scholarly journals Intensifying the Grid: A Typology for Medium Density Housing to Accommodate the Changing Demography of Wellington Suburbs

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Rose Stiles

<p>The combination of an increasing population, changing demographics and an ageing housing stock is driving the need for new and more varied housing types. Attempts to address these concerns have been less than satisfactory, leading to urban sprawl and the destruction of neighbourhood character. Residential intensification is a way of providing new housing while preserving both Wellington's compact urban form and open space. This thesis explores a process to increase housing density in the inner suburbs without a loss of urban form and character. Developed through design led research, the study first identifies those neighbourhoods most suited for intensification as Wellington's historic gridded suburbs. A representative street is then selected, and a strategy for integrating medium-density housing is developed. It then applies the principles in two multi-unit developments to address modern concerns with enhanced liveability and improved connection with private outdoor space. By manipulating the buildings in plan and section, complex internal configurations are possible, resulting in different sizes and types of dwellings, which accommodates varied demographic groups and household sizes. Through the elevation, the designs are then integrated into the local character of the site by reinterpreting the street's context in a contemporary manner. The design resolution was reached through a cyclical process, developing and being tested incrementally. The general principles of the design can be extrapolated and applied to other Wellington gridded neighbourhoods. They can also be applied to other locations with similar urban morphology in other New Zealand and Australian cities.</p>

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Rose Stiles

<p>The combination of an increasing population, changing demographics and an ageing housing stock is driving the need for new and more varied housing types. Attempts to address these concerns have been less than satisfactory, leading to urban sprawl and the destruction of neighbourhood character. Residential intensification is a way of providing new housing while preserving both Wellington's compact urban form and open space. This thesis explores a process to increase housing density in the inner suburbs without a loss of urban form and character. Developed through design led research, the study first identifies those neighbourhoods most suited for intensification as Wellington's historic gridded suburbs. A representative street is then selected, and a strategy for integrating medium-density housing is developed. It then applies the principles in two multi-unit developments to address modern concerns with enhanced liveability and improved connection with private outdoor space. By manipulating the buildings in plan and section, complex internal configurations are possible, resulting in different sizes and types of dwellings, which accommodates varied demographic groups and household sizes. Through the elevation, the designs are then integrated into the local character of the site by reinterpreting the street's context in a contemporary manner. The design resolution was reached through a cyclical process, developing and being tested incrementally. The general principles of the design can be extrapolated and applied to other Wellington gridded neighbourhoods. They can also be applied to other locations with similar urban morphology in other New Zealand and Australian cities.</p>


2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Jorge Bosch Abarca

<p class="VLCResumen">This article examines how the most recognisable urban forms of the Siedlung in the first postwar period in Germany were influenced by previous experiences in the construction of the urban periphery involving the company town and the garden city. The adaptation of these peripheral settlements – in which the desired balance between the country house and the urban dwelling was achieved by introducing terraced housing – to meet certain requirements of sufficient density to satisfy the growing demand for small dwellings was to determine the final configuration of the “modern Siedlung,” the settlement characteristic of the expansion of the large German city in the 1920s. An urban form that was to combat the housing shortage problem by providing systematic, medium-density housing groups consisting mainly of linear buildings several storeys high integrated with the open space in a remarkable balance between building and nature. On the basis of original sources from that period, this text addresses noteworthy aspects of this evolution towards a spatial, functional and aesthetic shaping of the collective accommodation characteristic of a Modernist German urbanism which still deserves to be taken into consideration in the current discussion about urban density.</p>


Urban Science ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 37
Author(s):  
Georgios-Rafail Kouklis ◽  
Athena Yiannakou

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the contribution of urban morphology to the formation of microclimatic conditions prevailing within urban outdoor spaces. We studied the compact form of a city and examined, at a detailed, street plan level, elements related to air temperature, urban ventilation, and the individual’s thermal comfort. All elements examined are directly affected by both the urban form and the availability of open and green spaces. The field study took place in a typical compact urban fabric of an old city center, the city center of Thessaloniki, where we investigated the relationship between urban morphology and microclimate. Urban morphology was gauged by examining the detailed street plan, along with the local building patterns. We used a simulation method based on the ENVI-met© software. The findings of the field study highlight the fact that the street layout, the urban canyon, and the open and green spaces in a compact urban form contribute decisively both to the creation of the microclimatic conditions and to the influence of the bioclimatic parameters.


