URBAN DESIGN & ZONING

 Zoning was our first attempt to legislate urban design standards related to a land use plan. The plan was intended to separate incompatible, unhealthy, and unsafe activity, but was a two-dimensional effort to address a three-dimensional problem. This included excessive building and pavement intensity that prevented adequate light, air, and ventilation at street level. Zoning addressed the issue with independent parking, floor quantity, and setback regulations for specified activity groups. This is a limited list of the regulations attempted because the key word in the sentence is “independent”. This independence produced design leadership contradiction that obstructed its mission to correlate the physical design objectives involved. The result has been repeated attempts to correlate regulatory contradiction with variance requests ever since, but the need for exception proves the often conflicting nature of the regulations. The result has been sprawl seeking profit rather than growth based on physical, social, psychological, environmental, and economic correlation within sustainable geographic limits.

The urban design stage is set by the shelter capacity provided for activity within a Built Domain served by movement, open space, and life support systems. The relationship between shelter capacity and activity determines the revenue produced per acre of project area, but cities have not been able to accurately predict the capacity of land on gross building area per acre, forecast its revenue potential, or measure its intensity implications with a complete list of correlated topics and values. This has severely limited their ability to coordinate the use and capacity of their land with its revenue potential and contribution to their economic stability. To reiterate, the missing link has been an accurate ability to measure, evaluate, and predict the shelter capacity of land, since the square feet introduced may be occupied by any activity; and the combination determines the revenue potential of the acres consumed. Municipal accounting reflects this limitation. It reacts to past expense with an annual budget for ensuing years, but is not guided by a consciously calculated plan for future land, building, and activity adjustment that has an accurately predicted capacity to improve its revenue receipts.
The challenge facing urban design is identification and correlation of the topics and values needed to guide all ensuing land use activity decisions toward the shelter capacity, physical intensity, economic stability, and quality of life needed to sustain growing populations within limited geographic areas defined to protect their source of life.

INTRODUCTION

Shelter capacity per acre may be occupied by any activity. Regulations control building construction and activity location but do not contradict this axiom. The relationship between building capacity and activity determines the revenue produced per acre of buildable site plan area, but cities have not been able to consistently and accurately predict the gross building area capacity of land, correlate its revenue potential, or measure its intensity implications with a complete list of correlated topics and values. This has severely limited their ability to correlate the use and capacity of land with its revenue potential and contribution to economic stability. Municipal accounting reflects this limitation. It reacts to past expense with an annual budget for ensuing years, but is not guided by a plan for future land, building, and activity intensity that has the capacity to improve a city’s financial future.

As an example, a city can easily divide its annual budget by its taxable, buildable acres to determine its cost per acre to function. It does not know the revenue it is receiving per square foot of each activity present per acre however, and it is safe to say that some of these acres are being subsidized by the revenue received from other activities. Without this baseline information, a city cannot begin to consider the land use (activity) acres and gross building area per acre (intensity) relationships needed to improve its revenue (yield) from the land available. In other words, a city is a farm that must improve its ability to evaluate and predict the economic implications of its crop and field allocation. Sprawl will continue to threaten its source of life until a city is able to alter its course with consciously correlated shelter capacity and activity decisions that promise economic stability over time. Only then can it begin to shelter growing populations within geographic limits defined to protect its quality and source of life.

BUILDING DESIGN CATEGORIES

The master equations of urban design sit at the end of spreadsheet template questionnaires that are related to a building design category. The templates contain topics that request values related to the category. We are fortunate that only six shelter categories exist when classification is based on the parking system employed rather than the form and style of the building façade. They are: (1) Buildings with grade parking around, but not under, the building (G1); (2) Buildings with grade parking around and under the building (G2); (3) Buildings with an adjacent parking structure on the same premise (S1); (4) Buildings with an underground parking structure on the same premise (S2); (5) Buildings with a parking structure under the building on the same premise (S3); and (6) Buildings with no parking required (NP). Parking is the distinguishing building characteristic that is correlated with other fundamental design topic decisions to determine the shelter capacity of a given buildable land area.
Building classification by parking system has been chosen because building form and appearance cannot be used to predict the gross building area capacity of a buildable land area; and this square foot prediction is needed to determine the shelter capacity, intensity, intrusion, and dominance that will be defined by activity and determine the economic productivity of the acres involved.
All building category templates itemize the pivotal topics that determine gross building area potential when values are assigned. These values are correlated in the spreadsheet for use by the category’s master equation. The equation predicts gross building area options for the building design category it represents based on a series of floor quantity alternatives that are also entered in the spreadsheet. The gross building area options predicted represent the development capacity of land in square feet per buildable acre given or calculated under the conditions specified. These predictions have intensity, intrusion, and dominance implications that can be measured, and many of these results will prove undesirable given more careful evaluation. I’m including a brief spreadsheet example at the end of this discussion to illustrate this explanation.

When shelter capacity predictions are multiplied by the revenue potential of a given activity per square foot, the result indicates the potential yield from the gross building area and acres under consideration. It is hard to imagine a consciously and continuously balanced urban economy in a limited geographic domain without a better understanding of the fundamental urban design values and relationships on each lot that will determine our physical, social, psychological, environmental, and economic quality of life.
It should be obvious at this point that the acres within a city represent its capital. The activity and intensity planned for these acres defines the allocation of this capital within a portfolio that must be continuously monitored to produce the revenue needed to maintain and improve a desired quality of life over time. This is not accounting, financial planning, or real estate investment in the traditional sense. It is urban design evaluation and leadership that affects the formation of cities and their quality of life on a planet that does not compromise with ignorance.

