will usually have high property taxes, and you can usually avoid these
taxes by living in the outer suburbs because the taxes are usually lower than they
would be in other situations.

o Rise in Standard of Living:

There are also increases in standards of living and average family incomes,
which means that people have the ability to pay more to travel and commute
longer distances to work and back home.

 Rise in Population Growth:

Another factor that contributes towards urban sprawl is rise in population growth.
As number of people in a city grows beyond capacity, the local communities
continues to spread farther and farther from city centers.

Consumer Preferences:
 People in high income groups have stronger preferences towards larger
homes, more bedrooms, bigger balconies and bigger lawns.

Effects of Urban Sprawl:

 Environmental Issues: Sprawls can also cause certain environmental

issues that you may want to be aware of. In fact, when you think about going
out to develop these lands you will have to worry about the wildlife that lives in
these lands. You will be displacing them, and it can really cause a ripple in
the environment.

 Impact on Social Lives: When people move further out, they also have an
impact on their social lives. They don’t have neighbors that live as close,
which means that they won’t really stay as social as they should

 Will continue to occur as long as we live here on earth. It isn’t something that
is going to change, but over time the more rural areas are going to become
more populated because of development and change.

 It may lead to less overcrowding- but it won’t happen overnight. It’s clear that
urban sprawl is something that people will consider to be a good thing or a
bad thing, depending on their own beliefs systems
 GENERIC FORM & GENERIC CITY

 As the world becomes more globalized and information exchanges are so

fast, many cities in the world are trying to position themselves apart from other
cities to attract different resources such as investment or manpower.

 One of the strategy that city uses is to create its own identity/branding to
separate from others. Rem Koolhaas formulates different ideas how city
could position itself better as “Generic City”. His theory is based on his own
critical observations of many global cities he experiences and what
characterizes them.

 First, he despises the identity of the city and believes identity actually
choke the city itself to death. He said “Identity is like a mousetrap in which
more and more mice have to share the original bait,…, The stronger
identity, the more it imprisons, the more it resists expansion,
interpretation, renewal, contradiction.”

 Also, “The insistence on the center as the core of value and meaning, font of
all significance, is doubly destructive.” He celebrates and believes generic city
is liberated from “the straightjacket of identity.”

 Second, Koolhaas thinks the airport is the most important elements to

understand the contemporary city. He stresses the architectural and
spatial aspects of the airport could provide as well as the performance and
autonomy of the airport could offer. That is why he called “the airport is the
most singular, characteristic elements of the Generic City” and the
airport will replace the city in the future.

 In contrast to the view of current urban planing, he embraces the fact of

motorways and bridges over pedestrians networks that generic city has to
offer.

 He affirms that is “the free style” of generic city and the generic city is
immoral and pragmatic. Also, the Generic City grows so fast that city
planning becomes redundant. That is the advantage of the Generic City.

 In architecture of generic city, Koolhaas emphasizes on the use of the

postmodern language as a method, not a historical language. And, He
believes generic city employs this architectural style that does not need a
strong theoretical framework helps the development of the generic city.
 PRIVATIZATIZATION OF PUBLIC REALM

 Public realm or the public sphere is an area in social life where individuals can
come together to freely discuss and identify societal problems, and through
that discussion influence political action.

 It is "a discursive space in which individuals and groups congregate to discuss

matters of mutual interest and, where possible, to reach a common judgment.

 The public sphere can be seen as "a theatre in modern societies in which
political participation is enacted through the medium of talk" and "a
realm/domain of social life in which public opinion can be formed

 Traditionally public spaces were funded with public money and built by the
local government.

 With a commitment to public service and less emphasis on returns on

investment, design decisions could be made for the greater good.

 Lack of Community Cohesion is the primary issue.

 The gated communities produce privatized open space, especially in housing

developments, leads people to become less inclined to spend time in truly
urbanized open spaces, such as city parks.

 The privatized open spaces such as those ones of the public Apartment and
condo building has open space open only for its residents and they can only
access ; which leads to people socializing with people like themselves.

 This will allow us to get to know only our neighbours; it can discourage us
from mingling with people in our local community.

