SUBJECT: Architectural Design 7: Community Architecture and Urban Design

INSTRUCTOR: Ar. Gerrlene C. Cabalonga, UAP

MODULE 1
(Week 1-5)

1. Introduction to Urban Design and the Community

Urban design is the shaping of a community’s physical form in a way that considers a multiplicity of
objectives and interests through an inclusive, public decision-making process. Combining the practices of
architecture, planning, and landscape architecture, urban design addresses the functional and aesthetic qualities
of the physical environment at a range of scales, from the individual streetscape, park, or block to the larger
community, city, or region. It used in suburban and rural communities and has even provided solutions to address
environmental management challenges.

1.1 Urban Design

Urban design, as defined by the late University of Washington Professor Meyer Wolfe, is the “manipulation of
the physical environment” in a way that:

 Addresses the way people perceive and behave in their surroundings.

 Considers the implications of form-giving actions (including the environmental and ecological
consequences) at a range of scales (sometimes from the individual to the regional).
 Pursues multiple objectives for multiple clients (including affected members of the public).
 Conducted through an explicit decision-making process that offers the public the opportunity to participate
in a meaningful way.
 It provides a useful checklist for designers, planners, engineers, and other practitioners to use such that
they are addressing urban design’s inherent values.
 It describes a rational participatory process and provides a clear methodology for applying urban design
concepts.

1.2 Four Key Components of an Effective Approach

 Urban design pursues multiple objectives for multiple clients
A critical, defining aspect of urban design that separates it from single-client master planning is that
urban design is directed toward accomplishing a variety of objectives for all populations in a community.

 Urban design addresses the sensory environment

Urban design addresses how people perceive and use their environment. People care about the look,
feel, and livability of their communities, and urban design tools are a planner’s most effective tools to address
this need. To accomplish this, urban designers must be well-versed in the way human perception and behavior
is affected by their physical surroundings, which also involves understanding cultural behaviors and
preferences, economic factors, and functional activities associated with the physical environment.

 Urban design considers the implications of form-giving actions in a range of scales

A successful urban design project typically addresses conditions within the project boundaries but also
the recommendations effects on the larger surroundings. At the same time, such efforts should examine how
the proposed actions relate back to the experiences of the individual. Urban design is often thought of
addressing only urban design features, such as a park, street, or town center, but urban design tools are also
effective in addressing regional, landscape-scale objectives.
  Urban design uses an explicit, public decision-making process
Broad and focused engagement techniques are critical in most public planning efforts and urban design
brings with it a number of tools to help people participate meaningfully in the design process. This includes
visual preference surveys in which participants evaluate different building types, park features, or
environmental measures to identify which might fit best within their community. People also seem to respond
well to hands-on exercises that allow them to identify the type and location of desired improvements.

1.3 Building a Community through Urban Design

There are two models for development of cities and towns. One, the neighborhood model, founded on
thousands of years of trial and error, brings people together.
We build cities that bring us together or push us apart. "Gated communities" are an obvious example
of building to isolate, but other methods are also common. Streets that are too wide, with fast moving traffic,
divide us. So do zoning codes that separate uses and housing types. Berms, buffers, setbacks, limited-access
highways, and massive parking lots, when used routinely, put barriers and distance between people. Mixed-
use neighborhoods and great public spaces, on the other hand, bring citizens together in real communities.
Here are the ten best reasons to design and build places that support community:
1) For freedom and choice in mobility

When you live in a place designed to keep people

apart, you have to get around by motor vehicle. When you
live in a walkable neighborhood, you can still drive if you
want to. But you can also walk, ride a bike, hop on a bus
or train, and often take car-share or bike-share.

2) To support social interaction

Humans are social, yet this primary fact of life is oddly absent as a core consideration in modern urban
development regulations that separate uses and housing, notes Steve Price, principal in the firm Urban
Advantage. Price has gathered impressive research on how land-use policies
3) For great public places
You know when you are in a great public place, and the pure joy that it brings is palpable. People flock
to these places. There is nothing like great public places to bring people together, but activating such spaces
requires people living and working in proximity—it requires the neighborhood model.
4) For healthy lifestyle opportunities

Places where people walk 10,000 steps per

day as part of their daily activities have been proven to
be healthier than those where people walk less, all
other things being equal, notes architect Steve
Mouzon. Living in a walkable place myself, I walk and
ride a bike nearly every day for transportation. But I
also run regularly, and the convenience of simply
stepping out my door and jogging a few miles in
pleasant surroundings contributes to my health. If I had
to go to the gym, or drive someplace to run on a trail,
I'd do it less and maybe not at all.