A BRIEF EXAMPLE

We call the cellular unit of urban growth a lot, parcel, or project area. Each cell used for shelter contains topics whose values determine its capacity to accommodate activity, but the accurate calculation of shelter capacity and its intensity implications represent missing leadership tools that limit our ability to use land wisely. This has produced the arbitrary pattern we call sprawl. Our ability to plan, manage, and lead the provision of shelter to improve our quality of life in a limited Built Domain will advance when we begin to understand the cellular content that must be correlated to define the shelter capacity, and intensity of occupant activity that will combine to produce economic stability in a limited urban area.
Table 1 is included as an example of the potential involved when the shelter capacity of land can be accurately forecast. The header in this table notes that gross land area is given, gross building area options are to be found, and the G1 building design category is represented.
The shaded cells in the Land Module identify the values that must be given and subtracted to determine the remaining shelter area available in cell G17.

The first seven shaded cells in the Core Module ask for values that will be subtracted to find the remaining land area for building cover and parking area in cell G33.
The values entered in shaded cells A35 and A36 are used to calculate the parking lot area that will be subtracted to find the area remaining for building footprint in the core area.
At this point all values required by the master equation in cell B39 have been defined, except for floor quantity (f). These values are entered as a series of options in shaded cells A44-A53. The master equation correlates these values with all other shaded values to find the gross building area options in cells B44-B53.

All ensuing predictions and implications calculated on lines 44-53 of the Planning Forecast Panel and Implications Module of Table 1 are a function of the gross building area predictions in cells B44-
B53.

By the way, the unique characteristic of the G1 Building Design Category can be seen by comparing columns B, C, and D in the Planning Forecast Panel. Increasing floor quantity increases gross building area potential but it must be served by an increasing parking lot area in the constant core area calculated. This means that the available building cover area in the core area declines to make room for the increasing parking lot area, but the smaller building cover area is multiplied by an increasing floor quantity. The result is an increase in gross building area that declines with each floor added because the available building cover area in the limited core area declines in response to the increase in parking area required. This simply confirms what every architect understands but can’t accurately calculate without the algorithm and master equation in Table 1.

OBSERVATIONS

The shelter capacity implications calculated in cells F44-F53 of Table 1 explain how well the capacity of land to shelter activity has been used per acre consumed. This is a critical statistic that has the intensity implications calculated in cells G44-G53.

At this point, I can only tell you that the entire forecast is based on the set of specification values entered, including the 30% unpaved open space value entered in cell F11; and that a change to one or more of these values will change the entire forecast. I have no research to claim that these results are acceptable or unacceptable for any of the different activities that may be considered for occupancy. At the present time these implications are like blood pressure readings with no research frame of reference. It is not hard to visualize, however, that planning and zoning research could produce correlated design specification parameters capable of producing prescribed results for each activity group considering G1 Building Design Category occupancy.

Unfortunately, land is considered a commodity that can be bought and sold with little attention to the fact that it is a source of life. We have convinced ourselves that we own the land and convert portions to shelter served by movement, open space, and life support systems that have become a competing Built Domain. We will not win this contest with the Natural Domain but cannot survive without shelter. It means there must be reconciliation, and the first step is to build the ability to accurately forecast the capacity of land to accommodate shelter for activity, since this cannot be allowed to threaten our source of life or produce excessive intensity that threatens our health, safety, and welfare.

This discussion has introduced a brief explanation of the mathematics involved, but the prediction of implications has been limited to the physical implications referred to as shelter capacity, intensity, intrusion, and dominance. There are many other possibilities, but I lack the data to make a convincing argument. Column K in Table 2 shows, for instance, the revenue potential options that would apply per acre if the gross building area options in cells B44-B53 of Table 1 were multiplied by $1.00 of revenue per gross building square foot and divided by the 1.738 acres consumed. A comparison of these yield alternatives to a city’s cost of administration, maintenance, improvement, and debt service per acre would indicate its potential contribution to the city’s economic stability. If this comparative knowledge existed across all activities, lots, and acres within city limits, the data would produce a more informed picture of the relationship between a city’s land use allocation, its financial stability, and its economic potential.

The symbiotic challenge goes far beyond a city’s economy, but it begins with the land. This example helps to explain the pivotal importance of gross building area, shelter capacity, and intensity prediction to survival in limited geographic areas defined to protect our source of life.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

I have presented new tools, equation derivations, and forecast models to predict shelter capacity, intensity, intrusion, and dominance for any land area in my book, The Equations of Urban Design, 2020; and have presented the database structures and relationships required to build knowledge concerning the revenue productivity of land use activity and intensity options in an essay contained in my book, Symbiotic Architecture, 2020. The essay is one from a collection in the book and is entitled, “The Least a Smart City Should Know”, 2018. I self-published the two books on Amazon.com where they can now be found.

The equations in the first book I’ve mentioned above represent a culmination of the work I began with the books, Land Development Calculations, editions 1 and 2, published by The McGraw-Hill Companies in 2001 and 2010. The database structures in the essay published in 2018 should be pursued by those wishing to accumulate the knowledge we will need to persuade others that we must learn to shelter growing populations on geographically limited land areas that are planned to protect both our quality and source of life. It will represent pure research and it is my hope that the knowledge acquired will contribute to a new science of urban design.