ARPL02

FUNDAMENTALS OF URBAN
DESIGN AND COMMUNITY
ARCHITECTURE

Presented by:
Ar. Jahnelle G. de Jose, uap
URBAN DESIGN
CONTROLS

ARPL02 – Urban Design & Community Architecture

URBAN DESIGN CONTROLS
Land Use Planning and Zoning

❑ Defined as the legal regulation of the use of land

❑ Allocates types of uses based on growth patterns
❑ An application of the police power for the protection of public health,
welfare and safety
❑ Generally, land uses conform to a regular predictable pattern

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URBAN DESIGN CONTROLS
Incentive Zoning

❑ Relaxes certain restrictions if builders and developers provide

desirable public features and amenities such as plazas, arcades, and
other open spaces

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URBAN DESIGN CONTROLS
Cluster Zoning

❑ Creating special zoning policies and regulations for medium to large

sized controlled developments

ARPL02 – Urban Design & Community Architecture

General Land Use Color Codes

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Urban Land Use Color Codes

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URBAN DESIGN
GUIDELINES

ARPL02 – Urban Design & Community Architecture

URBAN DESIGN GUIDELINES
❑ Urban design guidelines are frequently used in smaller sized urban
developments such as residential villages, tourist zones, planned unit
developments, historical districts, etc.
❑ The basic objective of these guidelines is to ensure a relatively
uniform urban character in such localities, even if sections are
designed separately by different architects and planners
❑ Urban design guidelines are also formulated for safety and security, to
prevent overlay contrasting structures adjacent to one another, to
establish open spaces, to retain a certain feel or atmosphere
associated with the area, and so on.

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URBAN DESIGN GUIDELINES
❑ Some urban design guidelines include regulations on:
-building heights
-building bulk
-setbacks
-architectural character
-size of roads, sidewalk, etc.

ARPL02 – Urban Design & Community Architecture

URBAN DESIGN GUIDELINES
1. Public Squares
❑ The center of public squares should be kept free of clutter
❑ Public squares should be enclosed entities
❑ The size and shape of public square are critical
❑ Irregularity is acceptable in the configuration of a public square, and
does not necessarily negate visual order
❑ A continuum of interlinked social spaces enhances the part as well as
the whole
❑ The ideal street should form a completely enclosed unit visually

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URBAN DESIGN GUIDELINES
2. Visual Closure and Visual Order
❑ An axis can be established by a symmetrical or asymmetrical
arrangement of forms and spaces
❑ There are two types of symmetry: bilateral symmetry which is the
balanced arrangement of two equivalent elements about a common
axis; and radical symmetry which consists of equivalent elements
balanced about two or more axes that intersect at a central point
❑ A form or space can be made significant by being made visibly unique,
by endowing the shape either with exceptional size, shape, or location
or a composite form of these principles

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URBAN DESIGN GUIDELINES
2. Visual Closure and Visual Order
❑ Rhythm employs the fundamental principle of repetition, of which the
simplest form is linear. Alternatives include grouping of elements by
size, shape, or detail
❑ Transformation allows the systematic manipulation of typical,
appropriate, architectural model, geometric form or shape, through a
discreet evolution to respond to the specific context of the design at
hand

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URBAN DESIGN GUIDELINES
2. Visual Closure and Visual Order
❑ A datum is a device in the form of a line, plane, or volume which has
the property of organizing a random pattern of elements through its
regularity, continuity and constant presence. As a device, a datum
must have specific scale to perform its function effectively

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URBAN DESIGN GUIDELINES
3. Planned Outdoor Amenities
❑ Seating, fountains, shelters, steps, kiosks, bandstand
❑ Sports fields, play equipment and landscaped parks
❑ Trials along natural features
❑ Botanical gardens and sanctuaries

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URBAN DESIGN GUIDELINES
3. Planned Outdoor Amenities (Formal Recreation Space)
❑ The location of the recreation facilities should be as central as
possible to the areas which the spaces serve, though this need not be
the most valuable area of the project site
❑ Access will be important, but a location behind commercial, industrial
or public facility areas would be suitable, provided that they are safe
areas
❑ Areas for formal games should be reasonably level and of suitable
surface

