SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITIES

COURSE CODE: 3675

MSc SUSTAINABLE ENVIRONMENTAL DESIGN

Ar. Nazia Iftakhar, ED, H&N Sciences, AIOU

UNIT 6: DESIGN OF NEOGHBORHOODS
 Unit include:

 Traditional Concepts
 Size and Identity of Neighborhoods
 Social Identity and Home Zones
 Open and Closed Neighborhoods
 The Urban Continuum
 Shaping Neighborhoods
 The Open Spaces Network
INTRODUCTION
 Previously, it sets out the different ways in which
neighborhood form has been conceived in terms of
 identity,
 size,
 differentiation,
 density and
 access
 The objective is to assess the options at the level of
local planning.
TRADITIONAL CONCEPTS OF FORM
“Neighborhood is formed naturally from the daily
occupations of people, the distance it is convenient
for a housewife to walk to her daily shopping and,
particularly, the distance it is convenient for a child
to walk to school. He should not have a long walk
and he should not have to cross a main traffic
road. The planning of a neighborhood unit starts
from that.”

(Boyd et al, Homes for the People HMSO 1945)

TRADITIONAL CONCEPTS OF FORM
 The original concept in modern town planning can be
traced back to Ebenezer Howard’s ideas for the
internal structuring of towns around school catchments.
 Radburn layout, with residential enclaves giving
access to a segregated pedestrian network leading to
schools, shops and playgrounds without risk from
traffic.
 Later developed traffic management implications with
maximum traffic flows on residential streets within a
defined ‘environmental area’ being 300 passenger car
units.
 Ensuing discussion on neighborhood form focuses on
two issues, size and identity, which draw in all the
other design elements.
NEIGHBORHOODS SIZE
 The size of a neighborhood may be defined by
reference to population and/or access. The
catchment population required to support a primary
school and local center is one key criteria.
 However the size of neighborhood varies widely.
‘Transit oriented developments’ (TODs) in the US,
generate sufficient demand for a light rail station
 This range and variety gives the clarity in general
principles but justification for specific standards and
sizes is often obscure.
 But the problem of relying on district or township
centers is that trips by whatever mode are longer, and
the need to healthy walking activity is reduced.
NEIGHBORHOODS IDENTITY
 Creating local identity had long been a central theme
for urban designers.
 Studies of perception show the degree to which each
individual carries round their personalized image of
‘their’ neighborhood, depending on what they feel is
home terrain, and identified by landmarks.
 The main contrast of approach is perhaps between
those who believe that clear edges and physical
separation help neighborhood identity and those who
believe permeability between localities is vital, and the
city is a seamless web.
 It is not only the physical identity which is valued.
For some the potential for the local body politic is
critical
 SOCIAL IDENTITY & HOME ZONES
 The social identity of the local area - in terms of social
class and ethnic group - help to determine feelings of
security (or fear).
 Social balance within a neighborhood can be promoted
by reducing social exclusion and increase the efficiency
of resource use.
 The home-zone becomes the essential building block of
the town. Within it social diversity is consciously limited,
extraneous traffic excluded or calmed, and clear
physical identity established.
 The neighborhood is made up of a number of such
home-zones, and the town a mosaic.
SOCIAL IDENTITY & HOME ZONES
OPEN & CLOSED NEIGHBORHOODS
 The master plans created by the British new town
designers worked from the premise that
neighborhoods are stable and fixed. This assumption
sits uncomfortably with contemporary lifestyles and
economic restructuring.
 The isolation of the estate contributes to a downward
spiral as residents experience exclusion.
 The fixed, delimited, neighborhood also is ill-adapted
to the variation between facilities.
 Indeed it is likely that forcing catchment conformity
on the range of services will increase operating
costs for some, and threaten their local viability.
OPEN & CLOSED NEIGHBORHOODS
 Furthermore neighborhoods, and local services are
not static. The physical form of neighborhoods
needs to be able to respond to social and economic
change, not prejudice it or be prejudiced by it.
 The general lesson from the closed versus open
neighborhood question, as from the review of social
identity, is that planners cannot ‘buck the market, but
they can help shape it.
 The closed neighborhoods have a limited life
before they become out of joint with social and
economic needs. The open forms are more robust,
though involve environmental costs, and may still
have restrictions on catchment flexibility.
THE URBAN CONTINUUM
 The urban continuum has the major but unsung
advantage of allowing the very flexibility of catchment
size over time and space that the neat, stylized
