URBAN DESIGN ASSIGNMENT

1. GOOD CITY FORM
By kevin lynch
BOOK REVIEW
PRESENTED BY
Aakash R
Akshay N
Saish M
Somesh M
Zakir M

2. HISTORY
Impersonal forces do not transform human settlements. we have only indirect
evidence, but archeology and myth tell us something. The independent and
relatively sudden jump to civilization has occurred some six or seven times in world
history.
In every case, the first cities emerged only after a preceding agricultural revolution.
New skills develop to serve the new elite. The central collection of food has
secondary advantages. The physical environment plays a key role in this unfolding.
The city is a "great place," a release, a new world, and also a new oppression. Its
layout is therefore carefully planned to reinforce the sense of awe, and to form a
magnificent background for religious ceremony. Built with devotion and also with
conscious intent, it is an essential piece of equipment for psychological domination.
At the same time, it is a glorious expression of human pride, relief, and awe. As the
civilization develops, of course, the city takes on many other roles in addition to this
primary one. It becomes storehouse, fortress, workshop, market, and palace. Fir
The oldest known cities were temple cities. It is Laid out along processional avenues
and impressive sights, and which are Built to impress pilgrims and get their tribute.
This era of romantic capitalism, of great stress, vigorous expansion, and buoyant
confidence, was largely over by 1880 in Boston. Many young upperclass men, the
future leaders, had been killed in the Civil War.
HISTORY
The motives of the transformation are clear—better access and space for production,
an opportunity for profit in real estate development, and the control of space in order
to control the productive process and its participants.
Two proposals for mega form cities by Paolo soleri: Babel II D (in elevation), and stone
bow (in section) Babel II , 1950 meter high and 3000 Meters in diameter would hold a
population of 550,000 in a cylindrical skin of apartments shaped like a giant cooling
tower. Factories and services occupy the base, and fourteen "neighborhood park"
levels fill the central tower. (To one side, an outline of the Empire State Building at the
same scale gives a sense of this tower's size.) Stone bow houses 200,000 people in a
linear structure spanning a gorge. Its center is at the midpoint of the bridge, where
the section shown here has cut the city. The main highway is enclosed below the

3. NORMATIVE THEORIES
Normative theory we mean some coherent set of ideas about proper city form and its
reasons
First cities arose as ceremonial centers—place of holy ritual which explained the risky
forces of nature and controlled them for human benefit. Peasants supported the
cities voluntarily, attracted by their sacred power. A redistribution of power and
material resources to a ruling class went hand in hand with the growth of cities from
these religious beginnings. It is a meansof linking human Beings to those vast forces
and a way of stabilizing the order and harmony of the cosmos.
The two best-developed branches of cosmic theory are those of China and of India.
The Chinese model has had enormous influence. It controlled are from the outside in,
or circling the sacred enclosure in a clockwise direction. The earth is sacred and safe
to inhabit, once these rites and spatial divisions are accomplished. The yearly religious
processions follow the same encircling routes, and residents organize the city in their
minds in the same way. Madurai in India is a striking example of this model, in which,
even today, the city shape, the temples, the rites, the mental images of residents, the
locations of activities, the main roads and even the bus routes are all matched to this
symbolic form.
While China and India furnish us with the most developed examples of the cosmic
model, the basic idea was widespread. Elaborate ceremonial centers in South and
North America, in Asia and in Africa, are mute testimonials to it. Articulate theories are
recorded in Egypt, the Near East, Etruscan Rome, and many other localities. The use
of site and form to symbolize and reinforce power has been carried through Western
civilization and survives today. The radial perfection of the ideal cities of the
Renaissance was meant as a symbol of the orderly, mathematical universe. The
influential baroque model of the city—an interconnected set of diverging and
converging axes—was an expression and an instrument of power and order. It was
only because he was heir to such a welldeveloped model that Pierre L’Enfant was
able to survey, lay out, and commence constructing the city of Washington in such
record time.

4. These theories use some common form concepts. Among them are the axial line of
procession forms are attractive (and so they "work" for the purposes of the powerful)
because they speak to deep emotions of anxiety in people. They do indeed give us a
sense of security, of stability and continuity, of awe and pride. So they can also be
used to express pride and affection for a community, to relate people to it, to
reinforce a sense of human continuity, or to reveal the majesty of the universe.
The cosmic model upholds the ideal of a crystalline city: stable and hierarchical—a
magical microcosm in which each part is fused into a perfectly ordered whole. If it
changes at all, the microcosm should do so only in some rhythmical, ordered,
completely unchanging cycle. Thinking of the city as a practical machine, on the
other hand, is an utterly different conception. A machine also has permanent parts,
but those parts move and move each other. The whole machine can change,
although it does so in some clearly predictable way, as by moving steadily along
some predetermined track. The stability is inherent in the parts, and not in the whole.
The parts are small, definite, often similar to each other, and they are mechanically
linked. The whole grows by addition. It has no wider meaning; it is simply the sum of its
parts. It can be taken apart, put together, reversed, its pieces replaced, and it will run
again. It is factual, functional, "cool," not magical at all. The parte are autonomous
except for their prescribed linkages.
NORMATIVE THEORIES

