Urbanism: Diversity, Smart Growth, and Future Urban Design is the eleventh 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, was since its creation, ever linked to the way of life. Urbanism is concerned with human interaction with their counterparts in their community. Urbanism aims at increasing interactions between different levels of society daily. Urbanism since its introduction into urban planning and design and even in other fields circles many keywords in the academic arena, practice, research, and in general discussions in several places. Diversity, smart growth, and urban design keywords were linked together and appeared in research and practice. What is diversity? Is it a strategy, a tool, and in which field it is used? Is diversity used to lead to smart growth? And how does that impact the future of urban design in practice?
Diversity is one of the key topics used in social science to make a balanced society in any place in the world. Diversity is the mix of people from different income levels, any race they originate from, any skin color, any religion they practice, any nationality, and any beliefs. Specialists in the field of social science argue that a society of that mix gives people the maximum value, equity, social justice, and citizenship. In this manner, society will be free of prohibited and illegal behavior within the society that keeps it safe and in balance like crime, and drugs.
In politics, the keyword diversity has lots of meanings. In terms of political activity within the government a diversity and inclusion of several sectors of the political society as parties in the government is required. In this manner, the poles of elections will be full at the time of election because all parties are involved and have their share to practice politics within the government. Having a variety of voices, views, and perspectives within the political government operations is a healthy practice due to its inclusion of all society and their representatives.
Cities in the world either flourish or die relevant to their economic status. In economic practice, governments represented in all public sector organizations, and the private sector as well as plan and design their economic policy and activity toward diversity. Cities in any country are designed, in terms of economic activity, to include several types of economic activities, economic sectors, and businesses. That way cities flourish because of many sectors that provide a place for inhabitance and move the economic cycle and business cycle in the city.
Urban design research and practice have circled the keyword diversity. In urban design diversity means the design of different types of buildings and different types of housing in terms of densities. The design of different types of public spaces, urban spaces, and the introduction of many kinds of green space areas. Diversity means not relying on one type of methodology or theory in conducting the design for urban development or any similar activity such as gentrification or intensification.
The architecture of cities varies depending on their contexts. Diversity in architecture has as well many meanings. The buildings in the city were designed using different styles of architecture, themes, and methodologies. The scale of the buildings varies in terms of location, height, and size. The materials (see Figure 1) used in these buildings and other types of buildings are either natural or man-made modern materials that fit the building design. The city architecture gives many aesthetic scenarios in its various locations to serve location attractions for external activity and tourism. The various types of trees, lawns, bushes of softscapes fit the landscape design in parks and public spaces.
Diversity is a keyword used in design management. Design managers and researchers use diverse types of methods, and techniques to investigate a solution for a design problem. In practice workshops in the streamline of a design management process, a diverse of brainstorming methods are used to generate alternative creative ideas. For example, the sustainability issue map, total design method, and others. In addition to that models of design management such as the traditional model and the sequential model give the design manager and the company more strength in management, problem-solving, and identifying defects.
Diversity is a tool and a technique used in many fields and specialties. Know what is the connection between diversity and smart growth and does diversity lead to smart growth?
Smart growth was invented in the USA to reduce the expansion of low-density sub-urban sub-divisions as the predominant pattern of development in other words to stop the spread of urban sprawl. Smart growth research was circled for many years in the planning and design literature. Researchers introduced many concerns about urban sprawl and smart growth whether it’s a policy, strategy, or guidelines, especially in the USA.
Kushner1 in his paper raised some concerns about smart growth. Like, smart growth policies that target development towards revitalization could result in the intensification of ethnic separation. Adding to that, the cease of democratizing and incubation function and quality of life and opportunity for new immigrants and the poor may diminish.
Chen2 in his research introduced other concerns about urban sprawl and the need to direct policies, strategies, and guidelines towards smart growth. He said that the unstoppable spread of such development leads to worse congestion, escalating tax rates, disinvestment in older communities, devouring of open space, damage to the ecosystem, and pollution from automobiles.
He presents and discusses the smart growth strategies that preserve open space, redevelop urban areas, and pay farmers to not sell their land for development. Smart growth for him and as per his research means more density, primary development is commercial, large buildings, attached buildings, shallow setbacks, streets and alley setbacks, sidewalks and passages, raised curbs, and single tree species.
