Morphological Dimension of Urban Design

Urban Design LECTURE 4 The Morphological Dimension

Abhishek K. Venkitaraman Assistant Professor

Urban morphology

Factors Influencing Urban Morphology - Site factors - Historical and cultural factors - Functional factors - Government influence - Social values - Economic forces *economic circulation *economic accessibility / urban land rents

MORPHOLOGY Line breaks: morph|ology

THE STUDY OF THE FORMS OF THINGS Origin Mid 19th century: from Greek morphē 'form' + -logy.

URBAN MORPHOLOGY THE STUDY OF THE FORM AND SHAPE OF SETTLEMENTS  Development patterns  Process of Change

Urban morphology – the study of change in the physical form and shape of settlements over time – focuses on patterns and processes of growth and change.

Differences in street and block patterns, plot patterns, the arrangement of buildings within plots and the shapes of buildings create very different environments – the different patterns are commonly referred to as ‘urban tissue’ (Caniggia & Maffel 1979, 1984).

How form of the city changes?

BHOPAL- CHRONOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT

Growth of Roorkee

Chronological growth of the town

Comparison of growth 1970

2012

Growth of a City The growth of a city takes place in different stages. Some cities grow so rapidly that it will be difficult to recognize them after few decades.

New York in 1851 was a fine and spacious city. Situated in the bank of East and Hudson river it had three to four storied terraced houses. But in 1951, the three and four storied flats gave way to skyscrapers. Only the streets remain unchanged.

Similar is the case with the Birmingham, which expanded fast due to industrial establishments. Toronto has also made the same mistakes that the other big cities have made. One can see urban jungle in San Paulo also. But San Francisco is an exception due to the construction of satellite city across the river, overdevelopment cannot be seen in this city. It has thus retained its character.

Chicago is a city which is portrayed as a technological success but a planning failure.

Growth of towns

Growth of town can be classified in two ways • Growth according to Origin • Growth according to Direction

Growth according to Origin: • Natural Growth- Not preplanned development, developed as matter of chance; • Possibly could be a result of evolution rather than a pre-thought or preplanned development; • Primary factors for the natural growth are availability of fresh water, rich soil, immediate comfort and convenience of the people • Concentric Spread , • Satellite Growth, • Ribbon Development and • Scattered Growth;

• Planned Growth The town develops on pre-determined line as prepared by the town planner Development in a orderly manner;

Planned growth can be understood through 2 points 1) Selection of site for the town; 2) Features to be embodied in the plan

Natural Growth Concentric Spread: • Here the town develops in the form of concentric rings • Resulting from improper houses, concentration of the people in the heart of the town, congestion of the traffic and accidents

Satellite Growth: • The satellite growth implies dependency on the parent city but still possessing its town identity; • When a town reaches a certain size, satellite devolution must take place, to break the suburban sprawl beyond that size; • Since its periphery falls away from the heart of the parent city, it becomes less convenient and uncomfortable for the distant people

Ribbon Development: • Ribbon development is in the form of a ribbon or line, i.e. a single row of houses along the bus stops, bus routes, railway station or highways; • It happens specially in newly developing towns where rules and zoning regulations have not been strictly enforced; • Ribbon development has become a regular feature where we find over crowding of all types of building such as school, factories, petrol pumps.

Disadvantages of Ribbon Development: • Advantage for the frontage of the main road leaving the interior undeveloped and causes wastage of valuable land; • Leads to over crowding of the road and, streets become narrow and give rise to accidents; • All types of buildings grow at the frontage, some times affect health conditions; • Town spreads far and wide, becomes costly to maintain and future developments are very costly;

Scattered Growth Town shows erratic growth, expands in a very irregular manner; It results into traffic congestion, slums and lack of open spaces;

Leapfrog Development • Leapfrogging occurs when developers jump from one built-up area to another, leaving a large, undeveloped space of land or forest in between. • This can occur because of the city's zoning laws. • The problem with leapfrogging is that transportation between the two developed areas often becomes dependent on driving rather than walking or biking.

Growth According to Direction • The growth of towns considering the direction takes place in two ways:

1) Horizontal Growth; 2) Vertical Growth • Horizontal Growth- City can grow horizontally in all directions, to accommodate the growing population. Horizontal growth is economical at places where land price is cheap; • Vertical Growth- City grows vertically which is done by adding more floors to the existing building or by constructing high rise or multistoried buildings. This type of development is suitable where the land value is high;

1) Horizontal Growth: Advantages: • Economic building construction • Does not require high technical personnel • Possible to have roof ventilation and maximum use of roof lighting • Density of population is generally low • Marginal space around the building could be used for garden Disadvantages: • It requires more land for the same space area • The construction cost rises as foundation area increases • It is uneconomical where the land is costly • There is absence of group living

2) Vertical Growth: Advantages: • Over all construction cost reduces because less expenses in foundation • Lot of land saving where land is costly • Increased green space around the building • Encourages a sense of group living Disadvantages: • Fire safety, earthquake issues, heavy dependence on mechanized vertical transportation system in building • Alteration in microclimate • Density of population is very high

Morphological Elements: 1. Land uses - Changes to land uses include both new uses coming in and existing uses moving to other areas. 2. Building structures - There has often been a recognisable cycle of building development on each plot.

