Urban Density

Può la densità essere lo strumento analitico di interpretazione dei fenomeni urbani e contemporaneamente un parametro progettuale di prefigurazione dello spazio architettonico? La densità nelle sue diverse accezioni e unità di misura, costituisce un nodo di grande rilevanza per l'interpretazione dei fenomeni urbani e degli spazi architettonici. Incoraggia una riconciliazione dello sguardo quantitativo con quello mirato alla lettura qualitativa, riavvicina discipline disgraziatamente disgiunte nell'attuale pratica, suggerisce mezzi e stili di vita che sono alla base del nostro habitat. Ciò che infatti ha da sempre caratterizzato la città non è solo la sua dimensione ed il numero degli abitanti, ma un secondo fattore fondamentale: la densità appunto, o meglio un valore di densità minimo in grado di produrre divisione del lavoro, varietà di funzioni e attività, complessità della struttura sociale. L'architettura progetta distanze oltrechè volumi, la densità ne è quindi un parametro centrale; l'urbanistica e la progettazione urbana, utilizzando il calcolo della densità come livello minimo di pianificazione, dovranno tendere a configurare in futuro le città, influenzandone gli aspetti non solo numerici, ma anche tipologici, morfologici e spaziali. Riscattato dalla computistica, il fattore densità, si trasforma allora in una variabile urbana in grado di definire la forma attuale della città, divenendone strumento di misurazione e di progetto.

Contemporary cities experience poor urban environment conditions. High densities have resulted in the genesis of the Heat Island effect that under the undeniable climate change will only get intensified. Reducing the ambient temperatures and improving the microclimate inside the urban fabric appears to be urgent. This paper examines the parameters affecting the urban microclimate. Through the analysis of a typical urban block and the process of fieldwork in the city centre of Thessaloniki, urban geometrical characteristics and environmental conditions are identified. Possible design guidelines aiming to rehabilitate the urban block are also evaluated.

Gandhi and Architecture: A Time for Low-Cost Housing chronicles the emergence of a low-cost, low-rise housing architecture that conforms to M.K. Gandhi’s religious need to establish finite boundaries for everyday actions; finitude in turn defines Gandhi’s conservative, exclusionary conception of religiosity.  Drawing from archival and field materials, the book begins with an exploration of Gandhi’s religiosity of relinquishment and the British Spiritualist, Madeline Slade’s creation of his low-cost hut, Adi Niwas, in the village of Segaon in the 1930s. Adi Niwas inaugurates a low-cost housing architecture of finitude founded on the near-simultaneous but heterogeneous conservative Gandhian ideals of pursuing self-sacrifice, and rendering the pursuit of self-sacrifice legible  as the practice of varnashramadharma.
At a considerable remove from Gandhi's religious conservatism, successive generations in post-colonial India have reimagined a secular necessity for this Gandhian low-cost housing architecture of finitude. In the early 1950s era of mass housing for post-partition refugees from Pakistan, the making of a low-cost housing architecture was premised on the necessity of responding to economic concerns and to an emerging demographic mandate. In the 1970s, during the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries crisis, it was premised on the rise of urban and climatological necessities. More recently, in the late 1990s and early 2000s, its reception has been premised on the emergence of language-based identitarianism in Wardha, Maharashtra. Each of these moments of necessity reveals the enduring present of a Gandhian low-cost housing architecture of finitude and also the need to emancipate Gandhian finitude from Gandhi's own exclusions.
This volume is a critical intervention in the philosophy of architectural history. Drawing eclectically from science and technology studies, political science, housing studies, urban studies, religious studies and anthropology, this richly illustrated volume will be of great interest to students and researchers of architecture and design, housing, history, sociology, economics, Gandhian studies, urban studies and development studies.

