Before I get to the title of this essay I would like to
mention an essay I remembered after reading an article about data dependent planning
and urban design. The essay is entitled, “The Least a City Should Know”. It is
located on my blog at www.wmhosack.blogspot.com.
I am not attaching it for the sake of brevity since it is longer than I
normally write and contains 7 tables. It is about the correlation of currently
independent database sources that must agree to form a common resource before
we can begin to correlate the information needed to build knowledge and make
informed city planning and urban design decisions.
We cannot predict, plan, and lead shelter capacity decisions
toward the efficient and economically stable use of limited land areas without
improved database correlation. We do not need to leave these decisions to a
marketplace that believes in land without end and private profitability without
concern for public revenue potential and financial stability per acre of
municipal land area.
In other words, we cannot correlate design of the physical
city with its social and economic characteristics until we are able to assemble
the relational databases required to understand the correlation of decisions
involved.
Forecast Models for Shelter Capacity Measurement
and Evaluation
I have written about the urban design classification system,
building design categories, forecast models, design specification templates,
architectural algorithms, master equations, and definitional equations that determine
shelter capacity and intensity at the cellular level of city formation on many
occasions; and have referred to the software package of measurement and
forecasting models as both Shelter Capacity Evaluation and Development Capacity
Evaluation.
I continue to vacillate between the terms “shelter capacity”
and “development capacity”. Shelter has
a residential tone but conveys the life-saving nature of the topic. Development is all-inclusive but has a
less imperative, more diluted and commercial tone. When I use either of these
terms, they are meant to encompass the building design categories, gross
building areas, and shelter capacity, intensity, intrusion, and dominance implications
that can be mathematically predicted from design specification values entered
in a building design category template. These predictions can be used for
either residential or non-residential occupancy. They predict the shelter
capacity, intensity, intrusion, and dominance implications of contemplated
design specification options, but the values chosen can be improved with a
focused strategy of data accumulation, correlation, and evaluation.
Principles of Shelter Capacity
Evaluation
While writing this I thought back to my creation of Shelter
Capacity Evaluation software and would like to mention the points that have
come to influence my opinions and approach. The number of variable decisions
exposed by this exercise gave me a new appreciation for the mental correlation
performed by architects, landscape architects, city planners, urban designers,
and so on over centuries. They have had to perform this correlation with the
leadership instinct, intuition, awareness, experience, and rules of thumb that
we have called talent. It has been applied for centuries when population growth
was encouraged and land was plentiful. We now need to support talent with a
foundation of data accumulation, mathematical evaluation, and increasing
knowledge that will help it consistently provide shelter for the activities of
increasing populations within geographic limits defined to protect their
quality and source of life. It will never replace talent, but it will give it
more credible support for the decisions it recommends. The following opinions
have led me to the formation of this mathematical foundation.
(1)
There are two worlds on a single planet – the
Built Domain and the Natural Domain.
(2)
The Built Domain continues to consume
agriculture and the Natural Domain with sprawl and annexation.
(3)
Human survival depends on shelter within the
Built Domain.
(4)
The activities of growing populations depend on
an increasing shelter supply.
(5)
Shelter is served within the Urban and Rural
Phyla of the Built Domain by its Movement, Open Space, and Life Support
Divisions.
(6)
Shelter is provided by 6 building design
categories that can be mathematically defined.
(7)
Land consumption by a building design category
is a function of the design specification values entered in its forecast model.
(8)
Building floor quantity options can be mathematically
correlated with site plan design specifications to forecast gross building area
alternatives for a given land area.
(9)
Gross building area divided by the buildable
acres involved equals the shelter capacity per acre planned or present.
(10)
Shelter capacity
times the impervious cover percentage planned or present on a given buildable
land area divided by 10,000 equals the intensity present.
(11)
Intensity
measurements and predictions can indicate excessive urban design alternatives.
(12)
Excessive
intensity remains to be defined with case study measurements of existing
building design category specifications.
(13)
Shelter
capacity for activity has private financial and public economic development
implications.
(14)
A city’s
total expense per acre can be compared with the revenue it receives per census
block, tract, or zoning district acre to determine financial stability and
future urban design strategies.
(15)
Urban
design strategies for shelter capacity, intensity, activity, and location can
improve the revenue produced from areas within a city’s municipal area.
(16)
Shelter
capacity forecasting combined with activity allocation in an urban design plan has
economic implications that affect a city’s quality of life.
(17)
Existing
building design specifications can be measured and evaluated using the topics
listed in its related building category forecast model.
(18)
The
composition and appearance of building mass, parking, pavement, and unpaved
open space in a project area begins with the site planning and floor quantity
specification values adopted as the urban design foundation for all ensuing
design decisions.
(19)
Shelter
project areas are cells with various amounts of shelter capacity, intensity,
and activity that combine to form the Shelter Division of an urban anatomy.
(20)
The
design specification measurements of an existing building are like the first
blood pressure measurements in medicine. They require collection, correlation
and evaluation to build knowledge of the capacity, intensity, intrusion, and
dominance impact represented.
(21) Sprawl is the pattern of a parasite withut a symbiotic future.
Observation
We have not, or have refused to recognize population growth
as a threat to the preservation of agriculture and our source of life, the Natural
Domain, even though we refer to this growth as “sprawl”. Sprawl is also a term
associated in the minds of many with housing. It is actually unlimited land
consumption for gross building area, often called annexation that can be used
to shelter any activity. It is unlimited land consumption driven by population
growth, deteriorating urban areas, shifting opinions, and use of inadequate forecasting tools that make it a threat
to our source of life.
The need for shelter will continue to drive sprawl until we
can correlate increasing demand within geographic areas limited to protect the
natural domain without excessive shelter intensity. It has been an impossible
goal because the shelter capacity of land and the intensity implications of
optional, qualitative design decisions have resisted accurate mathematical
definition and prediction. This has left population growth and sprawl as a
debate without a frame of reference beyond conflicting opinion. I have created
the measurement and prediction software of Shelter Capacity Evaluation to offer
an alternative.
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