Urban Design: Lecture Notes

PPPM
410/510

Urban Design:
Lecture Notes

[Home | Overview | Syllabus | Schedule | Links]

"Quality-oriented techniques are seldom considered to be "growth management" Porter, pg 147.

Why do we have cities?

Scale economics--exist at any level of output at which, with input prices constant, long-run average total cost is falling. Why? Proximity to materials, labor, resources, etc.

Agglomeration economies--advantages of spatial concentration resulting from scale economies, sometimes refers to individual firms, but can refer to urban areas

Comparative advantage--some regions are naturally better at producing some things than others

Are there limits to urban size?

Urban economic theory holds there are, because:

Demand for products in which the area specializes--i.e., exports
Limit to the natural resources that provide its comparative advantage
Entire area subject to diminishing returns after a certain point--will output double if population doubles?

Types of design:

Object design—of a single object, or a standardized series of them (i.e., a building or bridge)
Project design—of a defined geographic area, however large, in where there is client, a program, a schedule, and control over significant aspects of form (i.e., a housing project or a campus)
System design—of a functionally connected set of objects which may extend over large areas but do not make a complete environment (i.e., an arterial street system or a lighting system)
City or environmental design—of the general spatial arrangement of activities and objects over an extended area, that has multiple clients, an indeterminate program, partial control, and no completion

Urban Design Theory: Four traditions of urban design

Monumental city design
Garden suburbs and garden cities
Modernist city design
The megastructure, or city as building

Development patterns

Traditional centrally-oriented urban area
"Sector" model
"Satellite city"
Multi-nodal