If you believe that the physical pattern, mass, and condition
of urban and rural shelter reflects the quality of human life present, and that
the definition, measurement, evaluation, and planning of the physical intensity,
context, compatibility, and condition occupied by activity within urban and
rural areas are significant issues, then this essay may be of interest.
Shelter capacity and occupancy are separate topics. Capacity
can be measured and the options mathematically predicted for any given land
area. These project options represent levels of physical intensity. The
combination of shelter capacity and intensity may be occupied by any activity. The
result is physical context. Context choices have revenue and investment implications.
They affect compatibility and influence quality of life beyond their immediate
project boundaries, but we are missing the ability to measure these results,
evaluate their implications, and improve our decisions.
INTRODUCTION
A building can shelter any permitted activity. Gross
building area in square feet divided by the buildable acres occupied is the
shelter capacity of the buildable land involved. It varies with the building
design category chosen and the design specification values entered in its
forecast model. The options produced have measurable capacity, intensity,
intrusion, and context implications. The shelter decision is combined with
occupant activity and location to add both investment and revenue potential. The
shelter environment of every city represents a collection of these decisions, and
they determine its financial (revenue) stability. The annexation of land is an
attempt to improve this financial stability without a complete understanding of
the correlated shelter capacity and activity decisions required to balance
shelter capacity, intensity, and activity to achieve public revenue objectives.
The average revenue yield per acre produced in a city’s
jurisdiction must equal its total cost per acre to operate, maintain, improve,
and serve its debt. The profit per acre from a project ends with its sale. The
municipal obligation to sustain the project does not end. It increases with project
age. An investor hopes to leave with a profit. A city is left with an
obligation.
THE CASE
A city knows that total annual revenue per acre must equal or exceed
its total annual expense per acre, but a planning issue like that in Boston becomes
a local conflict to be avoided because it is difficult, if not impossible, to
correlate the debate with public issues beyond the immediate neighborhood. Very
few, if any, cities have the correlated information systems, data science, and
mathematical algorithms required to evaluate the revenue impact of an
individual project proposal on its quality of life. Greater knowledge and
mathematical evaluation is needed to assess project change that is a
microscopic alteration in the urban anatomy, and that may represent either
evolution or disease.
THE GOAL
I have believed for quite some time that our goal must be to
shelter the activities of growing populations within a geographically limited
Built Domain designed to protect their quality and source of life, the Natural
Domain. It is a physical goal, however, based on the belief that the shelter
capacity, intensity, and context of activity within a city can be
mathematically correlated with the land available to produce an economic
strategy capable of supporting an improved quality of life. It cannot be achieved
with random projects pursued by the special interests of investors. The
speculative approach of private interest cannot help appearing arbitrarily
beneficial and insensitive to a neighborhood’s concern over the issue of
“adjacent and compatible” activity. Fighting over symptoms will only distract
us from building the information management and diagnostic tools needed to
reach the goal.
URBAN DESIGN
Urban design plans with correlated physical, social,
psychological, environmental, and economic objectives are needed to determine
the shelter capacity, intensity and activity allocation required for municipal
financial stability. A municipal land use plan that depends on annexation and
rezoning to solve annual budget deficit with service reductions and isolated
project development or redevelopment is not a recipe that can place public
debate on a more solid foundation. Every project becomes an isolated skirmish
without a strategy focused on demonstrable, comprehensive public and private
benefit.
A city leaves its physical, social, and economic future to
piecemeal fights over “adjacency and compatibility” at the microscopic,
cellular project level of its urban and rural anatomy. The unwelcome result is
continuing uncertainty and metastatic growth that continues to consume its
source of life.
REPEAT FROM “THE MATHEMATICAL FOUNDATION OF SHELTER
DESIGN DECISIONS”
I have written about building design categories, design
specification templates, and the shelter capacity implications of specification
value choices on many occasions using forecast models to illustrate the
mathematical correlation required for consistent shelter capacity leadership.
My intent has been to put the discussion of shelter capacity
and its relationship to our quality of life on an equal footing with the
languages of real estate law and economics. The debate can only begin when a
mathematical language of shelter capacity built on measurement,
evaluation, prediction, and knowledge accumulation can forecast and guide the
implications of land area, building design category, and specification value
choices. These specification values lead to the formation of shelter capacity,
intensity, intrusion, and context. The nascent awareness of the need for this
leadership language and knowledge has been referred to as urban design, or city
design in the words of my deceased but prescient professor, Rudolf Frankel.
I self-published “The Equations of Urban Design” on
Amazon.com in 2020 to summarize and improve my work in three previous books
entitled, “Land Development Calculations”, editions 1 and 2 published by
McGraw-Hill in 2001 and 2010, and “The Science of City Design” self-published
in 2016. They represent my continuing effort to explain the site plan
allocation and floor quantity options that precede architectural design. It is
the quantity allocation of building cover, parking cover, pavement, unpaved
open space, and floor quantity in a site plan that determines shelter capacity
options, context, and quality of life in mathematical terms equal to the
leadership debate involved. The mission is to establish a consistent leadership
language for shelter debate and land consumption decisions on a planet that
does not compromise with failure to anticipate.
I also maintain a blog entitled, “Cities and Design” at www.wmhosack.blogspot.com that
began in September 2010. It currently contains 257 essays for anyone interested
in following the topic. The more recent essays are also included on LinkedIn. I
would be happy to provide a complete Table of Contents to any request on
LinkedIn.
REPEAT FROM “PURSUING URBAN DESIGN and ZONING KNOWLEDGE”
The Latin word for shelter, roof, or cover is “tegimen”. I
pronounce it “tejimen”, even though this may offend Latin scholars, and would
like to suggest the words “Tegimenics”, “Tegimenistics”, or “Tegimenology”
as labels for those interested in pursuing the issue of shelter capacity and
quality of life for growing populations in limited geographic areas on a planet,
in a universe, that expects us to anticipate its unwritten Law of Limits. It is
a language intended to give a quantitative voice and credible support for
emerging topics many refer to as urban design or city design with its roots in the
ancient planning of Hippodamus of Miletus.
Walter M. Hosack, August 2025
Photo of early grid plan of Piraeus, Greece
By Baedeker - Baedeker's Handbook of Greece,
Leipzig.http://www.nautilia.gr/forum//attachment.php?attachmentid=31153&d=1236108867http://www.nautilia.gr/forum/showthread.php?t=36257&page=32,
Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8511294
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