The Shelter Capacity of Land

The shelter capacity of land combines with occupant activities to determine the economic stability and social potential of a city.

Shelter capacity is gross building area per buildable acre. Shelter capacity and revenue per square foot of occupant activity combine to produce estimated revenue per buildable acre. The urban design of shelter capacity, intensity, and activity within a limited jurisdiction makes financial stability and quality of life a realistic objective. It is a function of the correlated urban design decisions involved. Their mathematical correlation has been missing, however; and the substitute has been annexation searching for economic stability with sprawl. Stability, however, has had little definition beyond a balanced annual budget that has often been cut to meet the objective.

Stability depends on a mix of shelter capacity, physical inte
nsity, and occupant activity adequately distributed on land within a city’s boundaries. I’ve written about the building design categories, forecast models and design specification decisions associated with gross building area prediction and shelter capacity calculation in many essays and several books. These specification topic decisions are primary urban design decisions that shape the ensuing physical form and space, social activity, and economic stability of cities. Fortunately, they have a mathematical foundation that can be used to correlate these decisions and form a leadership language for city design. I’ve written about this mathematical format, knowledge formation, and leadership potential in four books and over 200 essays. I’ll refer to these sources for those who wish to learn more.

A building may be occupied by any activity. The collection of building heights and areas in a city is referred to as urban form, fabric, composition, and so on. The entire collection of buildings is part of the Shelter Division of a Built Domain that is served by its Movement, Open Space, and Life Support Divisions.

The shelter capacity represented by a building introduces levels of intensity, intrusion, and dominance to the surrounding area based on the floor quantity and design specifications chosen. This building is occupied by activity that increases its value as a public revenue asset. The building, however, consumes a portion of a city’s land that is its investment portfolio. The yield from this portfolio depends on the mix of shelter capacity, physical intensity, and occupant activity occupying each parcel of the city’s land area. It is not just about land use compatibility therefore. It is about the correlation of land use activity with shelter capacity and intensity decisions on every parcel in order to yield the total average revenue per buildable acre required to equal a city’s total expense per acre.

The creation of urban space, building mass and physical intensity has been a preoccupation of architecture, landscape architecture, and urban design. Compatible land use activity has been a preoccupation of city planning, zoning, and real estate law. However, the two are inextricably linked. Shelter capacity produces levels of intensity, intrusion, and dominance based on the floor quantity and design specifications chosen. When it is occupied by activity, it produces revenue per square foot of activity and per acre of buildable land occupied. Excessive intensity is produced by the quantity of shelter capacity introduced per buildable acre when enhanced revenue is the objective. The level of intensity produced and resulting revenue benefit has been a matter of argument and opinion, but it can all be mathematically measured, evaluated, and predicted to improve future leadership direction.

In other words, economic stability and a desirable quality of life are functions of the balance planned for shelter capacity, activity, and intensity on every parcel in a city’s inventory. These parcels represent a city’s investment portfolio. The relationship of shelter capacity, activity, and intensity permitted or encouraged on every parcel within its boundaries yields revenue that determines the quality of life it can provide.

I am aware of no city that has the data, equipment, and personnel needed to continuously evaluate the balance of shelter capacity, activity, and intensity it needs to financially maintain the quality of life it desires within sustainable limits on every parcel within its boundaries. I admit, however, that I am no scholar with comprehensive knowledge of the resources being applied.

The accurate compilation of gross building area per buildable acre for every parcel in a government jurisdiction is a pivotal scientific measurement. It can be the foundation for urban design research and progress toward economic stability and a desirable quality of life.

Shelter capacity can be predicted as well as measured. The result can be converted to the level of intensity introduced to the site and surrounding area by the buildings, parking, pavement, and unpaved open space planned. The fact that it can be predicted introduces the opportunity to mathematically plan the three-dimensional form of shelter capacity within a city to accommodate the mix and scope of activity needed for the revenue required. This also offers the opportunity to produce spatial arrangements of building mass, parking, pavement, and unpaved open space that improve the places created and quality of life encouraged within the Shelter Division of the Built Domain.

A home on five acres has a shelter capacity measurement. A 50 story office high rise on a one acre parcel has a shelter capacity measurement. Both measurements reside within a mathematical spectrum of shelter capacity options. Their location in the spectrum is a function of the building design category chosen, the design specification values entered in the category’s template, and the floor quantity option under consideration. The result is an urban design definition with three-dimensional implications that can be used to conserve land, evaluate potential, and lead the space and form of cities toward shelter compositions that serve the many activities of growing populations. The intent is to find a leadership language that can lead everyone to protect our quality and source of life. It will involve shelter design decisions applied within limited geographic areas defined by science to protect our source of life.

