Republic of the Philippines

Eastern Visayas State University

College of Architecture and Allied Discipline
Tacloban City

ARCH 523
(Specialization)

APPLICATION OF CONCEPTS & TECHNIQUES TO AN URBAN DESIGN

PROBLEM SITUATION:
 Design Brief & Design Considerations
 Design Theories Discussion

Presented by:
Badulid, Troy Glenn
Centillas, Fatima Mary-Sol
Colinayo, Girlie
Dalumpines, Joshua Rey
Engle, Jana Jesslyn
Ibañez, Othniel Cesar
Liporada, Eber
Paete Jr., Edwin
Pedida, Eve Warlyn
Simbajon, Ma. Trisha
Waniwan, Mathew Carl
BS in Architecture – 5C

Presented to:
Ar. Jed Cajate, UAP
Instructor
 Urban Planning is a technical and political process concerned with
the development and use of land, protection and use of the
environment, public welfare, and the design of the urban development,
including air, water, and the infrastructure passing into and out of urban
areas, such as transportation, communications, and distribution networks.

 Deals with the design and organization of urban space and activities
besides determining and drawing up plans for the future physical
arrangement.

 Urban Planning must be accompanied by sustainability concept which

enables us to carry out the urban development process in the right way to
keep up the sustainable environment for future generations.

Garden City, by Sir

Ebenezer Howard

Currently many settle

with "Tactical Urbanism"
as a way of using quick
and bottom up
response to shape cities
rather than big ideas
from the top.
 In the age of cities with more people living in cities not only in absolute
numbers, but also in relation to the still growing global population (by now more
than half), new very large cities are created from scratch in great numbers and
they all start with design.
Thus, the question what urban design is, is by no means obsolete and the
same is true about the question of masterplanning.

What is the difference between Urban Planning and Urban Design?

Urban Design: Spatial relations
Urban Planning: Regulatory framework

Urban design includes consideration of networks and non-physical aspects

such as visual relations, communication, transport, air flow, infrastructure and the
like in such a manner that solids, voids and the various systems form synergies,
are sustainable, resilient, and equitable.

Christoper Alexander: 15 Principles of Wholeness from Christopher Alexander,

Introduction of "A New Theory of Urban Design"
According to Ali Madanipour, Professor of Urban Design
 In urban development, these problems of transition from one paradigm to
another became partly manifest in intensified cycles of boom and bust,
deepened socio-spatial segregation, 19 and privatization or decline of
public realm, the valuable common ground which seemed to be
abandoned by all agencies or under threat from the encroachment of
private interests. Urban design was a response, in the form of campaigning
for making connections, articulating the common ground, and arguing for
a socially integrative and environmentally responsible urban form.
 Urban design, therefore, has important contributions to make in the making
of the city, through its role in the urban development process, contributions
that are acknowledged by the three main categories of participants in the
process:
 Physical
 Social; and
 Economic Environment
 Three (3) Major challenges (by Madanipour)
1. Tension between perspectives
 The most important challenges that urban design faces are at the
intersection of the three categories of producers, regulators and
users.
 There is a danger that economic considerations become the main
drivers of urban development, giving priority to particular sectors at
the expense of others, or equating the needs of the development
industry with the needs of citizens.
 The overall challenge, therefore, is how to strike a balance, so as to
achieve a particular aim but not at the expense of others.

2. Blurring the boundaries and mainstreaming

 As urban design has extended its area of concern and as planning
has emphasized more forward-looking development of visions and
master plans, the two have come closer, even overlapping to some
extent.
 The objectives set out by urban design, such as mixed use, public
realm improvement, masterplanning etc. are embraced by the
planning system, the distinctiveness of urban design may appear to
be less than before.

3. Radicalism, orthodoxy and obsolescence

 They emerge as new ideas in response to the needs of the time or
as a challenge to the way these needs are met.
 Cities are not static; they constantly change and evolve in new
directions.
 As urban development activities become more intensive, this
contextualist approach inevitably becomes challenged, as indeed
the conservationist approach has already been.

Some Urban Design Problem Situations

1. Rapid urban population growth
 In 2008, more than half of the world human population, 3.3 billion
people, lived in urban areas. By 2030, this is expected to balloon to
almost 5 billion. Most of this growth will be in developing countries.
The urban population of Africa and Asia is expected to double
between 2000 and 2030 (UNFPA, 2007).
 2. Rise of megacities
 Urban centers are increasing in size and number. At the beginning
of the last century, there were only 11 megacities in the world with
populations of more than 1 million each. By 2030, UN predicts that
there will be more than 500 cities in the world with populations of
more than 1 million each; more than half of these cities will be in
Asia. In addition, the peri-urban areas in many big cities are rapidly
expanding.
3. High urban poverty level
 Asia's poor represent about 70% of the world's poor-nearly one in
three Asians is poor. Almost 25% of Asia's urban population is poor,
and the rate is increasing, as there is a continuous influx of poor
people into cities.
4. Inadequate basic services
 Large number of Asian cities cannot adequately provide urban
basic services to the increasing number of urban residents. Less than
half of the cities population is covered by water supply. A number
of cities do not have efficient systems of solid waste collection.
Majority of the cities in developing countries do not have sewerage
system connections, and sanitary landfill facilities.
5. Environmental degradation
 With an increasing population density, especially in slums areas,
environmental and health problems are rising. In addition to
mitigating air and noise pollution and controlling wastes, managing
the consumption of non-renewable resources have become more
serious concerns.

