Since its origin at the Harvard’s Graduate School of Design in 1956, urban design has been full of conflicts and contradictions.  I believe this may be due to the complexity and variations in cities around the world, with such vast policies and experiences it is creates a subjective narrative of universal solutions.

Sorkin goes on to say that we cannot use totalising schemes that have universal formal solutions to multifaceted social and environmental issues.  They ignore human, cultural, and natural variations and a top-down approach dismisses individual rights.

Many schemes and principles were influence by groups and people such as CIAM, Jane Jacobs, Lewis Mumford, Kevin Lynch and New Design Group.  Sert from CIAM sort to address problems resulted from rapid growth and urban sprawl and to restore an artistic sense to architecture in through urban design.  Whereas Mumford thought politics and culture was the core of the city.

Urban design has also been shaped by movements on equality of race, gender and sex, as well as the uptake of environmentalism.  After the loss of Penn Station Jacob’s fought to value the cities history, and the rights of citizens with the importance of neighbourhoods and human ecology.  Sorkin believes this is the correct theory and practice of urban design, however it  still does not address all of the complex frameworks that influence different cities.

Modernism and New Urbanism have similar ideologies of solving urban crisis’ and social justices however in practice there is an insistence on traditional homogenous forms, designed around cars for a particular class, lacking in possibility for influence and difference, as seen in the new urbanist projects Seaside, Celebration and Battery Park.  New urbanism has ignored the impacts of cities on the planet and the growing poor in city slums.

Urban theory today, Sorkin says, must consider environmentalism, with the challenge of finitude and equity.  Cities effect important global and local ecologies, that ensure the survival of the planet.  Jacobs and Mumford acknowledged that cities inevitably transform and proved that this transformation can be influenced by ethics, social interest and diversity through knowledge and experience.  In this conclusion Sorkin is contradicting the title and opening statements and is confirming that urban design theory is influential and can have practical outcomes in shaping our cities, despite previous successful and unsuccessful attempts.

While there is no one-size-fits all approach, I believe urban design has a discourse evolving as fast as cities, with many varied approaches possible at a global, city and neighbourhood scale.

The following link to the theory of Ecological Urbanism offers the environmental considerations stressed by Sorkin.  It describes the city as a literal and metaphorical ecosystem.  The environmental purpose is for cities to achieve interdependent efficiencies and redundancies similar to biological ecosystems.
Ecological Urbanism: the Nature of the City - Susannah Hagan

Calthorpe's 7 principles for building better cities closely related to Transit Oriented Design theory.  He argues that sprawl comes from both low-density and high-density development and leads to economic enclaves, land-use enclaves, and separates people from nature.

With the types of analysis available today people are able to make informed decisions in the development of thriving cities and communities.  The conclusion is that walkable cities are what provide the cross-fertilisation and interaction for a thriving city.  The reduce land consumption, greenhouse gases, vehicle miles travelled, household costs and increase health care.

Calthorpe's reasoning for improving cities and city life are very strong. After all, “places you go on vacation are places you can walk.”

In response, TURF takes a holistic approach to the environment by taking a contemporary approach to traditional agricultural practice, integrated terraced organic farms into its rooftop.  TURF has Asia’s largest urban green rooftop with over 40 edible species producing the equivalent of 80,000 meals per year.  Solar panels on the rooftop also produce 500,000 watts per hour.  To mitigate weather effects TURF has retention ponds that store up to 3.1 million gallons of water.  The water is filtered by plants and soils on a cascading roof that removes pollutants from the water and air.

The form of the building takes on a political approach with the H shape representing egalitarianism and democracy, with each of the four sections representing a core element of democracy.

In the presentation comparisons were made between Siam Green Sky Urban Agricultural Learning Centre and Chulalongkorn University Centenary Park and other projects including Farming Kindergarten and urban farming in a hotel in Singapore. Their success was seen in recycling organic waste, water management and retention, urban heat island reduction, reduced emissions from food transport, food security and as an effective overall climate solution.  It was interesting that the public did not see Chulalongkorn University Centenary Park as a success however landscape architect Kotchakorn said it was and had potential for expansion for significant results in the city.

 Principles of Ecological Urbanism  and Landscape Urbanism may have had a role in the planning of TURF similar to the planning of Stockholm Royal Seaport.  They were both designed to consider climate impacts and environmental problems.  It will be interesting to investigate the theory of Sponge Urbanism and its ideas of water management in city design.

TURF seems to be a demonstration project that strongly advocates for green roof conversions and water mitigation strategies that involve green space.  The design appearance has a large impact helping create this statement.  Questions that can be raised are whether the same outcome could have been achieved by converting existing roofs at the university and how systems and strategies can be used as a measure of the success of the building, especially the building is realised.

Further investigation into statistics on food production and water management and how they compare with feeding the city population and managing the amount of flood waters would be interesting to see.  As well as where the food goes other than to the university.  Public have access to the gardens but do they have access to the food produced?

Overall TURF successfully introduces methods of urban agriculture, water management and sustainable practices that set a precedent for the possibilities of green roofs in Thailand and the rest of the world.

Transit-Oriented Development:
TODs provide housing, services, open space and employment opportunities for various population groups in a pedestrian friendly, transit-oriented arrangement, all within a comfortable 10-minute walk.  They are developed on undeveloped sites, redeveloped or reused sites, and in new growth areas and are located on trunk transit lines or feeder bus networks with sufficient auto access.

Urban TOD:
Located at stops directly on the trunk line transit network with high commercial intensities, job cluster and moderate to high residential densities.  Significant investment is also needed in the transit system.

Neighbourhood TOD:
Located within a 10 minute transit from a trunk line service with moderate density residential, service, retail, entertainment, civic, and recreational uses.  A variety of housing types allow for diversity, while respecting the existing neighbourhood character.

Summary:

TODs are made up of attractive core commercial areas adjacent transit stops, residential areas with a mixture of densities, public use areas including parks, plazas, green space, public buildings and public services and may extend to lower density secondary areas adjacent, or further to rural and industrial areas.  They should be distributed along transit cores at a distance that minimises retail competition.

Unlike many suburban developments I see where I live on the Gold Coast the street systems in TODs are recognisable, formalised and inter-connected with common destinations rather than circuitous, complex and requiring the use of arterial roads.