The shelter capacity, intensity, intrusion, and dominance implications of mathematical urban design decisions have physical, social, psychological, environmental, and economic implications. These implications can be measured with shelter capacity evaluation, and definitions will make it possible to consistently lead shelter capacity, intensity, and activity toward physical, social, and economic objectives on every parcel within a city.

Shelter capacity occupied by taxable activity produces revenue per gross building square foot and per buildable acre occupied.

Unfortunately, we do not have a research library of revenue ranges per square foot of activity option and have not been able to accurately predict the shelter capacity of land. These are two of the tactical problems that must be solved to avoid consuming the Natural Domain with a Built Domain that is an unrecognized threat.

Cities have not been able to accurately, consistently, and expeditiously multiply the shelter capacity of their buildable acres times the revenue potential of optional occupant activities. This has obstructed their ability to correlate shelter capacity and activity at the parcel level, which is the building block of its physical, social, and economic security. The wrong combination within a city’s master plan and zoning plan can easily lead to budget deficits, annexation, sprawl, and eventual decline; or excessive intensity, congestion, and the misery this implies.

Shelter capacity can be multiplied by estimated revenue per gross square foot of activity. The result can be divided by the buildable acres occupied to determine the project’s contribution to a city’s total average annual expense per buildable acre. Some land will produce less and some more than the city average required. The total average revenue from all taxable acres occupied, however, must equal the city’s total annual expense per acre to operate. This may explain why the relationship of shelter capacity and intensity on every acre within an urban composition is so important to a city’s economic stability.

Annexation is not the answer.

A city may resort to the annexation of land for activity that produces new revenue when its total current revenue does not meet its total annual expense. The totals may balance and solve an immediate problem, but the total is no guarantee of financial security over time. The public expense of the annexed area per acre may eventually overtake the new money produced by the activity introduced. The result is continuing annexation for new revenue from land whose contribution to the annual budget may decline as age increases its annual maintenance expense. In this case, annexation decisions solve current problems but cannot monitor future performance with the data management required to correlate urban design decisions with their financial implications. It will be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to overcome the desire to annex new land for the wrong capacity, intensity, and activity choices as long as political decisions lack the comprehensive information and evaluation required to correlate urban design decisions with their financial implications.

The average revenue per buildable acre in a city must equal a city’s total annual expense per acre. This reconciliation does not mean that the city is providing a desirable quality of life, however. The financial balance represented by the collection of activities and shelter capacities permitted in its zoning plan is not frequently and efficiently monitored at the parcel, block, tract, of zoning district level and may not be producing the total revenue needed to meet its objectives. The knee jerk response is a political debate over essential and non-essential public services that can be eliminated to reduce public expense. This can be true for any city with, or without, annexation possibilities.

In most if not all cases a city has not gathered and correlated the data needed to evaluate the quantities of activity required for the revenue needed to provide and sustain the quality of life it desires over time. This occurs because it does not understand the shelter capacity of its buildable acres and cannot correlate this square foot shelter capacity with activity that can provide the revenue needed per square foot to sustain its annual budget. In addition, it cannot monitor these relationships over time because it does not have the commitment, agency cooperation, department cooperation, personnel, and digital tools required to pursue the effort.

Prerequisite

It is a simple concept obstructed by the need to accurately, quickly, and credibly calculate the shelter capacity of buildable land area given many floor quantity options, and the revenue potential per square foot of optional occupant activities. Without this information, it will be impossible to tell if a shelter project proposal will provide the revenue needed per acre to contribute to a city’s average expense per acre over time; or if it must be subsidized by other contributions. It will also be impossible to diagnose a city’s current economic health and consider optional remedies that may affect how it plans for the future use of land within its boundaries. This is not simply about the compatibility of adjacent activity in a two-dimensional plan. The land represents a city’s investment portfolio. The way it is allocated with three-dimensional urban design decisions will determine its economic and social performance within limited geographic areas.

The city design challenge is complicated by the data complexity associated with every parcel in a city. We have undertaken to forecast the weather, however. Forecasting shelter capacity and its implications on a planet with limited land will involve a reduced level of research and information management, but involve decisions that are within our power to make.

CONCLUSION

If you agree with the discussion above, you may agree that the problem begins at the parcel level of township, village, city, county, and region formation. At this level, relational databases, geographic information systems, three-dimensional massing, economic performance, social impact, and spatial composition enter an urban design universe that cannot succeed without improved correlation among many currently isolated professions. It is a simple proposition. We must lead the distribution of shelter capacity, activity, and intensity for growing populations toward financial and social stability within limited geographic areas that protect our quality and source of life.

