Urban Design Dimensions

THE DIMENSIONS OF URBAN DESIGN

1. The morphological dimension

2. The perceptual dimension

3. The social dimension

4. The visual dimension

5. The functional dimension

6. The temporal dimension

THE VISUAL DIMENSION

WHAT IS VISUAL DIMENSION OF URBAN DESIGN?

AESTHETIC PREFERENCE

Aesthetic appreciation of the urban environment is primarily visual and

kinaesthetic. Experiencing urban environment involves all our senses. Jack
Nasar (1998) identified five attributes of general public’s preferable
environments:

•Naturalness
•Upkeep/Civilities
•Openness and defined space
•Historical significance/content
•Order
PATTERNS AND AESTHETIC ORDER

As we always experience the whole rather than any single part in isolation, we
APPRECIATE ENVIRONMENTS AS ENSEMBLES, ORDERED, VISUALLY COHERENT
AND HARMONIOUS.

Smith (1980, p. 74) argues that our intuitive capacity for aesthetic appreciation
has four distinct components that transcend time and culture-

•Appreciation of rhythm
•Sense of rhyme and pattern
•Recognition of balance
•Sensitivity to harmonic relationships
ENVIRONMENTAL PREFERENCE FRAMEWORK
Kaplan and Kaplan (1982, pp. 82-7) suggest ‘coherence’, ‘legibility’,
‘complexity’ and ‘mystery’ as informational qualities of environments that
contribute to people’s preferences for particular physical environments.

MAKING SENSE INVOLVEMENT

COHERENCE COMPLEXITY
Environments with
PRESENT OR
Environments easy enough in the
IMMEDIATE
to organize or present scene to
structure keep one occupied
MYSTERY
LEGIBILITY
Environments
Environments
FUTURE OR suggesting that, if
suggesting they
PROMISED they were explored
would be explored
further, new
extensively without
information could be
getting lost.
acquired.
 ii) Proximity: enables elements that are spatially
i) Similarity: enables recognition of similar or identical
closer together to be read as a group and to be
elements amid others through repetition of forms or of
distinguished from those that are further apart.
common characteristics (e.g. window shapes)

iv) Orientation: whereby elements are grouped through a common orientation, either through parallelism or
convergence towards a void or solid.
v) Closure: enables recognition of incomplete or partial vi) Continuity: enables recognition of patterns that may or
elements as wholes. may not have been intended.
 THE KINAESTHETIC EXPERIENCE

The experience of an urban environment is a dynamic activity involving movement

and time- ‘the kinaesthetic experience. The environment is experienced as a
dynamic, emerging, unfolding temporal sequence. To describe the visual
aspect of townscape Gordon Cullin (1961) conceived the concept of ‘serial
vision’ and argued that the urban experience is a series of jerks or revelations with
delight and interest being stimulated by contrasts by the ‘drama of juxtaposition’.
URBAN SPACE
Positive and Negative Space

✓Relatively closed, outdoor space which has a

definite and distinctive shape.
✓Conceivable and can be measured.
✓has definite boundaries
✓discontinuous (in principle), closed, static,
but serial in composition.
✓its shape is as important as that of the
buildings surrounding it.

Negative Space:

✓Shapeless E.g. amorphous residue left over

around buildings
✓inconceivable- discontinuous and lacking
perceivable edges or form.
CREATING POSITIVE SPACE

For all ‘hard’ urban spaces, three major space-defining elements exist the
surrounding structures, the floor and the imaginary sphere of the sky overhead

Streets and Squares

Although positive urban spaces come in a variety of different sizes and shapes,
there are two main types- Streets (roads, paths, avenues, lanes, boulevards,
alleys, malls, etc.) and Squares (plazas, circuses, piazzas, places, courts, etc.).

Streets are dynamic spaces with a sense of movement; the width-to-

length ratio is greater than 1:3.

Squares are static spaces with less sense of movement; the width-to-
length ratio is less than 1:3.

Streets and squares can be characterized as- ‘formal’ and ‘informal’:

Iqbal Maidan- a famous square in Bhopal view of a typical Indian street
Formal–

✓have a strong sense of enclosure

✓orderly floorscape and arrangement of furniture
✓surrounding building that enhances formality
✓often symmetrical in layout

Informal–

✓relaxed character
✓wide variety of surrounding architecture
✓often asymmetrical in layout
The Squares
A square usually refers to an area formed by buildings. To better understanding of
the aesthetic qualities of squares, Camillo Sitte and Paul Zucker’s Ideas are of
particular value.

