URBAN ISSUES

URBAN
PORTFOLIO
SUBMITTED BY:-
BHUMI TOMAR
HEMANT SINGH BORA
SWASTI JAIN
SUBMITTED TO:-
AR. SUNAKSHI
SHOKEEN
1

2
CONTENTS
1. URBAN GLOSSARY……………………………………...03-24
2. BOOK REVIEW
“THE CITY SHAPED”…………………………………...25-65
3. PAPER REVIEW
“WALKABILITY”………………………………………..66-75
4. CASE STUDIES
I) RE-DEVELOPMENT OF CHANDNI CHOWK……….77-85
II) RE-DEVELOPMENT OF SINGAPORE………………86-90
5. MORPHOLOGICAL MAPS
“LAND USE MAPS”……………………………………….91- 115

1. ACCESSIBILITY-
The ease of reaching destinations. In a highly accessible location, a person, regardless of age, ability or income, can
reach many activities or destinations quickly, whereas people in places with low accessibility can reach fewer places in
the same amount of time. The accessibility of an area can be a measure of travel speed and travel distance to the
number of places ('destination opportunities') to be reached. The measure may also include factors for travel cost, route
safety and topography gradient.
2. ACTIVE FRONTAGE-
Refers to street frontages where there is an active visual engagement between those in the street and those on the
ground and upper floors of buildings.
This quality is assisted where the front facade of buildings, including the main entrance, faces and opens towards the
street. Ground floors may accommodate uses such as cafes, shops or restaurants. However, for a frontage to be active,
it does not necessarily need to be a retail use, nor have continuous windows. A building's upper floor windows and
balconies may also contribute to the level of active frontage. Active frontages can provide informal surveillance
opportunities and often improve the vitality and safety of an area. The measures of active frontage may be graded
from high to low activity.
4
URBAN
GLOSSARY
–
“A”
3. ACTIVE USE-
Active uses are uses that generate many visits, in particular pedestrian visits, over an extended period
of the day. Active uses may be shops, cafes, and other social uses. Higher density residential and
office uses also can be active uses for particular periods of the day.
4. ACTIVITY CENTRE-
Activity centres within cities and towns are a focus for enterprises, services, shopping, employment
and social interaction. They are where people meet, relax, work and often live. Usually well-served by
public transport, they range in size and intensity of use from local neighbourhood strip shopping
centres to traditional town centres and major regional centres. An activity centre generally has higher
intensity uses at its central core with smaller street blocks and a higher density of streets and lots. The
structure of activity centres should allow for higher intensity development, street frontage exposure
for display and pedestrian access to facilities.
5. ADAPTABILITY (OR 'ADAPTIVE RE-USE’)-
The capacity of a building or space to respond to changing social, technological, economic and market
conditions and accommodate new or changed uses.
6. AMENITY-
The features of an area, street or building, that provide facilities and services that contribute to
physical or material comfort and benefit, and are valued by users. An amenity can be either tangible,
such as open space, seating, a swimming pool or gym; or intangible, such as pleasant views, air
quality, or proximity to a local school or supermarket.
7. ARTERIAL ROAD-
The principal routes for the movement of people and goods within a road network. They connect
major regions, centres of population, major transport terminals and provide principal links across and
around cities. Arterial roads are divided into primary and secondary arterial roads. Declared arterial
roads are managed by VicRoads. Also see 'Major roads'.

5
URBAN
GLOSSARY
–
“B” 1. BARRIERS AND FENCES-
Barriers such as bollards and fences can define boundaries and protect people from traffic hazards and level changes.
They also protect trees and shrubs from people and vehicles. A barrier may be made as bollards, screens, rails, fences,
kerbs and walls. Barriers and fences can provide an opportunity for public art or to communicate local stories. They
may also provide opportunities for seating.
2. BLANK WALL-
A wall which has few or no windows or doors, and has no decoration or visual interest. See also active frontage.
3. BUILDING LINE-
The actual or apparent line created by a building's front wall along a street.
A consistent building line in a street can visually unify diverse building types and forms, and can assist new buildings
to fit in with the surrounding context. The building line, whether setback or situated on the street edge, is an important
aspect of urban character.
4. BUILT FORM-
The height, volume and overall shape of a building as well as its surface appearance.
5. BUILDINGS IN ACTIVITY CENTRES-
Buildings in activity centres accommodate a wide range of uses, such as living, working, shopping and services.
Buildings in these locations may be larger than those in surrounding neighbourhoods, occupy more of the site area
and be built to the front and side boundaries. They may incorporate a mix of uses that mean people are present at
different times of the day.

6
URBAN
GLOSSARY
–
“C” 1. CAR PARKING LOT-
Car parking lots are open areas of land used for parking cars. They can be publicly or privately owned and are
generally located in activity centres, at train and bus stations, and other facilities accessed by car. Some higher density
residential developments may incorporate private car parking lots.
2. CAR PARKING STRUCTURE-
Car parking structures are buildings used solely for car parking or mixed with other uses, and may provide parking for
residents, commercial tenants, shoppers and visitors. They can be constructed above or below ground.
Car parking structures cater for both vehicle and pedestrian movement, however pedestrians may be required to share
paths with vehicles to reach a lift or stairwell, which can be a safety hazard.
3. CARSHARE-
A commercial system providing access to cars on demand for rent either by the hour or by the day. Carshare vehicles
have dedicated on-street parking spaces, at locations throughout the service area, and often located for access by
public transport.
4. CAR PARKING, ON-STREET (SEE ON-STREET PARKING)-
On-street parking is part of the movement network. On-street parking provides convenient, short-term parking in close
proximity to activities and destinations. On-street parking may be arranged as parallel, indented, or angled bays, at
kerbside or in centre-road islands. The street type and use pattern determines the appropriate type of on-street parking
used. It plays an important role in inner urban areas with limited off-street parking.
5.CIRCULATION SPACE (OR 'CIRCULATION AREA’)-
Circulation spaces are part of the common area of a commercial, mixed use or higher density residential building and
are used by occupants, residents and other building users. These spaces include foyers, corridors, car parking areas,
and garden and recreation areas.
6. CONCEALMENT PLACE-
Spaces that are not easily visible and provide the opportunity to conceal potential offenders, their victims, illegitimate
uses, antisocial activity or crimes.
7. COMMUNAL OPEN SPACE-
An area within a private site providing for informal recreation activities for common use by building occupants and, in
some cases, visitors. It is distinct from private open space. Some communal open spaces can be accessible to the
public (such as that associated with a library or hospital) while other spaces can be accessible to customers only (such
as the courtyard of a restaurant or café).
8. CONNECTIVITY-
The number of connecting routes within a particular area, often measured by counting the number of intersection
equivalents per unit of area. An area may be measured for its 'connectivity' for different travel modes – vehicle, cyclist
or pedestrian. An area with high connectivity has an open street network that provides multiple routes to and from
destinations.
9. Continuous accessible paths of travel (CAPT)-
An uninterrupted path of travel to or within a building that provides access to all facilities. This kind of path avoids
any step, stairway, turnstile, revolving door, escalator or other impediment that would prevent it being safely
negotiated by people with disabilities.

7
URBAN
GLOSSARY
–
“C” 10. CROSSOVER (VEHICLE CROSSOVER)
Part of a pedestrian path where motor vehicles cross to access a property. The pedestrian path section may be raised to
path level to alert drivers to the crossing, or the path may be dropped to form a ramp for pedestrians.
11. CUL-DE-SAC
A street with only one inlet/outlet connected to the wider street network.
A closed cul-de-sac provides no possible passage except through the single road entry. An open cul-de-sac allows
cyclists, pedestrians or other non- automotive traffic to pass through connecting paths at the cul-de-sac head.

8
URBAN
GLOSSARY
–
“D” 1. DESIGN RESPONSE
Explanation and demonstration of how a proposed building development or public space design is informed by and
responds to the site and context analysis.
2. DESIGN STANDARD
A statement of function and performance criteria for the production of an object or place, often as agreed by a
professional, technical or representative body.
3. DESIRE-LINE (OR 'PEDESTRIAN DESIRE-LINE’)
The desire-line path usually represents the preferred route and the shortest or most easily navigated route between an
origin and destination. Desire- lines can often be seen as alternative shortcut tracks in places where constructed
pathways take a circuitous route. They are almost always the most direct and the shortest route between two points.

9
URBAN
GLOSSARY
–
“E” 1. EDGE CONDITION
A term used in urban design analysis to describe the transition or interface characteristics of a public space with its
adjacent land uses and structures. An edge may be 'active', with a building's doors and windows addressing the space,
or it may be 'inactive', with blank walls or a barrier edge, such as a water body, high traffic volume road or
infrastructure corridor. The edge condition assessment is part of the urban context analysis.
2. ENCLOSURE (OR 'SENSE OF ENCLOSURE’)
Where the building frontage height, street width and street tree canopy creates a feeling of a contained space within
the street.
3. ENTRAPMENT PLACE
Small confined areas, shielded on three sides by some sort of barrier that may be used by criminal offenders to trap
potential victims or to conceal themselves. The area may be poorly lit, have limited sightlines and have no possible
escape route.
4. ESCAPE ROUTE
An alternative and safe means of exit from an area. See also 'Entrapment place'.

10
URBAN
GLOSSARY
–
“F” 1. FACADE (OR 'BUILDING FACADE’)
The principal wall of a building that is usually facing the street and visible from the public realm. It is the face of the
building and helps inform passers-by about the building and the activities within.
2. FRONTAGE (OR 'FRONT LOT LINE’)
The property boundary that abuts the street. If a property abuts two or more streets, it is the boundary the building or
proposed building faces.

11
URBAN
GLOSSARY
–
“H” 1. HIGHER DENSITY RESIDENTIAL BUILDING
Higher density residential buildings house a number of individual apartment dwellings in a single building, and are
five or more storeys in height. They may be residential only or residential combined with other uses such as retail,
offices or car parking
2. HIGHER DENSITY RESIDENTIAL PRECINCT
A higher density residential precinct generally has larger lot sizes that are able to accommodate apartment and mixed-
use developments. The precinct may be in or adjacent to an activity centre or within a large development site. The
structure of a higher density residential precinct provides a high level of amenity in public spaces, access to facilities
and services, while protecting privacy and personal safety.

12
URBAN
GLOSSARY
–
“I” 1. INFORMAL SURVEILLANCE
Observation, from the street or from adjacent buildings, provided by ordinary people as they go about their daily
activities. This kind of observation can deter criminal activity or anti-social behaviour and make places feel safer.
Sometimes termed 'casual surveillance' and 'eyes-on-the-street'.