5. VITALITY
Vitality comes as close to being a pure public good as any on our list, since
health and survival are values very widely held, and threats to health are often
indiscriminate in their incidence. In this realm, we are more secure in making
judgments for others, especially for the generations to come, since we can
predict that they too will wish to survive.
The earliest ways of modifying the world to make it more habitable had to do
with simple shelters, the domestication of crops and animals, and the location
of settlements near sources of food, fuel and water. While long-range transport
and modern food production have apparently freed those of us in the more
affluent
nations from some of these early constraints.
In summary, there are a number of performance dimensions for city form that
group themselves under this heading of vitality:
a. sustenance: the adequacy of the throughput of water, air, food,
energy, and waste;
b. safety: the absence of environmental poisons, diseases, or hazards;
c. consonance: the degree of fit between the environment and the
human requirements of internal temperature, body rhythm, sensory input, and
body function;
d. for other living things, how well the environment provides for the
health and genetic diversity of species which are economically useful to man;
and
e. the present and future stability of the total ecological community.

6. SENSE
By the sense of a settlement, means the clarity with which it can be perceived
and identified, and the ease with which its elements can be linked with other
events and places in a coherent mental representation of time and space and
that representation can be connected with no spatial concepts and values.
This is the join between the form of the environment and the human processes
of perception and cognition. Too often ill-defined and so passed over with a
few pious regrets, this quality lies at the root of personal feelings about cities. It
cannot be analyzed except as an interaction between person and place.
Perception is a creative act, not a passive reception.
Sense depends on spatial form and quality, but also on the culture,
temperament, status, experience, and current purpose of the observer. Thus
the sense of a particular place will vary for different observers, just as the ability
of a particular person to perceive form varies for different places. Nevertheless,
there are some significant and fundamental constancies in the experience of
the same place by different people. These constancies arise from the common
biological basis of our perception and cognition, certain common experiences
of the real world (gravity, inertia, shelter, fire, and sharpness, to name a few)
and the common cultural norms that may be found among those who
habitually use any particular place. Places have a greater or lesser sense, and
so do events. Activities and celebrations associated with a location support its
perception to the extent that they are themselves perceived as vivid and
coherent.
The simplest form of sense is identity, in the narrow meaning of that common
term: "a sense of place’' Identity is the extent to which a person can recognize
or recall a place as being distinct from other places—as having a vivid, or
unique, or at least a particular, character of its own.

7. FIT
The fit of a settlement refers to how well its spatial and temporal pattern
matches the customary behavior of its inhabitants. It is the match between
action and form in its behavior settings and behavior circuits. So we may ask if a
factory building, the machines within it, and the way those spaces and objects
are put to use are a good system for achieving the production to which it is
devoted. How smoothly do work actions and work objects fit together?
Good fit:
Even the continuous residential use of an old house, stabilized as it is by the
persistence of the human family. This lag gives our lives a semblance of stability,
but misfits are a natural consequence. We expand our energies reshaping the
structure which has been handed down to us, or we reshape our actions.
Bad Fit:
The term fit is loosely related to such common words as comfort,
satisfaction, and efficiency. These
words shift in meaning as expectations shift.
The amount of something is one of its important characteristics (and
there can be too much of it, as in the case of public plazas too large to seem
active and inviting). But the key test is the behavioral fit.

8. ACCESS
Cities were first built for symbolic reason and defence, but it soon appeared that one
of their special advantages was the improved access they afforded. Modem theorists
have seen transportation and communication as the central asset of an urban area,
and most theories of city genesis and function take this for granted. The finger plan for
Copenhagen, Denmark - development along arterial roads (parallel train and bike
routes), interspersed with green arms that reach very close to the city
For the North American city today, that three types of analysis might typically be most
useful:
1. Map of the general potential of access to persons
Compute and map the variation in population potential in a settlement, in terms of
persons per time-distance, by modes generally available. One might further show
how this field varies if persons are weighted by income. One could analyze the peaks,
hollows, and sudden slopes in this field and on whom they are incident.
1. Maps of substandard access,
Set standards of minimum access to certain activities and places that are considered
basic to normal life by the people that presently occupy the settlement. These could
be features expected to be available at a regional scale, such as shopping, medical
services, schools, open spaces, city centers, or job opportunities matched to
capabilities. In such cases, the maximum time-distance would be measured by the
mode generally available to the persons in a locality. These analyses of substandard
access, are rarely done systematically, are familiar in planning work.
1. Map which compares possible reach with the range actually used.
For selected groups in some particular localities of the settlement, map the territory
they consider "reachable/' that is, which they believe is accessible to them, at a
reasonable cost and within a reasonable time, and without danger, discomfort, or a
sense of exclusion. Compare this mental territory with the objective barriers to
movement, the areas exclusive or dangerous, the regions which are too distant or
costly to reach.
Access is one fundamental advantage of an urban settlement, and its reach and
distribution are a basic index of settlement quality. No one ‘wants maximum access,
but only some optimum level, although that should be a level which can be
increased, if one is willing to explore. Access to what and for whom must be
analyzed, as well as the mode and the cost (which may be negative).
There are well-known devices for improving access, including the provision of new
channels and modes, the rearrangement of origin and destination, the modification
of management and control, subsidy, and the training of the traveler himself.