Walter M. Hosack: December, 2023

ZONING POTENTIAL for URBAN DESIGN LEADERSHIP

 A Note to Michael Ytterburg, Architect

You have touched on a potential urban design leadership language, but it is in the hands of those who do not understand the comprehensive mathematical correlation required to avoid contradictory physical design direction. Without adequate leadership, project design decisions and direction can arbitrarily consume the land while producing either random sprawl or excessive intensity. This is particularly true when annexation opportunities are available. When they aren’t, excessive intensity on limited land area becomes a very real possibility.

Land-locked cities have not had annexation alternatives. This has often forced them to struggle with decline, limited economic development, eminent domain, and excessive physical intensity in an effort to meet their current expenses and debt obligations. It has been very difficult to define the scope of economic development required to comprehensively correct a deficit; but shelter capacity evaluation as part of a digital master planning effort beginning at the parcel level of our presence can be translated into an economic development strategy embedded in a zoning ordinance for any city.

Zoning is a concept without an adequate mathematical language, tools, and information; but it has the potential to lead us toward a desirable quality of life within limited geographic areas defined to protect our source of life. It will not evolve, however, without a complete overhaul by those familiar with the physical design vocabulary and correlated mathematics needed to consistently lead others toward desirable shelter capacity decisions based on measurable research and evaluation.

Zoning was a hard fought legal battle to define two types of freedom - individual freedom to pursue initiative and collective freedom to oppose individual oppression. It began as an attempt to reduce the suffering of vulnerable populations crowded into shelter symbolized by excessive physical intensity, pollution, disease, and decay. It was eventually recognized that this threatened everyone’s health, safety, and welfare. We are now beginning to recognize that the ambiguous term “welfare” includes our physical, social, psychological, environmental, and economic quality of life at the very least - while we continue to argue over the line separating individual from collective freedom.

BUILDINGS

A building can shelter any activity. The combination has been called a “land use”. Building mass combines with floor quantity, parking quantity, pavement, and unpaved open space to produce project shelter capacity and physical intensity to shelter activity within a mathematical spectrum of options that has sprawl at one end of the scale and excessive intensity at the other. The terms “land use” and “density” may have confused the fact that physical design is used to shelter social and economic activity. It symbolizes the leadership decisions taken with its silent presence, but they remain undocumented and uncorrelated by an adequate mathematical leadership language. The result has been random sprawl as a reaction to the excessive intensity of the past and more excessive intensity and sprawl pursuing the goal of profit at any price by exploiting the weaknesses of uncorrelated zoning ordinance leadership.

The concept of citizen participation may have assumed that sprawl and excessive intensity are defined and regulated by the dimensional stipulations scattered throughout a zoning ordinance. In addition, the assumption may have been that annexation could solve all inadequate zoning definitions of city planning intent by consuming additional land area, but we are becoming aware that our inability to accurately predict the shelter capacity of land for growing populations is consuming land that is our source of life. I believe that most recognize, at least intuitively at this time, that land is not a consumable commodity and unlimited resource.

Populations produce density. Buildings produce shelter capacity, intensity, intrusion, and dominance based on the design specification values chosen to define a project strategy. Density has confused the physical design issue. It is only related to residential activity. A residential building may be designed to shelter many optional densities depending on the average dwelling unit area planned and the related design specification values under consideration. From a physical design perspective, project building mass, height, parking, pavement, and unpaved open space combine to determine one shelter capacity implication expressed as gross building area per buildable acre. This measures the impact of strategic shelter design decisions in a project and their impact on the surrounding area. The physical relationships become obvious when occupant activity is recognized as a separate topic limited by the shelter capacity available.

Projects combine to form urban design areas, districts, cities, regions, and conurbations. We are not even close to correlating the design specification decisions involved based on measurement and evaluation that can produce strategic shelter design knowledge and consistent leadership decisions. The design specification topics involved have not even been comprehensively listed unless you have read about shelter capacity evaluation. The shelter goal is to lead these strategic decisions toward urban design results that can shelter the activities of growing populations within geographic limits that protect their quality and source of life – the Natural Domain.

Shelter capacity, intensity, intrusion, and dominance are mathematical implications produced by mathematically correlated design decisions entered in a shelter capacity template. The implications measured or predicted are the foundation for all ensuing levels of design decision associated with site planning, architectural form, function, and appearance. The values entered in a template represent a strategy that is refined with more detailed design decisions, tactics, and tasks that combine to define the construction needed to produce a final product. The product symbolizes the knowledge of a culture and expresses it in a silent message to the future.

