Refining principles
The following issues repeatedly came up as criteria for making a place attractive and will form the foundation for the refined principles.
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Privacy/social interaction- perception of being left alone literally or as a social group vs. the loss of anonymity (feeling of being watched)
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Community/neighbourliness
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Safety – eyes on the street – too much goes bad
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Human scale - provide an attractive and vibrant form at street level and separates residents from street life.
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Diversity of people / flexible and adaptable uses - monoculture vs. tensions between classifications of people
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Waste – not enough people to justify collections vs. litter everywhere
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Sunlight – open spaces with no-one there vs. overcrowding and no sunlight penetrating
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Physical/Mental well-being – stress/poor health
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Access to open space and ecological diversity –
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Urban heat island / wind tunnel - environment
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Access to transport/walkability
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Economy/jobs
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Aesthetics/legibility/character/identity
Overall, provided that the living enviornments and management of the scheme is good there is no restriction in terms of issues and physical size of units.
Each principle should be assessed on a scale of 1 to 10 with 5 being the optimum and ideal environment for an attractive urban environment. The lowest of the scale, 1, is not dense enough so that the development leads to a sparse and illegible form with no vibrancy. The opposite end of the scale, 10, is too dense and results in cramped living conditions with no facilities such as open space and a loss of privacy.
1 5 10
The following elements came out of the general research into urban design theories.
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A variety of dwelling types and tenure.
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Design for housing for a variety of users
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Create a variety of public spaces for different needs
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Communal shared resources e.g. urban agriculture, water recycling,
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Orientate buildings and spaces to maximize solar gain and wind.
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Design the streetscape according townscape principles,
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Design flora for visual attraction, smell, food production.
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Active frontages onto the public realm
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A distribution of landuses
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Mixed uses throughout the development
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Create pedestrian orientated, shared space
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Sense of ownership of private and public spaces
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Intensification of density along transport routes (This is illustrated below)
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Emphasis on street design to promote walking
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Create a permeable network of streets
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Design for visually/physically impaired
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Human scale at a height of 5 to 6 storeys with good relationships with the street ot adjacent piece of land to which they relate from upper floors
Overall, the only physical constraint in this respect is height and quality living environements in terms of influence on design.
Issues summary
Urban design theories summary
Testing principles
