The Third Dimension of City Planning, Zoning, and Urban Design

 

We can no longer depend on city planning master plans; zoning maps based on compatibility assumptions; and the belief that there is an unlimited Natural Domain available for annexation and consumption by the Built Domain. Weak assumptions and conflicting, uncorrelated regulations will remain a function of inertia until shelter sprawl, annexation, and excessive intensity are recognized as physical threats to our survival. It is not enough to recognize a threat, however. It must be met with an urban design strategy of equal magnitude involving the new tools and leadership correlation required to protect growing population activity with symbiotic shelter solutions in geographic areas scientifically limited to protect their quality and source of life, the Natural Domain.

Expanding the scope of attention to ensure that shelter remains an essential element and not a threat to survival will require a new strategy to achieve greater political credibility. This will depend on an expanded vision of the information-sharing, data science, relational databases, and geographic information analysis required for shelter capacity prediction, measurement, evaluation, and collaborative correlation in the search for knowledge that can help us learn to live within geographic limits.

(Shelter capacity is gross building area in sq. ft. (GBA) divided by the project buildable land area in acres. Gross building area potential on a given buildable land area, for the building design category (G1), is:

GBA = ((af) / (a+(fs))) * CORE

The G1 design category includes all buildings served by adjacent surface parking on the same lot, parcel, or land area. The square feet of gross building area planned or permitted per parking space is represented in the equation by (a). The square feet of parking area planned or permitted per parking space is represented by (s). Floor quantity (f) in the equation is the third dimension of city planning and zoning. I have discussed the derivation of CORE area from a standard set of design specification topics and value choices in numerous essays and will not repeat myself here. For the purposes of this discussion, CORE area is the project area remaining for primary building cover and parking cover after all other site improvement and open space areas are subtracted from the total project area.)

Urban design tools, and the information they provide, are needed to build convincing knowledge and arguments regarding land consumption, shelter capacity, spatial context; and the social, psychological, environmental, and economic implications of shelter aggregation choices. These choices involve building design categories, design specification values, floor quantity choices, and category master equations. They produce shelter options that are served by a city’s movement, open space, and life support systems. These are the four divisions that combine to form the currently parasitic urban and rural phyla of the Built Domain.

Architectural education teaches the formation of shelter space, form, function, and appearance needed to organize spaces that serve client activity and accommodate the essential engineering systems required on a given land area. This is the mental process of information-gathering, logical evaluation, and creative correlation that produces strategic options requiring leadership choices. It is the first milestone in architectural education, but the appropriate consumption of land is rarely considered. It is simply included as part of the problem to be solved, and the quantity is not tailored to either demand or capacity. Waste and/or excessive intensity is inevitable as the architectural strategy focuses on the internal success and external appearance of shelter while site planning deals with the land remaining.

We live with land surveys that do not accurately calculate the spectrum of shelter capacity alternatives available. They define an area, or quantity, that is considered a commodity for sale and use. The concept of shelter capacity evaluation considers a defined land area to be a unit in a city’s investment portfolio whose shelter capacity, intensity and activity options have revenue and investment potential that can be calculated. This unit potential combines to establish a city’s financial stability and affordable quality of life, but the ability to measure, forecast, evaluate, and adjust unit potential throughout a city’s land portfolio awaits the introduction of information-sharing systems and shelter capacity evaluation algorithms that are currently academic proposals.

The lack of mathematical urban/city design evaluation has led to city budgets based on history and future projections unable to accurately evaluate the total average annual revenue per acre that can be produced to balance the total average annual expense per acre needed to maintain and improve its desired quality of life.

Urban design expands the architectural universe of strategic evaluation. It is concerned with the formation, impact, impression and spatial context of places formed by the aggregation of shelter mass, shelter capacity, intensity, activity, movement, open space, and life support because these compositions affect a population’s physical, social, psychological, environmental, and economic quality of life. The goal is to limit the consumption of land for these places within a scientifically prescribed Built Domain defined to protect our quality and source of life. The political implications of the challenge are obvious, and the credibility required to lead will be no less than that needed to establish city planning, zoning, and building regulations in the 20^th century.

The relationship between land consumption and shelter capacity, intensity, and activity options has public revenue potential per acre that can be calculated. It may be the strongest argument for increasing research and knowledge regarding shelter capacity relationships that produce desirable places for people; since they can also produce revenue, financial stability, and an affordable quality of life within limited areas when consciously and mathematically organized.

Shelter capacity is a function of a given buildable land area, building design category decision, master equation, and choices regarding design specification values and floor quantity options. These decisions produce levels of measurable capacity, intensity and context that are occupied by activity. Shelter capacity, intensity, activity, and context decisions have mathematical relationships that can be used to balance the revenue potential of parcels across larger municipal land areas. These are the predictions that can establish the credibility of urban design recommendations. Their social, psychological, and environmental implications will require longer term research correlated with the conclusions from many related professions.