With the rise of urbanisation across the world, cities have pushed their way to the forefront of global socio-political and socio-economical change. Cities are also called as a force for change in the era marked by increasing impact of human actions on Earth (Grimm et al., 2008). In this globally changing environment, many argue that the future of cities has to be consciously redirected toward better consumption of resources, toward enhancing social cohesion and toward making sustainability a framework of evolution (Hall and Pfeiffer, 2013). These arguments predominately have noted that manifesting change requires building a closer connection between citizens and the city itself. In pursuit of such goal, building a better connection between people and city, some scholars began to question the extent to which cities' size can contribute to building better cities. Better in this argument refers to better consumption of resources, enhanced connectivity between cities' elements, and improved social cohesion. In search for a better urban future it is inevitable to explore, ponder and interrogate ways in which cities are built because most of the cities across the world are exposed to the increasing changes of climatic patterns and thus are in the consequent need of introducing adaptation methods and enhancing urban resilience. Envisioning of a novel future for urban systems, the literature of urban change (Hunt and Watkiss, 2011), future of urbanisation, urban sustainability and adaptation (Change, 2014) is mainly categorised in two directions. The first argument for rethinking future of cities is focused on the need for adaptation in the cities that are growing with a rapid race aka big cities such as New York, Dubai, Johannesburg. The second form of the need for urban adaptation is manifesting itself in the relationship between cities' scale, size and its impact on urban sustainability. Following the second trend, impact of cities' size and other physical characteristics such as density and population level on sustainability and in predicting a viable future scenario of urban growth, Kunstler (2012) speculates the following: " … I see that cities getting 'smaller and denser, with fewer people, and lower, with the skyscraper obsolete, travel greatly reduced, and the rural edge growing more distinct (Kunstler, 2012) " .

RESUMO O tema da presente pesquisa é a influência da densidade urbana no processo de desenvolvimento urbano, tendo como estudo de caso a cidade de Cascavel/PR. Partindo do seguinte problema: −Pode o processo de desenvolvimento urbano ser impactado pela densidade urbana?, o objetivo do trabalho foi verificar como a densidade urbana atua sobre o processo de desenvolvimento da cidade de Cascavel. A hipótese levantada foi que a baixa densidade urbana possivelmente prejudique o desenvolvimento. Os métodos utilizados para a estruturação do trabalho foram: método indutivo e método monográfico, que, juntos, a partir de revisões bibliográficas, apresentaram conceitos de densidade urbana e de desenvolvimento urbano de maneira a fundamentar as análises, feitas a partir do método quali-quantitativo. Esse procedimento permitiu o cruzamento das conclusões assegurando que os dados não sejam produtos de uma situação particular, quantificando-os e qualificando os fatos observados na pesquisa. Os objetivos da pesquisa foram atingidos. PALAVRAS-CHAVE: Densidade urbana. Desenvolvimento urbano. Planejamento urbano. Cascavel/PR. ABSTRACT The theme of the present research is the influence of urban density on the urban development process, having as a case of study the city Cascavel in Paraná state, Brazil. Starting from the problem:-Can the process of urban development be impacted by urban density?, the main objective of the study was to verify how the urban density acts on the development process of the city of Cascavel. The hypothesis raised was that the low urban density possibly impairs development. The methods used for the structuring of the work were: inductive method and monographic method which, together, based on bibliographical reviews, presented concepts of urban density and urban development in order to base the analyzes, based on the qualitative-quantitative method. This procedure allowed the conclusions to be crossed, ensuring that the data are not products of a particular situation, quantifying them and qualifying the facts observed in the research. The objectives of the research were achieved.

DESCRIPTION Like all species, Cities, worthy of this title, share a common "Genome", such that distinguishes them from other forms of human habitation such as "Plan Voisin", Brasilia, Milton Keynes and even well intentioned Poundbury.

Urban areas are considered as the integrated systems which are consisted of structures, environment and people, as well as they are holding the socio-economic activities that constitute the fundamentals of the everyday life. Providing the integration of the systems, which constitute the urban areas is significant in the sense
that providing the maintenance of the daily life. In this context, the places, where aforesaid socioeconomic activities going on are the components of the built environment in the urban areas. Urban planning within this sense is conceived as the most important tool, which shape the components of the urban built environment.
Land use, density and neighbourhood design decisions related with the urban space have a crucial role in structuring the built environment where we are living in and the built environment has the ability of directly affecting the daily life of its inhabitants.
In order to determine these effects, it is required to measure the components, which shape the built environment. In this context, a method on the neighbourhood unit scale has been proposed to enable researchers to analyse numerically the built environment within the scope of land use diversity, density situation and whether the certain neighbourhood design criteria are provided, which are the results of the planning decisions related with land use, density and neighbourhood design, respectively. This proposed method could be applied to different neighbourhoods, by
considering various sub-criteria. Hereby, existing situation of the built environment, in the context of land use diversity, density and neighbourhood design could be analysed numerically. Therefore, it would be possible to determine whether there is a correlation among the obtained results with the travel behaviour, medical condition (as obesity, mental health etc.), household residential choice, sense of community and place attachment etc. of the inhabitants. As well, it would be possible to confirm if there is a
relation between the results of the planning decisions in the sense of land use, density and neighbourhood design characteristics of the built environment with social, environmental and economical sustainability.

