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