Camillo Sitte:

He advocated a ‘picturesque’ approach to urban space design in a pictorial sense-

‘structured like a picture and processing the formal values of an organized canvas:
•Enclosure
•Freestanding sculptural mass
•Shape
•Monuments

•Paul Zucker:
He outlined five basic types of ‘artistically relevant’ squares which represented
‘organized and contained spaces’:
•The closed space- space self-contained
•The dominated square
•The nuclear square
•Grouped square- space units combined
 THE PUBLIC REALM:

public realm in India

The public realm has ‘physical’ (i.e. space) and ‘social’ (i.e.
activity) dimensions. Public life involves relatively open and universal
social contexts, in contrast to private life, which is intimate, familiar, shielded,
controlled by the individual, and shared only with family and friends.
The Street

Streets are linear three-dimensional spaces enclosed on opposite sides by

buildings. They may or may not contain roads. Streets for can be analyzed in
terms of polar qualities, the combination of which give scope for great
diversity- visually dynamic or static; enclosed or open; long or short;
wide or narrow; straight or curved; formality/informality of architectural
treatment

Townscape

Townscape results from the weaving

together of buildings and all other
elements of the urban fabric and street
(trees, nature, water, traffic,
advertisements, etc.) so that ‘visual drama’
is released.
Buildings seen together gave a ‘visual
pleasure’ which no buildings can give
separately.
URBAN ARCHITECTURE

Visual aesthetic character of urban environment derives not only from its
spatial qualities but also from

✓the colour, texture and detailing of its defining space

✓activities occurring within and around which contribute to its character

and sense of place

✓its architecture and its landscaping

Buchanan (1988b, pp. 25-7) argued that building facades should:
create a sense of pace.

mediate between inside and out and between private and public space,
providing gradations between the two.

have windows that suggest the potential presence of people and that reveal and
‘frame’ internal life.

have character and coherence that acknowledge conventions and enter into a
dialogue with adjacent buildings.

have compositions that create rhythm and repose and hold the eye.

have a sense of mass and materials expressive of the form of construction.

have substantial tactile and decorative natural materials, which weather

gracefully.

have decorations that distract delights and intrigues.

The criteria of structuring and informing and appreciation of
urban architecture:

✓Expression

✓Order and unity

✓Integrity

✓Plan and section

✓Detail

✓Integration
HARD AND SOFT LANDSCAPE

Floorscape:

Two main types of floorscapes can be identified in urban areas- ‘hard’ pavement
and ‘soft’ landscaped area. A floorscape’s character is substantially determined
by the materials used (e.g. brick, stone slab, cobbles, concrete, etc.), the way
they are used, how they interact with other materials and landscape
features.

A change of flooring material can indicate a change of ownership (e.g.

public to private), indicate a potential hazard or provide a warning. The
floorscape pattern often performs the most important aesthetic function
of breaking down the scale of large, hard surfaces into more manageable
human proportions
In Glasgow City eCntre Public Realm, Strategy, and Guidelines, Gillespie (1995, p.
65) offers a set of six general principles:

✓Design to incorporate the minimum street furniture.

✓Wherever possible, integrate elements into a single unit.

✓Remove all superfluous street furniture.

✓Consider street furniture as a family of items, suiting the quality of the

environment and helping to give it a coherent identity.

✓Position street furniture to help create and delineate space.

✓Locate street furniture so as not to impede pedestrians, vehicles or

desire lines.
Soft Landscaping

Soft landscaping can be a decisive element in:

creating character and identity,

✓enhancing the temporal legibility of urban environment by trees and other

vegetation that suppress changing season.

✓playing an important role in aesthetic pleasure.

✓adding a sense of human scale.

✓providing a sense of enclosure.

For all landscape schemes, hard or soft, English Heritage suggests an eight-part strategy:

Appearance

Consider the suitability of materials and their combination for the tasks they perform.
Design for robustness in terms of long-term maintenance.

Cleansing

Avoid clutter, by keeping signage to a minimum and using existing posts or wall
mountings.

Have a concern for pedestrians

Have a concern for people with disabilities

Traffic and related matters

 DEFINING PUBLIC SPACE:

“Public space relates to all those parts of the built and natural environment
where the public have free access. It encompasses- all the streets, squares and
other right of way, whether predominantly in residential, commercial or
community/civic uses; the open spaces and parks, and the “public/private”
spaces where public access in unrestricted (at least during daylight hours). It
includes the interfaces with key internal and private spaces to which the public
normally has free access.”