Coordinated planning of specific area plans can be efficient, effective and financially beneficial compared to individual and standard planning practice and coordination.

New growth areas, regional form and new towns are inevitable because of regional work and housing affordability, however they each need to consider and preserve land between towns, transit accessibility and boundaries for growth.

The general principles for various TODs are logical and applicable to modern cities if funding, policy and further planning is considered.  I believe encouraging walking, cycling and transit while reducing reliance on the automobile is essential for cities to grow while minimising traffic congestion, social isolation and greenhouse gas emissions.

Hippocrates discussed how “airs, waters, and places” influence the health of people and communities in the fifth century B.C.  Later at the end of 1400’s Alberti warned of the relationship between disasters inflicted upon cities that do not work with nature.  In response to further degradation of environmental conditions, in 1864 George Perkins Marsh proposed “reclaiming and reoccupying lands laid waste by human improvidence” work with nature to reconstruct damages.  As I am attempting in Assessment 3 this idea can be implemented in the utilisation of urban infill sites for TODs.  There are also many significant figures from the twentieth century including Patrick Geddes, Lewis Mumford, Kevin Lynch, Ian McHarg and Jane Jacobs who promoted an ecological approach to city design and planning.

In Ecological Urbanism Spirn lists the following key concepts and principles for urban design:

Can ecological urbanism solve social problems?
The principle that urban ecosystems are connected recognises that environmental and social problems in low socioeconomic areas are influenced by problems in flows of capital and waste across communities and must be addressed at a scale larger than the community boundary.  Policy and public concern drive the focus urban design and planning, however social, economic, or environmental solutions may be incorporated to overall strategies.

What opportunities come from ecological urbanism?
There is great potential for further research and interdisciplinarity between urban designers, ecologists, economics, engineers, artists, etc. to increase knowledge of urban ecological systems and process to create adaptive human settlements that are life-enhancing and life-expanding, and able to address pressing environmental issues such as climate change.  Similar to Michael Sorkin’s views in The End(s) of Urban Design the city’s effects on ecologies must ensure the survival of the planet.

Tactical urbanism uses bottom-up initiatives that can be integrated into planning processes linking evolutionary and co-evolutionary relationships.  Interventions are implemented by local groups at various scales from the street level to the building, lot and district levels.  New urbanism was an inclusive movement the investigated urban expansion, however tactical urbanism involves the transformation of existing city spaces addressing issues at the local level with immediate results.  These self-organised interventions sit between formal and informal processes.

Formal planning institutions are made up of agencies, organisations, standards and regulations, and have authority over public and private planning initiatives.  While they are responsible for legalities, legitimacy of the aim of community groups is also considered.  Legitimate processes are often not on-going and relevant enough to be formalised, however planners can learn from the experience of its citizens, and make use of typological and morphological research to adapt flexibility.  

 

Despite organisational challenges and varying results tactical urbanism offers methods to test solutions and allows debate by drawing attention to particular urban spaces.  These informal actions make use of unused land creating new experiences in these spaces over different periods of time.  Temporary models may lead to permanent adaptive solutions that can impact planning at local or city scales.

 

The Open Streets project mentioned by Silvia closes streets temporarily to cars making way for pedestrians, bikes, skating, dance and other activities. It is an example of an initiative that has now been implemented at a larger scale across a number of cities in USA with positive results for communities.  An example I know of is seen in Melbourne when planning institutions adopting flexible processes by changing restrictions allowing awkward and unused spaces within laneways in the CBD to be rented at a low cost for small businesses (image seen below).  I think these initiatives demonstrate opportunities within communities and cities that may otherwise be overlooked by planners and designers.  By allowing flexibility within planning systems the city can continue to adapt and thrive.

Informal settlements are often developed by ‘pirate’ developers with quasi-legal tenancy on private land in interstitial and fringe sites.  While they are hidden from the formal city, they are often permanent and highly productive containing almost half of the cities workforce and often develop close to these jobs and opportunities.

The study by Kim Dovey and Hesam Kamalipour investigates a set of spatial relations between formal and informal settlements.  They use comparative mapping techniques with data from Google Earth and Google Street View to analyse morphology and morphogenic processes in informal settlements.  In 12 cities from varying urban types over the global south, street, block, plot and building typologies are analysed and divided into four categories including ‘informal’, ‘informal mix’, ‘formal mix’ and ‘formal’.

Generally, in formal settlements street layout comes first with a top-down hierarchical and ordered process producing professionally surveyed consistent streets and plots.  Informal settlements often use bottom-up processes with buildings developed before adapted streets, plots and blocks that are uneven, inconsistent, and interconnected with high site coverage and low amounts of private open space.  Mixed categories however are highly complex with varying levels of a quasi-formal of formal street grid and a mix of formal and informal architecture.

Of the 12 cities studied Caracas and Mumbai reveal high distinctions between formal and informal urbanism that reinforces an existing binary principle, however in the cities Cairo, Karachi, Cape Town, Johannesburg, Nairobi, Jakarta, Manila and Lima, areas of mixed categories are the greatest.  The study concludes that pirate developments, incremental upgrading and informal encroachment produces mixed and quasi-formal morphology.  While the binary principle contrasting formal and informal settlements is flawed it has produced the most effective upgrade strategies shifting developments from one category to another, including incremental in situ upgrades, site and services urban design, and demolition and replacement.  Dovey and Kamalipour also argue that the ambiguity of categories of formal and informal development allows them to take place in ‘camouflage’, without the state’s knowledge, and that this is at risk with the mapping of informal settlements.

 

It is acknowledged that many aspects of informal settlements are not included in this study including micro-scale arrangement of sidewalks, informal encroachments of formal buildings, fluid boundaries, social, tenure and conditions.  The depth of history and the political environment investigated by Dovey and Kamalipour is also limited, however these factors may have greater influences on the morophology of informal settlements within cities.  In the UDAD7014 lecture by Kali Marnane, the type and location of work of citizens, as well as social structures also informed the morphology of buildings, paths, and open spaces within informal settlements.

