Urban Pattern Essay Example

Urban Pattern Essay Example Urban Pattern Essay Urban Pattern Essay Settlements of any size and type can always be formally synthesized by their patterns, so it means pattern identify the settlements. Town houses in gridiron blocks, high-rise office structures, academic campuses, suburban estates, and highway retail sprawl are good examples. Urban form, then, is a result of the bringing together of many elements in a composite totality:the urban pattern. Patterns are the outstanding formal features of urban areas. A pattern can be defined as an elaboration of form that results from a composition of parts. Thus, patterns assume complex characteristics based on their formal elaboration; they also assume some degree of universality, since the total pattern can be represented by a sector. For example, an identifiable area in a city, or village can be best understood through a typical sector showing circulation, buildings, and open spaces; this typical sector ‘represents’ the formal characteristics found throughout the area and thus acquires some ‘universality. ’ Patterns have the potential of carrying powerful formal syntheses or visual codes over a geographic space. Formally, cities have a greater similarity to rugs and carpets than to other design products, with intricate motifs covering thier surfaces and various combinations of patterns complementing one another. Patterns are the physical expression of an underlying, continous formal system. Their visual essence lies in the complexity of a number of interrelated motifs, rather than in the total composition, since patterns are fragments or parts of a continuum and not totalities. Patterns can be conceptualized as models of field designs that can be extended over geographic space. They are reflecting the impact of a society on the earth, through the imposition of their cultural artifacts of shelter and movement. Clearly, urban patterns do change from one sector of a city to another, according to location in the city and time of development. The commercial high-rise pattern of down-town merges with the dense residential pattern of town houses-two patterns resulting from different land uses and accessibility at different locations. The tight pattern that originated in preautomobile times contrasts with the open pattern typical of the automobile era-two patterns resulting from two periods of development. In this way, an urban area is truly a tapestry of patterns, each corresponding to specific morphological factors-location, technology, culture, and so on. Furthermore, patterns tend not to reflect the will of a single designer, but rather composite wills-like the inherited wills involved in the traditional design of carpets or the pluralistic wills that have shaped so many human habitats. Indeed, patterns are true community forms. URBAN DUALITIES How is one to gain an initial formal understanding of urban patterns? Quite often, complex forms can first be grasped through the identification of their range of formal outcomes. Let us identify the ‘formal extremes’ that patterns can take, which we shall call dualities because they tend to appear as nominal opposites. Urban patterns, complex community forms that they are, can be conceptually understood through a series of dualities. The world is full of dualities. I have selected three dualities for examination here, not only for their descriptive duality, but because of their operational value for designers :unbuilt space versus built form, continuous events versus discrete events, and repetitive elements versus unique elements. Unbuilt space-built form duality This duality recognizes that urban patterns integrate built structures enclosing space for some use together with unbuilt areas used as open space or circulation. It provides the basic gestalt of urban areas, with figure-and-background images. Spatial concepts and definitions, environmental qualities, microclimate and health conditions, and other aspects of urban life can be thrown into relief by examining this relatively simple duality of unbuilt space versus built form. This dualit is related to the distinction between public and private realms in cities. Although most unbuilt space-open space and circulation-can be considered public, some open space can be private, as in institutional or residential courtyards. Also, enclosed space can be public or enjoy some sort of semipublic status, as in the case of churches, museums, department stores, and even street-covered arcades. Between enclosed buildings and open spaces there are many intermadiate possibilities: buildings lacking one wall, suh as Greek stoas; buildings with a roof supported by free standing columns, such as the arcades of Bologna; a space open to the sky and surrounded by walls, such as a stadium; a plaza with a few vertical elements, suh as San Marco. Continuous-discrete events duality This duality recognizes that urban patterns are made up of two quantitatively different kinds of elements: Some are interconnected and extend virtually over the whole area; others are discrete. This gometric difference is extended to implicit qualitative differences in the two types of events. The first can be characterized as continuous forms-networks-and the second as sets of discrete forms aggregated within or adjacent to the networks-infillings. Communities are structured by continuous networks within which an infill of discrete events takes place. The combination of networks and infillings results in a total pattern. Urban networks are identified primarily with transportation and other city infrastructures, which by nature must be continuous throughout the pattern. Streets, roads, avenues, boulevards, canals, highways, aqueducts, rail lines, and high-tension lines are all continuous networks that structure urban areas in one way or another, and in so doing they have more than just a utilitarian function; they become outstanding visual elements of the urban pattern. Buildings have occasion-ally played the same role, ranging from defensive walls in the Middle Ages to the megastructures of the 1960s. But in most cases, buildings, from cathedrals to houses, garages to skyscrapers, as well as most open space, are all infillings within the network structure, defining the three-dimensional architectural quality of a place. The interface areas between networks and infillings costitute the most alive zones of the man-made environment. Human beings are not truly participants in community life until they are on foot; the interface between transportation and networks infillings is the place where people shift from being passive riders to being active pedestrians. For this reason, the design of these interfaces-subway stations, but stops, train terminals, garages, sidewalks, and docks-is critical for the vitality of social and