Sprawl is a disease consuming the Natural Domain with building mass, pavement, and open space in both the Urban and Rural Phyla of the Built Domain. When sprawl is seen as a cancer expanding with population growth, there will be a search for a cure to treat this threat to our source and quality of life. The cure will begin at the cellular level of sprawl formation called a lot. A primary building providing shelter for human activity is its nucleus. A cell and its aggregation is where architecture can help by focusing on the building categories, cell content, design specification values, and master equations that produce gross building area options within each cell of currently sprawling urban form.
Gross building area can be occupied by any activity. These area and activity options combine with pavement and social open space to produce levels of shelter capacity, intensity, intrusion, and domination in each cell of the Shelter Division of the Urban and Rural Phyla of the Built Domain; but capacity and intensity have not been measured or compared with occupant activity. This combination has municipal revenue and expense per acre implications that affect its physical, social, psychological, environmental, and economic quality of life; but this lack of correlation means that the relationship of building mass, intensity, and activity to economic stability and quality of life cannot be predicted at the present time. This, however, is the key to a cure for sprawl vainly seeking financial stability and shelter for growing populations.
Shelter capacity is gross building area per acre. It produces a level of intensity, intrusion, and domination in a cell based on the building design category chosen and the values entered in its design specification template. These values have had partial recognition and conflicting specifications in zoning ordinances. This has led to uncorrelated, unsuccessful attempts to consistently lead the emergence of urban form to physical, social, and economic success that protects our health, safety, welfare, and source of life.
Architecture intuitively understands the correlation required but has never classified building design categories, comprehensively listed their design specification topics, or written algorithms to correlate design specification values for use by master equations that accurately predict shelter capacity and intensity options for any given land area. This leadership language was not needed by anyone when the planet was “a world without end” and we were encouraged to be “fruitful and multiply”. These exhortations have led to promiscuous consumption of land vainly searching for economic stability with hopeful annexation. Public participation has kept everyone busy within the city, but its focus on detail has failed to recognize sprawl and the knowledge needed for correction.
The cure is city design of urban form for growing populations that contains shelter capacity, intensity, intrusion, and dominance decisions balanced for economic stability and quality of life within sustainable limits. New relational databases are needed to produce knowledge that can defend the decisions required. Decisions in turn must be expressed in a language that can lead. It must correlate the mathematical design specification decisions that are the hidden foundation of shelter formation. This is the language needed to repeat success and avoid failure on a very finite world in a universe without end.
A city design recipe for urban form is not a replacement for traditional architectural priorities. It is a massing prelude that requires further architectural refinement to produce shelter composition, context, and appearance. These results will symbolize the logical foundation needed to achieve sustainable cities and symbiotic survival on a planet that does not compromise with ignorance.
If you have read my books you should have a thorough understanding of what I mean by the mathematical language of city design, building design categories, design specifications, gross building area, shelter capacity, intensity, intrusion, dominance and urban form correlation. The first two contained forecast models based on the incremental approach to calculation historically used by architects. The third translated this approach into architectural algorithms that correlated comprehensive sets of design specification values to serve a building design category master equation. The equation predicted gross building area options based on these design specification decisions and floor quantity alternatives. A change to any specification value or floor quantity alternative produced a new set of options, but a forecasting CD was not included because of previous copyright infringement. This book has been replaced by an unpublished fourth that simplifies the third and contains far better organization. All final forecast models will be placed in the cloud if someone takes up the baton.
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