Keywords: Mixed land use; neighborhood unit design; planning decisions;
built environment; density

The GIS-based Time model of Gothenburg aims to map the process of urban development in Gothenburg since 1960 and in particular document the changes in the spatial form of the city - streets, buildings and plots - through time. Major steps have in recent decades been taken when it comes to understanding how cities work. Essential is the change from understanding cities as locations to understanding them as flows (Batty 2013)1. In principle this means that we need to understand locations (or places) as defined by flows (or different forms of traffic), rather than locations only served by flows. This implies that we need to understand the built form and spatial structure of cities as a system, that by shaping flows creates a series of places with very specific relations to all other places in the city, which also give them very specific performative potentials. It also implies the rather fascinating notion that what happens in one place is dependent on its relation to all other places (Hillier 1996)2. Hence, to understand the individual place, we need a model of the city as a whole.

Extensive research in this direction has taken place in recent years, that has also spilled over to urban design practice, not least in Sweden, where the idea that to understand the part you need to understand the whole is starting to be established. With the GIS-based Time model for Gothenburg that we present here, we address the next challenge. Place is not only something defined by its spatial relation to all other places in its system, but also by its history, or its evolution over time. Since the built form of the city changes over time, often by cities growing but at times also by cities shrinking, the spatial relation between places changes over time. If cities tend to grow, and most often by extending their periphery, it means that most places get a more central location over time. If this is a general tendency, it does not mean that all places increase their centrality to an equal degree. Depending on the structure of the individual city’s spatial form, different places become more centrally located to different degrees as well as their relative distance to other places changes to different degrees. The even more fascinating notion then becomes apparent; places move over time! To capture, study and understand this, we need a "time model".

The GIS-based time model of Gothenburg consists of:
• 12 GIS-layers of the street network, from 1960 to 2015, in 5-year intervals
• 12 GIS-layers of the buildings from 1960 to 2015, in 5-year intervals
• 12 GIS- layers of the plots from1960 to 2015, in 5-year intervals

In the  GIS-based Time model, for every time-frame, the combination of the three fundamental components of spatial form, that is streets, plots and buildings, provides a consistent description of the built environment at that particular time. The evolution of three components can be studied individually, where one could for example analyze the changing patterns of street centrality over time by focusing on the street network; or, the densification processes by focusing on the buildings; or, the expansion of the city by way of occupying more buildable land, by focusing on plots. The combined snapshots of street centrality, density and land division can provide insightful observations about the spatial form of the city at each time-frame; for example, the patterns of spatial segregation, the distribution of urban density or the patterns of sprawl. The observation of how the interrelated layers of spatial form together evolved and transformed through time can provide a more complete image of the patterns of urban growth in the city.

The time model was created following the principles of the model of spatial form of the city, as developed by the Spatial Morphology Group (SMoG) at Chalmers University of Technology, within the three-year research project ‘International Spatial Morphology Lab (SMoL)’

The GIS-layers will be made available for download from SND (Swedish National Data Service) within 2020.

1. Batty, M. (2013), The New Science of Cities, Cambridge: MIT Press.
2. Hillier, B., (1996), Space Is the Machine. Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press

As research on the correlation between urban design and environmental performance is still lacking, the following long-standing question still stands-How far can we densify urban districts without sacrificing their energy balance and indoor environmental quality? This question served as the starting point for a parametric typological study conducted at the block scale in the context of Tel Aviv, with the overall aim of promoting performance driven design of Mediterranean urban environments. Dynamic input parameters included fenestration ratio, aspect ratios and floor area ratios of 5 different building typologies in both office and residential land uses. Environmental outputs included energy cooling loads, spatial daylight autonomy and the monthly average load match between energy demand and photovoltaic energy supply. The courtyard typology was found to achieve the best performance in terms of monthly Load Match, however mostly in residential uses of lower density. Although the high-rise typology offered the best daylight conditions, it recorded the worse performance in terms of energy balance and energy cooling demand. Results demonstrate the potential of a parametric typological workflow to effectively indicate the tradeoffs between single building and urban scale design considerations. This potential could be harnessed to assess the environmental feasibility of net zero energy typologies in Mediterranean climates and will be used for district energy studies as part of future work.