Walter M. Hosack, April 2025

The Journey from Architecture to Urban Design

 

Architecture interprets client aspirations by outlining a shelter strategy to protect the client’s activity on a given land area. The outline leads to a precise graphic and written contractual definition of the tactical objectives that must be reached to achieve the strategic goal.

My guess is that the journey from shelter aspiration to strategic solution began long before recorded history. It began with a desire for refuge. The solution became a tree or cave. The need for improvement grew with recognition of the challenges represented by increasing demand. This eventually led to the evolution of engineering spin-offs as opinion began to recognize that observation, measurement, calculation, evaluation, and prediction were needed to build knowledge that could address architectural components with mathematical precision such as, but certainly not limited to, building structure, heating, ventilation, air conditioning, plumbing, lighting, electrical systems, sanitation services, and so on. The effort to improve opinion with knowledge to meet aspirations, however, was focused on individual projects until ignorance and abuse began to multiply and threaten the public health, safety, and welfare (quality of life). Ignorance claimed freedom to abuse, and the public eventually responded with minimum standards of conduct. The public emphasis on land use compatibility, however, did not prevent excessive intensity, annexation, pollution, and sprawl that may already be a threat to our source of life and occupants of the Natural Domain.

ARCHITECTURE

Architectural focus is dictated by client priorities that rarely have the public interest in mind. The strategic architectural planning emphasized by formal education, however, is one step away from the attention required to ensure that shelter remains an essential element of survival and not a threat. The step requires an expanded vision, however, that includes the information sharing, data science, relational databases, shelter capacity equations, economic evaluation, and geographic information systems needed to establish the credibility required to defend urban design recommendations in the public arena.

Architecture and urban design share the thought process required to form physical design strategy, but architecture continues from strategy assessment to focus on the contract definitions required to lead tactical decisions toward a client’s shelter objective. The limited cellular scope indicates to me that another architectural spin-off is required to address a shelter anatomy that is presently growing with limited restraint and direction.

URBAN DESIGN

We may now recognize that we need to shelter the activities of expanding populations within geographic limits scientifically defined to protect both their quality and source of life. In other words, we must share the land with the Natural Domain and build symbiotic shelter, movement, open space and life support systems in a scientifically limited Built Domain.

Architects have intuitively referred to this as urban design. It considers the shelter capacity, building mass, movement, open space, and life support implications of occupant activity within an urban composition containing the divisions of the Built Domain. It has had little attention because it has been unable to accurately correlate the shelter capacity, occupant activity, and revenue potential of land area with a city’s average expense per acre for its quality-of-life aspirations.

I should pause to explain that the term “shelter capacity” means the gross building area options in sq. ft. per buildable acre available. It is a mathematical function of the building design category chosen; the design specification values assigned; the floor quantity options considered; and the master equation involved.

The inability to accurately measure and predict shelter capacity options has made it impossible for a city to quickly and accurately correlate urban design alternatives with their economic potential and quality of life implications based on consistent measurement and evaluation of existing conditions. This has often left a city considering budget reductions and agricultural annexation for revenue that often proves inadequate over time; or stagnation and decline when land is unavailable and taxation, redevelopment, and eminent domain are unacceptable. This will continue until the shelter capacity, activity, intensity, context, and revenue potential of land can be mathematically measured, predicted, and correlated with the municipal budget required to maintain a desirable quality of life within geographic limits.

Urban design implies a public role leading to the formation of shelter capacity, occupant activity, building mass, pavement, open space, movement, and life support policies intended to produce an economically stable quality of life within geographically limited areas. Its recommendations will be contested by many until it can prove that they have social, psychological, environmental, and economic benefits. I’ve discussed this challenge and the mathematical approach to shelter capacity evaluation in many essays and will simply refer to the index of essays included in my essay, “Limited Land – Unlimited Growth”, published on my blog at www.wmhosack.blogspot.com and on LinkedIn.

CONCLUSION

The scope of client influence had to be limited by planning, zoning, and building regulations introduced in the 20^th century to protect the public health, safety, and welfare; but the scope of client influence is still too great, and the regulations too weak and mathematically uncorrelated, to meet the challenge. If you agree that shelter is required to survive on an unstable planet, and that it must be provided for the activities of growing populations in geographic areas scientifically limited to protect their source of life, then our quality of life will depend on our ability to mathematically define and correlate shelter capacity, intensity, activity, intrusion, and context options on a limited number of acres that are self-imposed in a new age of awareness.

Walter M. Hosack, April 2025