economic life in urban areas, as well as for their aesthetic expression. The dictinction between continuous and discrete events is not absolute, however. Size and scale may affect this distinction since what appears to be discrete on a metropolitan scale may seem continuous on a neighborhood scale. For example, rows of party-wall town houses, which are discrete elements on urban scale, can be seen as continuous events on an neighborhood scale. Repetetive-unique events duality This duality recognizes that urban patterns are made up largely of a limited number of relatively undifferentiated types of elements that repeat and combine. It implies that the image of a city can be created by the visual repetition of undifferentiated elements as well as by unique elements. Notre Dame de Paris is a powerful image and symbol for that city, but the repetetive elements of the city`s urban pattern-apartment buildings, hotels, and offices-represent it as much as does its unique cathedral. Repetetive elemets are the true urban form givers, sheltering the community`s activities and expressing its way of life and culture. Unique elements are the expresion of either a very specialized activity or, more likely, the apex and more symbolic layers of the community hierarchy. Human habitats and workplaces are repetetive elements, but temples, palaces, town halls, parliaments, universities, opera houses, and museums are unique and higly visible in each community. In preindustrial traditional societies, repetetive buildings such as dwellings vary according to regions, whereas unique buildings are universal. Repetetive buildings, although roughly the same within an urban area, tend to change drastically among regions and cultures; unique buildings, although special in their urban area, tend to repeat themselves across regions and even cultures. The wide regional variety of human dwelling types found in the cities, towns, and villages of Europe stands in contrast to the minor stylistic variations of similar unique buildings-for example, Gothic churches-that exist across the continient. The attachment of repetetive elements to land and local culture, which become regional expressions, as well as the universal character of unique elements, are critical to the understanding of community forms. Probably no other duality has been so misunderstood. To consider an obvious example, skyscrapers built in downtown areas for the purpose of housing the managerial activities of corporations often indulge the egocentric corporate identity. A corporate workplace is a repetetive building type making up the majority of downtown urban patterns; it is not meant to be unique. Whenever the design of skyscrapers becomes a competition among corporations, the result is pointless escalation, confusion, and the breakdown of the urban pattern. Combination of dualities Dualities represent ranges of formal outcomes in urban patterns, taken one parameter at a time. In reality, patterns synthesize the various dualities in a single form. The following are possible combinations and examples: Unbuilt space, continuos, repetetiveUrban streets Unbuilt space, continuous, uniqueIstiklal streetts Unbuilt space, discrete, repetetiveNeighborhood plazas Unbuilt space, discrete, uniquePiazza Ortakoy Built form, continuous, repetetiveArcades Built form, continuous, uniqueDefense walls Built form, discrete, repetetiveOffice buildings Built form, discrete, uniqueBlue Mosque PATTERN ANALYSIS Urban design has a long tradition of borrowing from the past, one of that continues today as neotraditional designers look nostalgically back to the towns as an alternative to conventional development. Breaking down the analysis into layers facilitates comparison on each dimension. The five layers are: 1-Built form: Showing the footprints of all structures and the resulting grain and pattern of development. 2-Land use: Patterns showing the location and density of housing, as well as retail, office, industrial, and civic activity. 3-Public open space: Including parks, plazas, walkways, and water bodies. 4-Circulation system: Including vehicular roads, alleys, parking lots, and bicycle and pedestrian paths. 5-Pedestrian access: Showing areas with one quarter and one half mile access from a central point in the development, such as a local community or shopping center. In addition to studying the form and pattern of the developments, the analysis examines the character of public streets and public spaces; adequecy of the transportation system and the accesibility of the development to jobs, services, recreation, and schools; livability for children, teens, and elderly; and market success. URBAN TYPOLOGIES Urban patterns are formed by repetetive elements within which unique elements occur. These patterns have strong similarities and can be grouped conceptually into what we call typologies. The many similarities among certain urban structures, facilities, and spaces suggest a ‘family resemblance’ among them. This family resemblance can be found among network elements such as streets and infill elements such as buildings, among unbuilt spaces such as plazas and built forms such as urban blocks, and even among unique buildings and spaces. Some typologies are universal, others are bounded by culture. In other words, all elements in urban patterns can be, to various degrees, typical. Some definitions are in order. ‘Type’ is defined as the general form, structure, or character distinguishing a particular kind, group, or class of objects. ‘Prototype’ and ‘archetype’ are practically interchangeable concepts, indicating the first or primary type of any thing. ‘Stereotype’ is defined as something continued or constantly repeated without change. The definition of ‘type’ is based on the recognition of the essence of an object as well as on the possibility of reproducing that essence in another object. The essence of a typology is made up of a combination of key characteristics of the elements in the typology, as well as by the range of variations that the elements can experience without losing their affiliation with the typology. I am talking deliberatily about essence and not standards, a type witout the of catalogue models. Thus, any and all specific designs of a type must be variations,options, and interpretations of that type, with perhaps a few of them being closer than the others to the ideal. Urban types sre basically types of spatial organizations in settlements. However, additional cultural factors introduce the aspect of style. Gridiron blocks with row houses, central plazas, and roadside developments are ubiquitous patterns, for instance, are typical of baroque urbanism. How do typologies come into being? The concept is simple: Built elements that face the same (or very similar) sets of requirements and constraints will, in end up generating