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URBAN DESIGN GUIDELINES
3. Planned Outdoor Amenities (Informal Recreation Space)
❑ Locating a large number of small open spaces relating to housing
clusters or local access roads will prove to be most economical and
socially acceptable, particularly for the supervision of children
from their homes
❑ Hardened areas may be desirable for older children, though these
should be located so that activity does not affect other users of the
social space

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URBAN DESIGN GUIDELINES
3. Planned Outdoor Amenities (Maintenance of Outdoor Amenities)
❑ Design proposals should always be sustainable
❑ Private maintenance of garden areas in front of houses. This concept
could include the house owner’s responsibility for the maintenance of
the immediate street trees
❑ Maintenance of sports areas by clubs
❑ Maintenance of small public gardens by commercial establishments,
e.g. restaurants

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URBAN DESIGN GUIDELINES
4. Places to Linger
❑ Locate seating parallel to pedestrian flows; on wider streets with
active uses on both sides, arrange seating down the center of the
space
❑ In squares establish desire lines for pedestrian flows and then
arrange seating to take advantage of the people watching potential of
these positions. Some people like to stand or lean in similar locations
❑ Plan choices for seating configuration to encourage both panned and
spontaneous social encounter
❑ Avoid locating seats lower than their surrounding, as this reduces
their potential prospect onto the social space

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URBAN DESIGN GUIDELINES
5. Pedestrian Density in a Public Area
❑ 15 square meters per person in a public square is considered lively; at
50 square meters per person that same square can be regarded as
dead (Alexander et al. 1977)

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URBAN DESIGN GUIDELINES
6. Pedestrians-only Streets
❑ Vehicular traffic must be excluded
❑ Buildings along the pedestrian street must be planned in a way which
as nearly as possible eliminates indoor staircases, corridors, and
lobbies, and leaves most circulation outdoors (Alexander et al. 1977)
❑ Another aspect is that the most comfortable pedestrian streets are
those where the width of the street does not exceed the height of the
surrounding buildings
❑ Parked cars are themselves one of the most effective barriers
between pedestrians and moving vehicles

ARPL02 – Urban Design & Community Architecture

URBAN DESIGN GUIDELINES
7. Residential/Public Interface
❑ The clarity of the interface prevents spill over of public activities onto
private space
❑ The private/public interface needs to provide a sense of enclosure,
scale, continuity and protection as it is largely instrumental in
determining how successfully the public space is used
❑ The way in which the interface is, and the less complex its definition,
the less private it becomes. When the private space is very small, and
therefore very close to the street, the interface could become
an ineffective device for defining privacy

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URBAN DESIGN GUIDELINES
8. Pollution-free Spaces
❑ In flat, open terrain under calm conditions, air pollution levels are
highest adjacent to the road and decrease with distance from it
❑ Street canyons lined with buildings of similar height, oriented
perpendicular to the wind direction, tend to have poorer circulation
than street canyons that are lined with buildings of different heights
and interspersed with open areas. To promote air circulation in street
canyons, step buildings back from the street, increase opening and
vary buildings heights

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URBAN DESIGN GUIDELINES
8. Pollution-free Spaces
❑ Wind shadows on the lee of the buildings reduce air circulation and
provide a place for polluting emissions to build up. To reduce wind
shadow at the base of a building, buildings designed with
a pyramidical shape or openings are more likely to permit air flow
❑ The more enclosed the space the more likely the accumulation of
pollutants. To promote air circulation, streetside arcade or canopies
designed to be high rather than low would ameliorate the situation

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URBAN DESIGN GUIDELINES
8. Pollution-free Spaces
❑ To reduce the effects of pollution, create planted highway
embankments and woodland growth landscape to help filter
pollutants from the air and the dispersion there of. It is desirable to
locate pollution sensitive uses away from highway emission zones.
Green spaces within the urban setting are dust reducing and have the
property of assisting towards cleaner air by a process of carbon
dioxide fixation through photosynthesis.

