Urban Design Vocabulary and related Terminologies:

1. Acculturation
2. Agoraphobia
3. Anthropology
4. Block level studies
5. Building Use
6. Central Business District
7. City Beautiful
8. City Center
9. Density
10. Development Plan
11. Diagram
12. Economic Base
13. Edges
14. Entourage
15. Figure-ground Studies
16. Fringe
17. FSI / FAR (Floor Space Index / Floor Area Ratio)
18. Garden City
19. Gentrification
20. Heritage
21. Hypothesis
22. Land Use
23. Landmarks
24. Landscape Grain
25. Morphology
26. Neighbourhood
27. Nodes
28. Palimpsest
29. Pedestrianisation
30. Perspective Plan
31. Public Place
32. Public Realm
33. Public Space
34. Revitalization
35. Schema
36. Spatiality
37. Structure Plan
38. TDR (Transfer of Development Rights)
39. Theory
40. Tissue
41. Traditional and Vernacular
42. Travel-time Grid
43. Typology and Type
44. Urban
45. Urban Block
46. Urban Conservation
47. Urban Design
48. Urban Ecology
49. Urban Form
50. Urban Grain
51. Urban Insert
52. Urban Renewal
53. Urban Transformation
54. Urbanism
55. Urbanist
56. Urbanity
57. Urbanization
58. Zoning
59. New Urbanism
60. Post modern urbanism
61.Urban village
62. Necropolis
63. Urban fabric
64. Shape (of a city)
65. (Urban) pattern
66. (Urban) Texture
67. Imageability
68. Image of the city
69. Paths
70. Districts
71. Seam
72. Continuity
73. Sequence
74. Legibility
75. Entry points
76. Street and streetscape
77. Restoration
78. Restructuring
79. Urban redevelopment
80. Rehabilitation
81. Adaptive reuse
82.Character (of a city)
83. Quality/Essence of a place
63. Urban fabric: This refers to the manner in which urban tissues, uniform or diverse in
nature are knitted together with the urban structure to form an entity.

64. Shape (of a city): Shape is the physical outline in horizontal plan form and vertical
profile or contour.
(Source: Urban Design: The Architecture of Towns and Cities: Paul, D. Spreiregen, p. 64)

65. (Urban) pattern: Pattern is the underlying geometry of city form. Pattern qualifies
size and shape of a city.
(Source: Urban Design: The Architecture of Towns and Cities: Paul, D. Spreiregen, p.64)

66. (Urban) Texture: Texture is the degree of mixture of fine and coarse elements. It is
qualified as being either uniform or uneven.
(Source: Urban Design: The Architecture of Towns and Cities: Paul, D. Spreriegen, p. 55)

67. Imageability: It is that quality in a physical object which gives it a high probability of
evoking a strong image in any given observer. It is that shape, color, or arrangement
which facilitates the making of vividly identified, powerfully structured highly useful
mental images of the environment.
(Source: The Image of the City, Kevin Lynch; Page 9)

68. Image of the city: People's impressions of a building, a particular environment, or a

whole city, are (of course), more than visual. Within the city lie many connotations,
memories, experiences, smells, hopes, crowds, places, buildings, the drama of life and
death, affecting each person according to his particular predilections.
From his environment each person constructs his own mental picture of the parts of the
city in physical relationship to one another. The most essential parts of an individual's
image, or map, overlap and complement those of his fellows.
Hence we can assume a collective image-map or impressions map of a city as a
collective picture of what people extract from the physical reality of a city. That extracted
picture is the image of the city.
(Source: Urban Design: The Architecture of Towns and Cities, Paul D. Spreriegen, p. 50 )

69. Paths: Paths are the channels along which the observer customarily, occasionally,
or potentially moves. They may be streets, walkways, transit lines, canals, railroads.
People observe the city while moving through it, and along these paths the other
environmental images are arranged and related.
(Source: The Image of the City, Kevin Lynch: p. 47)

These are the major and minor routes of circulation which people use to move about. A
city has a network of major routes and a neighborhood network of minor routes. A
building has several main routes which people use to get to and from.
(Source: Urban Design: The Architecture of Towns and Cities Paul Spreiregen)

70. Districts: Districts are the medium to large sections of the city conceived of as
having two dimensional extent, which the observer mentally enters "inside of" and which
are recognizable as having some common, identifying characteristics.
(Source: The Image of the City; Kevin Lynch; p. 47)
71. Seam: Stitching or binding two entities by a common focal entity.