La perspective de construction d'un million de logements en Algérie d'ici 2009 interpelle les urbanistes et les architectes à plus d'un titre. En admettant un TOL moyen de l'ordre de 5 à 6 personnes par logement, nous allons concevoir ainsi des lieux d'accueil pour environ 5 à 6 millions d'habitants. Ce nombre équivaut à l'érection de deux métropoles de la taille d'Alger, ou de 25 villes moyennes de 200-300.000, ou encore de 60 villes de 80-100.000 habitants. Tâche difficile en absence des moyens adéquats et des méthodologies d'action performantes, quasi irréaliste dans un laps de temps aussi court. Au-delà des questions qui se posent quant à leur répartition spatiale, au mode de leur intégration dans l'armature urbaine (par extension des périmètres existants, par création des villes nouvelles, par renouvellement urbain avec récupération des friches et des poches foncières libres ?), à la mixité des fonctions et la dynamique économique que ces ensembles doivent enclencher, la problématique de la typologie des tissus urbains à créer reste entière. La densité résidentielle moyenne est un indicateur important de typologie de l'habitat et doit être réfléchie en fonction des contraintes tous types confondus et des usages locaux, mais aussi en fonction de la capacité de charge des sites d'implantation des ensembles, qui doit garantir un certain degré de qualité de vie et de confort urbain. Il nous parait intéressant dans ce cadre d'effectuer une brève rétrospective dans le passé de villes, afin de déceler le génie des ancêtres et de puiser dans la richesse de leur savoir…

This paper presents a central question: how to qualify the built urban form if it is mostly composed of private buildings and therefore hardly influenced by public urban designs, especially in consolidated urban fabric? To progress in this challenge, we propose a reflection on the current urban rules and the traditional planning, and their capacity to regulate the urban form in favor of the collective interest. Thus, in order to evolve in the potential of the urban control instruments for the activity of designing the city, we have adopted a new method, which regulates the urban form through density indicators. As a tool to actualize this method we chose to use the Esri CityEngineTM, a tridimensional modeling software specialized in urban environment generation from a set of predefined rules. Using the software, we modeled three scenarios: two descriptives ones, illustrating the existing situation and the neighborhood's current legislation application and a alternative design exercise from the elaboration of different sets of CityEngineTM rules and their application on buildable areas.

In the last decades, a tendency towards urban tissue densification has been observed to counteract the urban sprawl. Densification may be achieved through more compact built areas, preferring the vertical to the horizontal development of buildings but avoiding bulky high-rise building blocks. This strategy significantly affects several aspects of the microclimate and produces direct and indirect effects on human health and well-being. In this regard, air pollution and heat stress constitute two increasing threats to human health and well-being that need to be faced immediately. The involved phenomena are various, intertwined, and may lead to conflicting results. Hence, regenerating existing, well-structured, and stratified urban areas by densification is not an easy challenge. Urban ventilation may favor the mitigation of detrimental effects of air pollution and heat stress on human life. Therefore, a multidisciplinary methodology is presented for embedding urban ventilation perform...