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URBAN DESIGN GUIDELINES
9. A Sense of Neighborhood
❑ Perception play a significant part and optimum population threshold is
an important factor towards effective social networking and bonding
❑ People identify with neighborhoods which have extremely small
populations
❑ Major road through a neighborhood destroys the potential for bonding

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URBAN DESIGN GUIDELINES
10. Clusters
❑ The clusters seem to work best if they have between them eight to
twelve houses each
❑ More than twelve houses and the balance is strained
❑ In all cases common land which is shared by the clusters is an
essential ingredient
❑ Ownership is essential for the clustering pattern to take hold, and
shared ownership of the social space reinforces the common interest

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URBAN DESIGN GUIDELINES
11. Common Land
❑ Make it possible for people to feel comfortable outside their buildings
and their private territory
❑ Common land acts as a meeting place for people
❑ There should be enough common land to be useful and to
accommodate children’s games and small gatherings
❑ Common land needed in a neighborhood is in the order of twenty
five per cent of the land held privately
❑ The automobile should on no account be allowed to dominate this
land

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URBAN DESIGN GUIDELINES
12. Active Building Fronts
❑ Locate as many entrances as possible in such positions that comings
and goings are directly visible from the public space
❑ Encourage any compatible uses within the buildings to spill out into
the public area. This principle applies to uses mainly on the ground
and first storey.
❑ Even if there are no specific uses, most buildings contain activities
which can contribute to the animation of the public space itself

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URBAN DESIGN GUIDELINES
12. Active Building Fronts
❑ It is still necessary to preserve the privacy of the indoor activity, so
that the users will not feel the need to screen themselves totally from
the public space. Privacy can be achieved by horizontal distance, a
change in level and/or a combination of both
❑ The usefulness of the edge is important for people watching and is
greatly increased by the provision of places to sit

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URBAN DESIGN GUIDELINES
13. Building Edge Design
❑ With projection on pedestrian level in the form of an arcade or a solid
structure. This device creates a pleasing human scale aside from the
real body of the building
❑ A free standing low building the placed in front of a higher one
❑ Halfway up the building the section is set back by half its depth; this
allows for extensive floors on the lower level and apartments with
access to balconies on the upper level
❑ Top floor set back reducing the height of the building visible to the
eye

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URBAN DESIGN GUIDELINES
13. Building Edge Design
❑ Sloping elevation with vertical lower and upper floors
❑ Sloping elevation with protruding ground floor
❑ Stepped section by floor
❑ Free standing ground floor
❑ Standard section with moat
❑ Building with ground floor arcade
❑ Sloping ground in front of building
❑ Buildings atop very shallow inclines
❑ Buildings with arcade along the frontage above ground level and
access to pedestrian level

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URBAN DESIGN GUIDELINES
13. Building Edge Design
❑ Building with balcony accessed from the public place
❑ Inverted stepped section.
❑ Buildings with pitched projections
❑ Building with free standing towers

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URBAN DESIGN GUIDELINES
14. Movement Corridors and Destinations
❑ Private social space
❑ Open space between buildings
❑ The buildings edge to the street
❑ The neighborhood street or buildings
❑ The street corner
❑ The main street
❑ The primary street system
❑ Natural features

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URBAN DESIGN GUIDELINES
15. Sense of Community
❑ Design elements can reinforce a collective sense of community by
means of physical separations, the placement of local centers, the
diversion of main traffic ways, the exploitation of irregularities,
or terrain and other differentiations of a physical nature
❑ In a residential neighborhood, the use of main gateways giving entry
to clusters is device creating a psychological shield against
overexposure to public activity. The gateways should be solid
elements, visible from every line of approach, and could even be a
hole through a building.