While reading Informal/Formal Morphologies I was reminded of a tour I was given by a local through a Favela in Rio de Janeiro.  The person leading the tour appeared well informed and positive, and said hello to many people as we walked through the area.  While the area appeared to lack access to resources in comparison to formal areas within the city, it seemed to have a vibrant and well-connected community.  As seen in the image below the morphology of the Favela consisted of tight winding paths with informal architecture.

Informal settlement morphology is complex and influenced by many factors including history, economic and political environments and is made up of a variety of communities that contribute to the productivity of cities.

Image: corridor in a Favela in Rio de Janeiro.

Peiser argues that policies that encourage sprawl through discontinuous development, also known as ‘leapfrogging’, in a free land market promote higher density future infill development, as seen in the diagram below.  As a result, lot sizes developed will decrease at a controlled distance from the central business district (CBD).  Otherwise higher densities within the CBD should be set naturally by the land market.

To demonstrate this theory Peiser used formulas to analyse data from dominant growth corridors in several cities in USA that had experienced high growth from 1950-1987.  Findings revealed that local planning and regulations affect the relationship between sprawl and density, with densities doubling over the 33-year period.  Density also increases as accessibility increases and as well as for infill developments over time.  Therefore, this type of sprawl may contribute to higher densities.  

Even with future higher densities Peiser acknowledges that sprawl has problems of inefficient resource allocation for public facilities, increased transport costs and the removal of agricultural land.  Policies that impact costs and patterns of sprawl include zoning, urban growth boundaries, utility provisions and infrastructure planning.  Low density zoning also contributes to higher costs and lower densities.  Urban growth boundaries also limit discontinuous development preventing future urban infill.  Peiser argues that residents should bare the added financial cost as subsidies lead to a larger spread and greater inefficiencies that outweigh the benefits of discontinuous development.

In conclusion Peiser states that there needs to be a balance of cost allocation and planning policies.  To encourage discontinuous development and future density increases zoning policies could reflect this future demand.  While Peiser’s argues that urban growth boundaries increase land values, he also argues that increased land values lead to higher densities, therefore perhaps policies that allow higher densities on existing infill sites including sites for urban renewal would increase densities sooner.  The definition of ‘infill’ can also be explored and expanded upon in this instance.  The article Unearthing the Roots of Urban Sprawl: A Critical Analysis of Form, Function and Methodology further analyses infill development within the author's interpretation of urban sprawl.

For further investigation I ask, what is the intention of urban growth boundaries?  It may be for land preservation or encouraging increased densities.  What effects have urban growth boundaries had on development in existing urban environments?  Is a free market and rising land prices an efficient factor to determine increased density?

·       Formed by a street network
Regents Park, London, John Nash, c.1811
·       Linked up park developments

·       Grand residential enclave

·       Fresh, hygienic place for the ·            middle class to live
Central Park, New York, Frederick Law Olmsted, 1858-76
·       Mitigate population growth, impacts and crowding

·       Improve the situation of the urban poor classes

·       Parks provide amenity: open space, etc.

·       Creating nature in a city

·       Civic leaders organised it

Latrobe University, Melbourne, Roy Simpson, 1964
·       Civic heart: important buildings surrounding a civic open space

·       Different from suburbia

Boston Downtown Waterfront Faneuil Hall Renewal, 1964
·       Critique of urban renewal as a top-down process

·       Connections to the waterfront that straddled a highway

Seaside, Florida, Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company, c.1985
·       Shift in thinking away from urban design being about downtown

·       Attention brought back to the neighbourhood

·       Nostalgic vision of domestic architecture

·       Urbanism critique for being nostalgic instead of new and symbolic

·       Control urban environments through covenants and codes

Amsterdam
·       Lively streetscape

·       Areas for pedestrians

·       Lively density

·       Desirable urbanity

·       Doesn’t match up to modern cities of today

Placemaking
·       Project for Public Spaces

·       https://www.pps.org
Beijing
·       Complex

·       Scale

·       Asian megacity

·       Many ring roads

Why Indonesia is Shifting its Capital From Jakarta? (30,539,000 population)
·       Unequal access to resources

·       Informality vs formality

“Unequal Scenes”
·       Scale of problems from the megalopolis

·       Critique

Worldometer.com
·       Global population statistics

David Shane, “Urban Design Since 1945: A Global Perspective”
·       Give agency back to urban designers

·       Each city can contain all of the categories

·       Metropolis, Megacity

·       Enclave, armature, heterotopia

How Tokyo became the world’s largest megalopolis, of 37 million people
·       Exponential pop growth 1930-2014

·       Has it reached peak city?

·       Land ownership patters, regulations

·       What does that mean for designers of cities?

Degrowth
·       Detroit: urban trajectory from decline of car industry

·       Decline of commerce, infrastructure, and investment

·       Melbourne: empty carparks everywhere but nowhere to park

 The City as a Project
Utopian Schemes: Le Corbusier
Arcadian Schemes
Peter Eisenman
·       Nolli, Plan of Rome (figure ground impression of the city)

·       Piranesi, Campo Marzio

o   No streets

o   Part has monuments that never existed

o   City as a vehicle of a generation of critical ideas

Rem Koolhaus
·       Countryside

·       Post-nature future

Liam Young, Planet City for 10 Billion People
·       Response to apocalypse

·       Gather entire population into one city

·       Rest of the world repairs
Hill Thalis, Public Sydney
·       Nolli techniques

·       Interrogation of existing city

Urban Design is a Sensibility
Alex Krieger (Reading ‘Urban Design’)
·       “Commitment to improving the livability of cities”

·       “One may rejoice that there are many spheres of urbanistic action for those who are passionate lovers of the cities.”

·       “The territory of urban design is its ‘sphere of action’ for any given project.”