2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (12) ◽  
pp. 4565 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lingjun Tang ◽  
Yu Lin ◽  
Sijia Li ◽  
Sheng Li ◽  
Jingyi Li ◽  
...  

Urban vibrancy is an important indicator of the attractiveness of a city and its potential for comprehensive, healthy and sustainable development in all aspects. With the development of big data, an increasing number of datasets can be used to analyse urban vibrancy on fine spatial and temporal scales from the perspective of human perception. In this study, we applied mobile phone data as a proxy for local vibrancy in Shenzhen and constructed a comprehensive framework for the factors that influence urban vibrancy, especially in terms of urban morphology and space syntax. In addition, the popular geographically and temporally weighted regression (GTWR) method was used to explore the spatiotemporal relationships between vibrancy and its influencing factors. The spatial and temporal coefficients are presented through maps. The conclusions of this attempt to study urban vibrancy with urban big data have significant implications for helping urban planners and policy makers optimize the spatial layouts of urban functional zones and perform high-quality city planning.


2018 ◽  
Vol 47 (3) ◽  
pp. 363-380
Author(s):  
Tong Zhang ◽  
Sophia Shuang Chen ◽  
Guangyu Li

Compact urban form has been applied as a strategy to reduce the loss of green space that occurs from development, but the impact of this policy on the provision of green space still presents many uncertainties. This research investigated the statistical relationship between urban form indicators and the loss of vegetation biomass to understand the response of quality green space provision to changes in urban morphology. A methodology combining multi-source data assimilation, statistical analysis, and spatial analysis was adopted for the Yangtze River Delta cities of China. First, six urban metrics were selected to describe the shape and layout of urban patches in each city, and the total biomass loss index was then introduced as a parameter. The values of urban metrics and total biomass loss index were calculated for the 50 Yangtze River Delta cities. Second, ordinary least squares regression and geographically weighted regression analyses were then used to establish a quantitative relationship between total biomass loss index and urban form indicators. The results revealed an extremely negative correlation between total biomass loss index and the three urban variables of Richard compactness, density gradient, and the Gini coefficient; moreover, the parameter estimates for the three variables in the geographically weighted regression model were local and varied over space. Third, the mechanisms by which the urban form influences biomass loss were discussed and different urban form planning strategies for particular urban areas were suggested. In conclusion, compact urban form in a clustered layout of urban areas with a dense central agglomeration was verified to be ecologically superior and conducive to green space protection. For the physical interpretation of the statistical relationship between urban morphology and vegetation loss, the interface effect of urban agglomeration on vegetation merits further study.


Author(s):  
Inés Aquilué ◽  
Estanislao Roca ◽  
Javier Ruiz

Regarding topological interpretation of space, this research aims to identify urban morphologies, whose topology becomes increasingly determining under high uncertainty. This topological approach has been applied in an evolutionary analysis of urban spaces under siege, fear and conflict, which conducted to the construction of a specific method. This method analyses the transformation of urban areas in five consecutive phases: urban form [1], increase of uncertainty [2], application of the apparatus [3], change in urban form [4], information flows [5]. These five phases were applied to different empirical studies, analysed through specific morphological and topological models. In the light of this method, two selected urban morphologies Dobrinja –a suburb in Sarajevo– and the Beirut Central District have been examined. The urban morphology of both areas was dramatically transformed after both civil conflicts –the Bosnian War and the Lebanese Civil War–. Dobrinja suffered severe modifications, first provoked by the violence of the siege during the Bosnian War [1992-1995], and then by the Inter-Entity Boundary Line as a result of the Dayton Peace Agreement [December 1995], which divided the neighbourhood and caused serious alterations in its ethno-demographic and spatial structure. The Beirut Central District was first destroyed by the violence experienced in the Lebanese Civil War [1975-1990] and then by the process of subsequent reconstruction [since 1992], which led to a simplification of its structure. The two morphological and topological analyses enable us to determine the initial causes and their spatial consequences in both urban areas, regarding their conflict and post-conflict stage.