neighborhoods of planning convention inhibit.
 Identifiable, named neighborhoods are bounded by
the high street or centered on it. These ‘fuzzy’
neighborhoods often merge into each other with no
clear edge but high permeability.
 So local high streets typically provide the social
meeting places between residential neighborhoods,
the place for exchange of goods and services but also
where the locality meets the town and connects with
the city.
THE URBAN CONTINUUM
 The high street is a series of activity generators. The
variety of uses along the them is reflected in variety of
built form and public space. They are organic structures
that can absorb a considerable amount of change over
time, responding to altered market conditions and
catchments.
 The essence of the high street is that it is bustling with
activity - the focus for a number of residential areas that
are placed by comparison. So the removal of traffic is
only appropriate where pedestrian activity is high and
the space limited.
 The environmental capacity criteria for shopping streets
should be the ability to cross the road without undue
delay, and the ability to converse at normal volumes -
admirably humane criteria
SHAPING NEIGHBORHOODS
 For urban planners is to realize the advantages of
traditional interconnected urban districts and high streets
without the accompanying disadvantages - principally
traffic dominance.
 Hook was perhaps the most innovative and ‘sustainable’
of UK mid-century new towns but sadly was never built.
 Peterborough’s new townships are at a more modest
density, so except at the district center do not generate
the level of local pedestrian activity envisaged in Hooks
inner town.
 The principle of planning high streets at the core of
urban districts or townships has the advantage over the
nucleated model of service centers in that it can provide
continuity between new and old areas.
SHAPING NEIGHBORHOODS
SHAPING NEIGHBORHOODS
SHAPING NEIGHBORHOODS
 Linearity is the key. Few recent developments in the UK
have adopted the principle of high streets.
 The absence of high street schemes is partly a reflection
of inertia and conservatism on the part of local
authorities, developers and designers, but also a matter
of development density and commercial viability.
 The viability of local services, even assuming pro-
pedestrian development schemes, is a more profound
problem. Typical UK suburban and North American
densities, are not sufficient to maintain the wide variety of
local services implied by the term high street.
 The local authorities and development agencies also
have to create a situation where public, private and
voluntary agencies will want to locate within a locality.
THE OPEN SPACES NETWORK
 Whereas pedestrian access and public transport routes
provide the structure for higher intensity development,
water courses and hill crests offer a logic to the
organization of open space.
 Landscape concepts have been influential in new
settlement design but not in urban planning generally.
Suburban open space increments have been provided on
a disaggregated and discontinuous pattern.
 The intimate relationship between natural land/drainage
systems and urban space makes for the uniqueness of
any place. The landscape is recognized as providing the
form within which a neighborhood may lie. Human activity
responds to and reflects the landscape that nurtures it,
and in its turn shapes the landscape itself.
THE OPEN SPACES NETWORK
 it is clearly difficult to retrofit existing urban areas, not
only because of the slow rate of change but because
of financial constraints and pressure on brownfield sites.
The pressure for
housing
development in-
town, on every spare
site, could be
managed by offering
opportunities for
intensification away
from the green
network
CELLULAR AND FUZZY NEIGHBORHOODS
 The traditional planning models treat the
neighborhood as a cell.
 Cellular neighborhoods come in three distinct forms.
The single cell model, The interlocked cell model (as
in Milton Keynes) and The cell cluster model,
illustrated by Harlow,
 The urban continuum pattern of older towns, with
linear high streets serving overlapping
neighborhoods and providing both local and
township services, offers an alternative to the cellular
model. Essentially neighborhoods in this context
have fuzzy edges (following the Peterborough idea).
CONCLUSION
 Residents may define different neighborhoods depending
on their personal location and associations.
 Even where there are recognizable boundaries (such as
railway lines or rivers) the fuzzy neighborhood model
emphasizes permeability.
 The diversity of home-zones creates a residential mosaic
combining, it is hoped, security with social inclusion.
 The high streets become the places where residents from
different neighborhoods can meet.
 The linear urban concentrations can be one strand (one
public transport route) or two strands wide, can be
looped or truncated, radial or orbital or grid based.