Tailoring Shelter Capacity to Meet Physical, Social, and Economic Context Objectives

 Shelter construction on a single parcel accumulates in cellular fashion and combines with movement, open space, and life support systems to form a Built Domain anatomy that is not divinely created. It will continue until we have mathematical standards for shelter capacity evaluation that can mathematically measure, evaluate, predict, provide, limit, and lead the performance of all who plan, design, provide, invest, and consume land for shelter, profit, and revenue. Without a vocabulary and language capable of producing leadership knowledge and direction, shelter design, and real estate investment will continue following growth objectives with inadequate anticipation.

Architecture creates a shelter strategy called schematic design to protect and serve a client’s activity. It then works to complete a precise graphic and written contractual definition of the objectives that must be constructed with tactical effort to achieve the strategic goal. The result can be thought of as a cell within an urban anatomy, but there has been no mathematical ability to limit its growth, measure the intensity introduced, or the economic potential implied by occupant alternatives.

Cellular projects aggregate to form neighborhoods, districts, cities, and regions served by movement, life support and public open space arteries that add intensity, but its definition has remained a matter of opinion, political perception, and leadership confusion prompted by unreliable and inconsistent density and floor area measurements. (I won’t bother to defend this statement since I have written many previous essays on the topic.) This has made physical, social, and economic leadership by architecture, urban design, and city planning a hope without a language.

A mathematical language of intensity measurement and evaluation is needed to establish consistent leadership direction. The term can be defined in architectural terms as a spectrum of shelter capacity alternatives measured in gross building area potential per buildable acre. This capacity can be occupied by any eligible activity. It is formed by choices among building design categories, design specification values, floor quantity options, and a category master equation that produces gross building area predictions per buildable acre given the information measured and/or entered in a category forecast model.

I have written about this correlation and the context implications of shelter capacity, intensity, and intrusion measurements/predictions on many occasions, but have only provided the equations in a book entitled, “The Equations of Urban Design” available on Amazon. If you’re interested, you’ll have to build the forecast models from the information provided. I have never been convinced that there will be enough interest to warrant the expense of a web site devoted to the interactive use of these models, even though I have always believed there is a global need for more accurate shelter capacity leadership on a planet with limits that are no longer debatable.

I self-published the book mentioned and regret that I didn’t think of the title, “Shelter Capacity Evaluation”, at the time. The word “equations” in the title is misleading since each chapter is about a building design category and its mathematical capacity, intensity, and activity potential on a given land area. The correlation of shelter capacity, intensity, and activity to achieve economic stability and desirable context within limited geographic areas is the opportunity implied by the mathematical approach to design measurement, evaluation, and leadership presented. Derivation of chapter category master equations is presented at the end of each chapter for those who wish to verify the journey to each.

I would also like to amend the Table of Contents in my book, for those interested, with the version I’m attaching to this brief note. It does a better job of indicating the relationship between a building design category and its master equation.

Walter M. Hosack, May 2025