ZONING

The zoning code is a planning document with an inadequate design leadership language. A building code is a document that leads the tactical construction decisions required to reach the design strategy and objectives established. It is not a strategic document from a planning perspective. I originally struggled with this issue because I found the zoning ordinances I read a hopeless tangle of procedure and activity regulations with contradictory physical design specifications scattered throughout. I wished for an ordinance that would separate its design standards for ease of reference and leadership direction, and eventually realized that the text could be separated into the following sections:

1)      Management

a.      Purpose

b.      Operations

2)      Definitions

3)      Land Use

a.      Area regulations

b.      Activity regulations

c.      Existing conditions

d.      Nuisance regulations

4)      Design

a.      Context regulations

b.      Object regulations

5)      Enforcement

I wrote “The Disorganized Zoning Ordinance” in 2010 for my blog at www.wmhosack.blogspot.com to suggest the steps required to reorganize and adopt this rearrangement. My intent was to improve the transfer of information among those the ordinance was attempting to lead. A more detailed explanation was included in Chapter 20 of my book, “Land Development Calculations”, 2010. I did not attempt to reconcile the contradictions I found among zoning ordinance design specifications, however. My focus was on content reorganization. For instance, most experienced designers are familiar with the contradictions among permitted density, building height, and parking regulations in most, if not all, zoning ordinances. They often require reconciliation with contested variance requests fought over the concept of consistent legal application, but the consistent application of a contradiction has made everyone ignore the mathematical problem. I knew the problem could be solved with equation derivation, algorithms, and forecast templates created to correlate the specifications involved and reduce measurement, prediction, and implication evaluation to a simple entry of design value decisions. The template decision topics and values could then be used to predict options and measure existing conditions to define their capacity and intensity implications for comparison and evaluation. I’ve called the effort Shelter Capacity Evaluation. It is intended to introduce consistent measurement, evaluation, correlation, prediction, and communication to all leadership efforts concerned with shelter capacity and urban design for social and economic activity on limited land areas.

The intent is to improve the knowledge and leadership provided based on information that only research can provide and mathematics can document with the credibility required to balance the debate between individual and collective freedom that will determine our response to the universal Law of Limits we face.

I have written about shelter capacity evaluation templates on many occasions and mention them again because they collectively represent a language that can be introduced to the design section of zoning ordinance reorganization. Keep in mind that a zoning ordinance is not simply about compatibility among neighboring activities. It attempts to lead the strategic decisions of shelter design that determine a shelter project’s place within the physical sprawl/excessive intensity spectrum. At the present time it does this with an incomplete understanding of the scope, building design category, and design topic relationships that must be correlated before leadership decisions can make a difference.

Our goal is survival. Our strategy will involve food, water, fire, air, shelter, land, and population objectives that prompt skepticism and argument at least and aggression at worst. The last three can be quantitatively addressed with shelter capacity evaluation. Two are new to the list. The first four involve environmental preservation. The campaign will require new awareness, trait modification, and commitment to the search for knowledge and wisdom in a world of emotion that accompanies the gift we have been given.

POSTSCRIPT

Think of a city’s Movement, Open Space, and Life Support Divisions as arteries serving a Shelter Division within a Built Domain that must serve increasing shelter capacity demand from growing populations. Unfortunately, we have been too short-sighted to see open space as a necessary artery in the Built Domain or as the growth medium of our Natural Domain. We have also avoided seeing unpaved open space quantities as critical ingredients within every project site plan in the Built Domain. It has always been an avoidable expense or an expedient form of currency taken from a planet that is not a helpless victim.

Walter M. Hosack: December, 2023

CORRELATION of SHELTER DESIGN DECISIONS

Shelter Ideals, Goals, Strategies, Objectives, Tactics, and Tasks

Goals are correlated to achieve an ideal rarely, if ever, achieved. Strategies are abstract concepts designed to achieve a goal through the achievement of
sequential objectives. Objectives are defined, correlated and accumulated to reach strategic success based on tactical plans and activity. Tasks are individual actions correlated to form a tactic. For instance, Normandy was an objective and part of a strategy in WWII. The goal was to win the war. The ideal behind the goal was freedom. The WWII objectives took the names of locations. The tactics were correlated tasks or actions designed to overcome the opposition.

A tactical substitute for a strategic objective produces a preoccupation with observation until a concept emerges to unify the glimpses. For instance, the Black Plague was a threat without a strategic answer. The objective was to find a cure but tactical treatment awaited a concept that could address more than the appearance of its symptoms. A concept, or strategy, was needed to guide a series of experimental, objective efforts. In the interval, treatment became a guessing game. A strategy eventually evolved around what was then the abstract concept of germ theory. The theory required the evolution of language, tools, materials, sciences, and arts required to pursue a search demanding a correlation of effort. The goal stretched beyond the disease. The intent was to advance the knowledge of medicine. The ideal remains the elimination of all disease.