5) To reduce cost of living

6) To protect the environment
Places that bring us together benefit the environment in several ways: Every trip on foot or on a bike
burns fat instead of gas, keeping us healthier and the air cleaner. Also, when we spend time outdoors, he says,
we get acclimated to the local environment so that when we return indoors we may be able to throw the
windows open and leave the air conditioner off.
7) For long-lasting value and to build the tax base
8) To reduce infrastructure expenses
9) To reduce traffic deaths
When cities and towns are designed for separation, inevitably the thoroughfares are built for faster
moving traffic. People have to drive farther, at higher speeds—multiplying risk for everybody on the roads,
including those who must walk in difficult conditions.
10) To make your community unique
The more we build to separate, the more every place looks like every place else. It's hard to distinguish
between shopping centers, strip commercial corridors, subdivisions, and office parks. But when you build and
revitalize mixed-use main streets and focus on placemaking, the unique qualities of community are enhanced.
That gives people a reason to go to a community, experience something different, and invest.

1.3.1 Urban Design Principles

These are guidelines that a city adopts to direct its long term strategy. Urban designers, architectural
firms and neighborhoods may also adopt principles to guide their contributions to urban design. The following
are the common examples:
Beautiful Cities
Creating a beautiful city is a primary goal.

Blue Green Cities

Blue and green spaces such as waterfront areas and parks are a priority.

Compactness
Reduce the distances between things by choosing compact designs. For example, wide highways and parking
lots are generally less compact than light rail for equivalent passenger capacity.

Complete Neighborhoods
The principle that people can live, work and receive basic services within their neighborhood. Associated with
village-like neighborhood and mixed zoning.

Conviviality
Neighborhoods are social and lively with spaces for personal solace, companionship, family and community.

Ease of Movement
Cities are easy to traverse by walking and transportation is accessible and efficient.

Efficiency
Cities are energy and resource efficient.

Health and Safety

Health and safety is a priority. For example, air quality is a fundamental goal.

Heritage Conservation
A city’s history and historic architecture of great value is preserved.

Human Scale
Cities are built at human scale.

Laissez Faire Architecture

Building codes that place unreasonable restriction on architecture are detrimental to a city as they prevent
creative expression.

Neighborhood Character
Neighborhoods have a unique character that has value.

People First
Cities are built for people. Machines such as cars and industrial sites tend to detract from a city. Where they
are required, they are designed to take the background. For example an underground parking lots as opposed
to a parking lot on prime waterfront land.

Public Space
Natural areas, beaches, parks, public squares and streets that are open to the public have a profound value to
a city.
Quality of Life
Quality of life as measured by people’s self reported happiness is a primary goal of urban design. A high
quality of life tends to be a virtuous cycle that attracts greater economic activity and investment leading to
improved quality of life.

Regional Integration
Neighborhoods are integrated with cities and cities are integrated with regions. For example, transportation has
little value without regional links.

Sustainable Design
Urban design is a type of sustainable design that uses techniques such as green technology.

Transition Design
Cities tend to change slowly and can’t be transformed overnight. Urban design is a practical discipline that
takes transitional steps toward goals.

2. Community Planning
2.1 5 C’s in Community Planning
The source of most conflicts and confusion occurring when cities update their Community Plans is due
to the confusion over the scale and size difference of a ‘Community’ versus a ‘Neighborhood’ unit.
A community is defined as, “a group of people living in the same place or having a particular
characteristic in common.” Many places have different communities inhabiting them, such as an elderly, or
arts, or ethnic community living and/or working in close proximity to one another. Even the internet can be
considered a place inhabited by many diverse communities. So the scale, parameters, and character of a
community-scaled planning effort is difficult to define.
Usually, community planning areas are defined by political boundaries, or historic development plats
and, in some deplorable cases, old insurance red-lining practices that gave a city its initial zoning districts. The
neighborhood is a physical place — varied in intensity from more rural to more urban — that many different
communities inhabit. At its essence, whether downtown, midtown or out-of-town, its health and viability (in
terms of both resilience and quality of life) is defined by certain basic characteristics.
1. Complete
Great neighborhoods host a mix of uses in order to provide for our daily need to live, work, play,
worship, dine, shop, and talk to each other. Each neighborhood has a center, a general middle area, and an
edge. The reason suburban sprawl sprawls is because it has no defined centers and therefore no defined
edge. Civic spaces generally (though not always) define a neighborhood’s center while commerce tends to
happen on the edges, on more highly traffic-ed streets and intersections easily accessible by two or more
neighborhoods. The more connected a neighborhood is, the more variety of commercial goods and services
can be offered, as not every neighborhood needs a tuxedo shop or a class ‘A’ office building.