13
URBAN
GLOSSARY
–
“K” 1. KEY PUBLIC SPACE
Key public spaces may be located in parks, plazas, or streets. They are generally public places of significance, with
high levels of amenity. They may be identified through strategic assessment processes.

14
URBAN
GLOSSARY
–
“L” 1. LAND DEVELOPMENT
The construction, buildings or works made on a parcel of land to support the use to which the land is put.
2. LAND USE
The purpose for which the land has been or is being or may be developed. The activity on the land.
3. LANE
A travel path for a vehicle as part of a roadway. As in 'bicycle lane', 'traffic lane', or 'bus lane’.
4. LANEWAY
A vehicular way or pedestrian access way, often narrower that a street, located to the rear or side of lots providing
access to the service areas, parking and outbuildings, and it may accommodate utility easements.
5. LARGE DEVELOPMENT SITE
Large parcels of land within cities and towns sometimes become available for redevelopment and new uses. Often in
prime locations, these sites can be publicly owned (such as railway corridors, surplus government land or dockyards)
or they can be former commercial, industrial or institutional sites that are no longer needed for their original purpose.
They may be located in activity centres or are accessible to transport connections, services and jobs.
6. LARGE FORMAT RETAIL PREMISES
Large format retail premises are mostly free-standing buildings or complexes with a single large building footprint,
and associated infrastructure. They are often single-level or low-rise buildings and they may include large at-grade car
parking lots or car parking structures. They can be shopping centres, supermarkets, restricted retail premises or
department stores. Large format retail premises differ from other large buildings with regard to visitor patterns, goods
delivery requirements, and goods display practices. They are often located in high visibility places, for example at
major road intersections or adjacent to highways that are highly accessible by car.
7. LEGIBILITY
The ease with which a person is able to see, understand and find their way around an area, building or development. A
'legible' layout is one that people find easy to navigate and move through.
8. LEVEL-OF-SERVICE (ALSO CALLED 'QUALITY OF SERVICE' OR 'SERVICE QUALITY’)
The capacity and effectiveness of a system's functionality, as experienced by users, to provide the service for which it
is intended. For a pedestrian street or a park, the service can comprise various factors such as active, interesting
surroundings, path width, pavement surface, seating opportunities, obstacles, safety from traffic, cleanliness.
9. LIGHT SPILL
Unwanted light falling on areas outside those intended for illumination, and that causes annoyance, discomfort,
distraction, or a reduction in visibility. Often defined as light illuminating areas outside the property line containing
the lighting system. But may also be applied to lighting in public spaces that affects amenity in private spaces.
10. LIGHTING
Lighting performs a number of functions, from supporting way-finding, orientation and safe movement at night to
providing a decorative effect for building facades, landmarks and paths. Lighting systems can be large- scale and
utilitarian, or small and ornamental. They may use overhead lamps, bollards, up-lights, bulkhead or veranda lighting,
feature and facade illumination. Shop display lighting can also contribute to overall public realm lighting levels.
Lighting is critical to creating a public realm that is safe and inviting for users.
11. LOCAL PARK
Local parks are green public spaces up to about one hectare in size and may include trees, grass, gardens and
playgrounds and are located within easy reach of users. Some local parks also include water features, cafes or sports
facilities. The location of a park in the movement network often influences its useability.

15
URBAN
GLOSSARY
–
“M” 1. MAIN STREET
The principal retail and small business street in an area, a focus of many local trips, and accommodating higher
volumes of pedestrians.
2. MAJOR ROAD
Major roads accommodate high volumes of motor vehicle traffic including public transport and freight, and have
higher design speeds (60–100 km/h). Major roads can have two or more traffic lanes in each direction and may
provide for on-street car parking, bus lanes or tram tracks, bicycle lanes, as well as verge space for pedestrian paths,
infrastructure and landscaping. Also see 'Arterial roads’.
3. MIXED-USE DEVELOPMENT
A range of complementary uses within the same building, site or precinct. The different uses may be arranged floor by
floor, or side by side. The uses may be residential, commercial, retail or institutional.
4. MOVEMENT NETWORK
The interconnected system of streets, roads and paths that accommodates pedestrians and cyclists, on-road public
transport, emergency and private vehicles. The movement network connects places and activities, and allows people
and goods to reach their intended destinations and to access private land. The movement network is managed by a
number of agencies, each with different responsibilities and interests.

16
URBAN
GLOSSARY
–
“O” 1. OBJECTS IN THE PUBLIC REALM (INCLUDES 'STREET FURNITURE’)
Objects in the public realm include those items located in streets and public spaces that are either for public use and
convenience, or for utilities infrastructure and services. Objects include street furniture, service cabinets, trees and
planting, barriers and fencing, lighting, signs and small public buildings and structures.
2. OFF-ROAD PUBLIC TRANSPORT
Public transport that runs on a network largely independent of streets and arterial roads. It includes light rail,
metropolitan and regional rail. It does not include on-road public transport such as the metropolitan bus and tram
network.
3. ON-ROAD PUBLIC TRANSPORT
See 'Public transport on roads’.
4. OPEN SPACE
See 'Public open space' and 'Private open space’.
5. ON-STREET PARKING
On-street parking is part of the movement network. On-street parking provides convenient, short-term parking in
close proximity to activities and destinations. On-street parking may be arranged as parallel, indented, or angled bays,
at kerbside or in centre-road islands. The street type and use pattern determines the appropriate type of on-street
parking used. It plays an important role in inner urban areas with limited off-street parking.
6. OUTLOOK
A place from which a view is possible; a vantage point.

17
URBAN
GLOSSARY
–
“P” 1. PATHWAY
A pedestrian path, bicycle path or other area for use by people but not by motor vehicles.
2. PEDESTRIAN AND BICYCLE CROSSINGS
Pedestrian and bicycle crossings provide points to safely and conveniently cross roads and streets, or other barriers
such as motorways, railway lines or waterways. Many crossings are located on paths to activity centres and schools,
or at stations, bus or tram stops. Crossings are either at-grade or grade-separated.
3. PEDESTRIAN AND BICYCLE PATHS
Pedestrian and bicycle paths specifically provide for people on foot, bicycle or other mobility aid vehicles. Paths may
be located on local streets and major roads, in public spaces such as parks and reserves, or through semi- public
spaces such as car parking lots, forecourts and arcades. Paths may be solely for pedestrian use, cyclist use, or shared
paths for both pedestrians and cyclists.
4. PEDESTRIAN PRIORITY STREET
Pedestrian priority streets give high priority to walking, cycling and facilitating social contact, while allowing for
low-speed motor vehicle traffic (under 40km per hour). These streets are usually found in areas of intense and diverse
activity such as activity centres, education facilities and public transport interchanges. They accommodate diverse
travel modes as well as provide a public space function. Bicycle lanes may either be provided as a separate lane, or a
shared path with other modes. Streets may also restrict vehicle types or access at times.
5. PEDESTRIAN SHED (OR 'PED SHED’)
A graphic representation of the area surrounding a particular destination that can be reached on foot within a specific
walking time. Its extent is related to walking distances to the destination, as opposed to a simple radius from a centre
point. It can be expressed as walking time (10 minutes at average walk speed), or as a distance (800m). It is related to
"walkable catchment".
6. PERMEABILITY
The extent to which the urban structure permits, or restricts, movement of people or vehicles through an area, and the
capacity of the area network to carry people or vehicles.
7. PLAZA
A type of public open space connected to the street network that can range in size from a building forecourt to a large
city square. A plaza may be a wide mid-block pedestrian link, bordered by buildings or attached to a public building
such as a town hall, school, or entertainment and sports facility.
8. PODIUM
The lower levels of a tall building that are built up to or near the property boundary edges. The upper levels (the
tower component) are set back from the lower podium building edges. The podium and tower is often arranged to
achieve a relationship between the new building and existing streetscapes and urban context.
9. PRIMARY USE
Primary uses are those uses that have induced people to spend time in the area, such as workplaces, businesses and
residences, or institutions and services like museums or libraries. Also see 'Secondary uses’.
10. PRIVATE LAND
Land that is owned by a private person or group and kept for their exclusive use. Some privately held land is available
for the public to access and use, but the land owner may control aspects of access and use – see 'Public space’.

18
URBAN
GLOSSARY
–
“P” 11. PRIVATE OPEN SPACE
An open area or place that is privately owned and exclusively occupied. Private open space is usually attached to a
private dwelling. See also communal open space.
12. PUBLIC OPEN SPACE
Under the Subdivision Act 1988 – SECT 18, public open space is intended as a place of public resort or recreation. A
public open space may be provided as a plaza, park and square. See also 'Public space', 'Public realm'.
13. PUBLIC REALM
The public realm comprises spaces and places that are open and freely accessible to everyone, regardless of their
economic or social conditions. These spaces can include streets, laneways and roads, parks, public plazas, waterways
and foreshores.
14. PUBLIC SPACE
An area in the public realm that is open to public access, provides a public use or recreation function, and that is
owned and maintained by councils or other government agencies. However, some privately-held land is available for
the public to access and use, such as a building forecourt, a walk-through, or a shopping mall. The private land owner
may control aspects of access and use - see Private land.
15. PUBLIC TRANSPORT ENVIRONS
Public transport environs includes the public spaces, streets, buildings and activities located around railway stations,
bus and tram interchanges, and adjacent to railway corridors.
16. PUBLIC TRANSPORT INTERCHANGE
Places where people can access or transfer between public transport modes and routes. For example, between train,
tram or bus mode, or a multi-route bus or train station. Interchanges vary in size and may be stand-alone, adjacent to a
railway station, or located at a transport node, such as a park- and-ride facility.
17. PUBLIC TRANSPORT NODE
A tram or bus stop, interchange or train station, and the area immediately around it.
18. PUBLIC TRANSPORT ON ROADS (SOMETIMES CALLED 'ON-ROAD PUBLIC TRANSPORT’)
There are two main types of public transport that use the road network: the fixed tram network, which is usually
located on major roads and streets; and the bus network, which operates within standard traffic lanes or in bus priority
lanes. Bus and tram priority routes have priority over general traffic.