72. Continuity: It is the continuation of an edge or surface (as in a street, channel,

skyline or setback), nearness of parts (as a cluster of buildings), repetition of rhythmic
interval (as a street - corner pattern), similarity, analogy, or harmony of surface, form, or
use (as in a common building material, repetitive pattern of bay windows, similarity of
market activity, use of common signs). These are the qualities that facilitate the
perception of a complex physical reality as one or as inter-related, qualities which
suggest the bestowing of single identity.
(Source: The Image of the city, Kevin Lynch; p 106)

Continuity is provided by a series of coherent parts. The parts may be related by keeping
a common scale, form, texture, or color for a space, or area.
(Source: Central City Malls; H.M. Rubenstein, p. 24)

73. Sequence: Sequence is continuity in the perception of space or objects arranged to

provide a succession of visual change. It may create motion, or mood, or give direction.
(Source: Central City Malls; H.M. Rubenstein. Page. 30)

74. Legibility: It is the degree to which the components of a settlement are discernible
as a coherent urban form.
(Source: Good City Form; Kevin Lynch. pp. 139-140)

75. Entry points: These are the points of arrival to a settlement or an area, and
possessing an identifiable symbolic and perceptible image. These points may exist
within the settlement or occur at the fringes, in the form of landmarks or important
transportation nodes.
76. Street and streetscape: Street is an enclosed linear space used for access,
movement and activities and delineated by natural or built elements or a combination of
both. Streetscape refers to the collective expression of physical elements, functional or
aesthetic in nature that articulate and/or delineate a street.
77. Restoration: i) The object of restoration is to revive the original concept of legibility
of the object. Restoration and re-integration of details and features occurs frequently and
is often based upon respect for original material, archaeological evidence, original
design and authentic documents. In a sense, the cleaning of buildings is also a form of
restoration, and the replacement of missing decorative element is another.
(Source: Guidelines for Conservation, Bernard Feilden Page. 9)

ii) As defined in the Venice Charter.

The process of restoration is a highly specialized operation. Its aim is to preserve and
reveal the aesthetic and historic value of the monument and is based on respect for
original material and authentic documents.
(Source: Guidelines for Conservation, Bernard Feilden Page. 14)

iii) As defined in the Burra Charter. Restoration means returning the existing fabric of a
place to a known earlier state by removin9 accretions or by reassembling existing
components without the introduction of new material.
(Source: Guidelines for Conservation, Bernard Feilden Page. 17)
78. Restructuring: This refers to the development process applied to alter the existing
structure of an area for improved functional efficiency and/or image. The restructuring
process (may not necessarily demand extensive interventions to alter the structure, but
generally involves sensitive relocation of uses and reorientation of functional networks
within and outside the area.
79. Urban redevelopment: The need to revive deteriorating business districts and
residential areas in many cities gave rise to the concept of urban redevelopment as a
development process. The idea of this process was to wipe a site clean and to begin
again with a new and better urban pattern. Originally conceived under the Housing Act
of 1949 in U.S.A., this process unfortunately failed in many cities as the program was
either never accomplished or resulted in sterile environments.
80. Rehabilitation: As explained by Bernard Feilden: The best way of preserving
buildings as opposed to objects, is to keep them in use -a practice which may involve
(what the French call mise en valeur, or) modernization with or without adaptive
alteration. The original use is generally the best for conservation of the fabric, as it
means fewer changes.
Adaptive use of buildings, is often the only way that historic and aesthetic values can be
saved economically, and historic buildings brought up to contemporary standards.
(Source: Guidelines for Conservation, Bernard Feilden Page. 10)

81. Adaptive reuse: Adaptive reuse refers to the process of reusing an existing building
for a purpose other than which it was originally built or designed for. It is also known as
recycling and conversion.

82.Character (of a city): Sign or any distinctive mark: essential feature; sum total of
qualities making an individual entity.
(Source: Webster’s Dictionary).

83. Quality/Essence of a place: Attribute, characteristic, property that defines a space.