2. Compact
The 5-minute walk from center to edge, a basic rule-of-thumb for walkability, equates to approximately
80 to 160 acres, or 9 to 18 city blocks. This general area includes public streets, parks, and natural lands, as
well as private blocks, spaces and private buildings. This scale may constrict in the dead of winter and/or heat
of summer, and expand during more temperate months. Compactness comes in a range of intensities that are
dependent upon local context.

3. Connected
Great neighborhoods are walkable, drivable, and bike-able with or without transit access. But, these are
just modes of transportation. To be socially connected, neighborhoods should also be linger-able, sit-able, and
hang out-able.
4. Complex
Great neighborhoods have a variety of civic spaces, such as plazas, greens, recreational parks, and
natural parks. They have civic buildings, such a libraries, post offices, churches, community centers and
assembly halls. They should also have a variety of thoroughfare types, such as cross-town boulevards, Main
Streets, residential avenues, streets, alleys, bike lanes and paths. Due to their inherent need for a variety of
land uses, they provide many different types of private buildings such as residences, offices, commercial
buildings and mixed-use buildings. This complexity of having both public and private buildings and places
provides the elements that define a neighborhood’s character.
5. Convivial
The livability and social aspect of a neighborhood is driven by the many and varied communities that not only
inhabit, but meet, get together, and socialize within a neighborhood. Meaning “friendly, lively and enjoyable”
convivial neighborhoods provide the gathering places — the coffee shops, pubs, ice creme shops, churches,
clubhouses, parks, front yards, street fairs, block parties, living rooms, back yards, stoops, dog parks,
restaurants and plazas — that connect people. How we’re able to socially connect physically is what defines
our ability to endure and thrive culturally. It’s these connections that ultimately build a sense of place, a sense
of safety, and opportunities for enjoyment.

2.2 Community Building and Placemaking

2.2.1 Placemaking and Community Building in the Post-Pandemic World
UNStudio has recently published a report exploring the broader scope of community building and
placemaking in the post-pandemic urban environment. Through examples from their practice, UNStudio
highlights various design strategies currently incorporated in architecture and urban planning that cater to the
universal and crucial need to connect socially. In addition, the practice stresses the importance of “third
spaces” and human-scale connectivity, as well as the blending of digital and physical spaces of interaction.
Illustrating the social and health value of public spaces, the studio cites researcher Tamas David
Barrett who says that “it has been long observed that urban spaces in which the frequency of meaningful social
contact among the individual members of a particular population is high tend to generate healthier
communities.” UNStudio defines placemaking as a strategy that builds on community knowledge and considers
the site holistically, interweaving a wide array of aspects from health to sustainability, data-driven technologies
and the psychology of social interaction.

2.2.2 Architecture and Urban Design Critical to Helping Build Communities Post-Corona
Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, facilitating the creation of communities related mainly to the workplace
and the shared (living) economy, and was principally focused on co-creation, innovation and productivity. But
recent events have highlighted the human need for connectedness on a broader scale and as an essential
facet of human health.
In UNStudio’s new report, we delve into how architecture and urban design can be used to better
promote community building. This is where the idea of placemaking becomes critical.
“Designing to strengthen and support communities is all about creating places that bring people
together,” says UNStudio’s Founder and Principal Architect Ben van Berkel. “A key approach to achieve this is
through Placemaking, which it to create quality places that spark an emotional attachment for people, and that
thrive when users have a range of reasons to be there.”
 In essence, a successful placemaking strategy ensures that urban areas feel like real communities,
rather than isolated - and isolating - concrete jungles. Although some standard placemaking strategies may
involve incremental small-scale developments, or tactical ‘guerrilla urbanism’ or ‘pop-up urbanism’, for
architects and urban designers placemaking is about creating resilient, accessible, dynamic and inclusive
places for the long-term.
“In the past, urban planning policies often failed to understand the human and economic value of
community building, resulting in monofunctional neighbourhoods without sufficient public space, prolific and
dense high-rise development with few social amenities, or an excessive focus on tourism resulting in
considerable disruption to local social connectivity,” the report states. Garett Hwang, UNStudio Hong Kong
Director, says: “The definition of community has evolved so much that it’s no longer just a way of impacting
communities through physical interaction or changes, but also digital, social, emotional and mental.”

References:
Owen, J. (2020, March 16). The Importance of Urban Design for Your Community.
Steuteville, R. (2017, March 17). Ten reasons to build Community through Urban Design.
Spacey, J. (2016, April 30). 18 Urban Planning Principles.
Blackson, H. (2017, October 19). The 5 ‘Cs’ of Community Planning.
Cutieru, A. (2021, August 31). UNStudio Publishes Report on Placemaking and Community Building in the
Post-Pandemic World.
UNStudio Report: Architecture and Urban Design Critical to Helping Build Communities Post-Corona.