Land Use and Urban Design

The use of land for social activity and the use of land to shelter activity has led Zoning to believe that both are “land uses” that can be addressed with the same methods and language, but the use of land for compatible activity and the intensity of physical shelter constructed to protect occupant activity on land involves two separate languages. The first involves traditional legal identification and regulation of separate topics. The second involves the mathematical correlation of design specification topics and values to achieve a strategic planning objective.

Separation of activity on land involves the concept of compatibility. Separation of shelter for occupant activity on land involves levels of physical intensity that produce spatial context, but intensity and context have not had adequate planning and design definition.

It was possible to successfully argue that a policy permitting home locations adjacent to factory locations threatened the public health, safety, and welfare. This introduced the concept of compatible relationships. Master plans, zoning district plans, and lists of compatible activities per zone followed to resolve the many potential conflicts involved.

Density and the floor area ratio were used for definitions of physical intensity and context. Both measure results but give inadequate design direction. The results have often been sprawl or excessive intensity because density and floor area ratio values do not replace the many design specification topics, values, and building design category decisions that must be correlated to define shelter intensity and context options for any given land area and activity group. These specification decisions cannot be led as separate topics because they do not act independently. The values involved must be comprehensively correlated to produce accurate shelter capacity, intensity and context options for consistent leadership direction.

Shelter capacity, intensity, and intrusion topics and values have not been defined, measured, correlated, or evaluated to build design knowledge over generations, but this is the knowledge that can consistently lead to the quality of life implied by the phrase, “to protect the public health, safety, and welfare”. This phrase should include, “…within geographic limits defined to protect both our quality and source of life” in my opinion.

I have discussed the building design categories, specification topics, topic values, and architectural algorithms that produce shelter capacity, intensity, and context options for occupant activity on any given buildable land area in many previous essays. I have referred to it as shelter capacity evaluation, and earlier as development capacity calculation, but won’t repeat myself here. I would simply like to argue that the intensity and context of urban spaces/places formed by quantity combinations of building mass, parking, pavement, unpaved open space, and movement affects our physical, social, psychological, environmental, and economic quality of life.

The context of places can be measured, evaluated, and predicted with the quantitative language of shelter capacity evaluation. These places are occupied by activity options that have public and private financial implications. The correlation of context and activity within the zones of a city has public economic implications that determine a city’s financial stability, but context has been an accidental result of private investment intent. Public revenue has not been a private investment priority.

The context topic has been called urban design. It deserves measurement and evaluation to build the knowledge needed to predict, defend, and lead the second generation of decisions that will define the external places and spaces we inhabit and can afford to maintain. The context quantities that result will be symbolized by the final appearance introduced and debated by the language of fine art. ?

Walter M. Hosack: November 2024