Urbanism: Density,Compactness & Transit Oriented Development

Urbanism: Density, Compactness & Transit Oriented Development is the twelfth article assessing the dialectic of architecture and urban design in the urbanism field. I will go through this relationship from the top scale of urbanism in the city to the smallest scale of urbanism components of urban space.

Urbanism is correlated to Urban density, compactness, and transit-oriented development in various dimensions such as policy, economics, environment, social, and development physical form.

In politics, governments issue political policies and governance to direct and control the amount and the location of urban development. In the world, countries that depend on fixed and Semi-fixed masterplan governments determine the amount of development on specific land use and plots. And that relates to many factors which I will illustrate later in this article. In the Western world, countries have more flexible policies, depending on the political approach of the country, for the amount of development and its relation to land uses. In general, governments in the world are concerned about the amount of development because of its direct correlation to market stock, development units, prices, and its relation to businesses operating in the area. Stock unit prices affect the prices of all its components, especially the building materials and related industries. For the private sector, the owner of the land or the developer decides the amount of development on the land depending on many factors like lease time length and its yearly payment. Planning authorities play a vital role in the realization of the development proposal and the allowance of the allowable densities on the land and its uses.

Development has to be aligned with economic determinants and efficiency measures. Densities are defined and determined upon conducting a careful assessment of land uses in the area of development and adjacent plots. The densities of development are related to many determining factors. Land uses are generated upon conducting land use modeling and the distribution of the land uses depends on the location and the distance to the CBD. Land use Value determines what type of land is used in a certain location in a development and determines the plot development criteria. According to that densities are determined based on the land value whether it is bought or rented, and the revenue expected to be obtained after development. The growing demand for development which defines the densities of the development is hindered by the available funds from the public or private sector. See Figure 1 example of high-density development in Hong Kong.

Densities of development if not studied, assessed, and planned well lead to several destructive environmental issues. The increase in densities leads to an increase in the heat radiation to the environment from the building material used in construing the building especially if it is concrete. The increase in the heat in the environment increases the heat island effect when accompanied by the increase of hardscape in the development. An increase in density requires the buildings to be designed and aligned with sustainability requirements for Air, Light, and Sun. In many cases, development removes many parts of the ecosystem, and that causes the shift and damage of species and damage to environmental earth balance.

Densities of development have a direct correlation to social factors. The increase in density reduces the measures of high-quality and peaceful living. That leads to social segregation and turning the development into cantons of ethnic groups. One of the main contributors to social problems such as crime, drugs, prostitution, and other social problems is social segregation and turning societies into cantons. The densities of the development to be studied and planned for various levels of income and to create a mix and homogenous communities.

People are ever linked to the environment and nature. They prefer an area that includes open space, landscape, and recreation for children and family to access at rest time and stressful times. Densities not only have a direct effect on the local character of the area, town, and city but also the physical form has a direct impact on visualization issues on people and the way they sense the place. In practice, the development of physical form has a direct effect on its attraction to users whether rent or purchase.

Density has been an active topic in urban planning, design, and development since the creation of cities in the world. The increase in densities leads to the demand for travel and load on existing transit and the requirement for its development to take new loads. In research academics, and practice an enormous amount of research papers, publications, seminars, and professional studies on the compactness of development have been presented.

Van¹ presents a variety of research papers concerning compact cities in developing countries from India, China, Africa, Chile, Brazil, and many others. In the research, he points out that there are disputes over the desirable spatial models for compact cities. There are many debates over how cities are going to be compacted because of the unknown and unclear forces that determine the degree of compaction of existing settlements. So, what is a compact city? What does it serve?

Van indicates that Contemporary compact city approaches have become one form of achieving sustainable urban development. For him a contemporary compact city is “ to increase built area and residential population densities; to intensify urban economic, social and cultural activities and to manipulate urban size, form, and structure and settlement systems in pursuit of the environmental, social and global sustainability benefits derived from the concentration of urban functions”.

It is clear from his definition of the direct relationship between densities and compactness of urban development. But what does the compact city model serve?