Author(s):  
Alessandro Araldi ◽  
Giovanni Fusco

The Nine Forms of the French Riviera: Classifying Urban Fabrics from the Pedestrian Perspective. Giovanni Fusco, Alessandro Araldi ¹Université Côte-Azur, CNRS, ESPACE - Bd. Eduard Herriot 98. 06200 Nice E-mail: [email protected], [email protected] Keywords: French Riviera, Urban Fabrics, Urban Form Recognition, Geoprocessing Conference topics and scale: Tools of analysis in urban morphology     Recent metropolitan growth produces new kinds of urban fabric, revealing different logics in the organization of urban space, but coexisting with more traditional urban fabrics in central cities and older suburbs. Having an overall view of the spatial patterns of urban fabrics in a vast metropolitan area is paramount for understanding the emerging spatial organization of the contemporary metropolis. The French Riviera is a polycentric metropolitan area of more than 1200 km2 structured around the old coastal cities of Nice, Cannes, Antibes and Monaco. XIX century and early XX century urban growth is now complemented by modern developments and more recent suburban areas. A large-scale analysis of urban fabrics can only be carried out through a new geoprocessing protocol, combining indicators of spatial relations within urban fabrics, geo-statistical analysis and Bayesian data-mining. Applied to the French Riviera, nine families of urban fabrics are identified and correlated to the historical periods of their production. Central cities are thus characterized by the combination of different families of pre-modern, dense, continuous built-up fabrics, as well as by modern discontinuous forms. More interestingly, fringe-belts in Nice and Cannes, as well as the techno-park of Sophia-Antipolis, combine a spinal cord of connective artificial fabrics having sparse specialized buildings, with the already mentioned discontinuous fabrics of modern urbanism. Further forms are identified in the suburban and “rurban” spaces around central cities. The proposed geoprocessing procedure is not intended to supersede traditional expert-base analysis of urban fabric. Rather, it should be considered as a complementary tool for large urban space analysis and as an input for studying urban form relation to socioeconomic phenomena. References   Conzen, M.R.G (1960) Alnwick, Northumberland : A Study in Town-Planning Analysis. (London, George Philip). Conzen, M.P. (2009) “How cities internalize their former urban fringe. A cross-cultural comparison”. Urban Morphology, 13, 29-54. Graff, P. (2014) Une ville d’exception. Nice, dans l'effervescence du 20° siècle. (Serre, Nice). Yamada I., Thill J.C. (2010) “Local indicators of network-constrained clusters in spatial patterns represented by a link attribute.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 100(2), 269-285. Levy, A. (1999) “Urban morphology and the problem of modern urban fabric : some questions for research”, Urban Morphology, 3(2), 79-85. Okabe, A. Sugihara, K. (2012) Spatial Analysis along Networks: Statistical and Computational Methods. (John Wiley and sons, UK).


Author(s):  
Luciana Monzillo de Oliveira ◽  
Maria Pronin ◽  
Denise Antonucci

A series of new districts appeared in São Paulo between 1915 and 1940, all inspired in the garden-city concept created by Ebenezer Howard. The City of São Paulo Improvements and Freehold Land Company Limited established some of them in the southwest sector of the city, near downtown: Jardim América (1915), Butantã (1921), Alto da Lapa (1921), Pacaembu (1925), and Alto de Pinheiros (1931). Other developers carried out land subdivisions inspired in the same garden-districts concepts, but in more distant areas. The following garden-districts were built in the southern area of the city: Chácara Flora (1928), Interlagos (1938), and Granja Julieta (1956). Unlike central garden-districts, the history of the outlying garden-districts was seldom or only partly studied. Given this scenario, this study aims to fill a historiographical gap on Interlagos garden-district, which was born as “Interlagos Satellite Spa Town”. Its form is such an important example of landscaping and cultural heritage that the district was listed as protected by the city heritage agency in Resolution nº 18, November 23, 2004, in view of the morphological and historical features of the original land subdivision. This study relies on an urban morphology cognitive study which, according to Rego and Meneguetti (2011), aims to expand the knowledge on the origins and explanations of that urban form. The study presents unpublished data on the district formation, taken mainly from a survey carried out in newspapers from the 1930s and 1940s.