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URBAN DESIGN GUIDELINES
16. Optimum Norms for Shared Streets
❑ Two way traffic should be encouraged through the area, to reduce
vehicle speed
❑ The section should be kept narrow with occasional widening
❑ Raised objects should not be higher than 750 mm, to allow good
visibility to motorists in case of play activity on the street
❑ Adequate parking of the on street type for residents and provides
better play spaces when the absence of parked cars liberates the
space

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URBAN DESIGN GUIDELINES
17. Movement Corridors
❑ Linear configurations which are a primary organizing elements
catering for cars, cycles, people and services. As part of a movement
system they are not confined to a straight line, but could be slow
or tight curvilinear; they could also be segmented depending on
whether they are planned strictly for cars or for people
❑ Grid systems create nodes at regular intersections and yield square or
rectangular fields of space
❑ Network configuration is in essence a random system connecting
specific important nodal points in urban space

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URBAN DESIGN GUIDELINES
17. Movement Corridors
❑ Radial systems are capable of providing efficient circulation, providing
they are supplemented by concentric circulation and depending on
other factors, including topography
❑ Spiral configurations are continuous systems originating from a
central point and becoming increasingly distant from it. Unless
planned to create a specific spatial experience, the choice of such a
system would probably be dictated by topography

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URBAN DESIGN GUIDELINES
17. Movement Corridors
❑ Composite configurations are more common than the preceding pure
forms, and the movement systems of most towns have evolved
organically determined desire lines. The resultant richness of
spatial diversity at the intersections of a composite configuration can
be well exploited for social and economic vitality

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URBAN DESIGN GUIDELINES
18. Sustainable Density Options
❑ The integrated design of residential environments for the more
productive use of designated space. Through careful design, greater
proportions of streets can, for example, be integrated into the housing
environment as community social space
❑ Local shopping and commercial facilities could equally, through more
open ended zoning practices, be integrated into the residential
environment in order to obviate the need for setting aside
designated zones for these facilities. The practice of including shopping
at ground level with housing above would be a traditional application of
this option and could bring significant benefits
❑ Alternative housing options should be explored
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URBAN DESIGN GUIDELINES
19. Courtyard House
❑ High densities can be achieved while still affording ready access to
personal outdoor space
❑ The spaces encapsulated within the built form lend themselves to
being easy integrated into a tight urban fabric yet provide choices of
community interaction, privacy, defensibility and surveillance of a
neighborhood by residents

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URBAN DESIGN GUIDELINES
20. Meaningful Urban Space
❑ The Figure ground theory: Founded on the relative land coverage of
buildings as solid mass (figure) to open voids (ground), this theory
highlight the unity of opposites; The object is to manipulate
the relationships by adding to or subtracting from or changing the
physical geometry of the pattern. The figure ground theory is a
graphic tool for illustrating and managing mass-void relationships; it
is at two dimension abstraction in plan view that clarifies
the structure and order of order of urban spaces

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URBAN DESIGN GUIDELINES
20. Meaningful Urban Space
❑ The Linkage theory: Derived from lines formed by streets, pedestrian,
ways, linear open spaces and efficiency of the infrastructure take
precedence over patterns of defined outdoor space
❑ The Place theory: Goes beyond the previous two theories in that it
adds the components of human needs within their cultural, historical
and natural contexts. The unique forms and details of a
places indigenous setting will add richness.

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URBAN ECOLOGICAL
PROCESSES

ARPL02 – Urban Design & Community Architecture

URBAN ECOLOGICAL PROCESSES
INVASION

❑ A type of urban ecological process defined as the entrance of a new

population and/ or facilities in an already occupied areas.

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URBAN ECOLOGICAL PROCESSES
BLOCK-BOOSTING

❑ “Forcing” the old population out of the area because of social and
racial differences

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URBAN ECOLOGICAL PROCESSES
CENTRALIZATION

❑ An urban ecological process in city land use patterning referring to an

increase in population at a certain geographic center

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URBAN ECOLOGICAL PROCESSES
GENTRIFICATION

❑ Improving the physical setup and consequently affecting the market

for previously run-down areas

ARPL02 – Urban Design & Community Architecture