19
URBAN
GLOSSARY
–
“R” 1. RAILWAY CORRIDOR ENVIRONS
Railway corridor environs includes the land and activities adjacent to the railway operating corridor. Along the length
of the corridor, adjacent land may accommodate a variety of uses including streets and roads, public open space,
residential or commercial development. Railway corridor crossing points channel and concentrate pedestrian, bicycle
and vehicle movement to specific locations. Crossing points can be at-grade or grade-separated.
2. RAILWAY STATION PRECINCT
A railway station precinct is the area in the immediate surrounds of a railway station. Local movement networks
converge on railway stations, concentrating activity in the precinct. Railway stations also provide for pedestrian
crossing of the railway line. The railway station precinct can function as a social space where people meet or watch
the world go by.

20
URBAN
GLOSSARY
–
“S” 1. SAFER DESIGN
Specific public space design responses aimed at promoting personal safety and reducing people's fear of and
vulnerability to crime. Design actions focus on improving safety in places by increasing informal surveillance and
community usage of public spaces, reducing opportunities for crime and antisocial behaviour, and creating connected
and integrated streets and public places.
2. SCALE
The size of a building in relation to its surroundings, or the size of parts or details of the building, particularly in
relation to the scale of a person. Scale refers to the apparent size, not the actual size.
3. SECONDARY USE
Secondary uses are those that capitalize on opportunities to serve people who are already in the area for other reasons,
such as their work place, residence, or visiting institutions, services or facilities. Secondary uses may be service and
convenience shops, or cafes. See also 'Primary uses'.
4. SETBACK
The distance of a building wall from any lot boundary. A building front setback can add to the perceived width of the
street, provide additional public or private space, and allow space for landscaping. A building set on the front property
boundary has zero street setback.
5. SHARED PATH
A path that is shared by both pedestrians and cyclists, but does not accommodate motor vehicles. On a shared path,
cyclists must give way to pedestrians.
6. SHARED ZONE
A street where pedestrians, cyclists and vehicles share the roadway, and pedestrians outnumber motor vehicles. A
shared zone has no cross motor traffic.
7. SIGHTLINE
Lines of clear, uninterrupted sight from a viewer's location to other locations and distances.
8. SIGN (SEE ALSO 'WAY-FINDING’)
Signs give information about way-finding, directions, place and street names, cultural identity, buildings, uses and
activities, or for advertising products.
They can also act as a landmark. Signs may vary in scale and appearance, and may use maps, text, images or symbols to
convey information.
9. SITE ANALYSIS
Detailed description and examination of the features of a site, to determine how these features will effect and contribute
to the design of a proposed development. A site analysis directly informs the design response.
10. SITE COVERAGE
The proportion of a site covered by buildings.
11. SITE DESCRIPTION
An account of the essential characteristics of a site. It is a prerequisite for undertaking site analysis.

21
URBAN
GLOSSARY
–
“S”
12. SMALL PUBLIC BUILDINGS AND STRUCTURES
Small public buildings and structures include kiosks and vendor stalls, shelters, toilets, bicycle storage cages and
utility buildings, such as electrical substations, which are most often located in public spaces. While most small public
buildings and structures are permanent, some may be temporary or relocatable to allow for the flexible use of public
spaces.
13. STREET AND PARK FURNITURE
Street and park furniture includes seats, waste bins, drinking fountains, café furniture, bicycle parking hoops, post
boxes, parking meters, payphone cabinets, vending and ticket machines. This element also includes public art, play
and recreation equipment.
14. STREET CROSS-SECTION
A street cross-section is a diagram showing street details, generally from private property boundary to boundary, and
includes building frontage, street edge, footpaths, verges, kerbs, services, below ground infrastructure and road space.
15. STREET EDGE
The interface between building frontage or private property boundary and the street. The way a building, space or wall
meets the street affects the character of the street.
16. STREET SPACES AND PLAZAS
Street spaces are that part of the street used for social purposes such as a wide footpath or a pedestrian-only mall.
Plazas range from a building forecourt to a large city square. A plaza is often bordered by buildings or streets. Most
street spaces and plazas are paved, and can include trees and other planting, but they are distinguished from parks. The
spaces may have vehicles running adjacent to the pedestrian zone, be a shared zone, or may be free of vehicles.
17. STREETSCAPE
The visual character of a street space that results from the combination of street width, curvature, paving, street
furniture, plantings and the surrounding built form and detail. The people and activities present in the street also
contribute to the streetscape.
18. STRUCTURE PLAN
A land use planning framework of policies, objectives and actions in an identified area, guiding decisions about
change for a period of years into the future. The plan sets out an integrated vision for the desired future development
of a place and can use clauses, diagrams and schedules to guide infrastructure, built form and land-use change in order
to achieve specific environmental, social and economic objectives. The process is called structure planning.
19. SUBDIVISION
The act of subdivision means the division of a land parcel into two or more parts which can be disposed of separately.
It is also a term used for the resulting pattern of blocks and lots, and streets.

22
URBAN
GLOSSARY
–
“T” 1. TRAFFIC CALMING
Physical devices installed in streets to slow or reduce vehicle traffic and improve safety for pedestrians and cyclists.
Traffic calming devices include speed humps, chicanes and narrows, sized for the desired speed. These measures can
slow cars speed to between 15 and 40km per hour.
2. TREES AND PLANTING
Planting trees, shrubs and ground covers in urban areas contributes to visual interest and microclimate moderation.
Trees can provide shade, shelter, and cool air pockets; they can screen an unsightly view, act as landmarks, or provide
a sense of enclosure with leafy walls and ceilings. Trees are frequently the most important element for setting the
character of an area.

23
URBAN
GLOSSARY
–
“U” 1. URBAN CONTEXT (OR 'CONTEXT’)
Urban context refers to the broader setting of an identified area. The context may include the physical surroundings of
topography, movement patterns and infrastructure, built form and uses, the governance structures, and the cultural,
social and economic environment. The urban context can include the community vision for the area, and preferred
future character, form and function.
2. URBAN CONTEXT ANALYSIS
Similar to a site analysis, content analysis provides a detailed description and examination of aspects of the wider area
around a site, to determine how these aspects will effect and contribute to the design of a proposed building
development or public space design. An urban context analysis informs the building development or public space
design response.
3. URBAN DESIGN FRAMEWORK
A framework sets out, in words and graphics, the intentions, principles and actions to guide and manage changes in
the public realm in particular places.
4. URBAN STRUCTURE
The overall topography and land division pattern of an urban area including street pattern, the shapes and sizes of
blocks and lots. Urban structure also includes the location and types of activity centres, public transport corridors,
public space, community facilities, and urban infrastructure. Whether at the scale of a city, town, neighbourhood,
precinct or large development site, it is the interrelationship between all of the elements of urban structure, rather than
their individual characteristics, that together make a place.
5. UTILITIES INFRASTRUCTURE
In this document, the utilities and infrastructure installations that are located on and take up space within street and
public spaces. They may be traffic control boxes, fire hydrants, poles, overhead wires, traffic control signs.
Utilities infrastructure may also be installed below ground and could affect development at ground level.

24
URBAN
GLOSSARY
–
“W” 1. WALKABILITY
The extent to which the built environment supports walking for transport and for recreation, where the walking
environment is safe, connected, accessible and pleasant.
2. WALKABLE CATCHMENT
The area within a specified walking distance of a destination and where paths provide a specific level of service and
amenity. Often a 400m walking distance is defined as walkable, being about a five minute walk for most people. More
important destinations, such as train stations or major centres, may serve a wider walkable catchment.
3. WALKABLE NEIGHBOURHOOD
A neighbourhood where travel on foot, and also by bicycle, is made easy, direct and safe as possible for all members
of the community including children, people with prams or shopping carts and those using mobility aids.
4. WATER EFFICIENT URBAN DESIGN
Integrating and managing the water cycle in an area through collection, treatment and reuse technologies, to minimize
environmental impacts and improve aesthetic and recreational appeal. It often includes managing both potable water
use, and stormwater, groundwater and wastewater. Also known as water sensitive urban design.
5. WAY-FINDING (SEE ALSO 'SIGN’)
The act of finding one's way around an area, and the experience of orientation and choosing a path within the built
environment. Wayfinding can be aided by logical space planning and a consistent use and organization of definite
sensory cues, such as visual, audible or tactile elements along paths and at destinations. Signs can aid way-finding.
6. WHITE LIGHT
Illumination produced from lamps where colors appear as in normal daylight.

26
SPIRO KOSTOF
Spiro Konstantine Kostof was born 7 May 1936, Istanbul – 7 December 1991, Berkeley. was a
leading architectural historian, and professor at the University of California, Berkeley. His books continue to be
widely read and some are routinely used in collegiate courses on architectural history.
Born in Turkey, of Greek and Bulgarian ethnic origin, Kostof was educated at Istanbul's Robert College. He
came to the United States in 1957 for graduate work at Yale University. Although he intended to major in
drama, his interests shifted to architectural history. He received his Ph.D. in 1961, then taught at Yale for four
years, before moving to the University of California to join the faculty of the College of Environmental Design.
He was to remain at Berkeley for the duration of his career.
Kostof's approach to architectural history emphasized urbanism as well as architecture and showed how
architectural works are embedded in their physical and social contexts.
In 1993, following his death, the Society of Architectural Historians established the "Spiro Kostof Award", to
recognize books "in the spirit of Kostof's writings," particularly those that are interdisciplinary and whose
content focuses on urban development, the history of urban form, and/or the architecture of the built
environment.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
THE
CITY
SHAPED

This classic study of cities explains how and why cities — among the most enduring and remarkable
of all human artefacts — took the shape they did.
Professor kostof focuses on a number of themes — organic patterns, the grid, the city as diagram, the
grand manner, and the skyline — and interprets the hidden order of urban patterns.
Photographs, historical views and specially commissioned drawings vividly depict a global mosaic of
city building: the shaping of medieval Siena; the creation of New Delhi as the crown of the raj, the re-
modelling of Moscow as the self-styled capital of world socialism and the transformation of the
skyline as religious and civic symbols yield to the towers of corporate business. This is an enthralling
book, of vital interest to architects, planners and social historians.
27
OVERVIEW:
THE
CITY
SHAPED
FIRST SECTION-
In this section, it is explained how the cities have grown and changed with the time.
SECOND SECTION-
In this section, grid system is introduced; and explained how It has become one of the most prominent
feature in designing.
THIRD SECTION-
This section has been named as, ‘The city as a diagram” which itself enlightens that the main focuses
here is kept on functioning of a city. Certain examples has been also included.
FOURTH SECTION-
In this section the main focus is kept on the internal infrastructure of capital cities, which is planning
mostly inspired by historical styles.
FIFTH SECTION-
In the final section of the book Kostof has introduced the concept of urban skyline and explained how
aesthetics of cities is as much important as planning.