9. CONTROL
Spatial controls have strong psychological consequences: feelings of anxiety,
satisfaction, pride, or submission. Social status is buttressed, or at least expressed, by
spatial dominance. A principal motive of war has been the struggle for place, and
governments are land-based units.
The first spatial right is the right of presence, the right to be in a place, to which may
be added the further right of excluding others. In normal circumstances, I have the
right to be on any public sidewalk, but I cannot keep others off of it.
The second right is that of use and action, of behaving freely in a place or of using its
facilities without appropriating them.. I can regulate sidewalk behavior to some
degree, as mine is regulated. All of us may walk and pull our carts along the
pavement, but none may be too noisy or too violent, or block the passage of
another.
The third right is appropriation. When I have that, I can take the resources of a place
for myself or use its facilities in some way that prevents their use by others. If I wish, I
spread my grain on the walk to dry, or cut the grass at its edge for hay. To greater or
less degree, I may monopolize the benefits of the place.
Fourth is the right of modification. Now I can change the place as I see fit, however
permanently. I can even destroy it or prevent others from doing so, I am free to do
that no matter what the external consequences. I may break it up at night with a
jackhammer, even if the noise awakes my neighbors, or I may sow it with land mines.
Two restraints should have been laid on me: the prohibition of a problem to others not
on the property and the prohibition of permanent damage. Do what you wish with
that path of yours, but do it quietly, and remember that others will want to walk there
in the future.
Fifth is the right of disposition. I can give my rights in the walk to whomever I please.
My control is then permanent and transferable, like a piece of money.

10. EFFICIENCY & JUSTICE
Efficiency is the balancing criterion: it relates the level of achievement in some
performance to a loss of others. Efficiencies of settlements can be compared only by
seeing which achieves the best level in some one dimension, given a fixed amount of
other values expended or achieved.
In making comparisons, the costs and benefits of creating and maintaining a system
must be considered together, at least over some moderate span of time. We are
prone to consider only initial costs and ongoing benefits, while neglecting the
ongoing costs, and, at times, the immediate benefits of the act of building as well. On
the contrary, we should evaluate a stream of values and costs. In our case,
unfortunately, most values cannot be quantified except in the crude sense of more or
less, and so one cannot explicitly discount them to the present. One must simply
express a preference among futures whose values decline, increase, strike a plateau,
fluctuate, or vary in other ways.
Many of the more critical costs of achieving a good settlement will be losses in other,
nonspatial realms.
The matrix below displays some first speculations as to how valuations on these
dimensions might be expected to vary with social situation. We might summarize this
guessing matrix by saying:
As a society becomes richer, there is a shift in interest. Sensibility in particular may
become more highly valued, but fit and control remain important. Many dimensions
may become less critical not because they are less highly valued, but because it is
easier to find a substitute for them or to pay the costs of failure.
Vitality is important in any case, but in a homogeneous society, many of the other
dimensions are either less critical or easier to achieve. ll dimensions are either less
critical or easier to achieve in a stable situation

11. CITY SIZE AND NEIGHBOURHOOD
● Evidence says city size is correlated to air pollution with respect to travel time to
work
● Cities are more efficient than village because of its better economy apart from
the unpleasant living there
● The LIG prefer to live here as their living is compensated with higher wages and
bigger places(living)
● Every city is in competition with each other therefore there is justice as less
attention is given to who plays and who benefits.
● Therefore the social and personal values are violated and cannot be converted
into dollars, the reason which they have shifted for the city
● Due to increase in size, air and water pollution will be difficult to control in future
which will lead to dependence on exotic material and waste disposal will be
difficult to dispose.
● But, this isn't seen in the first glance all because of the political control.
GROWTH AND CONSERVATION
● Rapid growth means constant disturbance, facilities which are ill-fitted to
demand and institutions whose capabilities lag behind the need for them.
● If the absolute size of a settlement is less important than we have thought,
except perhaps at the neighborhood scale or in a political sense, we cannot be
indifferent to the rate of change of size. The landscape is scarred with
construction. Sense suffers, and access is confused. Events seem out of control,
and decisions may be made badly under stress. Most serious, are the constant
breaking and remaking of social ties that is required and the political conflicts
that arise between natives and newcomers.
● Some of these problems are results of a growth in total size, while others derive
from the movement of people.
● Mobility and the growth of places are not the same. Much back and forth
population movement can occur with little effect on aggregate growth rates. In
the United States at present, gross migration is something like ten times its effect
in net growth.

