“The question driving me is
simple, yet demanding: what if design intelligence doesn’t follow development,
but structures it?
What if land, ecology, and
systems are engaged at the level where value is defined, decisions are made,
and projects are set in motion?”
In response to the first question, development begins with a
land survey that defines a commodity for sale. We have continued to subdivide
these areas into smaller parcels without an accurate mathematical ability to calculate
the gross building area options or implications involved. Shelter capacity estimates and assumptions
have filled the void. Design intelligence has been challenged to see if it can fit
these assumptions into the area purchased, given the parameters established by
isolated, statutory, and often conflicting zoning ordinance regulations. This
will not change without the mathematical ability to accurately predict gross
building area options in square feet per buildable acre, or shelter capacity,
for any given buildable land area and building design category. These options
are now mathematically predictable and measurable.
The shelter capacity, intensity, intrusion, and context implications
of gross building area predictions can be calculated and evaluated based on a
consistent set of design template specification options. Comparison and
evaluation of these implications can build the library of knowledge,
expression, and leadership worthy of the term “design intelligence”. It is
needed to guide many to provide shelter for the activities of growing
populations within the geographic limits needed to protect our quality and
source of life.
Cities are a collection of individual parcels. Many of these
are represented by site plans for building footprint, parking, miscellaneous
pavement, and open space. Most aggregations are separated by arteries of
movement. These shelter cells may expand or multiply upon request to consume
the surrounding area without limit at the present time. Open space relief from
the intensity created by building mass, parking, and miscellaneous pavement within
a cell reduces the intensity of shelter planned or permitted for each cell, but
has often been considered a drain on investment potential.
The values entered in a design specification template for a
given building design category, including the percentage of unencumbered open
space planned or required, determines the gross building area options forecast
by the category’s master equation. Additional template equations interpret the
shelter capacity, intensity, intrusion, and context implications of these gross
building area options.
When the design specification values entered in a template
represent an existing project, the implications calculated measure its
capacity, intensity, intrusion, and context on a consistent scale of evaluation.
This measurement and prediction yardstick is the tool needed to support context
opinion with comparison, evaluation, and conclusions that place appearance in a
supporting role. The result is context measurement of mass and space that is currently
referred to as project composition. The context of the composition created by
the spatial arrangement of building mass, parking, pavement, and open space has
been unmeasurable until now but intuitively recognized and referred to as
“overbuilt”, “excessive”, “blighted”, “sprawling”, or “desirable” and so on. The
challenge has been to derive a method of measurement that can classify these
opinions for consistent leadership reference and guidance.
Urban Design
Urban design is concerned with physical compositions of
shelter, movement, open space, and life support that aggregate to form
neighborhoods, districts, cities, and regions. These options also have
measurable social, psychological, environmental, and economic implications that
are a function of these shelter capacity measurements and predictions.
I have demonstrated in my book, “The Equations of Urban
Design”, that gross building area potential can be measured, evaluated,
predicted, and translated into a consistent shelter capacity, intensity,
intrusion, and context measurement system. In my opinion, it is needed to
ensure that we use every buildable acre of land wisely to shelter the
activities of growing populations within geographically limited areas defined
to protect their quality and source of life.
Excessive shelter capacity produces the Dickensian intensity
of 19th century tenement life. Minimal shelter capacity produces
unlimited sprawl that threatens to consume agriculture and the Natural Domain
with misguided concepts of unlimited annexation. It is our task to define the
middle ground with the mathematical credibility and design intelligence
required.
What if land, ecology, and
systems are engaged at the level where value is defined, decisions are made,
and projects are set in motion?”
Value is defined at the parcel level of property ownership. If
ecological and environmental distinctions were made, they would produce at
least two distinct geographic areas in my opinion: the Built Domain and its
source of life, the Natural Domain. This distinction would have immediately
established two categories of land value. We have simply considered the planet
to be “without end” and without need for the distinction. All land has been
available to those with the power to claim ownership. Preservation remains a
hotly contested political issue. The Natural Domain, and agriculture within the
Rural Phyla of the Built Domain, are still considered consumable by many. As a
result they remain fair game for acquisition, annexation, and places “where
projects are set in motion” with value relatively unrelated to ecology and environmental
systems at the present time.
If a distinction were made between the Built Domain and
Natural Domain, it would begin to establish a “priceless” category of value for
the geographic areas designated as essential to survival on a limited planet. Agriculture
would also be recognized as an irreplaceable asset of immeasurable value within
the remaining Built Domain. The Natural Domain would become a place to visit.
Shelter capacity options have not had a mathematical method
of precise calculation, nor have they been evaluated based on their intensity,
intrusion, and context implications. This has prevented the formation of a more
informed leadership language and library of knowledge. It is why I wrote “The
Equations of Urban Design” in 2010. I believed that the design of shelter capacity
within a limited Built Domain can only begin with an accurate ability to
calculate the shelter capacity options related to a given land area; that this
ability depends on a choice from six building design categories; and that these
calculations have measurable context implications that transcend opinion over appearance.
I also came to realize that capacity may be occupied by any
permitted activity; and that managing the combination on land within corporate
limits has economic (as well as physical, social, psychological, and
environmental) implications that can also be mathematically built on gross
building area, shelter capacity, and intensity measurements and predictions.
In other words, the sum of shelter capacity, intensity, and
activity present or planned for every acre of municipal land produces average
annual revenue per buildable, taxable acre. The collection represents a city’s
investment portfolio, but it has struggled to financially plan the economic return
from this portfolio given its current level of data management and urban design
sophistication. In other words, it has not been able to correlate its physical composition
of shelter capacity, intensity, and activity with the average revenue per acre needed
to equal or exceed its current and projected average cost of operation,
maintenance, improvement, and debt service per acre. The result has often been
budget reductions of little benefit to the entire population.
What if land, ecology, and
systems are engaged at the level where value is defined, decisions are made,
and projects are set in motion?”
It will all begin in my opinion with the separation of Built
and Natural Domains and the ability to predict optional shelter capacity,
intensity, and activity options at the parcel level of urban and city design within
the Built Domain. This will not happen without political agreement that public
health, safety, and quality of life is involved; and it will not happen until
the efforts of public and private development can be mathematically correlated
with the common and consistent equations of shelter capacity evaluation, or
Tegimenics, in my opinion.
Walter M. Hosack, April 2026
PS: Any reader interested in more detail regarding shelter
capacity evaluation, or Tegimenics, may be interested in my book, “The Equations of Urban Design” available on Amazon.com.