INTRODUCTION
• Kostof’s interest likes in real cities- designers are interested in ideal cities or cities that
were never built.
• Urban process: physical change through time.
• The cosmic city: a spatial diagram of social hierarchy (e.g. The city of Oblivion, the head
of state lives in the middle of the city).
• The practical city: A functional construct.
• The organic city: A living organism.
• "Surplus production” = creation of cities?
People came to the area for goods and services.
• Military and political stability, more so than trade , created the need for cities
28
THE
CITY
SHAPED

CITY AS AN ARTIFACT
• City is the form and the process of making it converts it into an artifact.
• Urban design is formed by taking into the considerations of human behaviour while making the cities. For that we
need to understand the socio-economic changes and the persistence of the artefact(buildings).
• A form can be studied in different ways, it could be studied as an abstract or for its behavioural possibilities. But
urban designers are interested in the study of the evolution of form or architectural meaning of the form with
respect to history and cultural contexts.
• Certain cities are designed on the inspirations derived from these old townscapes. The whole idea is to incorporate
the distinctive quality into their own designs hence history of urban launch can be used as a design quarry.
 What is meant by process?
It includes two senses-
a. One sense deals with to the people the forces and the institutions bring about the urban form.
• The legal and economic history plays a vital role in shaping the city. Ownership of land and land market, building
codes and other regulatory measures, instruments of funding urban change and administrative structure are certain
topics in itself which consists of procedures and laws for city making.
• Cities are given shape by all sorts of people, by military engineers, for example by ship’s Gunners (like those who
laid out the early British port cities of India), by administrators and state officials and now to modern planning
commissioners.
b. Physical change through time
• City walls are pulled down and filled in; Once rational grades are slowly obscured; A slashing diagonal is run
through close grained residential neighborhoods, railroad tracks usurp cemeteries and water fronts, wars, fires and
freeway connectors annihilate city course.
29
BAGHDAD(IRAQ): THE GEOMETRIC
8th CENTURY GROUND PLAN,
ORGANISED AROUND THE
CALIPH’S PALACE.
BY THE 9th CENTURY THE SPRAWLING
GROWTH OF THRIVING COMMUNITY HAD
OBLITERATED THE ORIGINAL AUTOCRATIC
DIAGRAM.
THE
CITY
SHAPED
SOURCE: THE CITY SHAPED SOURCE: THE CITY SHAPED

AFFILIATES OF METHOD
 LEWIS MUMFORD, THE CITY IN HISTORY
• It assumes a basic acquaintance with the main lines of western and non-western urbanism as a sequential
narrative.
 KEVIN LYNCH, GOOD CITY FORM
• His normative models have less to do with political or economic order than they so with the prime motivation of
the city, or its self- perception.
 COSMIC MODEL
• According to this, it is an interpretation of the universe and the gods. The characteristic design features are the
monumental access, the enclosure and the protected gates, dominant landmarks, the reliance on regular grid and
spatial organization by hierarchy.
 PRACTICAL MODEL
• The concept of colonial towns and company towns is city according to this model is made up of small,
autonomous, undifferentiated parts, linked up into a great machine in contrast has clearly differentiated functions
and motions.
 ORGANIC MODEL
• Organic model or biological city sees the city as a living thing rather than a machine it has a definite boundary
and then optimum size, a cohesive, indivisible internal structure, a rhythmic behavior that seeks, in the face of
inevitable change, to maintain a balanced state. The creators of this model were the likes of Frederick law
Olmsted, Ebenezer Howard, Pattrick Geddes and Lewis Mumford.
30
THE COSMIC CITY: A
SPATIAL DIAGRAM OF
SOCIAL HIERARCHY.
THE PRACTICAL CITY: A
FUNCTIONAL CONSTRUCT
OF INTERRELATED PARTS.
THE ORGANIC CITY: AN
INDIVISIBLE, LIVING ORGANISM.
THE
CITY
SHAPED
SOURCE: THE CITY SHAPED

URBAN FABRIC COMPRISES OF THREE INTERLOCKING ELEMENTS
1. THE TOWN PLAN: it consists of the street system; The plot pattern, land parcels or lots; And the building
arrangement with this pattern. This town plan the younger Cozen- describes as “the cadastre or matrix of land
divisions differentiated by legally protected ownership.
2. LAND USE PATTERN: the land use pattern shows specialized uses of ground and space.
3. BUILDING FABRIC: The building fabric is the actual three dimensional mark of physical structures on the land
ownership parcel.
CLASSIFICATION OF CITIES
(Max Weber)
A. THE OPEN CITY: the town whether walled or not, is open to the surrounding countryside and on terms of
equality with it.
B. THE CLOSED CITY: it is self sufficient, exclusivist and distrusts country folk and newcomers alike in its
zealously guarded monopoly of industry and craft.
C. Comprises the subjugated towns of early modern times, disciplined and sternly controlled by a powerful Prince or
state.
(Kostof)
A. PRE-INDUSTRIAL CITY: specifies small size, lack of land use specialization; And little social and physical
mobility. The social structure is primarily off two classes- an elite and a lower class.
B. INDUSTRIAL CITY: it have been prefigured by capitalism. The urban landscape was fundamentally transformed
when urban land came to be seen as a source of income, when ownership was divorced from use and property
became primarily a means to produce rent. It was this land rent gradient that, in the words of JE VANCE, Jr.,
“ended the idea of the ordered city and economically encouraged the segregation of uses.”
C. SOCIALIST CITY: the central operative principle here is the abolition of capitalist ownership of land and
property. Dominance of central planning.
31
THE
CITY
SHAPED

WHAT IS A CITY?
• According to,”
1. ”a relatively large, dense, and permanent settlement of socially
heterogenous individuals” – L. Wirth, 1938.
2. ”a point of maximum concentration for the power and culture of the
community”,- Mumford, 1938
32
THE
CITY
SHAPED
SOURCE: GOOGLE

• According Kostof:
A) ENERGIZED CROWDING-
Cities are places where a certain energized crowding of people takes place. It has something to do with settlement
density.
B) URBAN CLUSTERS-
Cities come on clusters. A town never exists unaccompanied by other towns. It is therefore inevitably locked in an
urban hierarchy.
C) PHYSICAL CIRCUMSCRIPTION-
Cities are places that have some physical circumscription, whether material or symbolic, to separate those who
belong in the urban order from those who do not.
33
THE
CITY
SHAPED
ENERGIZED CROWDING-
URBAN CLUSTERS-
PHYSICAL CIRCUMSCRIPTION-

34
THE
CITY
SHAPED D) DIFFERENTIATION OF USES-
Cities are places where there is specialized differentiation of work which create social hierarchies: the
rich are more powerful than poor, social heterogeneity is also axiomatic
E) URBAN RESOURCES-
Cities are places favored by a source of income – trade, intensive agriculture and the possibility of surplus
food, a physical resource like a metal or spring (Bath), geomorphic resource like a natural harbor , or a
human resource like a king
F) WRITTEN RECORDS-
Cities are places that must reply on written records. It is through writing that they will tally their goods,
put down the laws that will govern the community, and the establish title to property – which is extremely
important , because in the final analysis a city rest on a construct of ownership.
DIFFERENTIATION OF USES- URBAN RESOURCES-
WRITTEN RECORDS-

35
THE
CITY
SHAPED
G) CITY AND COUNTRYSIDE-
Cities are places that are intimately engaged with their countryside, that have territory that feeds them and
which they protect and provide services for
H) MONUMENTAL FRAMEWORK-
Cities are places distinguished by some kind of monumental definition that is where the fabric is more than
blanket of residences. This means a set of public buildings that give the city the scale and citizenry land marks
of common identity.
I) BUILDINGS AND PEOPLE-
Cities are places made up of buildings and people. Kostoff claims that city forms their actual function and the
idea sand values that people attach them make up a single phenomenon.
CITY AND COUNTRYSIDE- MONUMENTAL FRAMEWORK-
BUILDINGS AND PEOPLE-

• THE DESIGNED CITY:
A geometric diagram, grid, circle, polygon etc. - A planned city.
• THE SPONTANEOUS CITY:
No designers, an irregular city, organic
• CITYAS AN ORGANISM:
The parks and open squares (lungs), city center (heart), the streets (arteries).
(Nice way of thinking when doing level design)
• No city, however arbitrary its form, is unplanned.
• POWER DESIGN CITIES:
The state is the owner and can create a pattern of their choosing. Still possible today?
36
ORGANIC PATTERN
OVERVIEW
THE
CITY
SHAPED

A. PLANNED AND UNPLANNED
• Planned /Design /Created City
o until 19th century this pattern invariably registered as an orderly geometric diagram
o it can be grid, centrally planned (circle or Polygon).
• Ville Spontanee' /Grown/ Spontaneous City/ Chance Grown/Generated
o to underline one of its pattern "geomorphic"
o form is irregular ,non geometric ,organic with crooked and curved streets and randomly defined
open spaces
• "to stress process overtime in the making of such city forms one speaks of 'unplanned evolution or
instinctive growth'
• Since the early 19th century a strand of planning that emerges in romantic suburbs (outside the Center
City) and graduates into a full blown alternative to the dominant practices of western urbanism has
given us non geometric layouts artfully designed to avoid the rigidity of geometric abstraction with
their preference for curvilinear Street systems the broken line assented spacing and spirited profiles
these layouts rephrase the tenets of organic cities in a self conscious and emulative mood.
37
UNPLANNED PLANNED
NAARDEN (NETHERLANDS)
THE
CITY
SHAPED
SOURCE: AUTHOR