3. Plot pattern - Cadastral units (urban blocks) are typically subdivided or ‘platted’ into plots or lots. These may be ‘back-toback’ plots, each having a frontage onto a main street or circulation route and a shared or common plot boundary at the rear. 4. Cadastral (street) pattern - The cadastral pattern is the layout of urban blocks and public space/movement channels between those blocks. The spaces between the blocks can be considered to be the public space network.

Elements which change: LEAST RESILIENT

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LAND USE BUILDING STRUCTURE PLOT PATTERN CADASTRAL (STREET) PATTERN

MOST RESILIENT

Cadastral pattern is the layout of Urban Blocks and, between them, the public space/ movement network.

The blocks define the space and the space defines the block

Neighborhood Status

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Buildings as constituent elements in Urban block - Spatial Coherence

Buildings as freestanding pavilions in amorphous space. -Monumental buildings -Arbitrary and disconnected individual features

URBAN GRAIN The balance of open space to built form, and the nature and extent of subdividing an area into smaller parcels or blocks. For example a ‘fine urban grain’ might constitute a network of small or detailed streetscapes.

It takes into consideration the hierarchy of street types, the physical linkages and movement between locations, and modes of transport

GRAIN FINE: composed of small sized street blocks COARSE: with fewer larger blocks

TEXTURE EVEN UNEVEN

Von Meiss contends that a fundamental problem of the twentieth century urbanization has been the multiplication of ‘objects’ and the neglect of ‘fabrics’.

Cities slowly tended to lose their spatial coherence, becoming a series of unrelated and competing or isolated monuments and small complexes of buildings surrounded by roads, parking and landscaping… FRACTURING OF SPACE

Regular and Deformed Grids: Regular or 'ideal grids : characterised by geometric regularity. they are typically planned and have some degree of geometric discipline. due to the ease of laying out streets, the most basic planned layouts have generally been rectilinear and many settlements with regular or semi-regular grids exist. 'Deformed' grids: characterised by apparent irregularity. the cores of pre-industrial cities tend to have ‘deformed’ grids. generally based on pedestrian movement and strongly influenced by topography, they were integral parts of the immediate area, rather than through-routes, and evolved and developed through use.

An important Urban Design quality established by the cadastral pattern is that of PERMEABILITY Visual Permeability Physical Permeability

Railroad Suburbs Railroads appeared about the time of the Civil War and they changed the shape of cities. The speed of the railroad allowed people (If they couldn't afford the fare) to live in "ideal" small towns built beyond the limits of the crowded organic city in which people worked.

Features of these dormitory towns include larger lots than in the city, stores near the railroad station, and curving streets with names that have rural/romantic connotations: Greenfield, Briarcliff, Idyllwylde, etc.

Streetcar Grids Streetcars, at first pulled by horses and later driven by electric motors helped to shape cities in the late 1800's. They allowed access to residential areas along major routes, which were often spaced a mile or half-mile apart in a square grid. Stores and apartment buildings line the main roads, while blocks of narrow houselots fill the less valuable land far from the streetcar lines. Numbered or lettered streets and avenues are typical, especially in those parts of the cities that were being urbanized at a very rapid rate.

The City Beautiful Wide boulevards going diagonally through a rectangular grid are the hallmarks of this design, which was a deliberate attempt to overcome the dullness of the streetcar city.

The avenues focus on public buildings and pedestrian squares with statues or monuments at strategic locations. Unfortunately plans for the city beautiful were expensive as well as imaginative and therefore most of them were never finished, though nearly every major American city has a few districts.

Bungalow Grids Compared with the earlier grids, the bungalow districts have lower population densities,

larger lots, and elongated blocks, often with alleys behind the closely spaced single-family houses and duplexes.

Tract Suburbs After World War II, increasingly affluent commuters demanded better transportation in the form of radial freeways (through old urban areas to city centers) andbypasses (around cities and railroad towns.) The automobile suburbs

featured rectangular street patterns with partially restricted access to the major highways. Blocks and houselots tend to be larger and more square than in bungalow districts; commercial strips are common along the major roads; and stree names often change at suburb boundaries.

Rectilinear Grid Iron Pattern

Rectilinear Grid Iron Pattern

Curvilinear City

Cul-de-sac pattern

Image Source: Author

FIGURE GROUND ANALYSIS

FIGURE GROUND ANALYSIS OF OLD CITY OF GHAZIABAD

Lack of green spaces & Poor Maintenance of existing green spaces

TYPICAL NARROW LANES

Observations:

COLORFUL,OLD SHOPS

The buildings are densely packed with little or no space between them. There are some open abandoned spaces which can be developed into potential urban spaces. Apart from the abandoned spaces, there is a lack of open spaces in the study area which leads to visual chaos and deterioration. There is no particular movement axis.

CENTRE OF WHOLESALE & RETAIL

Theories in Morphology Figure-ground Theory: relationship between building mass and open space; analyzes textures and patterns of urban fabric; and spatial order. Linkage Theory: Dynamics of circulation as generators of urban form; connection and movement. Place Theory: Importance of historic, cultural, and social values in urban open space; contextualist’s angle.