one typology as the best solution to these conditions. It is possible to imagine more than one good solution, but since human behavior tends to follow early successes, the result is often that a single typology emerges as the dominant one. In the development of a typology, several periods can be distinguished. At a given point, socioeconomic, cultural, and technological conditions may all come together to foster a new typology. For example, the Industrial Revolution and the subsequent development of industrial corporations led to the creation of large pools of adminisrative personel working together in central cities served by streetcards and, later, subway systems. The introduction of iron and, eventually, steel structures, as well as the invention of the elevator, made it possible to build tight clusters of high-rise office buildings in central buildings. Later, the development of air- conditioning systems eliminated the constrains on the size of those buildings imposed by the need for natural ventilation. Common determinants that affect a typology include the physical urban structure, municipal services, zoning and codes, technology, financial and tax structures, alternative investments, cultural beliefs, microclimate, and many others. Specific project requirements that affect a typology include the program-which is itself biased by cultural beliefs-the organization of the development entity, land and construction costs, demand markets, soil conditions, competition, and others. Technology, economic systems, social instutions-in a word, culture-are the social factors that, together with natural factors (such as microclimate, soil, and bodies of water), shape the patterns of human settlements. Technology, especially since the nineteenth century, has had an increasingly important effect in the shaping of urban typologies, including the critical areas of urban transportation- public transit, commuter rail, buses, and trolleys, as well as private automobiles along with highways and parking garages-building structures, mechanical systems, vertical circulation, instant communications, and,most recently, information processing. But quite often, built types herald later technological advance; some of the first skyscrapers in Chicago were built with load-bearing masonry walls. Culture is the prime mover in the development of urban typologies. Technology, as one of the cultural components of society. The central city skyscraper, for example, is a product of both technology and a cultural trend that encourages certain patterns of social behavior and, ultimately, certain events. Tall office buildings exist, in part, because there is a pervasive trend toward concentrating greater economic power in fewer corporations, which cluster together with other financial institutions and use their headquarters to project a corporate image. Cultural factors have always affected urban typologies. In the Middle ages, the high cost of transportation, the uncertainty of life beyond defensive walls, growing trade opportunities within a feudalistic system, and the universal institution of the churc led to the generic mediaval urban typology. It was a tightly clustered pattern, with market place and trade streets, often two centers of power (political and religious), and social institutions such as a hospital, asylum, orphanage and school near the church. Culture, building program, and technology shape typologies. Often, old types built for some specific users can be successfully adapted to other users, indicating that programs and types are not locked in a one-to-one relationship; instead, programs determine types through cultural interpretations. The basilica of Hagia Sophia, built by Constantine to be the center of Eastern Orthodox Christianity, was taken by the Turks and immediately converted to the Mosque of Istanbul, after which all other Turkish mosques have been patterned. The basilicas, in turn, were adapted from a Roman type of legal court building by early Christians, who used them as temples. Are these cases of cultural lag or adaptation, of program or type flexibility, or something different? One of the main roles of typologies may be to shape cultural symbols. Both the Byzantines and the Turks needed impressive halls to exhibit the religious glory of their empires: Hagia Sophia, the most unique element in the pattern. One of the trends most damaging to environmental richness is the cultural homogenization of urban typologies in many areas of the world. This phenomenon is well known to travelers, who find that hotels built in recent decades do not reflect regional differences, so that one cannot tell whether one is in Cairo, New York, Singapore, or Mexico, unless one leaves the hotel. Technology, of course, makes possible large climate-controlled shells anywhere, but it is the cultural dependency of many Third World countries that bears a major responsibility for this environmental impoverishment. Typically, human habitas have been rooted in the land and the local culture. Universality was restricted to the apex of the community hierarchy. It is only now that we see repetetive elements such as office buildings being elevated to the status of the universal, betraying their transnational character. As already mentioned, some typologies are local, while others are universal. The wide difference in the residential typologies of human habitats indicates that local conditions impose heavy constraints on people: Microclimate, defense, construction materials, and topography account for the majority of the differences among habitat typologies. Climate and culture can be overcome by technology. Thus homogenity, with its by- products of anonymity, gigantism, and lack of meaning, pervades urban areas in many countries. Cultural homogenity is a result of the increasing absorption of the world in the markets of the industrialized countries –primarily the United States- and the reshaping of regions and local cultures to fit the needs of the world economic metropolis. This reshaping includes the manipulation of what is considered the ‘good life’ and thus the generation of ‘perceived needs’ by local markets (and cultures). Arround the world, the good life is seen as benefiting from the replacement of local goods with foreign ones, like collage of Coca Cola and hamburgers, blue jeans and permanent press, Chevrolets and highways, glass skyscrapers and suburban developments-the glutton`s paradise. Local production is eliminated, local lifestyles are forgotten. And in the process regions become ‘culturally addicted’ to expensive, and often wasteful, foreign technologies and capital. By focusing on the right combination of localism and universality, designers will be able to produce far more responsive designers and also to (re)create new urban typologies suitable to time and place.