B. COEXIXTENCE AND TRANSCRIPTION
• If we were to scan thousands of city plans we would find that on the basis of symmetry urban arrangement can
be classified into two groups that is 'planned’ and 'organic' which coexist together.
• First there is the freeing of movement from geometric order
o the grid is inflexible in terms of human movement. The impairment of municipal controls led to the shortcuts
through rigid blocks so the circulation pattern was rationalized to suit urban conditions
• second the reorganization of the blocks.
o The blocks merged together into solidly built superblocks: and an inward communication system was installed in
this dance fabric. As a result the reordering of classical grid through new resident arrangement occurred.
• Third the impact of new public focI on the urban fabric
o Earlier streets that had led to focI once important but now of no relevance will decline or atrophy.
C. THE EVOLUTION OF ORGANIC PATTERN
• The fact is that no city however arbitrarily is forming appear to us, can be said to be unplanned. Power designs
cities and the rawest form of power is control of urban land.
• In the long history of cities from western Asia and Mesopotamia to the new towns of today, this exercise is
totalitarian design has limited currency.
• More commonly the urban diagram is intricately wrought difficult to read and since the force that endanger it are
many it may not always be explicit in every detail. There are as many as distinctive diagrams as there are cities
that inhabit them know tour exactly alike if on the other hand there is biological reality that is being applied or
positive it is best to reckon with it directly.
I. CITY AS AN ORGANISM:
• The parks and open squares (lungs), city center (heart), the streets (arteries).
II. THE ROLE OF TOPOGRAPHY
• The most widely acknowledged casualty, the natural landscape, rings true because it is visually the easiest to
grasp.
• The start of an irregular city plan is often due to a small number of topographic peculiarities.
• The idiosyncratic shapes of evaded or generate cities is determined by the topography
38
ROMAN COLONY ISLAMIC CITY WITH
MIDBLOCK PATHWAYS
LESS OPEN PUBLIC SPACES
DUE TO NARROW STREET
LANES
THE
CITY
SHAPED
SOURCE: THE CITY SHAPED SOURCE: THE CITY SHAPED SOURCE: THE CITY SHAPED

III. LAND DIVISION
• Pre urban land division may well be the most fundamental determinant for the irregular city forms of all ages. In the
early stages of settlement, the occupation of land commonly takes place without the benefit of a formal land survey.
Fields, meadows and pastures have a regular boundaries. And the main lines of this division demarcate large pieces
of land for common use.
• When this agriculture land finds itself in an urban situation, these main lines become streets and the land parcels
begin to be subdivided. Agrarian law in many ancient cultures is based on the principle of the indivisibility of land.
Various methods were explained by ‘kostof’ for subdivision of land
• The two methods for land division is the practice of measuring by metes and bounds fixing boundaries in relation to
natural features, which yields “organic” patterns and division according to a survey done with proper instruments
which establishes orthogonal relationships are both old.
• The author has explained various methods for subdivision of land for example the English used the headright
method of land distribution in the South where individual plantations were claimed before a thorough land survey
had been made.
39
IV. SYNOECISM
• The administrative coming together of several proximate villages to format town, what ‘Aristotle’ calls “Synoecism”
is repeatedly attested to in history.
• Sign racism can come about in two ways people may leave their villages to move to a new town to set up to absorb
them or else the villages themselves may merge to form the town.
V. THE LAW AND SOCIAL ORDER
• Topography, land division, synoecism- these are all physical determinants of irregular city forms.
• The main thing is that city form was allowed to work itself out subject only to the respect of custom, ownership,
visual privacy. The weakness of the public space of streets, could not support an artificially pristine layout; rather,
the public space was continually negotiated and redefined, as the buildings pushed out and over, interlocked and
diversified. There were also return building codes of local currency (though little is now known about them), and
universally applicable religious law.
1. RIVERINE SETTLEMENT
2. NATURAL HARBOR
3. DEFENSIVE SITE
4. LINEAR RIDGE
5. HILLTOP TOWN
6. SLOPED TERRAIN
HOUSES WITH NARROW
PUBLIC THOROUGHFARE,
IRAQ
THE
CITY
SHAPED

D. THE STRAIGHT AND THE CURVED: DESIGN ALTERNATIVES
• Cities were that way because they grew to be that way. In De re aedificatoria ,he wrote: the ancients in all towns
were for having some intricate ways and turn again streets without any passage through them that if an enemy
comes into them he may be at a loss and be in confusion and suspense; Or if he pushes on daringly, may be easily
destroyed.
• Albert granted the approximation of the organic plan for hilly sites, but also recommended it for small towns
with fortification. The idea of the greatness of the town, discover a new structure. Because According to him
organic pattern of small towns, beauty and aesthetics made in small town more sense than the organic pattern.
Rigid grid: the greatness of town can be felt and a new structure could be discovered at every step and trip.
I. ORIGINS OF THE PLANT PICTURESQUE
• the key element that changed from medieval to renaissance and to the late 18th century was the street pattern and
culmination of streets for example during renaissance., the street converged at either end of the town into an
irregular elongated green and in medieval period, curvilinear pattern was exploited. The decisive swing toward
an open, reasoned endorsement often non geometric urban design came in the later 18th century.
II. GARDEN CITY PARADIGM
• It all started with ebenezer Howard the author of 1902 garden cities of To-Morrow. The Garden City would have
all the advantages of the most active and energetic down life with all the beauty and delight of the country that is
the Garden City would be more or less like a picturesque suburb.
• The chief originators of this item were Raymond Unwin and Barry Parker the planning team for the first Garden
City- Letchworth, in Hertfordshire, so miles 130 kilometers north of London.
40
III. CONSERVATION AND THE LESSON OF HISTORY
• While England was looking to its traditional villages and dear cottage architecture and learning something about
urban living in easy contact with nature Europe found comfort in its storied medieval towns for its own recipe
against the effects of the industrial revolution on city- form. Demolitions in the old towns had become endemic.
• Straight thoroughfares were cut through compact medieval fabrics to link up more easily with the proliferating
suburbs. It is best represented by Camillo Site(1843-1903) and his book of 1889. Der Stadtebau Nach seinen
kunstlerischen Gnundsatzen (The Art Of Building Cities, or more literally “City Building According To Artistic
Principles.” The aesthetic superiority of picturesque old towns to geometric modern street plans had been
championed before site.
• Site associated the vital irregularities of city forms not only with visual interest but also with wholesome social
use.
• Cities were agglomerations of buildings and of people, the bond between them evolved and sustained through
time. There is a gradually developed harmony between public buildings and their physical context.
• According to site, Urbanism is precisely the signs of relationship and these relationships must be determined
according to how much a person walking through the city can take it in a glance streets and squares must be
considered in three dimensions, as volumes. The ideal St must form a completely enclosed unit.
• The ideal street must avoid bilateral symmetry. It is mentioned in Lyautey’s declarations “That the mindless
destruction of our old fabric erases our cultural identity.”
• Patrick Geddes promoted the idea of a civic survey- a comprehensive study of the geology, geography, economic
life, and above all the history and institutions of the city- prior to any planning invention. The survey would
constitute “diagnosis before treatment.” Then would come “conservative surgery.”
THE
CITY
SHAPED

E. MODERNISM AND THE PLANNED PICTURESQUE
• The destinies of modernist urbanism and the Garden City movement had been entangled before after the Second
World War.
• The return of modernism brought an end for a while, to the appreciation of the historic picturesque of European
cities the planned picturesque of garden cities and the offshoots. The resurgence of historic preservation. This was
a counter reaction to modernist a historicism.
• Gordon Cullen defined town- planning, much like site, as the art of relationships and focused his analysis of
historic fabrics on serial vision, awareness of human scale, and what he called content which partook of mystery,
relief, immediacy, and other comparable sentiments.
• After the terrifying 20s and 30s, where the old towns were attacked by Fascist/Nazis on one hand, modernist
fanaticism was evolving on the other after the 50s and 60s the frenzy of urban renewal devastated the city centers
which forced rethinking the wholeness of the city. This was the emergence of new urbanism where modernist
started thinking about of all kinds of urban space, the grand and the incidental. These new aspects related to
urbanism are mentioned in Rob Krier’s urban space (first published in 1975) and Collins rose collage city (1978)
capture our imagination, which makes us trust in the power of our collective urban heritage.
41
THE
CITY
SHAPED

THE GRID
• Rectilinear planning. Commonest pattern for planned cities.
• Several issues with grid planning, e.g.
o When and how does the grid terminate at the outer edges?
o Open spaces and their distribution.
o Size and shape of blocks – internal organization
• The most persistent belief that urban grids represent an “egalitarian” system of land distribution is expressed in
the context of modern democracies, principally the United States :‘ Simplicity in land surveying, recording, and
subsequent ownership transfer .’” – dividing land equally.
• The grid served two purposes:
o To facilitate orderly settlement, colonization in its broader sense.
o Instrument of modernization.
• Also, it served military arrangements, religious covenants, mercantile capitalism and industrial planning.
42
OVERVIEW
• The grid became standard for new sections in oldtowns in America.
• Open/Closed grid.
• ”Where there is the chance of making money from urban land, the claims of the public good will be set aside” – New York
commissioners justified their decision not to provide public space in their 1811 plan.
• Gridded extensions
- Where two type of grids meet or a grid and a organic core.
• E.g. Amsterdam used the best from gridded and organic planning.
• Block organization
- Notable features are the size and the density of the blocks . Neither remains fixed at all times. The larger block, the more
likely to create new breakthroughs (again, a city is never at rest).
THE
CITY
SHAPED

A. PREAMBLE
• Le Corbusier in his book “The pack- donkey’s Way,” said that “organic patterns are responsible for the plan of
every continental city.”
• Rational order of pacing the land- streets set at right angles to one another- is the first step in settlement planning.
I. THE NATURE OF RECTILINEAR PLANNING
• The grid- or gridiron or checkboard- is by far the communist pattern for planned cities in history. It is universal
both geographically and chronologically (though its use was not continuous through history).
• The grid is an exceedingly flexible and diverse system of planning. The only thing that all grids have in common
is that deer St pattern is orthogonal- that the right angle rules, and St lines in both directions live parallel to each
other.
• Hybrid version of the grits are:
1. Gridded extensions of “organic” city forms.
2. Gridded additions to an original grid plan.
3. The curvilinear grid of the modern residential development.
4. Loose approximations, where the lines are not strictly parallel or the angles strictly right.
5. Grids combined with other geometric planning principles.
43
II. THE GRID AND POLITICS
• The most persistent belief that urban grits represent an egalitarian system of land distribution is
expressed in the context of modern democracies but it is not intrinsically democratic.
• The first is a late outcome of the great division of Catholic Church. After the repeal of the edict of Nantes
in 1685, over 200,000 Huguenots fled from France. They settled and founded towns and suburbs in
Protestant Germany and in England. Poland and Switzerland.
• Second the Mormons two centuries later, Joseph Smith drew up a scheme for the ideal Mormon city,
known as “The Plat Of The City Of Zion”. The Plat was one square mile (2.6 square km) in surface, divided
by a grid of streets. The dimensions were ample. All streets were to be 132 feet wide, the building blocks
10 to 15 acres. The houses, to be built of brick and stone, were to be set back 25 feet from the straight
line. The plan would grow indefinitely as the faithful increased. All property would be deeded to the
church, and one would then be find an inheritance or stewardship dash a farm, a store or shop, a
ministerial mission.
• All the towns had the same form that is a regular street great on a square site, uniform houses of
identical shape, size and color, a small church, and identical manufactories.
III. BETTER ORDER” OR ROUTINE
• There were two main purposes of the grid:
1. The first was to facilitate orderly settlement, colonization in its broad sense.
2. The other application or the second one of the grid has been as an instrument of modernization, and
of contrast to what existed that was not as orderly.
THE
CITY
SHAPED

