Places which can be used for many different purposes offer their users more choice than places whose design limits them to a single fixed use (Bentley et al 1986). Design Principles are to design for housing for a variety of users, create a variety of public spaces for different needs, communal shared resources e.g. urban agriculture, water recycling, orientate buildings and spaces to maximize solar gain and wind.
Only places which are accessible to people can offer choice. The extent to which an environment allows people a choice of access through it, from place to place is therefore a key measure of its responsiveness (Bentley et al, 1986) Design Principles are an intensification of density along transport routes, emphasis on street design to promote walking, create a permeable network of streets and design for visually/physically impaired. This is illustrated in the image to the right.
Legibility and accessibility
Robustness
Diversity
Safety and surveillance
Diversity means achieving a variety of mixed building types and design a variety of dwelling types and tenure for a better and sustainable neighbourhood to live. In order to achieve diversity, the site has to provide different density type of buildings, within open space and active frontages so the site becomes more vibrant. Therefore, a variety of housing types in one location is an obvious way to promote diversity. Diversity is well related to urban design qualities in terms of human scale, connectivity, mixed uses, vitality, safety and permeability, which can help sustain diversity and creating a good urban form into study area. Shared space is a key element in a divers neighbourhood like the study area because of collective life and social places for daily needs. Finally, the three requirements to drivers neighbourhoods are: mixed uses, connectivity and safety. Design Principles are to design a variety of dwelling types and tenure.
In order to achieve security and safety on site well-defined routes that have pedestrians, cyclists and cars at the same level avoid hiding places and overlooked by surrounding buildings. Crime should be discouraged and different uses should not cause conflict. Active frontages and main movements through principle routes should be encouraged and backs of houses should be enclosed and inaccessible. Overlooked publicly accessible spaces and cars should be seen. Landscaping should not impede surveillance and public areas should attract people through events, shops, cafes. An evening economy should provide for activity in the evening without causing conflict. Design principles are to have active frontages onto the public realm, a distribution of landuses, mixed uses throughout the development, create pedestrian orientated, shared space and sense of ownership of private and public spaces.
Urban design theories
Senses are channels of sensation. This is very much the case when of the perceptual realm of the urban realm. When humans come in contact with the urban realm, we can derive a wealth of sensory experiences from it. The elements that make up these sensory experience interplay to create an urban richness congruent with the quality of these spaces. Richness should be encouraged through the influences from the urban morphological level such as geological systems, street network,blocks and plots, and down to a places’ cultural landscape like buildings and details. This can be achieved through orientation, distance travelled, and composition of landmarks and materials adds to this. The microclimate of a place through the environmental qualities and configuration of buildings has the ability to influence temperature through the utilization of solar orientation of dwellings. The visual cues provided through architectural features colours and textures of materiality and the play of natural light and sigh lines should be considered as it has the ability to make an impression on the memory of the inhabitatant. Design Principles: are to design the streetscape according townscape principles, design flora for visual attraction, smell, food production.
Richness
Design code standards
In addition to the design principles the following standards for design coding will also be used as a guide in order to meet the other criteria.
Click on the picture to read more on these standards.