«Apostamos por un crecimiento a lo ancho frente a un crecimiento a lo alto: nos equivocamos» dijo Patxi Lazcoz, alcalde de Vitoria-Gasteiz, el pasado 30 de marzo, en el I Encuentro Internacional de Urbanismo Sostenible celebrado en la capital alavesa. Sin entrar a investigar si se trata de un plural mayestático, de modestia o de autoría, merece la pena reflexionar sobre el supuesto error urbanístico denunciado, así como sobre el remedio que se pretende implantar para corregirlo. El problema aludido no debe ser reducido a la simple dicotomía entre crecimiento horizontal y crecimiento vertical. Hace falta discutir también acerca de los tres factores urbanísticos determinantes en la configuración espacial de la ciudad: la compacidad, la continuidad y la densidad. En el caso de Vitoria-Gasteiz, ahora toca entonar un mea culpa colectivo tras la reciente construcción de dos barrios enormes de nueva planta, Salburua y Zabalgana, en los que, al parecer, se ha optado por una escala urbana inadecuada. Los dos nuevos desarrollos iban a acoger a casi 22.000 viviendas en 610 hectáreas de suelo, lo que suponía una densidad bruta media de 36 viviendas/ha, mientras que diferentes urbanistas hacía tiempo que situaban el umbral mínimo para que una ciudad fuera desde todos los puntos de vista sostenible ―ecológicamente, económicamente y socialmente― entorno a las 65 viviendas/ha, ¡casi el doble! No pensemos, sin embargo, que Salburua y Zabalgana se planificaron y urbanizaron hace tiempo, antes de la irrupción del paradigma medioambiental en el panorama del urbanismo, no. Son dos barrios ideados muy a finales del siglo XX y desarrollados ya en el siglo XXI, cuando, además, ya se conocía en la ciudad la experiencia de un gran barrio nuevo de escala inadecuada: Lakua, el megadistrito construido en los años ochenta y noventa con una densidad bruta media de 35 viviendas/ha, como desarrollo modificado de un Plan ACTUR (Acciones Urbanísticas Urgentes), aprobado inicialmente en 1972 sobre una considerable superficie de 466 hectáreas. Si ya se sabía que Lakua era fría, poco densa y poco compacta, ¿cómo es que no se cuestionó radicalmente el modelo de ciudad sobre el que se basaba, a la hora de configurar Salburua y Zabalgana? La revisión crítica se realiza ahora, paradójicamente, cuando estos barrios ya están prácticamente finalizados. Y ya se han propuesto dos recetas para enmendar el error cometido: esponjamiento y redensificación, es decir, jibarización de la tipología de vivienda, y reparcelación de la reparcelación, en una operación de corrección urbanística que supondrá otras 7.000 nuevas viviendas tasadas entre los dos barrios, a las que hay que sumar las 3.000 de protección oficial ya añadidas en 2004. ¿Se trata esta redensificación de una medida realmente necesaria, o, por el contrario, se está usando la sostenibilidad como coartada para otorgar más y más licencias de edificación que saneen, como mínimo, las arcas municipales? Si ha existido un error urbanístico en Vitoria-Gasteiz, ¿no hay responsable alguno? ¿Las redensificaciones serán suficientes para arreglar el supuesto error? ¿No debe plantearse también una crítica seria de la morfología urbana adoptada?

RESUMO

O presente estudo é parte da pesquisa de doutorado em desenvolvimento pelo autor, cujo tema são os grandes blocos de habitação coletiva vertical construídos na América Latina ao
longo do século XX, que envolve suas origens, documentação das principais realizações, análise crítica de edifícios representativos e que, por fim, tentará avaliar sua pertinência nas cidades atuais.

A premissa envolvida na pesquisa é que tais edifícios, construídos no contexto das chamadas vanguardas de estado na América Latina, talvez sejam mais pertinentes no contexto das cidades atuais do que no momento em que se realizaram e, principalmente, do modo precipitado em que foram implantados. As críticas surgidas ao modelo nas décadas de 60 e 70 colocaram-no em crise em meio à crítica e também à população e levaram praticamente ao banimento de serem considerados como modelos habitacionais possíveis e até desejáveis em determinadas circunstâncias.

O presente trabalho apresenta o recorte adotado na pesquisa a partir da caracterização tipológica que embasa a seleção dos edifícios objeto do estudo, e se propõe a investigar em quais circunstâncias tais edifícios podem ser considerados como uma possibilidade desejável, tendo em vista o potencial de renovação de setores urbanos que apresentam no sentido da
dinamização de seu uso por milhares de pessoas, aumento da densidade e diversidade de usos – e consequentemente de acontecimentos – que podem ensejar, à parte, obviamente, o
fornecimento de moradia de qualidade como elemento central.
O tema tratado apresenta uma interseção importante com as questões de aumento de densidade urbana que colocam de forma recorrente nas discussões acerca das possibilidades
de estímulo e renovação de áreas urbanas degradadas em todo o mundo, questão também abordada no artigo.