 When people keep to themselves, social inclusion and community cohesion

can suffer.
 In other words, the privatization of public space is an attempt to diminish the
democratic dreams of ordinary citizens.
 URBAN DESIGN TRANSPORTATION

 The combination of urban design and transportation objectives produces

urban environments in which people can live, work, learn, play and
recreate; all within a short walk or a transit ride.
 This is an antidote to the large lots of single-family homes that are a car drive
away from everything, and that have come to characterize urban sprawl. It is
also characterised by the spreading of urban developments (as houses and
shopping centers) on undeveloped land near a city

……UNIT-1 NOTES

ZONING
• Zoning is subject to modification if required to protect the public health ,safety or
welfare .

• Legislative bodies make judgement based upon the data.

• The careful analysis is done and decisions are made based on sound planing and
the zoning principles.

• It will lessen congestion on streets, secure greater safety from fire, panic and
similar danger ,promote health by requiring adequate light and air

• Prevent overcrowding of land , avoid undue concentrations of

population,facilitate the provision of adequate transportation, water supply ,
sewage disposal

• Other basic necessities such as schools, parks,play grounds ,civic and clutural
amenities

• Blight ,obsolescence and slums are dicouraged the city retains the good character
and appearance .

……UNIT-1 NOTES
 GLOBALISATION AND THE URBAN SPACE

McGee and Watters have identified two features of the present version of
globalisation — increased integration of the national economies with the global
systems of production, consumption, and distribution; and space-time
contraction that is the effect of technological advances in transport,
communication, and computer technology.

And, cities are the primary spatial framework within which capital, goods, people,
and information are concentrated; therefore, globalisation has influenced urban
space formation in India. However, shaping of spatial structures of Indian cities by
global forces has been little discussed in globalisation debates.

Before the British came, Indian cities were monocentric — located around central
market places (eg, Delhi's Chandini Chowk, Abid/Koti in Hyderabad). To the market
centre the British ad ..

After Independence state housing boards and urban development authorities,

to accomplish certain explicit and defined goals, added contrived centres to Indian
cities, which led to the emergence of government-driven polycentric cities.
Market-driven polycentric cities have, in contrast, developed during the late 1990s
and show three spatial patterns — leapfrog development, fractured cities, and
divided cities.

Revenues generated to meet external demands have provided funds to support

production of locally-consumed goods and services in Indian cities. The market
demand for retail products and housing has led to construction of malls, retail
outlets, and apartment complexes, which has transformed the urban space within
the monocentric city.

As a matter of fact, tall buildings, shopping malls, corporate headquarters, prestige

hotels, and hospitals were overlaid on the earlier built environment by a process of
creative destruction, for instance road widening often left buildings unfit fo . for use
and developers would purchase a group of buildings to construct high-rise
structures. Consequently, the core city space has become randomly marked with
glass and steel structures as if development has leapfrogged from one location to
another.

At the same time, several economic centres have developed in the periphery
leading to polycentric cities. In the west these nuclei of economic activity are known
by various names — "technoburbs" (Robert Fishman), "urban villages" (Kenneth
Jackson) .. "middle landscape"
(Peter Rowe), and "edge cities" (Joel Garreau). In India global capital in search for
the cheapest available land honed-in on the periurban space surrounding cities.

Periurban areas in India are the rural-urban interface and a landing ground for
rural residents migrating to cities. Polynucleation of periurban areas is spatially
manifested in the form of office parks, malls, and apartments and single-family
homes.

Moreover, the core and periphery of Indian cities are now separated as if by a
fault line and construction of expressways, ring-roads, bypasses has
accentuated the fracture. State governments, by their excessive reliance on public
health inspired zoning based on abstract pattern of standard streets, lots, and set
backs, and commercial strips, have also contributed to the process of fracturing of
Indian cities.

Indian cities have been divided by the desire of different types of people to live s
.separately from other socio-economic groups leading to distance in urban space.
This was observed by the Chicago School in the US and called "spatial
polarisation". Divided cities have arisen due to the "exclusionary aspirations rooted
in fear and protection of privilege and the values of civic responsibility...and the
dangers of making outsiders of fellow citizens".

Spatially, this has led to the construction of "gated communities" to wall out
uncertainty, reduce different types of physical risk (e.g. personal safety) and social
interactions (eg unwanted social exchanges). At the same time job creation in cities
due to multiplier effects of external injections has attracted different types of people
leading to diverse and plural cities, called "mongrel cities" by Leonie Sandercock.

How to plan to enrich human life in fractured, divided, and mongrel cities Planning
has two components — the hard component (built environment) and the soft
component. In turn, planning for the built environment is possible at two scales. At
the macro-level regional level planning for transport, water supply, sewage
disposal, and environment management is required. Simultaneously micro-level
planning by using tools, such as neo-traditional models, is a practical possibility
to retro-fit neighbourhoods.