Author(s):  
Limeng Zhang ◽  
Andong Lu

A study on the history of urban morphology in China based on discourse analysis Limeng Zhang¹, Andong Lu¹ ¹School of Architecture and Urban Planning, Nanjing University. Nanjing University Hankou Road 22#, Gulou District, Nanjing, China E-mail: [email protected], [email protected] Key words: urban morphology, terminology, discourse analysis Conference topics and scale: Literature review   (Supported by the Natural Science Foundation of China, Grant No.: 51478215)   Urban morphology is a method widely used in China in the field of urban design and urban conservation. Since its first introduction to the Chinese context about 20 years ago, the key ideas and concepts of urban morphology underwent a significant phenomenon of ‘lost in translation’. Different origins of morphological thoughts, different versions of translation, as well as different disciplinary context, have all together led to a chaotic discourse. This paper reviews the key Chinese articles in the field of urban morphology since 1982 and draws out a group of persistent keywords, such as evolution, axis, urban fringe belt, plan unit and plot, that characterize the morphological approach to urban issues. By reviewing the transformation of the definition of these keywords, this paper aims to generate an evolutionary map of landmark ideas and concepts, based on which, four stages in the development of urban morphology in China can be identified: emergence, growth, maturity, practice. The mapping methodology could be extrapolated to other words, and the obtained evolutionary map could be a basic tool for further study.   References Conzen M. R. G.,  Alnwick, Northumberland: A Study in Town-plan Analysis [M] 1960. ( London, George Philip). J. W. R. Whitehand, and Kai Gu. ‘Urban conservation in China: Historical development, current practice and morphological approach’ [J], Town Planning Review, 2007 (5), 615-642. Duan Jin, and Qiu Guochao. 'The Emergence and Development of Overseas Urban Morphology Study' [J], Urban Planning Forum, 2008(5):34-42. M. P. Conzen, Kai Gu, J. W. R. Whitehand. Comparing traditional urban form in China and Europe: a fringe belt approach [D]. Urban Geography, 2011.


Author(s):  
Teresa Marat-Mendes ◽  
Maria Amélia Cabrita

The purpose of this paper is to provide an opportunity to explore the Habitat debate within ISUF. We quest that within this concept, as placed by Moudon (1997) in her inaugural paper to Urban Morphology, there is an intrinsic call towards an equilibrium between the various dimensions of urban form and a trans-disciplinary approach to the study of urban form, which deserves further investigation.According to Whitehand (2012) specific constrains affected the full concretization of such trans-disciplinary efforts, namely the further specialization of the disciplinary areas. Moreover, as argued by Marat-Mendes (2016), the focus placed by urban morphology on the physical dimensions of urban form has been significantly higher than on the social or human dimensions of the urban form, thus affecting in turn the above-identified equilibrium. In order to contribute to such debate, this paper presents the results of an ongoing investigation (Marat-Mendes, Cabrita, 2015), which seeks to recuperate the concept of Habitat within urban morphology. To do that, it first identifies the concept of Habitat as it was first defined in a number of seminal works to urban morphology (Demangeon, 1926). Secondly, it exposes how did such concept evolved throughout specific historical, disciplinary and methodological contexts (Deyong, 2011). And thirdly, it reveals the impact that such evolution had on the various problematics and scales of approach by those to which the Habitat issue was central for the study of urban from, including some contemporary contributions from various interdisciplinary areas, which seem to be recuperating that concept, although not explicitly. References Demangeon, A. (1926) ‘Un Questionnaire sur L’Habitat Rural, Annales de Géographie 35 (196), 289-292. Deyong, S. (2011) ‘Planetary habitat: the origins of a phantom movement’ The Journal of Architecture 6 (2), 113-128. Moudon, A. V. (1997) ‘The need for a Habitat Agenda within Urban Morphology’ Urban Morphology 1 3-10. Marat-Mendes, T. (2016) ‘Physical, social and cultural dimensions of Urban Morphology: redressing the balance?’ Urban Morphology 20 (2)167-168. Marat-Mendes, T., Cabrita, M. A. (2015) ‘A Morfologia Urbana na Arquitectura em Portugal. Notas sobre uma abordagem tipo-morfológica’, in Oliveira et al. (eds.) O estudo da forma urbana em Portugal (UPorto, Porto) 65-94. Whitehand, J. W. R. (2012) ‘Issues in Urban Morphology’ Urban Morphology 16 (1), 55-65.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document