(Carmona et al 2004: 10)

The relative ‘publicness’ of space can be considered in terms of three qualities:

•Ownership- whether the spaces is publicly or privately owned.

•Access- whether the public has access to the place.
•Use – whether the space is actively used and shared by different individuals and groups.
PUBLIC LIFE:

Public life occurs in social space used for social interaction, regardless of whether
it is publicly owned or privately owned space, provided it is accessible to the
public.

Public life can be broadly grouped into two interrelated types – ‘formal’ and
‘informal’.
THE PUBLIC REALM:

The public realm can be considered to be the sites and settings of formal and
informal public life. The concept of physical public realm extends to all the space
accessible to and used by the public, including:

External public space – those pieces of land lying between private landholdings
(e.g. public squares, streets, highways, parks, parking lots, stretches of coastline,
forest, lakes and rivers.). These are all spaces that are accessible and available to
all.

Internal public space – various public institutions (libraries, museums, town

halls, etc.) plus most public transport facilities (train stations, bus stations,
airports, etc.)

External and internal quasi- ‘public’ space – although legally private, some
public spaces – university campuses, sports ground, restaurant, cinemas,
theatres, nightclubs, shopping malls – also form part of the public realm but
includes privatised external public spaces.
Accessible Public Realm:

The criterion of universal access (open to all) suggests a single or

unitary public realm. A constructivist interpretation, however, suggests
there is no single or unitary public realm since a space that is public for citizen
A may not be public for citizen B.

The Democratic Public Realm:

The key functions and qualities of the public realm relate to a notion of a
‘democratic’ (and political) public realm – one that has a physical
or material basis, but which variously facilitates and symbolises socio-political
activities regarded as important to democratic citizenship.
THE DECLINE OF THE PUBLIC REALM
NEIGHBOURHOODS:

Overlaid on the physical and spatial design of a neighbourhood were more

social ideas and objectives, such as social balance (mixed communities),
neighbour interaction and the creation of identity and
sense-of-community.
Three interrelated strands of thinking thus informed neighbourhood design:

Neighbourhoods have been proposed and/or designed as a planning device –

that is, as a relatively pragmatic and useful way of structuring and organising
urban areas.

Neighbourhoods have been proposed and/or designed as areas of identity and

character to create or enhance a sense-of-place.

Neighbourhoods have been proposed and/or designed as a means of creating

areas of greater social/ resident interaction and enhancing neighbourliness.
Some ways how design can support neighbourhood diversity, Talen (2009a: 184-5):
➢by showing how multi-family units can be accommodated in single-family blocks.

➢by designing links between diverse land uses and housing types.

➢by creating paths through edges that disrupt connectivity.

➢by increasing density near public transit.

➢by demonstrating the value of non-standard unit types like courtyard housing, closes

and residential mews.

➢by fitting small businesses and live/work units in residential neighbourhoods.

➢by developing codes that successfully accommodate land-use diversity.

➢by softening the impact of big box retail development in under-invested commercial

strips.
➢by designing streets that function as collective spaces.

➢by connecting institutions to their surrounding residential fabric.

SAFETY AND SECURITY:

Fear of Victimization

Crime, Disorder and Incivility

Approaches to Crime Prevention

Opportunity Reduction Methods

FEAR OF VICTIMISATION

A distinction should be made between ‘fear’ and

‘risk’- the difference
between ‘feeling safe’ and actually ‘being safe’.

CRIME, DISORDER AND INCIVILITY

In public space, it is important to distinguish between criminal and

disorderly behavior since it is often disorderly rather than
criminal behavior that is problematic
APPROACHES TO CRIME PREVENTION:

‘Dispositional’ and ‘situational’

Dispositional approach involves removing or lessening an individual’s

motivation to commit acts, through education and moral guidance.
Situational measures manipulate not just the physical but also
the social and psychological settings for the crime.

There are four overarching opportunity reduction strategies:

Increasing the perceived effort of the offence.
Increasing the perceived risk of the offence.
Reducing the reward from the offence
Removing excuses for the offence.
OPPORTUNITY REDUCTION METHODS:

Key themes :

Activity, Surveillance, Territorial Definition , Control

Jacobs argued that,

rather than by police, the ‘public peace’ was kept by an intricate

network of voluntary controls and standards and that sidewalk,
adjacent uses and their users were ‘active participants’ in the
‘drama of civilisation versus barbarism’.
Hillier, based on his research concludes:
▪The relative safety of different dwelling types is affected by the number of
sides on which the dwelling is exposed to the public realm (flats
are most safe; detached dwellings least safe).