·       The industry is shape AND disrupted by these things

10 Spheres of Actions – Alex Krieger
·       The bridge connecting planning and architecture

o   Shuttle diplomacy

o   Must help others see the desired effects of planning

o   Visualization and programmatic narrative techniques

o   Specific design ideas

·       A form-based category of public policy

o   Should be legislated

o   Natural champions

·       Architecture of the city

o   Shaping public space

o   Done with authority and artistry

·       Urban design as restorative urbanism

o   The city of intricate layers

o   ‘the walkable city’

·       Urban design as an art of “place-making”

o   Provision of distinctive, lively, appealing centres

·       Urban design as smart growth

o   Minimise environmental harm and needless land consumption

o   Environmental stewardship

o   Control sprawl

o   Limit and manage growth

·       The infrastructure of the city

o   Engineering criteria, we have learned, are not by themselves sufficient city-producing tools

o   Work out what infrastructure is needed for a livable city

·       Urban design as landscape urbanism

o   Intersection of ecology, engineering, design, careful programming, and social policy

o   System approach, ecological approach

·       Urban design as visionary urbanism

o   Henri Lefebvre, Richard Sennet, Edward Soja, David Harvey

o   Our cultural observers remind us that pragmatism and technique cannot be a sufficient substitute, nor can design professionals be mere absorbers of public opinion waiting for consensus to build

·       Urban design as community advocacy (or doing no harm)

o   Custodians of the qualities valued by a community, qualities that the urban designer is asked to protect and foster

o   Distrust with urban design

o   Listen to and foster community values

o   Professional identity is important

·       Acting on the city

·       Barcelona had one of the highest population densities 1859

o   Poor hygiene, cholera outbreaks

London
·       Population doubled 1806 – 1899

19^th-20^th Century
·       Urban sociology

·       Shaped by science and experiences of the city

1830’s Edwin Chadwick, Bethnal Green Parish Map
·       Rise of the poor

·       City dweller coming to a class consciousness

·       Spacial vs health data

Paris, 1894
·       The city can be an ecosystem

·       Monuments relating to street networks

·       Property acquisition and planning

Place De L’Opera, Paris
·       Modern spectacle/monumental typology

Camillo Sitte, City Planning According to Artistic
·       Irregular planning

·       Variety of subjective experiences

·       Aesthetic basis to urban design

·       Expanding beyond the boundary

GARDEN CITY
·       Lower controlled densities

·       Suburban qualities

·       Ebenezer Howard 1850-1928

·       Raymond Unwin 1863-1940

·       Quickly superseded

Ebenezer Howard, Garden Cities of To-Morrow, 1902
·       Towns separated by green belts

·       Pre-planned size and densities

·       Green/agricultural land safeguarded

·       Self-organising, co-operative social models

Letchworth, UK (Garden City)
·       2000ha

·       30-35,000 people

·       Relationship of buildings to lots

·       Picturesque view of the city

·       Setbacks, road sizes etc. mimic codes of today

Raymond Unwin, Town planning in practice: an introduction to the art of designing cities and suburbs, 1911
·       Planning and architecture are closely aligned and related to design at this time

Greater London New Towns
·       Satellite towns after the war

·       Small new towns vs urbanisation of the center

Amsterdam School, Amsterdam Zuid social housing 1910s

FUNCTIONAL CITY
·       Principals of efficiency

·       Dwelling, work, recreation, transport

·       Responds to population pressures

·       Relieve existing cores of cities

·       No absolute agreement of principals

·       Welfare state model

Le Corbusier, La Charte d’Athenes, 1943 (1933)
·       Join people together to reform cities (the modern movement)

·       Technology can advance cities

·       Plan Voisin 1925

·       High density high-rise apartments

·       Ground open for leisure

·       Transport separate from other aspects urban life

Athens Charter, Amsterdam, Holland
·       Improve quality of construction

·       Best conditions for the greatest number of people

·       Observe reality to make judgements and calls

Barbican
·       Bombed during the war

·       New large scale development

Jose Lluis Sert at Harvard
·       Pivotal in the establishment of urban design

·       Pedestrianised core

·       Core centered around particular community buildings (libraries, entertainments, etc.)

·       Human scale and subjective experience important

·       ‘The Heart of the City’ CIAM

·       Urban renewal as a concept in the US

·       Worked in Boston

·       Planning is approached by architects, planners and landscape architects rather than a Masterplan

CIAM X, Otterlo, 1959
·       Social and environmental aspects of the city

·       City is more than functionality

·       The way people socialise and use spaces

Team 10
·       Break away group from the 10^th meeting of CIAM

Late Modernist/Early Post-Modernist
·       Softening of housing approaches

Megastructure
·       Plug-in City, Archigram, 1964

·       Lack of political and economic frameworks to realise these theories

In this period, urban designers began to:
·       Critique top-down planning methods that were a-historical, expert-driven and standardized.

o   Participatory design processes

·       Demand an empirical basis to design

o   Consideration of social and psychological factors, subjective experience

·       Value existing fabric and complexity of cities

o   Study of urban morphology, heritage protection

·       Focus on streets and public squares

o   Place discourse and placemaking

·       Appreciate the environment at a regional scale

o   Ecological urbanism, landscape urbanism

Critique of Modernist Urban Renewal
Urban design becoming a public era practice
Zoning, landmark preservation, etc.
Megastructure
·       Happening at the same time

Urban Renewal Projects
·       At the expense of existing neighbourhoods

·       Displacement of people

·       Demolish unsanitary/insalubrious areas

·       Favoured land-owners

Jane Jacobs
·       Activist

·       Not trained in urban design

·       ‘SOCIAL CAPITAL’

·       Against modernist rationalist thinking

·       Looked at the city as a citizen/resident

·       Successful urban places

o   Mixed use

o   Walkable

o   Etc.

·       Urban renewal projects began to look at improving cities in positive ways
Viewed planning as sudo science 

Thomas J. Campanella: Challenge of advocacy
·       Loses some expertise

·       Expert vs non-expert competition, values, interaction

Empirical Methods
Ruth Glass
Bethnal Green study
·       Surveys to analyse successes

·       ‘London Aspects of Change’

o   Spatialization of class struggle

o   Coined the term ‘gentrification’

·       Relationships about behaviour and sense of community

The Smithsons
·       Communities exist at different scales
Paolozzi and Henderson
·       New brutalism

·       Ethic and aesthetic

Michaelson
·       Impact of environments on people

·       Impact of people on environments

·       Ownership of capital

Challenge the diversity of low and middle income housing

Inserting designers with an interest in sociology into regulatory frameworks
Public/private affordable housing 
Environmental determinism
Probabilism and possibilism

Urban Sociology
·       Inserting designers with an interest in sociology into regulatory frameworks