B. HISTORICAL REVIEW
• The grid applies to country and town, two fields and streets, and at its most basic it divides an undifferentiated
stretch of land into regular, measured plots.
I. THE GRID IN THE ANCIENT WORLD
• The genuine urban grid makes it appearance in “Pre-classical Antiquity” in at least two regions of the ancient
world.
- Mohenjo Daro and Harappa in the Indus valley, which came to a mysterious end about 1500 BC had a sighted on
the western edge of own and blocks of roughly equal size. Our distinction was made between principal streets and
the alleys onto which the houses looked.
- The other archaeological region is Mesopotamia and Assyria, cities like Babylon and Borsippa. Hammurabi about
2000 BC even though the visible street pattern that has been recovered dates back only two Nebuchadnezzar in the
6th century BC.
• Herodotus describes baby launch as intersected by straight streets, some parallel and some at right angles to the
river. The division of the Greek grid was by strips rather than blocks, and the city walls.
II. NEWTOWN IN THE MIDDLE AGES
a. At the end off the classical world we lost track of the grid for several centuries. Orthogonal planning returned in
Europe in 1100. This was the re emergence of grid for: creation of new towns
b. extension of early organic city towns
44
GREEK GRID AN EARLY ROMAN GRID ROMAN GRID WITH PERFECT
SQUARE BLOCKS
THE
CITY
SHAPED

• The new towns were located in three general areas of Europe:
1. Southern France, northern Spain, England and Wales: here we find towns founded by the royal houses,
by powerful noblemen and by other Lords and aborts. In France especially, it came to be unexpected
of a Lord of the first rank that in addition to his castle, monastery, and hunting ground, he would be
the owner of a new town or best tide. Defense, agriculture and trade were the motivation, and that
towns were usually an agency of settlement on land reclaimed.
2. Switzerland, Austria, and Germany east of the Elbe: this includes the towns of the Dukes of tsar engine,
imperial towns under the patronage of the holy Roman emperor himself or his lieutenants, and
settlements founded by the crusading Teutonic Knights in the eastern expansion of Germany. By and
large, this area had the largest number, and the most carefully planned, new towns.
3. New towns founded by the city; states of Italy: in in this category, a prime goal was to disengage serfs
and village folk from allegiance to landed magnates and readjust their loyalties to the political system
of the city- states.
III. THE RENAISSANCE IN EUROPE
• Around 1600 systems of bastioned curtains improved over several decades were universally subscribed
to. This meant that cities, old and new, were encased in and elaborate, often star- shaped, ring of
pointed low, spreading patience with an enormous physical reach.
• Within this ring, the vast majority of the new towns were straightforward grids; A few towns adopted
radial concentric street systems inspired by renaissance projects of ideal cities like Filarete’s Sforzinda, ,
as subsequently reinterpreted by military engineers for the artillery age.
• Baroque urbanism was transforming European capitals. It was based on the dynamism of the diagonal,
and came to be associated with absolutist states. Baroque city- form had developed connotations of
political centrality and that the place of the king in the English scheme of things was very rich much in
the public mind during those decades of the later 17th century.
45
IDEAL PORT CITY PLAN BY SIMON
THE
CITY
SHAPED

IV. PASSAGE TO AMERICA
• For the design of Washington DC Jefferson’s famous little grid was selected. The grid lost and the
Frenchman’s splendid imperialist diagram won, for he went on to subject the rest of the nation to a
relentless gridding which permanently affected the structure of American space. The towns in new Spain,
called few blows or villas, were designed according to directives emanating from the Spanish court.
• These were collected under Philip second in a document known as the laws of the Indies, a genuine
product of renaissance thought. Its inspiration is ultimately the classical treaties of Vitruvius, as a
continuation of the long medieval history of boss tights. The grid with two main axis intersecting, and the
large public square at the intersection, were standard. This Plaza is the key to the entire settlement; its
size regulated the makeup of the grid.
• The ‘closed grid’ is seen as having firm boundaries and a definite design within its fixed frame the
boundaries might be walls or features of topography.
• ‘Open grid’ is predicted on a capitalist economy, and the conversion of land to a commodity to be
bought and sold on the market the grid is left unbounded or unlimited so extremely extended wherever
there is the promise of fast and substantial profit.
46
• Spanish System:
- Under the Spanish system, land was the inalienable patrimony of each family and there was centrally
situated public open spaces and ample common lands for everybody is use. Under the Americans, this
enduring social structure of the Pueblos was replaced by laissez-faire planning. The promenades along
the river or the ample Plaza in the center of the town became targets of development.
- The new municipal administrations 19 allocated for community use only those parcels of land that could
not be sold or given away. The laws of the Indies considered town and country to be one working unit. All
around the original city form, the grid spread out unchecked. Speculative grading did not require much
finesse.
- The worst offenders were the railroad companies. Railroad companies adopt grade. The beneficiaries of
vast land, grants from the federal government, especially after 1862, they laid out types of towns along
their tracks, often on a standard plan, as a means to land speculation and the capture of national traffic.
The common rule about street grids is to seek a compromise between natural irregularities and the
abstract vigor off the right angle. It was only during the Renaissance that the possibility opened up to
survey and record geographic features and irregular city shapes.
- These new grids of the 19th century for most of the part had no more than 30-60 blocks with 6-16 lots
per blocks. the plan had two linear access, one of them the industrial axis along the tracks with the
station, the rain elevator, coal sheds and water towers, the loadmaster’s house, and a trackside park with
a bandstand; the other, the commercial axis along Main street.
- Sometimes the two coincided or else they were set at right angles, or in in the form of T with the railroad
line as the bar.
THE
CITY
SHAPED

C. LAYING OUT THE GRID
• ‘Gridiron’ in the united states at implies a pattern of long narrow blocks’ and ‘checkerboard’ a pattern of square
blocks.
• street grid and plot grid will always interlock and be interdependent.
• There are two important considerations which affect the quality of gridded urban form:
i. The shape of the land.
ii. The technology of surveying and its relative sophistication at a given time and place.
I. ON THE SITE
• the common rule about street grids is to seek a compromise between natural irregularities and the abstract rigor of
the right angle.
• It was only during the renaissance that the possibility opened up to survey and record geographic features and
irregular city shapes.
II. SURVEYORS AND THEORISTS
• the simplicity of marking out an orthogonal street pattern made the grid a feasible city-form even for
technologically unsophisticated cultures.
III. THE TOWN PLANNER AS ARTIST
• the ichnographic plan shows the city from an infinite number of viewpoints all perpendicular to each
topographical feature.
• Unconcerned with actual appearance this highly complicated abstraction does it eat away two dimensional record
of solids and voids.
• New scientifically surveyed plan and that consisted off a circular disk divided into contemporaneous development
off mobile artillery lead to viewing cities.
47
RECONSTRUCTION OF TURKEY IN MID 4TH CENTURY
THE
CITY
SHAPED

D. COORDINATED SYSTEMS OF TOWN AND COUNTRY
• The centuries following these critical developments in urban design brought forth the most articulate and elegant
examples in the great history at least in the West- Avola and Turin, Richelieu and Neuf-Brisach, Mexico City and
Savannah street with block rhythms and open spaces were calculated in concert the habitually non centric
orthogonal array was punctuated with definite points of emphasis in the colonial epic of the Americas the urban
grid was routinely logged in a comprehensive regional plan which extended the structure of rectilinear space to
vast rural jurisdictions.
I. RURAL GRIDS
• ‘Centuriation’ was the most common method used by Roman land survey. Two axial roads at right angles to each
other started the survey then held tracks (limits) work dragon parallel to their course until a grid of squares or
rectangles had taken shape.
• The standard centuriation measure was the actus (120 feet/ ca.37m).
• In the French bastides a triple system of land division prevailed. Settlers received building lots called ‘ayrals’
(between ca. 1000 and 3300 square feet). Vegetable gardens called canals and arable land for fields and vineyards
called ‘arpents’ or journaux after the units of measurement these allotments formed three concentric zone:
- the urban parcels stretched to the limits of the town or the walls if they existed.
- The gardens were within or immediately outside the walls. When the Spaniards arrived in the new world, Land
Management was practiced on a regional basis.
- this jurisdiction of the original colonial cities was extraordinarily large.
• Land tracts were generally (square, 10,000 varas or 5 miles/8.5 km) on each side these tracks were called sitios
the town proper was in or near the middle of the tract. Common lands were reserved for the enlargement of the
town. English in North America had its own rural urban order. Savannah to take a celebrated case, was conceived
as part of a regional plan. Beyond the town limits were garden lots half squares in the form of triangles and further
out still larger plots for farms of major contributors.
48
II. GRIDDED EXTENSIONS
• The existence of a coordinated array of town and country did not ensure an orderly extension of town grids into
the surrounding territory. Amsterdam is a special case. This Great Northern part, which always exercised a
remarkable element of public control over city- form, borrowed the best of the organic system and the grid, to
ensure a rational, long- range development. Without the centralized authority of cities like Turin and Amsterdam
credit extension generates into a patchwork of small developments that meet at ownership boundaries of rural
holdings. The impression of an indefinitely extendable grid is in most cases indebted to the streamlining of this ad
hoc patchwork of by the traffic engineers super grade of true- streets assembled for the automotive age.
BIRD’S EYE VIEW OF THE CITY OF THE
CITY ATLANTA THE CAPITOL OF
GEORGIA
THE
CITY
SHAPED

