Tegimenics in Urban Design, Zoning and Planning

 

Tegimenics is the language needed to pursue shelter capacity evaluation related to city planning, urban design, zoning, government, real estate development, architecture, landscape architecture, civil engineering, real estate law, banking, urban geography and so on. Tegimenology is the science of shelter capacity evaluation. It is needed to guide the consumption of agriculture and the Natural Domain by a Built Domain that does not acknowledge unlimited growth as a threat to its source of life.

Tegimenics is a language derived in a book entitled, “The Equations of Urban Design”. The equations are the engine behind a series of forecast models derived in the book to measure and predict the shelter capacity of land -- and the intensity, intrusion, and context implications of the options predicted. The options are a function of the building design category chosen from six options for a given land area, and the design specification values entered in its template. I’ve written about the equations and forecast models created in the 260+ essays posted on my blog. The more recent have also been posted on LinkedIn and on its interest group locations: Urbanist, City and Town Planning, Urban Planning Group, Massive Small, and Project Our World.

I won’t attempt to explain the language needed to pursue the science of shelter capacity evaluation since it is covered in the book and essays just mentioned. The book has been self-published and is available on Amazon.com. The models discussed in the book illustrate software that remains to be published as interactive spreadsheets.

I have pursued the effort for several reasons. First, I believe that we must learn to shelter the activities of populations within limited geographic areas defined and designed to protect our quality and source of life. Unlimited growth on a planet with limited land area is simply an unrealistic recipe. Second, independent, mathematical zoning regulations often collide with each other. They are not correlated and their combined implications cannot be measured. It has been a recipe for confusion and conflicting opinions; and has too often produced the sprawl and excessive intensity of a parasite depending on annexation for survival. It is up to us to design, regulate, and lead the built anatomy. We cannot do it without revising the current uncorrelated form of mathematical regulation at the heart of master plans that attempt to define this anatomy.

A building may be occupied by any permitted activity. The amount of gross building area present or planned per buildable acre is the shelter capacity of the land area given. The spectrum of shelter capacity options is nearly infinite, but many design specification choices are not desirable but remain to be defined. 

The combination of shelter capacity, intensity, intrusion and location decisions has social, psychological, environmental, and economic implications that we have yet to correlate with physical design decisions expressed in the mathematical language of Tegimenics. It can lead us toward shelter patterns, forms, and places that reflect an increasing awareness of the physical anatomy we must define to serve the symbiotic mandate we must anticipate with the limited awareness we have been given. I apologize for being unable to resist calling this language Tegimenics and the future knowledge it may contribute a science of Tegimenology. It is the best I can do with my limited ability to anticipate.

Walter M. Hosack, September 2025