Gross building area can be occupied by any land use activity. A combination of gross building area per acre and occupant activity per square foot sets the stage for municipal income per taxable acre. When this primary source of revenue is added to other investment income, it must equal a city’s total annual expense per acre. It is a fairly simple relationship complicated by our inability to accurately and rapidly predict shelter capacity options per buildable acre and the revenue per sq. ft. that can be expected from occupant activity alternatives. This has made it impossible to correlate urban pattern with urban form and occupant activity to produce yield that supports a desired quality of life within geographic limits. Our inability to correlate has led us to repeatedly consume our source of life with annexation in a vain search for economic stability. Few are aware and fewer have paid attention to this unwitting Ponzi scheme. It requires new money from increasing amounts of land consumption to compensate for the increasing cost of past land use allocation mistakes. The problem appears over generations of budget reductions, slow decline, tax resistance, and community complaint; and the mathematical correlation required to correct the condition is just emerging to face its political opposition.
Annexation for more shelter capacity and activity with less than the average yield per acre appears to solve immediate budget problems with new money until its expense exceeds the revenue provided over time. At this point annexation again appears in vain pursuit of stability with hope as a strategy and Ponzi as its companion - when additional land is available. “First ring” suburbs have no room to expand and have been the first to confront this problem without the knowledge, commitment, and equipment that is equal to the threat.
The shelter capacity of land is a function of a building design category choice and the values assigned to its design specification topics. These values are correlated by an architectural algorithm and processed by a category master equation to produce gross building area options that are a function of the floor quantity alternatives entered. A change to one or more specification values produces a new forecast of gross building area options that can be occupied by any desired activity. Prior to this, the number of options that could be considered in a reasonable time frame was severely limited by time-consuming graphic evaluation. The introduction of mathematical analysis makes it possible to evaluate hundreds of options and economic forecasts before graphic analysis focuses on the most promising. These cellular content solutions represent design decisions at their most fundamental level. They aggregate to produce shelter form that is served by a pattern of movement, open space, and life support within the Built Domain.
Municipal financial stability will remain an elusive goal stimulating random annexation until we understand the current productivity of each acre within a city’s corporate limits. At this point, we can accurately predict the adjustments needed to equate average yield with the expense required per acre for a desired quality of life within city limits. The effort will require relational databases of acquired knowledge combined with evaluation models and treatment decisions at the cellular level of city formation. Keep in mind, however, that excessive capacity options produce intensity, intrusion, and domination that detract from our quality of life. Fortunately, they can be measured and evaluated to build the knowledge needed to lead future city design decisions.
