Urbanism: urban fabric or urban form sustainability?

Urbanism: urban fabric or urban form sustainability? Is the third 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 practices studies link these topics urban fabric, urban form, and sustainability. So how do these topics or fields intersect, intervene, and affect each other? Many are aware of the importance of sustainability when reading the word without going into detail. Why are specialists concerned about the urban fabric and the urban form?

In the first article, I provided various definitions of urbanism. Urbanism supplies many fields with practices that enhance their work and output. It’s all the actions and activities happening in the city where these are the interaction between humans and the environmental systems and manmade systems that affect the city inhabitant’s way of life.

The urban fabric and urban form are interchanging phrases in many practical studies and practices. And urban fabric, urban form, and morphology as well are related and linked elements in practical studies and these elements of a city are rarely separated.

X. Li¹ indicates that an urban fabric reflects the morphological composition of physical elements within a certain area. Cities in the world have different urban fabric shapes see Figure 1. Urban fabric practical studies use different computational methods like space syntax, Isovists analysis, and density-based quantitative analysis. Several Indicators are used to study in practice the urban fabric such as density, compactness, variation, fragment, and cohesion. The relationship between the values of these indicators and the relationship between the indicators themselves provides a comprehensive understanding of the urban fabric. The purpose of these practical studies is to give a clear perspective on the relationship between the various urban fabric shapes and the human, inhabitants, behavior in their daily life. Though these studies are important they do not take buildings into account and some results are difficult to interpret in relation to architecture and urban design. It is essential to identify how these indicators, which are heavily related to two-dimensional relationships, relate to a positive and healthy living in the city and how to measure that.

 Many other factors make the urban fabric shapes unhealthy for people and have a negative impact on the city. Swensen³ discusses the role of municipality planners against the questions of the integration of the historic fabric in new urban development. He says that fragmented planning makes it difficult to consider the reciprocity of historic fabric, townscape, and the natural environment. Here the historic fabric, when it is taken into account, participates in creating the urban image within the process of urban development. Specialists believe that the urban image is created by the global economy and these images arise from the interplay between politics, culture, and markets. Architects and urban designers need to consider the role of politics and the planning system in affecting and transforming urban development proposals within the historical fabric, and how the historical fabric may affect positively the urban design layout and the architecture of buildings in the urban development proposal.  

The urban fabric and urban form, as indicated earlier, are linked to the field of morphology. What is the urban form?

Oliveira² describes this close relationship that is rarely separated. Morphology means the study of the urban form, and the agents and the process responsible for their transformation. The urban form (see Figure 2) refers to the main physical elements that structure and shape the city- the urban tissue (fabric), streets and squares, plots and buildings, and landscape. Oliveira indicates that although urban morphology was proposed to be a branch of biology but it was applied to different fields because of its abstract nature. Various authors from different fields provide different definitions depending on the area of application. One of these definitions is:

“A method of analysis which is basic to find (ing) out principles or rules of urban design’ ‘…the study of the city as human habitat… Urban morphologists… analyze a city’s evolution from its formative years to its subsequent transformations, identifying and dissecting its various components’ ‘First, there are studies that are aimed at providing explanations or developing explanatory frameworks or both (i.e. cognitive contributions); and secondly, there are studies aimed at determining the modalities according to which the city should be planned or built in the future (i.e. normative contributions) “

Another way of studying the urban form (its built environment) shows how urbanism affects not only the physical part of the city but human behavior as it is a two-way interaction. Rapoport⁶  says that the built environment provides cues for behavior, and according to that people act upon reading the environmental cues. Using this approach it is possible to distinguish between two environmental effects direct and indirect. The direct are those where the environment affects behavior, mood, satisfaction, performance, or interaction while the indirect are those to draw conclusions about the social standing and status of its occupants and modified behavior.

Urbanism is concerned with other urban form determinants. Morris⁶ developed two types of urban form determinants that a specialist can use in his practical studies. The natural world determinants and the man-made determinants. The natural include topography, climate, construction materials, and technology. The others include political, economic, and religious. Topography has a direct effect on the urban form like cities built on a hillside or on top of a mountain or a valley. Climate as well, like cities that are under direct climate change like flood plains, typhoons, and hot desert weather. Materials and technology affect the urban form in different ways like the building itself and style of architecture and building mass and orientation, technology is used when the buildings are designed in a different way than the usual and typical way or the buildings are located in areas that need special methods of construction like the city of Venice in Italy see figure 3.