He illustrates that the rationale for the compact city lies in the assumption that high densities can reduce travel demands energy consumption and pollution and provide more environmental and quality-of-life benefits. This model is not the identical model for development or city. Many cities in the world include compact model criteria like high-density development such as New York, Hong Kong, Tokyo, and others. This model is the result of two main factors city population growth and commuters, and the high land price value. The compact model faced lots of opponents from the urban planning field and these supported the mixed-use model. The compact city model can serve the sustainable development requirements when the compactness is based on mixing land uses not zoning.

Video 1 below shows one of the examples of a compact model in one of the Middle East cities. This area is part of the city waterfront consisting of 4 square kilometers. The area includes three types of land uses residential, offices, and a mall. The area as presented in the video is unlimited height development. Regardless of the various problems that exist in this development ranging from traffic congestion in peak hours, lack of diversity, high rent and lease prices, and lack of proper parking lots serving the offices and outside areas, lack of privacy due to extreme proximity of the high-rise buildings, and many others. In this area if a resident from another area enters it, he needs 15 minutes just to reach the outer ring road to exit the development. This example is one of the bad examples of compactness in the area.

Now one can pose a question why we don’t see such kind of compacted development for example in London, Barcelona, Stockholm and other cities in EU? This development was planned and designed by European firms and most of the architecture of the buildings was designed by European firms.

Yolanda² presented a thesis on the urban density correlation to space and urban form. The thesis studies the density in three cities in European countries, the Netherlands, Germany, and Spain. The study provides very useful information on the urban densities in these European cities regardless of what Yolanda says about one of these cities. The research builds on creating three indicators for the study of densities and encourages researchers, academics, and practitioners to follow this model he named Spacematrix. He says that We suggest that density should be treated as a multivariable phenomenon, consisting of the three fundamental indicators intensity (FSI), compactness (GSI), and network density (N). This gives again the clear relation of density and compactness. For him, the study of these three indicators is to analyze an urban fabric, and the effect of these indicators on light, air circulation, building heights, open space, green space, and other elements of urban development. One of the contradictions of this research is that it indicates that Baumeister presents a normative building ordinate in 1880 that defines a maximum four-story building density and building height not to exceed the street width.  This is in extreme contrast to the density and building heights in the example above in the video regardless of the time length difference. Figure 3 shows the various examples of street width proportion to building height in three cities.

The research and debate for two decades about densities, and compactness led to various ideas and approaches in urban planning and design that had an impact on architecture. TOD transit-oriented development is an approach invented due to the increased demand for the use of public transit and population movement within the development, city, and commuters from other cities. The government directed its policies of urban development and private sectors were encouraged to locate their development proposals near transit to facilitate movement from the development and city. Many developers in the world would suggest and choose to develop near transit nodes or future development of transit nodes. The more the density increases the more the development responds to the feasibility of the use of public transit. Movement from the development and from the city to it facilitates travel for work, shopping, leisure, education, and social purposes. In this way, public transit becomes more affordable for both the government and the user.  Still, there is an existing and ever-lasting problem of limits of developing the public transit node and even traffic network. Increasing the number of train lines or the amount of train movement within a line has its limitations that cannot be upgraded when it reaches its optimum.  The traffic network as well cannot be upgraded when it reaches its maximum capacity in terms of lanes, and street shoulders requirements for public use and parking. See my articles about the defects in the London local plan concerning these issues.

My concern in this article and others is the intervention of architecture and urban design in this topic.  Architects should concentrate on the introduction of unit variety in their building design, provide maximum areas of all unit spaces for comfortable use, access to views, and privacy of exterior spaces like balconies, the aesthetics of building types and colors and materials,  using technology development in the building system for MEP and vertical movement (lifts), building orientation that reduces the heat gain and provides air movement in and out the units, and the inclusion of recreation areas within the building or the building plot.

Urban designers on the other hand when receiving the development proposal should focus on the relationship between urban densities and the amount of urban space, landscape, and the inclusion of a mix of commercial frontage in the development. To create employment and give access to many services like restaurants, laundries, supermarkets, cafes, and other daily-demanded businesses. To check the appropriate access connections within the development of the high-density buildings through green space, cycle routes, and pedestrian paths. To ensure that the development plan considers the increase of people’s movement in the future using public transit nodes and to consider the number of people coming for tourism to the area. And to assure the access of businesses to office units within the development to minimize the use of cars, public transit, and busses.

References:

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