Figure Ground Theories

The figure-ground theory is founded on the study of the relative land coverage of Solid masses: (“figure”) (buildings) Open voids: (”ground”) (parks, streets, squares) A predominant “field” of solids and voids creates the urban fabric. The figure-ground approach to spatial design is an attempt to manipulate the solid-void relationships by adding to, subtracting from, or changing the physical geometry of the pattern. The figure-ground drawing is a graphic tool for illustrating mass-void relationships; a two dimensional Abstraction in plan view that clarifies the structure and order of urban spaces.

Urban Solids:

Urban Voids:

• Public Monuments or institutions (Ziggurat, Pyramid, Gothic or Baroque Churches etc.) • Urban Blocks (Krier’s mission is to reconstruct the traditional urban block as the definer of streets and square) • Edge-defining Buildings -establish an edge of the district- (Berlage’s Housing district in Amsterdam, 1915)

Entry foyer space –establishes the important transition from personal domain to common territory- (fore court, mews, niche, lobby, front yard) Inner block void –a semi private residential space for leisure or utility- (courtyard and covered passage) Network of streets and squares –places to spend time in and corridors through which to movePublic parks and gardens –nodes for the preservation of nature in the city, places for recreationLinear open-space system commonly related to major water features such as rivers, waterfronts, and wetland zones

The objective of these manipulations is to clarify the structure of urban spaces in a city or district by establishing a hierarchy of spaces of different sizes that are individually enclosed but ordered directionally in relation to each other.

A predominant "field" of solids and voids creates this urban pattern, often called the fabric, and is punctuated by object buildings and spaces, such as major landmarks or open spaces that provide focal points and subcenters within the field. The figure-ground drawing is a graphic tool for illustrating mass-void relationships; a twodimensional abstraction in plan view that clarifies the structure and order of urban spaces.

Istanbul

Paris from Above

Berlin from Above

Linkages Theory Linkage theory is derived from “lines” connecting one element to another. These lines are formed by streets, pedestrian ways, linear open spaces, or other linking elements that psychically connect the parts of a city.

The designer applying the linkage theory tries to organize a system of connections, or a network, that establishes a structure for ordering spaces. Emphasis is placed on circulation diagram rather than the spatial diagram of the figure-ground theory. Movement systems and the efficiency of infrastructure take precedence over patterns of defined outdoor space.

Constantinople, reconstruction of the city’s appearance in the 9th-11th centuries,showing the string of forums.

Place Theories The place theory adds the components of human needs and cultural, historical, and natural contexts. Advocates of the place theory give physical space additional richness by incorporating unique forms and details indigenous to its setting. In place theory social and cultural values, visual perceptions, of users and an individual’s control over public environment are as important as principles of enclosure and linkage

Source: http://www.slideshare.net/ceptwebmaster/janwani-lap-jm-rd

DEFORMED GRID

TRADITIONAL

MODERN

CHANGE OF MOVEMENT SYSTEM

HIERARCHY OF ROAD NETWORK

CAR AS COLONIZER OF PUBLIC SPACE

INTRODUCTION OF CUL-DE-SACS

Queensway in Birmingham

POD DEVELOPMENTS A further transformation in the morphological structure of urban areas is that from outward facing urban blocks to inward- focused complexes.

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PROVIDES QUIETER AND SAFE STREETS

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LACK OF INTERCONNECTEDN ESS

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PROMOTES RESIDENT INTERACTION

•

CREATES CAR DEPENDENCY

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PROVIDES A LOCAL SENSE OF IDENTITY

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ENHANCES OPPORTUNITIES FOR CRIME

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REDUCES OPPORTUNITIES FOR CRIME

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LACK OF IDENTITY AND CHARACTER

SHARED STREETS The shared street layout gives pedestrians primary rights, so that, sensing they are intruding into a pedestrian zone, motorists drive more cautiously

TRAFFIC CALMING

STREET RECLAIMING

Traditional focus was given to road design: •More infrastructure for cars •More space for motorized vehicles •Unsustainable focus

WHY SUSTAINABLE TRANSPORT?

HOW TO ENCOURAGE SUSTAINABLE TRANSPORT SYSTEM? WALKING

? PUBLIC TRANSPORT

CYCLING

FEEDER SYSTEMS

?

Consider how best the site can be connected with nearby main routes and public transport facilities

The typical cul -de- sac response creates an introverted layout, which fails to integrate with the surroundings

A more pedestrian-friendly approach that integrates with the surrounding community links existing and proposed streets, and provides direct links to bus stops

This street pattern then forms the basis for perimeter blocks, which ensure that buildings contribute positively to the public realm

Ballard Estate, Mumbai

PERIMETER BLOCKS

Ref: URBAN DESIGN: A TYPOLOGY OF PROCEDURES AND PRODUCTS- Jon Lang (pg-208)

SERIAL VISION • Sequence of revelations. • Manipulate the elements of town so that impact on emotions is achieved. • To walk from one end of the plan to another at a uniform pace will provide a sequence of surprise. so an impact is made on eye.