In contrast to conventional development, neo-traditional development models aim

to recreate the classic small town with its walkable streets, mix of land uses, and
blend of buildings and open space. Orlando City in Florida has combined neo-
traditional planning principles and public-private partnership frameworks to develop
compact and walkable neighborhoods, villages, and town centres with a
jobs/housing balance; and clustered open spaces occupying more than 40% of
the land.

Noteworthy is the integration of principles of architecture, urban design, and

planning at the neighbourhood level and planning looks at the built form (eg
footprints of all structures), land use patterns (eg location and density of retail,
office spaces), public open space (eg parks, plazas), street design (eg circulation
systems), and pedestrian access (eg one-quarter mile access from shops).
 IDEAS OF SUSTAINABILITY

Sustainable design (also called environmental design, environmentally sustainable

design, environmentally conscious design, etc.) is the philosophy of designing
physical objects, the built environment, and services to comply with the principles of
social, economic, and ecological sustainability

Sustainable Urbanism, as a defined term, is application of sustainability and

resilient principles to the design, planning, and administration/operation of cities.

Related to sustainable urbanism is the Ecocity movement (also known as

Ecological Urbanism) which specifically is looking to make cities based on
ecological principles, and the Resilient Cities movement addresses depleting
resources by creating distributed local resources to replace global supply chain in
case of major disruption.

Green urbanism is another common term for sustainable urbanism. Sustainable

development is a general term for both making both urban and economic growth
more sustainable, but isn't specifically a mode of urbanism.

Sustainable urbanism aims to close the loop by eliminating environmental impact

of urban development by providing all resources locally.

It looks at the full life cycle of the products to make sure that everything is made
sustainably, and sustainable urbanism also brings things like electricity and food
production into the city.

This means that literally everything that the town or city needs is right there making it
truly self-sufficient and sustainable.

The architect and urban planner Doug Farr discusses making cities walkable, along
with combining elements of ecological urbanism, sustainable urban infrastructure,
and new urbanism, and goes beyond them to close the loop on resource use and
bring everything into the city or town.

It is about increasing the quality of life by bringing more resources within a short
distance and also increasing the quality of products that are offered.\

Defining Elements of Sustainable Urbanism

 Compactness
o Compactness, or density, plays an important role in sustainable urban
development because it supports reductions in per-capita resource use
and benefits public transit developments
 o For these reasons, sustainable urbanism requires minimum development
densities roughly four times higher than two dwelling units per acre.

 Biophilia
 The concept of Biophilia hypothesis was introduced by E. O. Wilson. It
refers to the connection between humans and other living systems.

 Within this concept, humans are biologically predisposed to caring for

nature. In Douglass Farr’s book, Sustainable Urbanism:

 Urban Design with Nature, he links open spaces such as parks and
recreational areas, sustainable food production and agricultural land use
practices with humans’ concern and relationship with natural systems.

 Therefore, biophilia is a crucial underlying component of sustainable

urbanism.

 Sustainable Corridors
 Sustainable corridors are similar to a wildlife corridor in that they connect
one area to another efficiently, cheaply, and safely.

 They allow people to pass from their immediate proximity to another

without relying on cars or other wasteful and inefficient products.

 It also relys on accessibility to all people in the community so that the

mode of transportation is the most convenient and easiest to use for
everyone. Sustainable Corridors also include biodiversity corridors to allow
animals to move around communities so that they may still live in and
around cities.

 High Performance Buildings

 High performance buildings are designed and constructed to maximize
operational energy savings and minimize environmental impacts of the
construction and operation of the buildings.

 Building construction and operation generates a great deal of ‘externalized

costs’ such as material waste, energy inefficiencies and pollution.
URBAN RENEWAL:

Urban Renewal is a continuous up-gradation process by which large areas of town /

city, gradually change their character by slowly renewing themselves to fit in with the
needs of contemporary society.

A combination of circumstances like

• Expansion of town without proper planning,
• new modes of living or shopping,
• changing attitudes towards environment also lead to such schemes.

Urban Renewal can be said as a collective programme to alter or correct the

above stated troubles.
It includes
• redevelopment,
• conservation and
• rehabilitation.

NEED:
In Urban areas, urban agglomeration and the resulting population congestion leads
to unbearable living conditions, which is the root cause of planning a renewal
programme.