Correlation among professions introduces another level of complexity. Medicine has developed specialties within its umbrella, but the correlation between anatomy and chemistry is a better example of correlation among the independent efforts I have in mind. We now realize, I think, that we live on a planet that depends on a spider web of correlated relationships that we barely understand and often blindly address at the project level. We are beginning to realize that an isolated project cannot help but damage the web given our level of knowledge and information. Projects are tactical in nature. The best contribute to an objective that is part of a larger strategy designed to achieve a goal that may never reach its ideal conclusion.

RELEVANCE of DECISION HIERARCHY

Our survival depends, at least, on fire, water, food, air, and shelter. Our goals have been fire safety, water purity, air quality, food sufficiency, and adequate shelter supply; but the shelter goal now faces a fundamental contradiction. Shelter sprawl that increases supply to protect the activities of increasing populations consumes land that is a foundation of life and a primary source of food sufficiency. Excessive shelter intensity that conserves land while increasing shelter supply compromises our physical, social, psychological, environmental, and economic quality of life. We have not been able to define either term with accurate measurement, prediction, and evaluation that can led to consistent leadership decisions.

On one hand we believe that growth is good and that we should be fruitful and multiply. Many repeat on a weekly basis that this is a world without end. It has to be if unlimited growth across the face of a limited planet is good – but it isn’t. Any shelter goal written to respect the planet’s fundamental Law of Limits and Survival faces this fundamental contradiction. It must be reconciled before we can move on. If you agree, then every tactical shelter project for growing populations must be designed and correlated to advance on a strategic path toward a survival goal within geographic limits that protects their quality and source of life. It is an overwhelming concept based on an abstract, intuitive awareness of our place in the ecosystem of the planet. In the light provided by medical history, it requires new language, theory, and tools to address the threat with the measurement, prediction, evaluation, and decisions needed to pursue diagnosis and treatment. In this context we are the microbes under the microscope and we are growing without limit in the petri dish we call a planet.

I should add that environmental protection is now recognized by many as an essential prerequisite for the survival goals just mentioned. It is now an ideal given our current level of awareness and comprehension.

It should be obvious that the conflict between realistic shelter supplies for growing populations on limited land areas requires reconciliation. I have just mentioned that it can only begin with correlation based on a new language of definitions, explanations, derivations, and mathematical forecast models that permit measurement, evaluation, prediction, decision, and consistent leadership direction of shelter capacity decisions by public and private investors for every buildable acre within scientifically limited geographic areas. I originally referred to this language as development capacity evaluation and presented the digital forecast models involved in my first two books. They are now eclipsed by a new effort. I now refer to the improved forecast models as shelter capacity evaluation software and have discussed portions over a number of years in my blog essays and Linked-In postings.

The bottom line is that land has a mathematically predictable spectrum of shelter capacity options per buildable acre. They produce measureable, definable lifestyle alternatives ranging from sprawl to excessive intensity at each end of the spectrum.

There is a sustainable shelter capacity limit we must anticipate to define a symbiotic future. Our goal has always been survival. The ideal may become quality of life for all. At one time the goal required unlimited growth to establish and defend our place on the planet, but the contradiction involved can never permit us to reach the ideal. The goal will require correlation of research and knowledge among a vast array of professions to define sustainable growth on limited land areas from the perspective of a planet that enforces limits we must anticipate with more than emotion.

There are two worlds on this planet. The Built Domain is composed of Urban and Rural Phyla. Each phylum contains Movement, Open Space, and Life Support Divisions that serve a Shelter Division. The catalyst for growth is a microbe we have yet to recognize as a parasite needing symbiotic leadership. The Natural Domain is its source of life in a Built Domain that is subject to the planet’s Law of Limits. Both must be preserved and protected in the way we have always begun – by defining territory. It is a definition that will require the correlation of all related and emerging scientific efforts pursuing the best of intentions.

In other words, growth is subject to the planet’s Law of Limits. Our survival depends, in part, on the sustainable, symbiotic shelter solutions and growth definitions we provide to protect the activities of populations within these geographic limits. The physical design of shelter at the project, district, city, and regional levels must now define and symbolize the scientific leadership correlation required to protect our quality and source of life on a planet in a universe that does not compromise with ignorance that we have been given the gift to overcome.

Walter M. Hosack: December, 2023