This study presents more descriptive and animated measures of urban planners to design for the changing ways in which we live and work in large global cities.
Conventional measures of urban density such as ‘dwellings per hectare’ or ‘bed-spaces per hectare’ are one-dimensional and prescriptive means of ‘measuring-up’ the cities we live in. None succeed in truly representing the characteristics of high-density living or adequately describing the increasingly varied ways in which we live and work.
For those involved in the planning process, this can mean that new urban developments do not meet the needs of city dwellers and are not designed to support the powerful social, demographic and cultural changes around us. This two-year architectural study, supported by a consortium of architectural research partners, was investigated alternative ways of measuring urban density and explored how such measures affect the way new urban developments around transport hubs are designed and occupied.
A user-driven framework
A hypothesis that a more user-driven measure of density can generate a more dynamic urban environment better suited to modern living and working was reinforced by a programme of research. Interviews with experts gave an overview on policy and looked at planning at the global, national and local scale. Horizon-scanning and trend research identified technological, social and cultural influences that could impact in the future. User consultations in London and Tokyo gave the research an individual scale.
This led to the creation of four new principles that were presented at the end of the first year of the project and developed further this year: Intensity – the measure of an area’s socio-economic requirements; Amenity – the measure of social demographic needs; Autonomy – the political ability of residents to influence local planning; and Frequency – the technology measure of an area’s flow of information and people within
wireless networks.
The second year of the study used these four principles to drive four hypothetical design scenarios, looking at how one site could change in character when different density measures are applied. The chosen site was Ebbsfleet in Kent, relatively remote from established central city services, but with good national and international transport connections.
Four new scenarios
Dis-connected Suburb, the first scenario, uses the existing metric of ‘dwellings per hectare’ and is a low-density, low-rise dormitory town dominated by commuters who desert it by day and return to it by night. Timeshare Towers is a high-density, high-rise settlement with a dominant work focus – the main residents are workers employed by the companies who dominate the site and the architecture has been designed to support rapid turnaround. Incorporated Cluster combines living and working and constitutes a mixed-use, medium density settlement that alternates between low and high-rise development. Open Source City is a user-led and resident-managed estate that allows social networking to evolve its form on a high-density site.
The scenarios sketch out four alternative and provocative views of the future, tested via multidisciplinary and participatory knowledge-transfer events as part of the UrbanBuzz initiative. What emerges from the study is that narrow measures of urban density restrict the open-mindedness of the city. New density measures are needed for developments to be planned in a more animated and holistic way.