Palavras-chave: Arquitetura, Habitação coletiva, América Latina, Densidade

Contemporary urban life has been shaped by two momentous shifts over the twentieth century: these shifts are increasing global mobility and increasing housing density, and both have required changes to personal approaches to dwelling. They have been pronounced in Australia, which has moved from an imperial‐colonial century to an Asian century in just over 100 years. Coupled with compact city policies in some regions, increased international migration has resulted in urban populations becoming more ethno‐culturally diverse, and encouraged urban residents to live in closer proximity to each other. Such trends are evident in the expansion of apartment living in cities. In the academic literature, each of these global shifts has been addressed separately, with much less attention being given to the two together. This oversight is especially the case in places where these changes are experienced most profoundly—private multi‐owned residential buildings that many and growing numbers of urban residents call home. The oversight is concerning because successful apartment living requires sustained participation and cooperation—how we dwell with each other matters. Without such forms of engagement and courtesies, apartment communities cannot run effectively or cohesively in terms of associational participation in management or of the everyday encounters of social life. Arguably, because global mobility is now so pronounced, engagement and civility require that people are respectfully observant of ethno‐diversity. Yet our review of the existing literature on multicultural encounters and participation in multi‐owned private apartment buildings suggests the need for more research on the intersections among global mobility, housing density, and apartment living. This paper begins to bridge this gap.

This paper presents the results of a research carried out in Belgium, France, Holland and United States about the destiny – foreseeable or possible – of heterotopias, a huge 19th and 20th centuries architectonic and cultural estate heritage.
The twentieth-century city was built through the addition of different settlements, which were strongly functionally defined and laid out. The heterotopias of deviation were built among the elements composing a “city of enclosures”.
The earth, beginning and ending of each thing, is saturated: even its underground is saturated and its layers have absorbed dross and wastes of all kinds. In metropolitan territories, there is a continuous production of waste.
To the larger and larger production of waste an answer is given by previsions that tend to consider re-cycling phases of different kind, flexible and long-lasting times and procedures, possibly first temporary and then permanent.
This research has helped defining a project proposed as an alternative to the II Stralcio Funzionale of the P.U.A. for the cemetery system of Poggioreale in Naples. The proposed alternative consists in extending the Parco Cimiteriale di Poggioreale into the former psychiatric asylum Leonardo Bianchi in Naples.
By adopting densifying, recycling, mixing functions as main criteria for a project related to a huge legacy of both material and immaterial kind of heritage, the “T’era Park” proposal aims to enhance the “notes from underground”.

The aim of the paper is to identify parameters that influence perceived urban density. Whilst it is standard for architects and planners to consider urban density, there is often no consideration of how individuals might perceive such density. We report the findings of a study in which participants rate photographs of urban scenes according to perceived urban density. The case study area is central Zurich, Switzerland. The images are analyzed according to six parameters: visibility, amount of buildings, street width, amount of sky, amount of green space, and amount of vehicles. We report the findings of where images were ranked along a scale from lowest to highest perceived urban density. Findings show that visibility alone is not enough to explain the rating of perceived urban density. The study is a first step towards reaching a definition of perceived urban density that can be applied to different urban contexts.

Car dependence is in decline in most developed cities, but its cause is still unclear as cities struggle with priorities in urban form and transport infrastructure. This paper draws conclusions from analysis of data in 26 cities over the last 40 years of the 20th century. Statistical modelling techniques are applied to urban transport and urban form data, while examining the influence of region, city archetype and individual fixed effects. Structural equation modelling is employed to address causation and understand the direct and indirect effects of selected parameters on per capita vehicle kilometres travelled (VKT). Findings suggest that, while location effects are important, transit service levels and urban density play a significant part in determining urban car use per capita, and causality does flow from these factors towards a city’s levels of private vehicle travel as well as the level ofthe provision of road capacity.

Urban density has often been considered one of the main conditions for the emergence of urban intensity, here understood as the potential for endless random and unpredictable interactions between heterogeneous individuals and activities. However, within the expanded territory of the contemporary metropolis, the rise of mobility and communication technology has brought about new possibilities for informal interaction and exchange beyond the traditional relationship of proximity. By combining a multi-scale approach with an understanding of everyday rhythms, the present paper explores: (1) how this unprecedented space-time condition enables the emergence of intensity across low density areas; and (2) the spatial conditions involved in this potential. Empirical research undertaken in a low density Italian area, situated 50 km South of Milan, provides material for illustrating the argument.