The application and challenges of the concepts and techniques

1. Sustaining urban areas as engines of growth
Cities are focal points for economic activities, and engines of
economic growth. They are centers of excellence for education,
health care, culture, technological innovation, entrepreneurship,
social services, government administration, and communications
with the world. They create opportunities for jobs, employment and
livelihood. They are as well focal points for rural hinterlands to
alleviate rural poverty.
2. Managing urban growth
The rapid rate of urbanization needs to be effectively managed to
ensure that the potential economic and social development arising
from urbanization are optimized to reduce poverty, improve the
quality of life and protect the environment.

3. Bridging supply and demand gap on infrastructure services

There exists an enormous gap between demand for infrastructure
services and capacity to finance urban development. In 2004,
conservative estimates suggested about $250 million per year in
infrastructure investments would be needed to support urban
growth over the next 25 years.

4. Strengthening urban management capacity

Capacity of cities to manage urban growth and development,
including preparedness to respond to disasters, needs to be
strengthened. Project-based approaches with short time horizon
adopted in some cities are unsustainable and did not effectively
address long-term goals.

5. Decentralizing urban administration

Many governments have decentralized responsibilities to local
governments. This gives local governments more strategic role in
planning and decision-making in urban development. However,
funding may not have always matched with devolved functions.
Decentralization also requires collaboration between the central
and local governments.

6. Responding to globalization
Globalization has thrust cities into new frontiers making it more
imperative for cities to be globally competitive.

7. Stakeholder partnerships
Cities partner with private sector, other cities, and organizations to
exchange information, build capacities, expand resources and
enhance revenues, and implement improvements in urban
management.
 8. Formulation of city development strategies
Several cities across the region have formulated development
strategies based on long-term visions and an analysis of their
strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Cities recognized
the essential link and complementarity between national
development policies and city development strategies.

9. Inter-local cooperation
There is a growing appreciation for the linkages between rural and
urban areas, particularly in terms of inter-local cooperation in the
face of the emergence of city-regions or multi-modal metropolitan
areas. City-regions are becoming the foci for integrated urban
development, which is blurring the traditional distinction between
"rural" and "urban".

10. Cities as ecosystems

With the increasing interest in sustainable urban development, cities
are now being viewed as living ecosystems wherein a balance is
sought among social, economic and environmental concerns.
Related to these specific approaches to energy efficiency, disaster
mitigation, as well as resource and cultural heritage conservation,
are being developed.

11. City leaders as economic managers

City leaders have shifted from a purely political orientation to an
entrepreneurial and economic management approach. Some
cities have initiated successful experiments in innovative techniques
adapted from the private business sector, such as asset
management.
Design Brief & Design Considerations:

What is Design Brief?

 It is used to evaluate the various elements of development applications.
These documents provide an understanding of how and why projects are
designed in a particular manner, and gives staff the opportunity to work
co-operatively with proponents.
 Its main purpose of the Urban Design Brief is to illustrate the design solution
for a new development project in the City and how the solution was
devised.

The Urban Design Brief will include two distinct sections. Section 1 will provide
an analysis and proposed design principles, while Section 2 will describe how
the development options will respond to the analysis and proposed design
principles.
Section 1:
 Design Goals and Objectives
 Design Response to City Documents
 Spatial Analysis
Section 2:
 Conceptual Design
 Public Realm
 Sustainability Techniques
 Heritage Initiatives (where applicable)

Design Considerations
 Access to facilities
- Access strategy
- Connection with public street
- External signage

 Pathways
- Configuration
- Changes in level
- Ramps and sloping grounds
- Stairs and steps
- Floor surface materials
- Handrails
- Tactile surfaces
- Luminous contrast

 Parking and loading/unloading areas

- Run-in/out
- Accessible carpark
- Loading/ unloading areas

 External areas and landscaping

- Street furniture
- Trees and plantings
- Rest places
- Visual access
- Water areas

 Entrances and Exits

- Configuration
- Doors

 Lifts
- Operation
- Interior

 Way finding, signage and guidance

- Information counters
- Orientation
- Landmarks
- Signage disposition
- Information transmission
- Maps and directories
- Graphical details

 Sanitary and health care facilities

- Facilities to be provided
- Special features in accessible toilet design
- Provisions for visually impaired persons
- Provisions for persons of physical disability
- Provisions for baby care and children
 Furniture, fixtures and fittings
- Configuration
- Provisions for different user groups

 User requirements and building management

- Client’s support
- User requirements
- Furniture and equipment planning
- Records
- Building management
- Maintenance
- Alteration and addition works
Design Theories Discussion

Summary of Four Criteria for Design Theories

1. The theory should have a broad scope for design application, but should
be able to deal with any topic.
2. The theory should use propositions—if-then language—as a way of
describing, explaining and predicting actual and existing aspects of
designing and design success; however this is defined.
3. Where appropriate, the new theory should accept propositions and
language contained in other design theories.
4. The theory should accommodate—or at least acknowledge—generative
activity.