The political effect comes when governments decide the type of development and determine development guidelines (non-design). Economic comes when different development parties, public or private, decide to pump in funds to finance the development of an area or a regeneration program of a derelict zone in the urban form. Religion comes when a religious power has an effect on a development like building religious buildings or funding them, and owning a location that could be developed for religious purposes.

The various activities in the creation of the urban fabric or urban form affect the planet and the global environment. We have acknowledged how many factors, that relate directly to the environment, affect the urban fabric and urban form creation. When the environment comes into the discussion of the urban fabric or the urban form creation then we are into sustainability.

Many architects and urban designers Know that sustainability is the intersection, achieved, of environmental, economic, and social pillars. Practitioners say that the term sustainability is vague. Madhavan⁷  says that sustainability means different things to different people and it is underpinned by different, contradictory, preconceptions, public attitudes, political agendas, cultural beliefs, emotions, and goals. Dev⁸ says when the global concern gave existence to environmentalism, several definitions were given to sustainability. Some of these definitions limited sustainability criteria for maintaining ecosystems and natural resources others consider the three pillars of sustainability, well-being, and equity factors. Newman⁹ says sustainability is about balancing systems and components of nested systems in ecological balance with each other.

Sustainability in theory comes in various forms such as building sustainability ( green building) and every country has their system. Development sustainability is related to buildings, urban space, landscape, transport, and economy and here also every country has its system. The non-development dimension is linked to people’s economics, education, equity, rights, and so on from the social and political perspective.

Building sustainability is achieved by the architect’s work to reach a specific benchmark of reducing electrical consumption, water usage by certain sanitary fixtures, daylight and views and proper design of building façade and orientation, building envelop insulation, and reducing heat gain by high insulation materials and economic and efficient AC system. Reducing heat island effect by eliminating open hardscape to the maximum and combing it with green system network. Covered car parking and using shared car lifts whenever possible.

Development sustainability is achieved by urban designers and planners. Selecting the proper development location with certain criteria like near to transport node and encouraging walking. Developing brownfield that protects the valuable land for agriculture to provide city inhabitance with food. Recovering water beds and specifically the polluted ones and protecting precious water for living organisms. Reducing the number of roads and car usage to support the public transit system usage and to make it more efficient. The ecosystem makes the earth in balance. Wildlife and related green system have to be considered when creating a development. Compactness or urban density is an active criterion of sustainable development to protect virgin land and enhance public transport usage as well as the best density for a high quality of living. And when developing on previously developed land protecting heritage and cultural assets keeps the local character effective and people’s identity.

Know how do urban fabric and urban form practices intersect and meet with sustainability? and how does it affect architecture and urban design in practice?

In the following table we can observe the three components of this article urban fabric, urban form, and sustainability interact with the architecture and urban design profession.

Table 1, The interaction of architecture, urban design with the urban fabric, urban form, and sustainability in practice.

As we can see in the table architecture in practice target a good building form and efficient function which together contribute positively to the city’s creation. Urban design as well, on a larger scale, targets a good development form and the user comfort of the development. These two fields or in other words architects and urban designers should look for Human comfort in the practical studies of the urban fabric and urban form. Which urban fabric pattern is most effective, and which urban form provides a quality of urban living.

References:

1. Li, X. et al. (2016) “Assessment of urban fabric for Smart Cities,” IEEE Access, 4, pp. 373–382. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1109/access.2016.2517072.
2. Oliveira Vítor (2022) Urban morphology an introduction to the study of the physical form of Cities. Cham: Springer.
3. Swensen, G. (2012) “Integration of historic fabric in new urban development—a Norwegian case-study,” Landscape and Urban Planning, 107(4), pp. 380–388. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2012.07.006.
4. Busquets, J. (2005) Barcelona: The urban evolution of a Compact City. Rovereto (Trento): Nicolodi.
5. Rapoport, A. (2016) Human aspects of urban form towards a man-environment approach to urban form and Design. Elkins Park: Franklin Book Company, Inc.
6. Morris (1994) History of urban form: Before the industrial revolutions. Harlow: Longman scientific & technical.
7. Madhavan, G. et al. (2013) Practicing sustainability. New York, NY: Springer New York.
8. Dev, S.M. and Yedla, S. (2015) Cities and sustainability issues and strategic pathways. New Delhi: Springer India.
9. Newman, P. and Jennings, I. (2008) Cities as Sustainable Ecosystems: Principles and practices. Washington, D.C.: Island Press.