Urban Design

URBAN DESIGN
The Grid Generator

Introduction
 Urban design under scrutiny

 People opposed to planning
 Physical effects
 Accused of not planning at all
 Assumptions on which planning doctrine is based
1. Visually ordered city
2. Statistically ordered city
3. Combination of the two
Visually Ordered City
Camillo Sitte explains this doctrine in his book “city planning to artistic
principles.” (1889)
 City is all inspiring work of art
 Civic art must be impression of the life of community
 Works of art con not be created by a committee but only by single individual
 Shows ambitions of society
 Total control in planner’s hand
Impact
 Garden city movement

 City beautiful movement
 Visual images
 Succession of pictures
 Squares or streets if not the total city
Statistically Ordered City
 Severely practical
 Population predicted
 Behaviors predicted
 Growth predicted
 Densities guessed
 Zoned activities
While some people use the combination of both theories to create great plans,
focusing on aesthetics and planning.
Attack by Jane Jacobs
Jane Jacobs criticizes these doctrines in her book “the death and life of great
American cities.” (1961)
 “the art of city planning have not yet embarked on the effort to probe the
real world of living.”
 Not a total work of art
 Cannot be statistically organized
 Organic development
 Direct outcome of activities of living
 Planning is restrictive – Artificial
Christopher Alexander’s criticism
 In his essay ‘a city not a tree’ he says:

“I want to call those cities that have arisen spontaneously over many many years
‘natural cities’. And I shall call those cities or parts of cities that have been
deliberately created by planners ‘artificial cities’.”
 There is some essential element missing in the artificial cities.
Urban Design
 Are all old towns spontaneous?

 Are there no artificial or consciously planned towns in history?
 Professor Beresford (1967) discovered 400 towns in England that were planned
 Some were successful while others failed
 Grid iron
 Orderly plan
 Estimates about future, trade, population, size and number of building plots.
The giant grid iron imposed on natural landscape.

Alexander’s theory
 Activities of the living can be parceled out into separate entities and can be
fixed forever by a plan.
 Population Housing schools open spaces recreational
areas
this is one thought.
 If the needs are seen as a whole housing might be planned in a way that it
might provide free space that the requirements of the school or recreation
might overlap.
 A city is not a tree
 Organic growth without structuring element of some kind of framework is
chaos.
Grid As A Generator
 How does it effect the framework?

 How controlling is it?
 How it manages growth?
 How it tolerates change?
Savannah, Georgia
 Basic unit is a square – Ward

 Separated by street
 Building plots or houses around 2 sides
 Open center
 Each side of open square sites for shops
and public buildings
 Connected with intermediate roads
 Continuous band of green and
commercial
 Grid provides direction and orientation
Manhattan
 Extensive and uniform pattern of

streets and plots
 155 cross streets, 66’ wide
 Grid: 600’ x 200’
Chicago
 Landscape divided into squares 36

miles on each side of center lines
 Subdivided into squares of 6 miles.
 Furthered divided into 36 sections, 1
mile each.
 Subdivided by acreage, 4 sets of 160
acres
 Further division of 80, 40, 20, 10, 5
acres possible.
 5 acres could be divided into
rectangular plots etc. as required.
Analysis
 3 types of examples of grid

 Each one changed over time
 New forms and style of buildings
 Savannah produced green and dispersed city of open spaces
 Manhattan; small subdivision of grid and increase in demand of floor space,
forced buildings upwards.
 Chicago spread, opening up new patterns according to uses.
 Grid defines street patterns that shape plots and they finally gives rise to
buildings.
Causes and limitations
 Pressure to increase floor space

 First submerged into garden space
 Building occupying entire city block
 Safeguard light on street and adjoining buildings
 Limited size of grid forces to move up
 Raymond Unwin (1912): “if the population of the building had been let out at
any moment, there would have been no room for them on the streets.”
 Balance between plot, area of floor and area of street disappeared.
Interaction Between Grid and Built Form
 Vertical growth seems like the only option

 We know all the statistics, requirements and sizes
 But we ignore the multiple choices the plots offer to the buildings.
 Space on sidewalks and roads because of the population generated by 5, 10 or
20 storey buildings.
 Unwin: “the area of circle is increased not in the direct proportion to the
distance to be travelled, from the center to the circumference but in
proportion to square of that distance.
 Commuting time.
Geometric Rules
 Same areas different widths

 Consider them ways of placing buildings
 Pavilion
 Annulus or court
 Buildings on the pavilion plots
 Compare with anti floor – courtyards
 Same area
 Same rooms
 Same floor space
 one third of total height
 Increase the size of road by omitting
some streets – new building forms
 Floor space placed in buildings around
edges- space of 21 storey towers can be
contained in 7 storey building.
 Large open space at center.
 Set of Seagram buildings 36 storey high –
more road space
 Seagram building replaced by court forms
–same built volumes produce buildings 8
storey high only.
 Squares could be used foe vegetation etc
 No one may want it, but it is important to
know the possibilities.
 Talk about high rise is not about best way
of putting built space on the ground.
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The Grid Generator

 Urban design under scrutiny

 Garden city movement

 In his essay ‘a city not a tree’ he says:

 Are all old towns spontaneous?

The giant grid iron imposed on natural landscape.

 How does it effect the framework?

 Basic unit is a square – Ward

 Extensive and uniform pattern of

 Landscape divided into squares 36

 3 types of examples of grid

 Pressure to increase floor space

 Vertical growth seems like the only option

 Same areas different widths

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