12. ● Much of the world, and the United States in particular, is on the move:
immigrants, refugees, job seekers, vacationers, tourists, travelers, and retirees.
Where it is voluntary, this human flux, like the mobility of capital, has important
advantages, since it brings skill and labor to places where they can best be
used and people to places which they prefer. But much mobility is far from
voluntary, and so moving entails serious costs, of which psychological depression
is not the least. Turn back for a moment to the second argument against zero
growth, that of potential decline. We see the world through metaphors, and the
metaphor here is that a settlement is an organism which, if it decreases in bulk, is
about to die. Or it is an engine which either runs forward, stops, or goes in
reverse; and who knows where it will go in reverse? All planners bewail decline.
Our theories analyze growth, not loss. Yet, while rapid decline (like rapid growth)
may be a catastrophe, there are also values in a moderate, negative rate of
growth, including such things as good access to an abundance of space and
facilities, low stress, increased adaptability and control, and strong historical legi-
bility. Tourists and summer people seek out just such places, and natives will
often remain in them by choice. Could we plan for decline, to realize those
values?
● Thus it is possible that there might be optimum rates of growth or decline in
certain general situations. Public strategy might seek to keep within an optimum
range of rate on both sides of the zero point, for reasons of cost, legibility,
control, and political competence. Optimum rates might refer to changes in
density as well as in size, or to rates of interchange of population. These optimum
rates would be different at different scales of territory. A very rapid increase of
decline in a local place might be tolerable if adequately supported, while large
regions should stay much closer to stability. We have little information on such
optima, however.
GROWTH AND CONSERVATION

13. · URBAN TEXTURE AND NETWORKS
● The more elusive issues we have just considered the implications of
settlement density, a feature so often confused with size are quite
substantial. The preference of most groups of the population of the United
States is for a relatively low residential density.The current "return to the
city" seems to be a minor countercurrent to the main flow, which picks up
somewhat each time mere is a fuel crisis, or when the cost of housing rises
faster than incomes.
● The density of the workplace also has a great impact on the quality of life,
as well as on costs, access, and the fit with production, yet very little is
written about it. Activity densities of other kinds, such as of the service and
shopping centers, are critical not only for access to those tilings, but also
for sense and the facilitation of social encounter. A low spatial density of
fixed facilities may be complemented by occasional temporary con-
gregations, such as conventions, market days, and festivals.
● The grain of a settlement is another fundamental feature of its texture, a
feature often confounded with density. By grain he mean the way in
which the various different elements of a settlement are mixed together in
space. These elements may be activities, building types, persons, or other
features.
● A grain is sharp when the transition from a cluster of like elements to its
unlike neighbors is abrupt, and blurred if the transition is gradual. A
possible measure of sharpness might be made by dividing a region into an
arbitrary set of small cells, and then by counting the number of pairs of
adjacent cells between which the mix varies by more than some threshold
percent.

14. · CITY MODELS & CITY DESIGN
● Design decisions are largely based on models in the head of the designer.
Presumably, those models connect with more general theories, but
models and theories can be surprisingly independent of each other. The
word "model'' is ambiguous. It is also the current academic word for an
abstract theory of how something functions, in which the elements and a
system, and the relations between those elements, are clearly specified,
preferably in a quantitative mode. The model statement may be precise
and explicit, or vague and unthinking. It can be graphic, verbal, or
mathematical in form, or even be communicated without language,
simply by concrete example.
● The plan of Washington DC , as drawn by major pierre charles L'Enfant in
1791.A network of radial streets, which connect the principal buildings and
the commanding features of the land, was laid over an irregularly varying
rectangular grid.

15. ● Design is the playful creation and strict evaluation of the possible forms of
something, including how it is to be made. That something need not be a
physical object, nor is design expressed only in drawings. City design is the
art of creating possibilities for the use, management, and form of settle-
ments or their significant parts. It manipulates patterns in time and space
and has as its justification the everyday human experience of those
patterns, it does not deal solely with big things, but also with policies for
small things like seats and trees and sitting on front porches wherever
those features affect the performance of the settlement.