·       Public/private affordable housing 

·       Environmental determinism

·       Probabilism and possibilism

·       Introduction of empirical evidence: observation, surveys, evaluations

Observational Methods
·       Wide uptake

·       Willam Whyte

o   Analysed the public use of plazas

o   Similar technique to Jane Jacobs

o   More about urban public space in down town areas

More about how people use them than the evaluating how it was designed to be used 

Jan Gehl – Cities for People

o   Catalogued cities around the world
Steal design ideas 
Allegiance between designers and sociologists

·       Lack of a knowledge base from research

·       Sociologists had established knowledge bases

·       EDRA: Environmental Design Research Association

·       Build availability of resources

Kahn
·       Shift landscape architecture from private gardens to public space

Denise Scott-Brown
·       Fregas book

·       Different of experiences from Harvard to Uni of Pennsylvania

Rockafella Conference on Urban Design Criticism (1958 U Penn)

Battery Park City, New York, 1968
·       Planned community

·       State governance structure but independent organisation

·       Extensive public open space
Mixed socio-economic groups 

Rediscovery of the City
Qualitative aspects of the city
·       Looked to their own ways and methods

·       Looked away from the city as a whole

·       Sert: Can our cities survive

o   Response to challenge to liberal democracy

·       Traffic in Towns

o   Privilege in the car

o   Reality of increased car usage and numbers

o   Impact on pedestrian environments and quality

·       The Man in the Street

o   Advocate for the street for the city environment

·       On Streets
University aligned institution 

Street Fight, Janette Sadik-Kahn
·       Value of streets

·       Streets can be better designed for pedestrians

·       Small inexpensive changes for larger transformations

·       Reallocate the use of space

·       Marking of territory (eg. bike lane)

·       Monitor changes and behaviours = potential catalyst for implementing more changes

Edmund Bacon
·       Better Philadelphia exhibition

o   Set the terms for modernis urban renewal

o   Logical…….?

o   Planning woven into the existing fabric of the city

o   Centre of the citiy deserves immense attention

o   Residential…….? (Listen to lecture)

·       Critique of urban renewal

·       Urban renewal can be project focused

·       Subject and people focused

·       ‘Design of Cities’

o   Differs from Moses

o   Handbook of principles based on the histories of cities

o   History of modernism and urban renewal

Kevin Lynch, The Image of the City, 1960

·       Individuals response to the urban environment

·       Paths, edges, nodes, landmarks

o   Fundamental elements in the way humans perceive their environments

·       Measures: vitality, fitness, access and control

Gordon Cullen, Townscape, 1961

·       Picturesque planning of Brittain

·       Understand cities from the perspective of the subject

·       Ground views

Jane Jacobs
·       ‘Downtown is for People’

·       Illustrations by Gordon Cullen

Collage City, Colin Rowe and Fred Koetter, 1978
·       Context should drive urban design

·       The way the new interacts with the old
Capacity for the meaning of things to change over time 

Aldo Rossi, The Architecture of the City (1996 English, 1982 Italian)
·       Appreciation that the city is made over time

·       Cities are made and then become artifacts

·       Buildings are a part of the city regardless of their function

·       Shift to post-modernism

·       Meaning and memory (social and cultural)

·       Anti-techno utopian modernism

Everyday and Vernacular Urbanism
Finding value in the vernacular and everyday experience

Learning from Las Vegas, Venturi, Scott-Brown, Izenour
·       Looking at it on its own terms

·       Taxonomy of commercial vernacular

·       Ducks (expressive building forms) vs Decorated Sheds

Margaret Crawford, Everyday Urbanism, 1999
·       Finding value and meaning in the everyday environment

·       Taking clues from the environment for what the design should be

·       Ad-hoc

·       Informal aesthetics

·       Temporal transformations

Patrick Geddes 1854-1932
·       Influence on CIAM

·       Model for the symbiotic relationship between people and their environment

·       Cities rely on where they get their stuff from

Ian L. McHarg, Design with Nature
·       Lack of appreciation of nature in city and urban design

·       Highly influential in landscape and urban design

·       Regions are made up of soil, water, etc.

·       Landscape sensibility

·       Layers that contribute to a region

Charles Waldheim, Landscape as Urbanism, 2016

·       Spokesperson for landscape urbanism

·       Driven by environmental concerns

·       Landscape is the best way to think about urban design

James Comer Field Operations
·       Highline New York

Paleomorphism
·       Urban design being shaped by the environment

·       Charles Waldheim

Ecological Urbanism, Mohsen Mostafavi, Gareth Doherty
Development post oil 

“Europe” informal settlement, Cape Town

·       Informality is part of developments

·       Organisation, desire paths and networks set up around the way people have occupies and operated the land is an analogy of the way medieval city started out

·       Medieval city is a play between the old world and the new world 

Self organising layers of densification 

Siena 900BC+

·       Grain size of development

·       Pedestrian set up to allotments to densification

·       Sense of an evolution

·       Hill utilised for defensive purposes

Density

·       Density is treated as the answer to everything

·       Preservation of energy

·       What is a good density?

·       Sprawl vs. tall

·       Coverage vs. density

·       FLA ratio

·       Dwelling units and dwelling unit size

·       Density = ecological issue?

Carparking

·       Underground carparks remove “deep soil”

Landscape

·       The idea of catchment

·       Relationship between topography and water

·       Catchment and orientation = land use

·       Surface coverage affects groundwater and runoff

·       Infiltration 

Biodiversity

·       Species population are effected

·       Impact from cities

·       Countryside is urbanizing

Heat Island Effect

·       Sunlight compounds itself inside the city

Buildings can shade themselves 

Decolonisation

·       0 point of the Renaissance = anything outside of renaissance is primitive

·       Everything that is not of European order is thought of as primitive rather than co-evolving

Migration of cows

·       Working dynamically with landscape

·       Following water etc.