The need for urban development mainly arises due to

1. Bad living conditions of urban people
2. Physical and Functional obsolescence.
3. Traffic congestions due to improper planning.
4. Economic/Social imbalance
5. Inadequacy of infrastructural facilities.

AIMS AND GOALS

1. Identification of areas for different schemes i.e., conserrvation,
rehabilitation, redevelopment etc.
2. Provision of required housing, commercial and industrial facilities.
3. Improvement of slums and blighted area
4. Strengthening and Provision of infrastructual facilities – viz… schools,
hospitals etc and amenities like water supply, drainage
5. Deciding the traffic circulation pattern by strengthening and widening of
existing roads and provision of links.
URBAN RENEWAL STRATIGIES
1. Redevelopment
2. Rehabilitation
3. Clearance
4. Urban Decentralisation
5. Conservation
6. Reproduction
7. Revitalisation

1. REDEVELOPMENT – ( CLEARING AND RE-USE OF LAND)

Redevelopment is taken to mean the process which involves clearance of property
and the building of new structures according to a definite pre-conceived plan with the
layout different from that of area before redevelopment was undertaken.
7. REVITALISATION
Helps to discard negative imagery of a city .
Ex: Old industrial centres are frequently defined in the media by severe economic
and social deprivation, homelessness, high levels of crime, vandalism, public
disorder, pollution and a lack of civic amenities. As a consequence, they have
increasingly needed to reposition themselves as centres of leisure and amenity
rather than of production and heavy industry.
CONTEMPORARY APPROACHES:
COMMUNITY/ PUBLIC PARTICIPATION AND URBAN DESIGN:

Public participation is the involvement of people in the creation and management

of their built and natural environments. Its strength is that it cuts across tradition
professional boundaries and cultures.

The activity of community participation is based on the principle that the built and
natural environments work better if citizens are active and involved in its creation and
management instead of being treated as passive consumers.

The main purposes of participation are; To involve citizens in planning and design
decision making processes and, as a result, make it more likely they will work within
established systems when seeking solutions to problems.

To provide citizens with a voice in planning and decision making in order to

improve plans, decisions, service delivery, and overall quality of the environment.

To promote a sense of community by bringing together people who share common

goals. Participation should be active and directed, those who become involved
should experience a sense of achievement.

Traditional planning procedures should be examined to ensure that participation

achieves more than a simple affirmation of the designers or planners intentions.

The Importance of Participation: The planning system is meant to reflect the

general wishes of the local community and there is a need on the local authority to
consult widely during the formulation of a Local Plan and in the operation of the
development.

TRANSIT METROPOLIS:

 A Transit metropolis is an urbanized region with high-quality public

transportation services and settlement patterns that are conducive to riding
public transit.

 While Transit villages and Transit-oriented developments (TODs) focus on

creating compact, mixed-use neighbourhoods around rail stations, transit
metropolises represent a regional constellation of TODs that benefit from
having both trip origins and destinations oriented to public transport stations.

 In an effort to reduce mounting traffic congestion problems and improve

environmental conditions, a number of Chinese mega-cities, including Beijing
and Shenzhen, have embraced the transit metropolis model for guiding urban
growth and public-transport investment decisions.
Types of Transit Metropolises:

Adaptive Cities:

 Transit oriented cities that have invested in rail systems to guide urban
growth and achieve larger societal objectives

 Such as preserving open space, producing affordable housing in rail

served communities

 All feature compact mixed use suburban communities and new towns
concentrated around rail nodes

 Examples: Stockholm, Tokyo, Singapore and Copenhagen

Adaptive Transit:

 places that have accepted spread out low density patterns of growth

 Seek to appropriately adapt transit services and new technologies to

these environments

 Karlsruhe (dual track systems); Adelaide (track guided buses) and

Mexico City (small vehicle entrepreneurial services)

Strong Core Cities:

 integrating transit and urban development within a more confined

central city context

 Provide integrated tram services around mixed traffic tram and light rail
system

 Trams designed into streetscapes and coexist with pedestrian and

bicycle traffic
 Examples: Zurich and Melbourne
Hybrid:
 Adaptive cities and adaptive transit
 Create workable balance between concentrating development along main line
transit corridors and adapting transit to serve their spread out suburbs and
exurbs

 Munich-heavy rail trunk line services, light rail and conventional bus services
have strengthened central city while also serving suburban growth axes