II. GRIDDED EXTENSIONS
• The existence of a coordinated array of town and country did not ensure an orderly extension of town grids into
the surrounding territory. Amsterdam is a special case. This Great Northern part, which always exercised a
remarkable element of public control over city- form, borrowed the best of the organic system and the grid, to
ensure a rational, long- range development. Without the centralized authority of cities like Turin and Amsterdam
credit extension generates into a patchwork of small developments that meet at ownership boundaries of rural
holdings. The impression of an indefinitely extendable grid is in most cases indebted to the streamlining of this
ad hoc patchwork of by the traffic engineers super grade of true- streets assembled for the automotive age.
E. THE CLOSED GRID: FRAME, ACCENT, AND OPEN
Open grids with laissez-faire planning cannot aspire to a coherent design. To achieve a formal structure, the limits of
the town would have to be determined at the time of origin.
I. THE WALLED FRAME
• Evolve enclosure is the most obvious, but not the only, means of delimiting. Conversely, the city wall where it
exists may or may not be integrated with the street grid. The reason is evident: street grid and wall circuit have
different demands placed upon them. As the primary system of defense, the world must ensure its own survival
under attack; Its design has this issue to consider before all else.
49
II. STREET RHYTHMS
• Whether restricted by its own defensive armature or by consensually setup natural barriers like farm fields and
common lands, a closed grid to some extent composes itself. Some of the elements at the disposal of the designer
are rhythmic arrangements of streets, the creation of a strong center, and the disposition of open spaces.
• In the division of many grades, the interweaving of main streets and alleys can have its own rhythm, and
variations in the size of the blocks will directly affect the distance between the streets.
III. THE DISTRIBUTION OF SQUARES
• The crossing acquired a proper square in Austria in the so-called Rechteckplatz (right-angled square) type. This
Market Square was sometimes extended perpendicular to the direction of the main streets of the linear grid. The
advantage here is that the square can be stretched out in concert with the growth of the rest of the city.
IV. BLOCK ORGANISATION
• As the basic unit after orthogonal planning, the block and its structure in three dimensions give the urban grid it's
character. The common historical terminology for these blocks refers to islands- insulae, ilots, etc. first at New
Salisbury (Wiltshire) they were called “chequers,” which “shows that the chess-board analogy had not escaped its
planners.”
• the size and shape of the blocks were directly related to the number and shape of the lots into which they were
subdivided.
• Rural system was slowly pushed aside from the mid 12th century, as strips lots redefined an urban framework
suitable for a merchant economy, with the agricultural component now clearly secondary.
THE
CITY
SHAPED

F. THE GRID IN THE 20TH CENTURY
• From the 1880s to the 1920s protagonist of social reform- those, at any rate, who had not been
converted to Garden City ideology- had championed the perimeter block as the answer two tenements.
Enclosed blocks with large open courtyards were built in the 1980s as philanthropic projects in Berlin
two designs by Alfred Messel and in New York by William Field and Sons
• Berlage in his 1915 plan for Amsterdam South laid out a syncopated grid of long courtyard framing
housing blocks with uniform facades which were intended to obscure class differences.
• Gridiron block was introduced as an intractable source of urban misery.
• Due to traffic streets an idea of an inturned super block bounded by major traffic arteries were
introduced for separate communities.
• The conventional street grid stranded residents on rectangular islands surrounded by noise, dirt, fumes
and danger, the solution for this was to promote social intercourse in superblocks designed as self-
contained neighborhoods each with its own shops schools and community facilities.
50
SCHEMATIC PLAN OF CHANDIGARH, LE CORBUSIER
THE
CITY
SHAPED

• IDEA OF CITY BY-” PAOLA SOLERI”
- A new term came into use , ’Arcology’; which is the combination of architecture and ecology.
- It is a field of creating architectural design priniciples for very densely populated, ecologically low-
impact huma habitats.
- Archology was proposed to reduce human impact on natural resources. Archology designs might
apply conventional building and civil engineering techniques.
• SOLERI’S STYLE OF CITY PLANNING CHARACTERISTICS:
51
THE
CITY
SHAPED
THE CITY AS A
DIAGRAM
1. Barrel vaults
2. Quarter-sphere apses
3. Sweeping half arches
4. frameless round window holes.
5. The detailing of the elements were crude
• PAOLO SOLERI’S IDEA OF ARCOSANTI:
 Arco Santi is a city planned by Paolo Soleri in the paradise valley of Arizona.
 He began construction in 1970, to demonstrate how urban conditions could be improved while
minimizing the destructive impact on the earth.
 The ultimate goal of Arco Santi is to house 5000 people in a single structure solar-powered archology
25 stories high; the rest to be reserved or agriculture, recreation & beauty
ANXOMETERIC VIEW OF ARIZONA

• PALMANOVA CITY
-Palma nova is a town and commune in Northeast Italy. The town is an example of star fort of the late
Renaissance , built up by the Venetian Republic in 1593.
-Palma nova is the only complete radial plan to be built in Italy in the 16th century. The frame is a nine-sided
polygon, but the central piazza is a hexagon and even then only three of the town’s nine bastions are linked to it
in a direct line
52
THE
CITY
SHAPED
• UTOPIAN CITIES
-By their nature, these cities are most often transposed into design in perfect geometric shapes, circles and
focused squares and polygons of various kinds.
-They follow rigid modes of centrality – radial convergence or axial alignment.
- A main example of this is the squaring of the Circleville (Ohio) .
• SQUARING OF CIRCLEVILLE :
• The plan of Circleville Ohio was laid out in the 1810s by the town’s first Director Daniel Drawback. He
sited the town inside a large old circular earth work built by members of the indigenous Hope well culture.
• The plan took the form of two concentric circular streets, joined by straight streets radiating from the
center. At the very middle, on a mound, was the octagonal county court house.
• By the 1830s however the Circlevillians had become irritated with their town’s circularity. The conception
of the plan was dismissed as ‘childish sentimentalism’. It was proving difficult to fit buildings onto the
awkward-shaped lots , and odd bits of leftover land were wasted.
• The townspeople established the Squaring Circleville Company and petitioned the Ohio General
Assembly in 1837 to allow the Company to convert the street layout – with the cooperation of landowners –
into a standard rectangular American grid-iron.
• The process was carried out by stages in the four quadrants of the circle and was completed by 1856
PLAN OF PALMA NOVA CITY

• SPECIALSIED ENVIRONMENTS
The design of regimentation:
• Military camps and garrison towns readily fall into line because of the pre-established ranking and
routines of their inhabitants such as the Assyrian relief camp in the throne room of Assurbanipal shows
the military camp as two crossing roads in a fortified circle.
• The Roman cestrum had a rigid rectangular layout determined by two crossing streets, the via
principals and the via Quintana, that led to four principal gates and divided the camp into four quadrants.
• Spanish presidios, on the other hand, had small houses for the limited number of soldiers, married for
the most part and the expansion of mission and pueblos. And the single men mostly lived in the barracks
.• The Indian cantonment areas designed precisely under the British rule had residential and
development areas designed for the militants and their families.
53
THE
CITY
SHAPED

54
THE
CITY
SHAPED
• HOLY CITIES:
Specifications of holy cities:
• Holy cities can also be example of religions symbolism.
• They are those cities of concentrated sanctity whose physical organization displays a deliberate program of
ritual intent. • These are cities, like mecca and Jerusalem, where particular religions place their origin; cities
where the worship of principal deities is condensed, as with Amon at Thebes or Shiva at Benares (Varanasi); or
cities where a king seeks to anchor has reign , as did Jayavarman VII at Angkor Thom.
• The attempt of designing all the cities was to represents spatial structure of heaven
• POLITICAL DIAGRAM
The political diagram of the city celebrates the centrality & monocentric dominion. And its main components are
circle and axis.
LINEAR SYSTEMS
• Axial alignment is commonly used in association with an overall urban diagram.
It depends on one of two inducements : cosmology, and physical and cultural topography. • One prime example
of this is the China city planning.
• Chinese planners invariably emphasized the north-south axis, image of the meridian, to order their capitals.
• This was in coordination with a precise structure of thought regarding the universe and the place of the ruler
within it.
• The earth in Chinese cosmology was a stable cube; the heavens were round. Space was conceived of as a
series of imbricated squares, at the center of which lay the capital of the empire strictly oriented to the points of
the compass
• CHARACTERISTICS OF CAPITAL CITIES OF CHINA:
• The first model is represented by Chang’an under the Tang dynasty. Here the imperial palace is at the north
end of a central axis. • In the other capital scheme, the palace is in the middle of the city; this is the case with
Beijing
• The terminologies like Kings way, Queen’s way, Government House, Viceroy’s official residence etc. were
used to describe a city.
• The spatial structure of the cities was also based on:
1. Race
2. Occupational Rank
• CENTRALIZED SYSTEM
The other device for charting political order is to expand the city form in bands of diminishing importance out of
a center . The two related variants here are the concentric and the radial.

55
THE
CITY
SHAPED • CONCENTRIC ORGANIZATION:
 Concentricity implies the circle, but in city diagram this is at best a relative matter. The castle towns or
jokamachi of Japan, the symbol of an all-powerful feudal aristocracy.
 They hardly show the geometrical purity of ideal cities, yet they are unequivocal diagram of centralized
power. Seat of the daimyo, the new feudal lord these towns, among them Edo, Osaka, Tokashima, Kochi
and Kumamoto, were focused upon the castle.
 • The term Jōkamachi refers to a type of urban structures in Japan in which the city surrounds a feudal
lord's castle. • Most of the world's walled cities comprise a castle and a city inside the defensive walls.
 While Japan did have towns and villages surrounded by moats and earth mounds such as Sakai and
Jinaicho (temple town), Jokamachi initially had moats and walls only around the feudal lord's castle and
did not build walls around the entire city
• RADIAL ORGANIZATION:
• The combination of concentric space and street rays that join center to periphery made sense in terms of
circulation; but more to the point in political terms, the composite diagram was a strong visual projection of
the all-pervasive nature of absolute power, while the radiating streets might also play a secondary role as
dividers for some intermediary organization.
• Greeks & Romans went with ideal cities, Radial organization of a city was unknown to Greeks & Romans.
Romans tried to find a functional rational for it.
• THE FUNCTIONAL DIAGRAM
• The Logic of Defense The greatest interpretation of the radial scheme is by Renaissance military
engineers. Francesco di Giorgio (1439-1501) was the first Renaissance architect and military engineer to
articulate the ways in which a radial system of streets, a bastioned periphery wall, ad a public space in the
center could be made to work together.
• He tried out variations where this central space is circular or polygonal, and where the street system has to
be accommodated to a number of topographical situations.
1. A main complication arose from the fact that the bastions had to defend their own circuit if they were
to defend the city at large behind them. In that context, from a military point of view, the circle and
the square, were equally unsatisfactory.
2. The circle was inadequate because the military planner permitted efficient defense by the flanks. The
square was inadequate because it afforded the least flexibility to bastions which were forced to be
blunt given the right angles. A rectangular polygon was the best solution. The ideal plan was most
effectively executed on flat ,open plains unmarred by natural impediments.
• FINAL ASSESSMENT DONE BYKOSTOF
All ideal city-forms are a little dehumanizing. Life cannot be regimented in the ways that would like except
in totally artificial units like monasteries and cantonments and concentration camps where inhabitants
submit willingly or are constrained without choice. The city as diagram, in the end, is the story of dreamers
who want the complexity and richness of the urban structure without the problems, tension sand volatility