·       Effects from not following these creates problems

Africa

·       Communities organisation around protecting cattle

Settlement is in the landscape 

Monumentality is treated as history

Stone

·       Geology = cities

South America, Incas

·       Dynamic living working with the west

·       Precision in stonework, they worked with the shape of the existing stone

·       Relationships to working with site

·       Tops of mountains were settled

·       Courtyard typology used
·       Mountains push out of the city

·       City morphology shaped by the landscape

·       Tight streets with 10-12 story blocks

·       Forest microclimate

Geology

Amazon

·       Move from garden to garden

·       Moving and reoccupying land

Brisbane Floods

·       How flexible are our settlements to landscape change

·       Ideas of permanence and settlement

Regionalism

·       Ian MacHarg

o   Bedrock is the permanent foundation

o   Soils change quickly

o   Map topography, geology, hydrology

o   Ecological basis for land use

·        

Anne Winston Stone

·       We must understand the city as nature

·       The city as an ecosystem

Urban Ecology

·       What site are good for what organisms

·       Dynamics ecological effects

Patch Dynamics – Patch Corridor - Matric

·       Patches of vegetation and corridors that make up a matrix

·       Spatial conditions arise
Landscape Urbanism

·       Urbanism led by the landscape

·       Ecological view sets up the logics

·       Information driven

·       Process and self-organisation

·       How do things intersect with each other

Emergent patterns
Agencies involved

The most long-tem relationships of dwelling are the ones that are the most dynamic.

Topography sets up water relationships

Dealing with private land is a big issue compared to top-down control 

Third Sydney Terminal, Central Station 1906
·       Trends at the time

·       Modernism: Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier

·       Planning

o   Railway terminal grew organically next to Prince Alfred Park

o   Terminal Station was a celebration of technology

·       Highly infrastructural project

·       Amazing European terminal buildings

·       Infrastructural hub

o   Other transport modes plug into it eg. roads

·       JJ Bradfield

o   Proposed the electrification of the railway

o   Expansion of the railroad

·       Periods cross-over each other

o   Still horses on roads

o   Only some electricity

Mobility
·       Rana Barra

·       Futurists lead to modernism

·       Mobility as a technology

·       Speed

Bocheone Sculpture
19^th C to early 20^th C
·       Mass migration from rural to the cities

·       Transport modes were becoming antequated

·       Work in the city

·       Retrofitting involved in cities during this time

Intersection of architecture and infrastructure in early 20^th c

La Citta Nuova, Antonio Sant’Elia, 1914

Modernism
·       Legacy still in urbanism

·       Charter of Athens 1933

o   Transportation:

§  The existing network of urban communications has arisen from an agglomeration of the aids [sic] roads of major traffic routes.

§  Devised for the use of pedestrians and horse drawn vehicles, they are inefficient for vehicles

§  Lack efficiency and flexibility

§  Traffic routes classified according to nature and function

o   Roads are at the centre

o   Not interested in the suburb

o   Segregation of land uses

o   Role of infrastructure is connecting and separating land uses.

o   Hierarchy of road types and configuration (suppleness)

§  
Land use is the driver for infrastructure
Motopia - G A Jellicoe
·       The grid as the universal metric measure and to organize something with maximum flexibility

·       Methodology of densifying in certain places to keep other places as they are (surrounding open green space for conservation)

·       Multilevel housing and roundabout parking

Rob Adams, Melbourne City Council
·       Opened the doors to towers in Melb

·       He regretted it because the infrastructure couldn’t handle it

Megastructures, Rudolg
·       Densify routes in the city and leave everything else

·       Similar to other schemes of intensity vs opening up space

Cape Town vs. Brisbane
·       Raised freeways

·       How to get traffic through cities

·       New accessways

·       Intense roads along the foreshore

·       Nesting of infrastructure

·       Cut-off the access of the city to the water

·       Interest in the car led to modifications in the city

·       We haven’t worked out how to fix these things now

·       The only way things are built is through public/private partnerships

·       The money isn’t there otherwise

Distribution
·       Sprawl drives all planning and design

·       Population growth, pressure for housing, congestion, pressure on infrastructure, new world interest in the suburbs

·       Sprawl increases greenhouse gases, eats up viable agricultural land close to the city

·       Leapfrogging

o   Development leaps over each development

o   Layers of changes and spread

·       Edge nodes

o   Big box retail next to the road

o   Develops to service the residential area

o   Real eastate areas are zoned so that you can’t fit anything else into them

·       Duplication

o   Roads built next to roads

·       Heirarchies of distribuitions

Network model vs. centralised model
Alex Wall – Programming the Urban Surface
·       “The urban surface is similar to a dynamic agricultural field, assuming different functions, geometries, distributive arrangements, and appearances as changing circumstance demands.  This adaptability derives in part from planar character of the surface, to its smooth and uninterrupted continuity, but also from the equipment and services embedded within it.” 

The Next American Metropolis (TOD) Peter Calthorpe

·       “is a mixed-used community within an average 2,000 foor walking distance of transit stop and core commercial area.  TODs mix residential, retail, office, open space and public uses in a walkable environment, making it convenient for residents and employees to travel by transit, bicycle, foot or car.”

·       Walking to work is key

·       Walk to secondary area (shops)

·       = density

·       Circulation systems on the street

Transport Planning
·       Combination of these factors

·       However housing affordability is a driver for sprawl

·       The problem of the car

·       Attractiveness is influenced by accessibility

o   To shopping opportunities

o   To retail

o   Travel time 

o   Number of zones with retail

o   Relative sensitivity of accessibility to store size

o   Sensitivity of trip-making to travel time

·       Data driven, evidence based

Brisbane TOD
·       Discourse of density, walking, and transit nodes

·       Asian cities are extremely efficient in comparison with high density

·       SEQ entire region in the infrastructure plan shows the scale of planning needed

·       QLD much more focused on road infrastructure

Sydney - Polycentrism
·       3 different cities within Sydney

·       Reduce distance travelled for work

·       Major rail upgrades
Melbourne
·       Innovation centres tied to universities

·       Activity centres

·       Train network nodes

·       Major rail upgrades

New York City Department of Transport 2007-2013
·       ‘Street Fight – handbook to urban revolution’ Janette Sadik-Khan (commissioner)

·       Already have density

·       Safety

o   Most car fatalities from speeding on local streets (problem with cars)

o   The street is a public space

o   Formalising bike lanes

o   Temporary changes of spaces = results

§  Eg. people using the space by blocking cars

Transport systems adjust when you remove the car. 

