A City Planning Opportunity

Original zoning laws attempted to separate incompatible land use activity and ensure that adequate light, air, and ventilation reached the internal and external places we inhabit. It was a declaration of human rights at a time when excessive intensity was a function of unbridled speculative interest, limited mobility, and lack of concern for the public health, safety, and welfare. Individual freedom to dominate was challenged by the collective freedom to demand a better quality of life.

Land use is a deceptively simple term. It means the activity that takes place on any given land area. Incompatible land use activity is separated by zoning district plans. Annexation law permits activity districts to expand over natural and agricultural land. The fact that most activity requires shelter, movement, open space, and life support is taken for granted. The result has been a sprawling Built Domain that consumes land as needed. The problem has become increasingly apparent, but awareness does not solve problems. It simply raises questions among populations taught to believe that this is a world without end, to be fruitful, and to multiply.

Sprawl was first seen with aerial photography. Time has shown that sprawl is growing. This awareness has alerted human instinct to anticipate implications; but anticipation requires a language that can measure, evaluate, and treat the problem. Sprawl is land use activity sheltered by building capacity and intensity. It is extended and served by movement, open space, and life support systems. Shelter capacity is simply gross building area per buildable acre. Shelter capacity options are a function of the values assigned to a building category template. Intensity is a function of the shelter capacity chosen from the options available. Intensity measurement and prediction is the key to sheltering growing populations within a geographically limited Built Domain that protects their quality of life from excessive intensity and their source of life from excessive encroachment.

Keep in mind that a building can shelter any activity, assuming zoning and building code compliance. Activity can be moved to another building to achieve land use compatibility, but the physical context of shelter remains to affect our social, psychological, environmental, and economic quality of life. Credible context measurement, evaluation, prediction, and correlation with related databases are needed to connect shelter capacity, intensity, and activity with its many quality of life implications.