Liu3 articulates that the Smart Growth Association of America has put forward 10 principles of Smart Growth in 1996. One of the existing developments that these principles have been applied to is in Figure 2.
Smart growth strategies and planning principles appeared to stop one of the urban planning problems the urban sprawl which appeared mainly in the USA, North America, And Europe. Every couple of years a planning problem appears to lead to the invention of new principals. Smart growth does not differ in its planning principles from sustainable development. The aims of sustainable development differ slightly in terms of its main goal to use world resources effectively and to protect the resources for future generations. Smart growth does not differ from Eco-cities principles and many governments in Asia have implemented these principles to develop eco-town initiatives and build new towns for half a century like in Japan and China. Smart cities ideas and concepts do not differ either from smart growth. Smart cities principal’s main goal is to achieve efficient transport planning within high-density development and sustainable development adding to that the latest technology in designing buildings that already exist like using machine less elevators, occupant sensors for light, digital entries to buildings, and others.
Returning to my article concern about the intervention of architecture within these two topics smart growth and diversity. Diversity in architecture in practice is applied in different ways. For one of the mega projects I worked on in the Middle East, I reviewed and advised, for a villa development, to include in the design multiple scales of designs in terms of total villa sizes, and components like 2, 3, or 4 bedroom villas. In the country of design, these villas attract a variety of people whether buyers or renters from different categories and levels of income. In this manner, the developer managed to sell 30% of the villas at his targeted price even before the design was over within the schematic design phase.
For the same development which included 12 residential buildings the consultant was changed three times due to a lack of knowledge of country regulations and the inefficient market research study, mainly from the UK, I have reviewed the building complex design and suggested redesigning the buildings to include studio flats, 2, 3 bedrooms have minimum 1 bedroom flat because they are the most demanded in the market and it is easy to sell and rent these units in the location of the development. The building complex design was transferred finally to one of the biggest local consultancy firms that led the design and construction supervision to completion and handover. See Figure 3.
Urban design within the development of ideas, concepts, strategies, and principles serves this aim. Urban design to revitalize old towns and communities, to direct the efficient use of resources in urban development, design and develop towns to protect our culture and heritage and to protect the environment and its species, to use the latest technology in the architecture of the development and transportation, encourage the use of local materials to protect place character and identity. So, in the future, it’s SMART URBAN DESIGN to lead the urban development.
References:
- Kushner, J.A. (2002) ‘Smart growth, New Urbanism and Diversity: Progressive Planning Movements in America and their impact on poor and minority ethnic populations’, UCLA Journal of Environmental Law and Policy, 21(1). doi:10.5070/l5211019395.
- D.T. Chen, D. (2000) ‘The Science of Smart Growth’, Scientific American, 283(6), pp. 84–91. doi:10.1038/scientificamerican1200-84.
- Liu, L.L. (2012) ‘An analysis of the influencing factors in new urban planning under the conception of smart growth’, Applied Mechanics and Materials, 174–177, pp. 2433–2439. doi:10.4028/www.scientific.net/amm.174-177.2433.
- Kim, J.I. and Hyun, J.Y. (2018) ‘Do smart growth urban development strategies reduce jobs-housing distance in a high-density city? the case of the seoul metropolitan area’, Journal of Planning Education and Research, 41(2), pp. 149–159. doi:10.1177/0739456×18773500.
- Salama, A. M. (2017). PLURALITY AND DIVERSITY IN ARCHITECTURAL AND URBAN RESEARCH. ArchNet-IJAR, 11(2), 1. https://doi.org/10.26687/archnet-ijar.v11i2.1280
- Korff, R. (1996). Global and local spheres: The diversity of Southeast Asian urbanism. Sojourn, 11(2), 288–313. https://doi.org/10.1355/sj11-2e
- Day, K. (2003). New urbanism and the challenges of designing for Diversity. Journal of Planning Education and Research, 23(1), 83–95. https://doi.org/10.1177/0739456×03255424
- Grant, J., & Perrott, K. (2009). Producing diversity in a new urbanism community: Policy and practice. Town Planning Review, 80(3), 267–289. https://doi.org/10.3828/tpr.80.3.3
- Moroni, S. (2016). Urban density after Jane Jacobs: the crucial role of diversity and emergence. City, Territory and Architecture, 3(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40410-016-0041-1
This article is great and educative.