Intro: Who’s your mob? Where you from?
Located on unseeded stolen land

Language
·       600 dialects

·       270ish languages

Architecture and urban design have been a tool for the colonial project

All projects are in reality built on Indigenous lands

2020: a reckoning of history

·       Confront, acknowledge, and imbed history

·       Reframe colonial lands and how they connect to country

·       New ways to engage with place with narrative and history

How to building environment disciplines need to change
·       BLM confronted engagement with history

·       Design schools are questioning design equity

·       Govt and strategic policy levels including indigenous voices

·       Representation in AIA

·       Representation across the board

Who’s heritage is being protected?
·       Need to be beyond built heritage

·       Destruction of significant land and heritage

·       How do we protect these places

Budj Bim Engineers
·         Uses the lava flow the sustain eels ect. to sustain human life

·         Permanent settlements 

70% of Indigenous Australians live in urban environments

Urban design and the age of Treaty
·       Sophisticated adaptation and change

·       Move beyond recognition and acknowledgement

·       Engage and unpack the effects of the colonial experience

·       Only 20 Ind. graduates from arch ever
Role + how can practice become an enabler
·       International Indigenous Design Charter

·       Applies equally with other design spheres

Indigenous Placemaking _ an Indigenous practitioner’s perspective

The Wilin Centre, Southbank Campus, Uni Melb
·       Opposite NGV
Go back to real location
Original river has been altered, straightened, to suit colonial development
·       Public interface

·       Private inner workings

·       Culturally safe space for students
How do you give knowledge to the original history of the site along with colonial heritage
·       5 language groups and 5 colours

·       Adaptation, engagement and embedment
·       Echos of history

·       Make the invisible visible
·       Scar tree talks to sustainability

·       You don’t remove the tree (eg. to make a canoe from the bark)
·       Carve the scar in the tree

·       Mark significant sites eg. burial grounds

·       Markers in the landscape

·       Reimagining of the scar tree

·       Gathering table

o   A new representation

·       Glass display cabinet

o   View of the inner workings of the cultural institution

·       A place of stories, exchange of knowledge, weaving

·       No ‘white glove’ approach or ‘museum’ approach

·       Equity and access to elements in the building

·       Lighting points you towards the river

 Student Precinct Project, Uni Melb
·       River red gums 300-400 years old (pre-contact)
Indigenous Engagement Programe
·       Capture and embed indigenous voice

·       Fuse first nations perspectives into design

·       There was a watercourse throught the uni site

·       Old creek lines were piped for water systems

·       There is an eel migration through the water system

·       Showcase of culture on campus

·       Welcome to country

Narrative
·       Daylight and water pulled through into the building and civic spaces

·       Cultural narrative for weaving

·       The site was part of a gathering site: good water, good shade, good site originally

Design
·       Showcase and imbed culture and language

·       Opportunities for digital activation eg. white night

·       Stitches within the city and context as well as landscape story and narrative

Roconcile at scale
·       Cohesive and integrated approach

·       In alignment with Indigenous ways of being

·       Acknowledge

·       Reveal

·       Truth telling

·       Reciprocity

o   Facilitate mutual benefit

o   Share in the benefits

o   Peoples and knowledge systems embedded and part of the story and showcasing of design

Q & A
Skills for students to acquire
·       Curiosity

o   Go deep

o   Have skin in the game

o   Build your own language, resources and cultural intelligence

o   Engage and connect with community

·       Communication

o   Build legible communication processes

o   Remove our own jargon

o   Carve out time and space

·       Care

·       Be flexible, patient, adaptable

·       Not commodified, not appropriate culture

Where to start
·       Traditional owner groups need to triage projects (hard for a uni project)

·       Books are a good starting point

·       Texts that sit outside academic realm

·       Personalise the experience with your view, not otherization

Internationally
·       Find a way in: build your own cultural literacy and understanding

Upside-Down Map
·       Reframing the world

Community Consultation
·       Enduring relationships

·       Build affinity and trust

·       Risk of being culturally insensitive if done wrong

·       The Indigenous knowledge is as valuable as the geo-tech

Registered Sites
·       Policies and guidelines can be onerous

·       Intangible heritage

o   Stories

o   Connections, eg. meeting spots of memories

o   Cultural memory is significant but not always recognised

·       Opportunities for digital activation eg. white night

·       Stitches within the city and context as well as landscape story and narrative

·       Large parts of cities are informal: how to engage

·       Climate resilience

Governance
·       System/entity governance

·       Formal and informal mechanisms

·       Laws, norms and conventions of behaviour, institutions create agreements

·       External actors

o   Lobby groups, think tanks, political parties, non-govt. organisations, community, media

Design Governance
·       The process of state-sanctioned intervention in the means and processes of designing the built environment in order to shape both processes and outcomes in a defined public interest (Camona 2013).

3 Forms of Power
·       Coercion: force

·       Ideology: beliefs and values

·       Discipline: self-interest, observation or surveillance

5 Power Bases, John R. P. French and Batern Rave
·       Legitimate power: role or duty

·       Referent power: charisma, loyalty and interpersonal skill

·       Expert power: skills or sanctioned expertise

·       Reward power: reward capacity

o   Not a good form

·       Coercive power: negative influence

Modern Urban Power Scale

·       State sanctioned developments

·       Private sector control of design: impacts amenity and design equity
·       Multipronged approach needed

·       Big government fear vs fragmentation of only market

8 core problematics of design governance
(Carmona, de Magalhaes and Natarajan, Design Governance: The CABE experiment, 2017, p15-19)

·       Fragmented responsibility and built-in dissensus 

o   lack of a centre-wide voice, responsibility sits across public, private and different tiers of government

·       The Marginalisation of ‘Expert’ Judgement: 

o   Eg. chief public health officer making calls for COVID-19,

o   This doesn’t exist in design

o   People with no design expertise making judgements and having great impacts

·       Debatable concept of ‘good design’

o   Based on judgement

o   Aesthetics is subjective

o   No design criteria

·       Intangible nature of design and design value

o   Values are not direct

o   Reduced to aesthetics

·       Appropriate limits of power

o   Expectation of public benefit

o   Public has to argue to private sector for this

o   Balance of power

·       Market realities and the detached state

o   Reluctance for developers to spend on good design, low benefits to them

·       How much intervention

o   Appetite of the society at the time for the state to intervene

·       Balancing certainty with flexibility

o   Consistency of policy

o   Policy not being too constraining on the best outcome

o   Control measures are thought to be too inflexible

o   Flexibility = risk for a developer eg. pushing a good design

Informal Design Governance, Carmona

·       There are tools and techniques to govern good design other than legislation