▪Living in higher density areas reduces risk, with ambient ground-level

density (as opposed to off-the-ground density) correlating particularly strong
with safer living.

▪ Good local movement is beneficial, but larger-scale thorough-

movement across areas is not.

▪Where large-scale movement exists, the greater movement potential

provided by more integrated street systems lower risk.
•Relative affluence and the number of neighbors has a greater
effect than layout type, whether grid or cul-de-sac.

•A Larger number of dwellings per street segment reduces risk in

grid, cul-de-sac and mixed-use areas.

•Dwellings should be arranged linearly on two sides of the street in

larger residential blocks that allow good local movement but that are not
over-permeable.
 CRITICISMS OF OPPORTUNITY REDUCTION APPROACHES:

Opportunity reduction approaches are criticised on two main grounds –

their image and the possibility of displacement.

Image: Use of opportunity reduction techniques has often raised concerns about
the image presented and the ambience of the resulting environment e.g. resulted
in the emergence of highly defensive urbanisms.

Displacement: By restricting opportunities for crime in one location simply

redistributes it. Displacement takes different forms:

Geographical displacement- the crime is moved from one location to another.

Temporal displacement – the crime is moved from one time to another.
Target displacement – the crime is moved from one target to another.
Tactical displacement – one method of crime is substituted for another.
CONTROLLING SPACE: ACCESS AND SOCIAL EXCLUSION

Lynch and Carr (1979) identified four key public space management tasks:

• Distinguishing between ‘harmful’ and ‘harmless’ activities –

controlling the former without constraining the latter.

•Increasing the general tolerance towards free use, while stabilising a

broad consensus of what is permissible.

•Separating – in time and space – the activities of groups with a low

tolerance for each other.

•Providing ‘marginal spaces’ where extremely free behaviour can go

with little damage
Exclusion can be considered in terms of the following:

1. Excluding conducts: Managing public space can be discussed in terms

of preventing or excluding certain undesirable social behaviours.
‘Exclusion Zones’- zones designed to be free of some undesirable social
characteristics, for example, smoke-free zones, campaign and politics-free zones,
vehicle-free zones, skateboard-free zones, mobile/cellphone-free zones, alcohol-
free zones etc.

2. Exclusion through design: Includes

physical exclusion being the inability to access or use
the environment, regardless of whether or not it can
be seen into. Economic access, a form of direct
exclusion can be practised by charging an entry fee.
Exclusion through design is typically a passive means
of exclusion
3. Excluding People: These kind of exclusions are more active and
prevent the entry of certain individuals or social groups. They include
exclusion on the grounds of conduct (behaviour over which people have a
choice) as well as on the grounds of status (factors over which people have
no choice- skin colour, gender, age, etc.)
The ‘Policing’ of Public Space:

Managing and ‘policing’ public space commonly involve more than

just the public police. Policing needs to be considered in terms of ‘social
control’ and in terms of public and private police.

Jones & Newburn (2002: 139) distinguished different types or levels of

social control:

•Primary (formal) social controls – these are direct and are exerted by those
for whom crime prevention, peacekeeping, and investigators and related
policing activities are a primary and defining part of their role.

•Secondary (informal) social controls – these are more indirect and are
exerted by those for whom social control activities are an important
secondary aspect in their role.

•Tertiary (informal) social control – these are also indirect and are those
exerted by ‘intermediate’ groups within local communities.
EQUITABLE ENVIRONMENT:

Disability, Ageing and Exclusion:

The US-based Centre for Universal Design defined the principles of universal
design as follows:

•Equitable
•Flexible
•Simple and intuitive
•Perceptible
•Tolerance for error
•Low physical effort
•Size and space for approach use
Burton & Mitchell (2006) demonstrated a range of design features and
helping to deliver six design attributes:

•Familiarity

•Legibility

•Distinctiveness

•Accessibility

•Comfort

•Safety
Mobility, Wealth and Exclusion

Exclusion of the Young

Cultural Difference and Public Space

Gender Perspectives

INCLUSIVE DESIGN:

•Place people at the heart of the design process.

•Acknowledge diversity and difference.
•Offer choice where a single design solution cannot
accommodate all users.
•Provide for flexibility in use.
•Create environments that are enjoyable to use for everyone.