Lecture 06: Theory of Urban Design

Lawrence Ogunsanya

lawrencesanya@yahoo.com

ogunsanya@ukzn.ac.za

URBAN DESIGN IV

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Existing Theories and Practice

• Theories that have motivated and still inform the construction of cities are both normative and functional.

• Normative theories attempt to specify "goodness“….what is good city form?... and discuss in detail the aspects that create good cities…..Prescriptive…..What cities ought to be!

• Functional theories attempt to explain how cities perform by concentrating on city form processes, spatial and social structure, and form models……Descriptive……What cities are!

Normative Theories 1. The Cosmic Model

• It assertions that the form of a permanent settlement should be a magical model of the universe and its gods.

• Such a crystalline city has all of its parts fused into a perfectly ordered whole and change is allowed to happen only in a rhythmically controlled manner

• specific phenomena included: such as returning, natural items, celestial measurement, fixing location, centeredness, boundary definition, earth images, land geometry, directionality, place consciousness, and numerology

• Important activities, such as administration and worship, typically at the centre.

• Streets and buildings arranged to express spiritual beliefs; walls and gates enforced hierarchy.

• Layout is informed by the topography and used local materials, producing a striking sense of identity.

• Projection of authority, enforcement of social hierarchy

1. The Cosmic Model

1. The Cosmic Model

• Beijing, City designers arranged streets and buildings to improve the flow of chi, applying feng shui city-wide.

• The Mayans sited buildings in Chichen Itza to represent cosmic forces.

Athens , Greece

Vatican , Rome

2. The Machine Model

• The analogy between city and machine has a long history

• it occurs often when there is no long-term goal in mind but the settlement has to be created hurriedly and its future growth will be determined by still unforeseen forces

• Its form requires a few simple rules of urbanization and the

outcome is factual, functional and devoid of the mystery of the universe.

• Among its attributes are convenience, speed, flexibility,

legibility, equality, and speculation.

2. The Machine Model

• The city was viewed as a kind machine to power and fabricate industrial civilization. Classic Machine Cities were at their apex until around 1950

• The rail station, port and commercial district became the new centres of importance – not the temple.

• Efficiency in production housing, administration, transportation and commerce.

• Economic development supreme, even if it produces slums and pollution.

• The use of technology to overcome the existing terrain, water bodies and climate.

Johannesburg , South Africa

London, UK

San Francisco, USA

Dubai, UAE

3. The Organic Model • In the Organic model, the city is viewed as a living creature, its

inhabitants likened to cells and its “health” is paramount.

• To survive, the Organic City requires abundant energy,

omnipresent machinery, the automobile and communications technology.

• Does not change merely by adding parts but through reorganization as it reaches limits or thresholds.

• It is self-repairing and regulating toward a dynamic balance.

• Undergoes cycles of life and death as is rhythmic passage from one state to another.

Organic model (cont’d) • From this flows the notion of the form of the organic city: - A separate spatial and social unit made up internally of

highly connected places and people. - A healthy community of heterogeneous and diverse nature - The micro unit is the neighborhood, a small residential area,

as the support area for an elementary school, to which children, the most vulnerable of the human species, can safely walk.

- Like organisms, settlements are born, grow and mature, and

if further growth is necessary, a new entity has to be formed. Thus there are states of optimum size, beyond which pathological conditions ensue.

Organic model (cont’d) - Greeenbelts not only ensure an intimate contact with nature

but enclose healthy growth. - A model with typical physical forms, among which radial

patterns, anti-geometrical layouts, and a proclivity for natural materials.

- The Organic City sprawls, reflecting the democratic living

choices of its inhabitants. - Hundreds of “land use zones” mark permissible areas for

families, old people, apartment dwellers, shopping centers, offices and industry, resulting in social segregation.

-There is an attraction to small-scale modes of production or

services as opposed to large-scale synthetic processes. Often the model aligns itself with a socio-economic philosophy

that sees increases in urban value as the result of communal rather than individual endeavor.

Venice, Italy

Prague, Czechoslovakia

Moscow, Russia

Lamu, Kenya

Zanzibar, Tanzania

GENERAL SUMMARY OF THE 3 MODELS

Functional DescriptiveTheories These are founded on the following characteristics:

• Urban history: the city is regarded as a unique historic process... explaining cities as derivative of their own culture (ref Sjoberg, Rapoport).

• Urban Ecology: city is regarded as an ecology of people, each social group occupying space according to economic position and class. (Ref. Burgess [concentric model], Weber, Simmel and Spengler)

• City economy: regards the city as an economic engine in which space, unlike in the previous category, is both a resource and an additional cost imposed on the economy for production or consumption….location of cities an optimization of raw materials, labour and market locations (ref. Isard,Von Thunen,Christaller)

Functional Descriptive Theories (cont’d)

• Urban Communication: regards the city as a field of forces, a

communications network of particles which attract and repel each other much as they do in physics.

• Sub-sets of these ideas include population potential maps, gravity models, communications flows, and various topological models.

• Urban Politics/Governance: understanding the city as a system of linked

decisions...affluence, imminent domain, citizen participation in a democratic city; the game theory, in which people interact together according to fixed rules and produce agreed-upon outcomes

• Urban Chaos: rejects previous theories of competition and posits the city

as an arena of conflict, in which the city's form is the residue and sign of struggle, and also something which is shaped and used to wage it.

Theory Versus Practice (Why urban design matters)

• We design spaces to attract people (public realm)

• Urban design creates a framework for our lives.

• understanding how humans perceive the physical scale and form of cities is essential to mastering design.

• Embedded in urban design theories is the fundamental goal of balancing private development and public good in a way that incorporates the social, economic, and cultural needs of a diverse urban population.

Questions