·       Shaping process

o   Eg. shaping the 18 month engagement process with First Nations

·       Direct and indirect

o   Design review panel

o   Commissioning

CABE, UK Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment, 1999-2011
·       Previous was accused of being elitist and reactive

·       Design review service was controversial

o   Service offered

o   2008 12,000 submissions

o   High quality panel members

o   The Shard

§  4 design review panels

§  Panel focused on how the project work urbanistically: landmarks, amenity, wind patterns, English concern: form and view corridors to landmarks

o   Developed guidelines for design review

A Typology of Informal Design Governance Tools
·       Evidence

o   Argue importance and value

o   Evidence based

o   Research and audits

·       Knowledge

o   Spread knowledge or good design and practice

o   Practice guides, case studies, education/training

o   Different scales: home building, urban design, streets

·       Promotion

o   Proactive making of case

o   Awards, campaigns, advocacy, partnerships

·       Evaluation

o   Evaluating projects and processes

o   Indicators, design review, certification, competition

·       Assistance

o   Direct form of support

o   Engage the public sector

o   Financial assistance, enabling: offer resources and expertise

 Building from the rewards program
Architecture Centre network
New network
·       Citizens can come and engage with development
Guide aimed at clients
Australia
·       Design governance generally happens at state level

·       CABE was a national approach

·       Keating ‘better cities’ policy in 90s

·       Role of local govt in the quality of the built environment

Planning for the Public Good 
·       How the government can play a role in shaping design of public places
Just City Lab, Harvard
Governing by Design, the Aggregate Collective
·       Flips the idea of design governance

·       It could be something that happens through design

·       Design is a Governance tool

o   How does change happen? 

o   Who authors design? 

o   How does architecture participate in modernization? 

o   How does architecture govern?

Case study vs. city scale impact
·       Nightingale

Robin Boyd Foundation
·        Non-profit design agency

·       1945-71 design advocate

Bottom-Up proof of concept
·       Policy is a scale type

·       6 prototypes a year propel opportunities of change

·       Top-Down is not likely to make positive change in Aus.

Follow the money
·       Where does the money go?

·       That will shape the success

Recession era design bottom up boomed as top down had no money
Passive Research
·       Systems oriented not task oriented

·       Good design = good processes

Design Governance
·       Rules organize society
·       Services kill the street edge character

·       Dominant parking structures limit city surveillance

·       Poor planning controls

Planning Scheme Amendment
·       Cross regulation and advocacy

·       “Central Melbourne Design Guide”

·       Poor can only ever be lifted to 

·       Demonstrate prototypes

·       Embed design review panels

·       Tactics eg. design comp = more stories = incentive = design restrictions

o   Development cost integrated into feasibility

Long Island, New York
·       Tax return from corporate habitation
Leasehold vs. government selling land off
·       More control over land

·       Long-term income for developer still

·       Cannot own free-hold land in Canberra
Code based system vs. performance-based system
·       Performance based system works well when power lies in the council to make decisions

Developer incentives
·       Planning cultures vary in every state of Aus.

·       Dense

·       Social boundaries rather than physical

Definitions:
Slum: inadequate access to safe water, sanitation and infrastructure with poor structural quality of housing, overcrowding and insecure residential status.

Informal Settlement: Informal settlements lack formal documentation to occupy land. Informal planning, design or construction is not in compliance with local building regulations or land-use plans.

Research Aim
·       Peoples perspectives on architecture

·       Origin of patterns and significance of patterns

Abel Wolman
·       We need water and energy for cities: they are intrinsic

·       “there is no shortage of water, however there is a need for long-term thinking”

·       Urban Metabolism tracks these flows

·       Can compare societies to the human body

Changes needed
·       Reduce inputs

·       Reduce waste

·       Increase livability

Water Performance

Transforming Cities
·       Inconsistent analysis’

·       Inconsistent boundaries because of fragmented government in cities

·       Need

o   Co-ordinated analysis

o   Common system boundaries

Blue = natural
Orange = Manmade

The evolution of water management in cities
·       Water sensitive city (Aus term)

Water Security
·       We have water when we need it

·       Water is good quality and safe to drink

Visions for Urban Water Management
·       Water internalization

o   Generating water from within cities

·       Supporting diverse functions

Climate Change
·       Climate change is driving changes in rainfall in Perth (more effects than any other city in Aus)

o   Can no longer rely on surface water services

Rising Energy Use
Quote
·       “Resilient pathways reduce GHG……”(see above)
Suburbs
·       Impervious surfaces are minimal in new unit developments

·       Lose the security of water on the site

·       Improve density and water performance

Design vs. Performance
·       Designer > engineer > user

·       Connect design, engineering and outcome

Salisbury
·       Poor area

·       Good water management

Norman Creek
·       Middle socioeconomics

·       Complex topography

 

 

Urban design challenge (21-25 June 2021) 

·       1 week design challenge

·       Ideas

o   Rain water harvesting

o   Water reuse

o   Green roofs

o   Urban agriculture

o   Hydropower

o   Evaporative cooling

o   Thermal Storage

·       Cascading water is important for water capture

Copenhagen Waster Management Facility
·       Could be used to harvest water as it has a good drainage system

 Cross-sectional work
·       Architects, engineers, planners, etc. are all needed to solve these problems

·       Open up communication channels

·       Standardised codes/language

Water underpins security

Australia is at around 10% but that will increase as water becomes more scarce

Q&A
·       Tools and data can help influence change

·       Minister for water collection

o   Link between drought and local flooding

·       Fragmentations = broken up benefits of investing in water management

·       Information on performance and trends over time is limited

·       Metabolism

·       Data is often 5 years old once published and changes are slow

·       Cities are changing with population growth so there is room for change but no conceptual frameworks and assessment methods and over scales (not just building scale or site ownership scale)

·       Governance issues o

·       Supply side focused solutions at the moment

o   Efficiency measures could be a lot more economical

·       Brisbane floods

o   2011 class action suit

o   4 types

§  River flooding

§  Local and storm water flooding

§  Tidal flooding

Pressure of flood capacity vs. water supply from the damn