This article examines the changes in personal travel levels, urban density, and other land use patterns over the period 1901 to 1991 in large Australian cities. It is shown that urban density changes are not the direct cause of the observed
travel increases. Instead, the huge rise in travel convenience brought about largely by the shift from public transport to cars, best explains travel growth in the post-war era. Urban density, however, does affect travel convenience (especially average
travel speeds and ease of parking), and thus indirectly, travel levels.

Major steps have in recent decades been taken when it comes to understanding how cities work. Essential is the change from understanding cities as locations to understanding them as flows (Batty 2013)1. In principle this means that we need to understand locations (or places) as defined by flows (or different forms of traffic), rather than locations only served by flows. This implies that we need to understand the built form and spatial structure of cities as a system, that by shaping flows creates a series of places with very specific relations to all other places in the city, which also give them very specific performative potentials. It also implies the rather fascinating notion that what happens in one place is dependent on its relation to all other places (Hillier 1996)2. Hence, to understand the individual place, we need a model of the city as a whole. Extensive research in this direction has taken place in recent years, that has also spilled over to urban design practice, not ...

Recreational green spaces are associated with human thriving and well-being. During the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic a spotlight has been shed on the interconnection between access to these spaces, human well-being and social equity. Containment measures enacted in many cities effectively precluded people from reaching distant recreational areas during the pandemic and consequently, recreational areas close to home became particularly important. Urban density is often associated with building or population density with the assumption that if either parameter has a high value, the availability of open (green) space is low. Certain densities are associated with specific spatial qualities. Addressing challenges of sustainable development, a detailed evaluation of density is necessary to allow evidence-based arguments, planning and decision-making. In this study we develop a multi-scale analysis method for quantifying and assessing green infrastructures from settlement unit to building lev...

El litoral de la provincia de Alicante es una de las áreas costeras españolas más dinámicas en términos urbanísticos y turísticos. Durante las últimas décadas el desarrollo urbanístico ha conducido a la extensión de un modelo turístico-residencial en el sector costero, caracterizado por la proliferación de viviendas secundarias y tipologías urbanas de baja densidad, que ha tensionado el frágil equilibrio hídrico provincial. Sin embargo, desde mediados de la primera década del siglo XXI, la tendencia en el consumo urbano de agua ha sido regresiva. A partir de la elaboración de una base de datos sobre consumo urbano de agua en los municipios del litoral Mediterráneo, esta investigación supone una primera aproximación al estudio de los factores explicativos del consumo doméstico de agua en el litoral de Alicante para el periodo 2000-2014. A partir de un análisis descriptivo de varios factores urbano-turísticos, demográficos y económicos y su relación con los módulos de consumo per cápita a escala municipal, se concluye que las mayores diferencias en el consumo doméstico de agua se explican por el modelo urbano, la presencia de extranjeros procedentes de la Unión Europea y la proporción de viviendas secundarias.

The coastline of the province of Alicante is one of the most dynamic Spanish coastal areas in urban and tourist terms. During the last decades, urban development has led to the extension of a tourist-residential model in the coastal sector, characterized by the proliferation of secondary housing and low-density urban typologies, which has stressed the fragile provincial water balance. However, since the middle of the first decade of the 21st century, the trend in urban water consumption has been regressive. Based on the development of a database on urban water consumption in the Mediterranean coastline municipalities, this research is a first approach to the study of the explanatory factors of the domestic water consumption in the coastline of Alicante for the period 2000-2014. Based on a descriptive analysis of several urban-tourist, demographic and economic factors and their relationship with the per capita water consumption at municipal level, it is concluded that the greatest differences in domestic water consumption are explained by the urban model, presence of foreigners from the European Union and the proportion of secondary housing.