Theory of a good city forms

1. Vitality
 Vitality come as close to being a pure public good an any on our lists,
since the health and survival are values very widely held, and threats
to health and often indiscriminate in their incident.
 Like most public good, however vitality tend to be honored in the
breach, since the cost to anyone to increase it or to refrain to
decreasing it may have little connection with his own benefits.

2. Sense
 Sense is depend on spatial form and quality, but also on the culture,
temperament, status, experience, and current purpose of the
observer.
 Thus the sense of a particular place will vary for different observers.

3. Fit
 The Fit of settlement refers to how well and spatial and temporal
pattern matches the customary behavior of its habitant.
 It is the match between the action and forms in its behavior settings
and behavior circuit.
Two kinds of fit:
1. Good fit
2. Bad fit
Theories that have motivated and still inform the construction of cities

 NORMATIVE THEORIES (Prescriptive)

- attempt to specify "goodness“
- what is good city form?
- discuss in detail the aspects that create good cities
 What cities ought to be!

 FUNCTIONAL THEORIES (Descriptive)

- attempt to explain how cities perform by concentrating on city form
processes, spatial and social structure, and form models
 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

2. The Machine Model

 The analogy between city and machine has a long history (ref. Egyptian
and classical “per strigas”, Ron Heron’s insect city; archigram movement;
plug-in concept)
 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.
 Among its attributes are convenience, speed, flexibility, legibility, equality,
and speculation.
3. The Organic Model
 The analogy between city and living organism is fairly recent arising with
the growth of biology in the 18th and 19th centuries (ref. metabolists)
 Model is critical of others, especially the machine model with its "simple
grids" as “static”
 It asserts that an organism:
- is an autonomous being, with a definite boundary and is of a specific size.
- does not change merely by adding parts but through reorganization as it
reaches limits or thresholds.
- contains differentiated parts but form and function are always linked.
- is homeostatic, self-repairing and regulating toward a dynamic balance.
- undergoes cycles of life and death as is rhythmic passage from one state
to another.

4. The Contextual Model

 This relates new development to an analysis of existing urban structure.
 A prominent concept of this canon is that of “serial vision” the sequential
and unfolding nature of urban experience (foreground/middle
ground/background), with its corners, divisions/modules, protrusions, and
recesses/setbacks e.t.c creating aspects of interest and surprise.
 Context is something that has no clear or common spatial definition; thus
the impact of contextualism will vary with geographical location and
cultural influence.
 The mainstream urban design has been strongly influenced by
contextualism in terms of a new respect for the overall form of the
traditional urban street and block and a concern for public realm

5. The Pragmatic Model

 This is whereby urban design is defined according to the needs of the
epoch….. where the tools and concepts are used selectively and
exclusively in regard to the locality.
 The danger with this model lies in:
- -Likely loss of understanding of the larger processes affecting urban form
- Possible inability of making informed decisions at urban scales
- Failure to embrace environmental disciplines that are currently excluded
and isolated from mainstream urban design.
6. The Constructivist Model

 This explores techniques of form to create urban interventions that express

the spatial and temporal complexity of a given age.
 “Deconstructionists” are constructivists who use unconventional
techniques of form to express the essential fragmentation in city
environments.

7. Functionalist Model
 This was dedicated to exploring new interwoven urban structures that
would allow opportunities for social encounter/contact and exchange
whose end result is a humanising influence.
 The interpretation of this philosophy, however, varied widely in practice:
low-,
medium-,
and high-
--- density; vehicular and pedestrian segregation e.t.c

8. Rationalist Model
 This offered a morphological/structural approach to urban design that
related new urban development to the historical structure of the city and
typologies of urban space.
 The figure-ground drawing was widely used as a design tool.
 As “critical reconstruction”, this method was used to maintain and restore
the traditional 19th century street pattern and form of the urban block,
street and square, without constraining the contemporary architectural
expression of new building additions.
 This was not a plea for unthinking preservation or for regarding the city as
a museum; rather, the aim was to explore the deep structure inherent in
building types and how built forms accommodate changing, living uses
over time.
FUNCTIONAL THEORIES:
 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)

 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.
(Castells, Harvey. Lefebvre, Gordon)

Design Principles and Techniques

 Together these help in the correlation and synthesis of spaces, functions,
circulation, sites, and orientation
 Their choice and application (singly or combined) will depend on the
problem context (modus operandi)
 Overall they facilitate the conceptualizing process entailing decisions and
choices
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.
 We feel and experience urban design every day
 Every road width and building height delivers a message to their users on
how to use the public realm
 Design brings order and relation into human surroundings
 Different designs affect residents in different ways, and make the city’s
image more vivid and memorable
 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
 Urban design must solve practical problems of functionality first and
foremost, as it creates tools for people and their quality of life.