 Major L'Enfant- creating a new Federal capitol
• Appropriateness of the location
• Natural features:
- Public building and their hierarchy, the Capitol, Supremes' Court etc.
 Components of Baroque Aesthetic:
1. Focal point.
2. Topography, links
3. Landscaping
4. Vistas
5. Public spaces
6. Dramatic effects
7. Superimposed
 The Design of Heights
• Platforms
• Stairs
• Ramps
 The Baroque Diagonal
• Example: Wall Street, Salt Lake City
• E.g.: used to separate to sections of urban laytor (old core <->modern development).
56
GRAND MANNER
OVERVIEW
THE
CITY
SHAPED

A. CHARACTERISTICS OF THE BAROQUE AESTHETIC IN URBAN DAS THESE ARE REVEALED IN L
INFANTS WORK:
1. A total grand spacious urban ensemble pinned on focal points distributed throughout the city.
2. These focal points suitably plotted in relation to drama off the topography, and linked with each other by swift,
sweeping lines of communication.
3. A concern with the landscaping of the major streets.
4. The creation of vistas.
5. Public spaces as settings for monuments.
6. Dramatic effects, as with waterfalls.
7. All of this superimposed on a closer-grained fabric for daily, local life.
B. HISTORICAL REVIEW
Antiquity in pre- classical antiquity we cannot point to entire urban systems that could be called Baroque in the
Hellenistic period, there is an important development. The planning of in atta lid Pergamon in the third and second
centuries BC seems to attest to a distinctive school of urban design which employs a sophisticated array of Baroque
devices in a coordinated system. The city form of Pergamon, laid out on a narrow mountailesn ridge in western Asia
Minor, is an integrated series of visual and kinetic experiences.
C. BAROQUE ELEMENTS
• THE STRAIGHT STREET
1. The straight street promotes public order by doing away with the nooks and crannies of irregular neighborhoods.
2. Shortest path between two points: the straight street has a practical superiority in that it connects 2 points directly
and so speeds up communication.
3. The straight streets can express an ideology best raid street can direct the social and practical advantages it sees
into a discourse of ideology.
• MARKERS AND MONUMENTS
The grand Manner has employed freestanding monuments for two purposes- to accent a Vista and to fix the space of
a former Square. When the Squares and the avenues leading into and out of them are correlated a single monument
can fulfil both purposes. The staging of monumental accents is quite limited, most originate in Classical antiquity.
57
Pergamon (Turkey), Hellenistic capitol of the Attalid dynasty; model of the upper town
THE
CITY
SHAPED

• COMMERATIVE COLUMNS
The survival of two classical, commerative columns in Rome itself, that of Trajan in his Forum and the Column Of
Marcus Aurelius kept this urban example of imperial triumph in the people eye until the revivalist swell of the
renaissance. statues: in the traditions of the grand manner, the chief use of public statuary has been along ceremonial
streets and within squares.
• TRIVIUM AND POLYVIUM
The simplest systematic grouping is the Trivium. The Trivium, a meeting of three radial streets: at, or their divergent
from, 8 Piazza, is of course affiliated with renaissance experiments with radial schemes of urbanism; But it is less
totally terrain and much more flexible. It was the prestigious and magisterial example of Versailles that popularized
the Trivium, and even the convincing urban successors are few.
Polivium: the fanning out of radials in groups larger than three can proceed from orthogonal, polygonal or circular
course. For diagonal streets may emanate from the corners office chores or rectangular public space, more or less
regularly. The idea of the circular arrangement is the full round- point. The ground- point originates in landscape
design where it refers to a large circular clearing the in the boots. The English version of the urban round- point is star
so called spider web. In which main hubs are connected with straight feeder St drawn at right angles to the radials.
D. THE GRAND MANNER OUTSIDE ITALY:
• France appropriates the Baroque esthetic after 1650, and develops it into a rational system of urban design. French
Baroque is also an outcome of state sponsored urbanism.
• Specific contributions by Baroque:
- The tree lined avenue
- The residential square, defined by continuous and uniform facades.
- Central monumental statue
- Absolute power explains the appeal of the Grand Manner for the totalitarian regimes of the Thirties- for the likes
of Mussolini, Hitler and Stalin.
 BAROQUE AND MODERNISM
• The baroque esthetic was endowed in stages with the blessings of modernity. The openness of the
city form and the flow of fast paced traffic already important in the thinking of planners like L
‘Enfant who set out to make “the real distance less from place to place,” were also pre-eminent
modern concerns issues like modern transportation and a healthful urban environment with also
be central to the proponents of garden cities and later on modernist planning.
• the Garden City and modernism rejected a monumental public realm the grand Manor celebrated
it where this singled out the residential component as the crux of the urban experience the grand
manner swept it into a comprehensive monumentality affecting the city form as a whole.
58
THE
CITY
SHAPED

D. POSTMODERN BAROQUE
In postmodern Baroque modernist ideas rejected as destructive and vacuous. Ricardo Bofil said “Everyday life will
take the center of the stage, while the public edifies and facility will recede into the background.” In seaside, in North
Florida resort town, the access, the vistas terminating in identifiable landmarks, the tree lining of avenues are all there
in two dimensions, as in a Burnham fragment. This formal urban diagram is in fact the covenant of a public realm.
But though the building lines are held firm, the buildings are mostly evocative suburban residences.
59
DIAGRAMMATIC VIEWS OF DELPHI(GREECE), PRIENE(TURKEY), AND LINDOS(GREECE), REPRESENTING
RESPECTIVELY THE URBAN EXPERIENCE OF AN “ORGANIC” SITE, A GRID, AND A COMPOSITION IN TH
GRAND MANNER.
THE
CITY
SHAPED

INTRODUCTION-
•What do we understand by the term "Urban skyline"?- the word 'urban' stands for ' the region surrounding
a city' and "skyline" stands for, ' a line where the earth and the sky meets’
• Soon after the international competition, Melbourne realized that it is necessary to built something
unique, remarkable and signatural, that would help them to stand out unique.
• A urban skyline helps a city to achieve a remarkable position
For example- 1) The first thing which comes to our mind when we here, 'Paris' is ‘Eiffel Tower'; because
The Eiffel Tower provides an unique identity to that place.
2) if we talk about ziggurats the name which suddenly strikes our mind is 'Egypt’
• This approach of identifying a city from its skyline was introduced after 1876.
• It uses an approach where skyline are built on the horizon of the city.
60
THE
CITY
SHAPED
THE URBAN SKYLINES
MELBOURNE SKYLINE

• PRIVATE AND PUBLIC SKYLINES-
•Tall buildings that have existed throughout history from ziggurat to Eiffel tower.
•They were unique beacons and were public beacons.
•The skyscraper was the product of private enterprise, so that the primacy of the public order, as against
private interests, would be made palpable on the skyline.
• THE SKYLINE POTRAYED-
• A skyline is the physical representation of an artist's mind.• The main issue which was raised while
designing the skylines was; whether the shape of the skyline will matter to the residents or not.
• Skylines were portrayed as 'Civic Pride'; which relates to how places promote and defend local identity
and autonomy.• Representing the cities accurately was the prime issue; mediums that were used to
represent skylines were print of some sort of cut-outs of wooden or engraving before the actual
construction.
• There are two ways to fix a skyline”
1) Through extraordinary landscape features.
2) Through pre-eminent Buildings.
THROUGH LANDSCAPING- Cities with a complicated topography might try to emblematize
nature.
THROUGH PRE-EMINENT BUILDINGS- Skyline should be designed in such a way that it
should depict some distinguish feature, it can be elements from historical form or something unique . The
nature of the skyline is not determined by one or more distinctive building shapes, as much as it is by the
repetitive use of one architectural feature: minarets, domes, spires, industrial chimneys, and the like.
61
THE
CITY
SHAPED
JERUSALEM, A DRAWING BY ARTHUR KUTCHER,1973
The histroric skyline in the foreground tries to hold its own against modern
development.

• DESIGNING THE SKYLINES
• For designing a skyline four basic and fundamental physical validity are there:-
1) Height
2) Shape
3) Approach
4) Color and light
• The very first two validities refers to the landmark feature . The third one refers to the skyline as a whole .
And the fourth one is a aesthetic feature.
1) HEIGHT-
•The height of any structure is relative matter; to a landmark's surroundings.
•The concept of skyscrapers was first introduced in 1880s at Chicago.
•Also , The New York's zoning ordinance of 1916 legalized the concept of the setbacks.
2) SHAPE-
•The general mass and shape of buildings is a good device to distinguish different competing programs within
one historical frame-castle versus town hall.
3) APPROACH-
•The issue concerns the direct experience of skyline features by the visitor to the city.
•The traditional city was small and was experienced more directly because it was seen without suburban
sprawl.
•In fact, the walls were usually the first element of the skyline to be encountered.
• Today, the cities are large and uncircumscribed, and all sorts of skyline features begin to appear in the urban
fringe before we are allowed to read the symbolic relationships of the city center even were they to be
preserved by law.
• There are 3 main urban skyline views, that matters the most-
a. The one with the water front, which can be along a riverside or of a sea.
b. Those will be approached from the roads.
c. Earlier the cities were more compact and composed, so to tackle out this situation, a view can be
provided from a high vantage point within the city limit.
4) COLOR AND LIGHT-
•Color has always been a standard means to highlight the urban silhouette.
•Yet multicolored skylines were not so much popular in not only the European country but also across the
globe.
•But in parts of Asia, the entrances- gopurams; were beautifully coloured .
•German Expressionism, used shaded bricks, starting from deep purple at the bottom and gradually changing
it to light grey at the top. This method creates an optical illusion which makes the building look taller and to
give the illusion of sunlight even on an over cast day.
62
THE
CITY
SHAPED

63
THE
CITY
SHAPED
CITY HALL,LOS ANGLLES,1926
1) HEIGHT-
3) APPROACH-
URBINO, ITALY, TWO DIFFERENT
VIEWS
2) SHAPE-
EIFFEL TOWER, STELL STRUCTURE
4) COLOR AND LIGHT-
FLORENCE CATHEDRAL,ITALY

URBAN ISSUES

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

What's hot

What's hot (20)

Similar to URBAN ISSUES

Similar to URBAN ISSUES (20)

Recently uploaded

Recently uploaded (20)

URBAN ISSUES