This work aims to advance knowledge about the high-rise large-scale housing complexes built in Latin America throughout the twentieth century: its origins, relation with contemporary cities, mapping of the the most representative works and the comparative critical analysis of some of these works. The central hypothesis of the thesis is that such buildings are more suited to the current Latin American cities than at the time they were built, being needed that their present conditions become better known. To examine the proposed hypothesis were selected thirty works of reference, designed from 1945 to 1979 and set in nine countries in Latin America where this type of housing was adopted: Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Mexico, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela. The work has been divided into two main parts. Part One brings an approach from the historical and historiographical points of view of the subject of high-rise large-scale housing, tracing its origins from Europe, its hybridization with the North American urban researches, extending until its adaptation and adoption in several countries of Latin America from the 1940s on, reaching distinct meanings of those acquired by these buildings elsewhere. Once knowing both the historical conditions as the historiographical construction responsible for the enhancement and subsequent criticism of the studied housing typology, Part Two assesses the current conditions of use of those reference works, being twelve of them subject of critical comparative analysis. Despite the mystique that surrounds the high-rise large-scale residential buildings, their potential is not at all asleep, and its current revaluation can be identified, together with the idea of compact cities and emerging concepts of urban densification. It is also an aim to identify which are the main factors to be considered in the assessment of high-rise large-scale urban collective housing in order to make the most of the potential of these architectures, but avoiding at the same time its possible negative effects.

Dette indlæg er et oversigtspapir, der behandler forholdet mellem byernes struktur og udvikling, kravet om "bæredygtig udvikling" og persontransport i byerne. Papiret behandler følgende spørgsmål 1. Hvad er byernes rolle i en bæredygtig udvikling? 2. Hvad er tranportsektorens betydning i miljøsammenhæng? 3. Hvilken bystruktur mindsker trafikkens miljøbelastning? Særlig vægt på bebyggelsestæthed og byfunktionernes placering i byen 4. Hvilke muligheder er der for at ændre danske byer, så de understøtter et mindere energiforbrug til transport?

The transformation of the architects’ vision to architectural form is a lengthy process. From initial sketch to day-to-day life, a design is transformed through the reality of occupation. No matter how much effort is put into a design its final effectiveness is determined by the end user. The access to ample daylight balanced with an adequate sense of visual privacy within ones one home is not often accounted for within the planning process. With current legislation making access to daylight a right within many developed countries, guaranteeing that access within the dense urban environment can mean putting resident’s privacy into question when planning to meet these daylight requirements. Failing to consider the privacy needs of all residents, especially immigrant groups, can lead to privacy driven modifications counterproductive to the overall goal of increasing access to daylight. Resident modifications can, in turn, lead to reductions of daylight levels within the home. There is...

The aim of this paper is to explore the relationship between space syntax measures of network centrality and measures of urban density. To what extent do they correspond? How can space syntax parameters be optimized to account for urban density? We present findings from an empirical study where a range of urban density parameters are tested against space syntax measures of network centrality. Space Syntax as an analytical framework has gained much attention due to its ability to predict complex behavioural phenomena such as movement flows or land use distribution using only little information about the environment. The movement network is modelled as a collection of visual axes and their relations, with no additional information about the environment included. This is rooted in the assumption that additional environmental variables, such as building density or land use, are either equally distributed or follow the centrality properties of the network (Hillier, 1999; Hillier 1996). Thus, all other environmental properties are treated as inherently embedded in the network configuration and therefore redundant. Indeed, empirical evidence shows that in many cases " over 60% of human movement can be predicted or explained purely from a topological point of view " (Lerman Rofe & Omer 2014). Arguably, it is the extreme reduction of environmental complexity which has been the main innovation, but also the source of critical discourse about the Space Syntax method (Montello, 2007). Indeed, building densities and land use might sharply contrast with properties of network configuration, suggesting unresolved implications for the applicability of Space Syntax method as a movement predictor (Ratti, 2004). Space Syntax analysis has been highly successful at interpreting aggregate movement flows in a network. However, this paper reflects the clear need to define under which conditions Proceedings of the 11 th Space Syntax Symposium DOES URBAN DENSITY FOLLOW CENTRALITY?: Empirical study on the influence of street network centrality on urban density and its implications for the prediction of pedestrian flows 46.2 Space Syntax analysis might be treated not only as measure of potential, but also as reliable predictor of human behaviour. For this purpose, we conducted a series of empirical studies testing the core assumption of the Space Syntax model about the multi-collinearity between configurational properties and a set of established urban density

The future of cities depends on the functioning and development of their central areas. Today these areas have to provide many diverse functions while maintaining high quality of public space. In this paper the author's own method of analysing functional and spatial diversity of urban areas is presented. The analysis was tested on competition entries concerning land development design for Wyspa Spichrzów [the Granary Island] in Elbląg and research results were presented together with a commentary and conclusions.