A master plan for city development has had public health,
safety, and welfare improvement goals. Welfare has been the most nebulous term.
It implies physical, social, and economic improvement that has been partially
successful at best in my opinion.
Physical welfare has involved shelter, movement, open space,
and life support construction in both the Urban and Rural Phyla of a Built
Domain that continues to sprawl by consuming its source of life, agriculture
and the Natural Domain.
Health and safety master plans seem to have been most
successful when compared with the physical results that many associate with the
term “master plan”. Physical plans have had the goal of land use compatibility
defined by zoning district boundaries and design regulations. Compatibility,
however, has struggled with the definitions of shelter capacity, intensity,
intrusion, and context. The result has often been excessive intensity at one
end of the shelter spectrum and sprawl at the other.
(Previous
readers may remember that I prefer the term “activity” to “land use” because it
does not confuse the shelter capacity of land represented by building mass with
its occupant activity. They are distinctly different topics, since the shelter
capacity of land may be occupied by any permitted activity. Shelter capacity decisions
are the foundation for all ensuing physical, social, and economic design results.)
Both master plans and zoning laws have been incapable of
guiding physical results toward shelter for the activities of growing
populations within geographic limits defined to protect their quality and
source of life. This, in my opinion, is the goal we need to pursue with
physical master plans, urban design, and zoning regulation. Predicting the
capacity, intensity, and economic implications of physical design decisions may
begin to give us the arguments needed to chart a more convincing course with a
mathematically inter-active master plan.
ECONOMIC IMPLICATIONS
The growth, decay, death, and survival of cities is a
function of the total revenue generated by taxable activity on parcels within
its boundaries. When this activity requires shelter, the revenue produced is influenced
by the floor quantities present and the square feet of shelter capacity,
intensity, intrusion and context created for the activity or activities. The
revenue produced is a function of the square feet occupied by the activity and
the real estate value involved. There are other revenue sources, but this is a
simplified example. In all cases, the revenue produced on a parcel or parcels is
a function of the buildable acres occupied and the shelter intensity present. The
results from a single project are only one contribution to the revenue needed,
however. The average revenue per acre from all taxable parcels must equal or
exceed a city’s total annual cost of administration, maintenance, improvement,
and debt service per taxable acre.
A city’s parcels are
cells in an organism served by arteries of movement and life support. I wish I
could add arteries of open space, but this is a dream, not reality. My point is
that this organism is alive because we inhabit the parcels I have just referred
to as cells, and these cells are multiplying with annexation and sprawl in
search of revenue that continues to elude their grasp over time. This is
happening, in my opinion, because we do not understand the mathematical
relationships between land, shelter capacity, activity, intensity, and
intrusion that combine to produce physical, social, psychological,
environmental, and economic quality of life under the umbrella terms “welfare”
and “context”. (Previous readers may remember that “shelter capacity,
intensity, intrusion, and context” are measurable using the forecast models and
equations of urban design.)
The revenue performance of every taxable parcel within a
city’s boundaries is known, but the information is contained in separately
controlled silos. This currently prevents correlated modeling with the
relational databases and geographic information systems needed to evaluate and
monitor a city’s economic performance. Some information is privileged, but it
can be aggregated by block, tract, or zone to reveal the productivity of a
city’s land use allocation without revealing personal information.
Greater attention to a city’s shelter capacity and economic
productivity is needed. In other words, a city must learn before it can begin planning.
It is a challenge that can only be met with more sophisticated data cooperation,
geographic information systems, shelter capacity evaluation, zoning guidance, and
inter-active urban design leadership.
HISTORY
A master plan’s original intent was to improve a
population’s health, safety, and welfare by addressing its physical, social and
economic deficiencies. This has since been expanded by some, and contested by
others, to include its psychological, environmental, and ecological
deficiencies. The problem is that a city’s physical presence represents fixed
investment and social attachment that has a difficult time adapting to change.
All of this began long ago with the incompatible and
unregulated proximity of shelter activity, mass, and movement in cities. Private
investment compromised public access to light, air, and ventilation while also
producing unhealthy and unsafe buildings. In the 20th century, minimum
design standards and relationships were established in reaction to excessive
compression, unhealthy sanitary conditions, unsafe building practices, and
excessive fire hazard. Minimum standards were written to avoid the claim of
excessive regulation, but the focused scope has been inadequate to deal with
the problem of continuing growth on a planet with limited land area and
resources. We have adopted tactical solutions to a strategic threat that
requires more knowledge and new mathematical tools for evaluation and guidance.
We have had no models capable of easily anticipating optional
solutions to the demand for shelter from growing populations within limited
geographic areas. We continue to depend on annexation of limited resources to
satisfy this demand.
Two inventions were created to deal with a physical master
plan’s limited ability to adapt to change. The first attempted to deal with the
plan’s inability to correlate population growth with shelter demand within established
geographic limits. Annexation became a legal solution and the result has been
“”sprawl”. It continues to consume agriculture and the Natural Domain.
The second invention dealt with the lack of mathematical
correlation among zoning ordinance requirements. Compliance was achieved with a
“variance” concept that attempted to reconcile conflicts among requirements with
compromise using the concept of public review and approval of the
contradictions encountered.
Neither expedient can lead us toward a sustainable,
symbiotic future. We need an interactive anatomical model that can react to mathematical
experimentation without damaging the patient. The tools of data science and
geographic information modeling exist, but they are not correlated with the
revenue information and shelter capacity prediction needed to understand the
cellular economic fundamentals at the heart of a city’s physical anatomy and financial
security.
Shelter capacity to accommodate the growth of population activity
has been addressed with the legal concepts of rezoning, redevelopment, eminent
domain, and annexation. Consuming agriculture and the Natural Domain to expand
the Built Domain seems to be a continuing preference, but it has been
short-sighted.
I doubt that many will disagree that change requires
adaptation to prevent extinction. In this case, however, we are dealing with a
cellular anatomy that requires guidance before it consumes its source of life. This
anatomy has been thought of as property, but we inhabit these cells that we
call lots or parcels; and they are multiplying through annexation to produce dual
threats we have labeled “sprawl” and “excessive intensity”.
Property value has been determined by the marketplace and
considered an investment decision, but the concept has been one-sided. If we cannot
predict the revenue a cell can provide in this artificial organism, we will not
understand how to ensure the survival of a limited urban anatomy containing
these cells.
Growth has been considered an investment decision. The
public revenue needed to sustain growth has had little comparable mathematical
attention. This is where shelter capacity evaluation enters the picture. It can
predict gross building area options for a given land area based on the building
design category chosen and the design specification values entered in the
category’s forecast model. These values are correlated by the model and its
master equation to produce gross building area options per buildable acre
(shelter capacity options). They can be multiplied by anticipated occupant
revenue per square foot, to determine the anticipated revenue per acre
occupied. These predictions can be compared to a city’s total annual expense
per acre to evaluate the revenue performance of a proposal, and the sum of
these predictions can be used to guide future development decisions, but I emphasize
the word “average”. Not all projects will produce revenue per acre that equals
or exceeds a city’s annual expense per acre.
The revenue performance of an existing master plan can also
be evaluated with shelter capacity measurement, prediction, and evaluation.
This is the information a city needs to begin understanding the performance of
its anatomy and the economic development prescriptions needed to improve its
health, safety, and welfare.
NEXT STEPS
The tools of data science and geographic information systems
exist, but they are not correlated with the real estate tax, income tax, and
related revenue information needed to understand and evaluate the cellular
economic performance of a city’s financial anatomy.
A city’s economic performance is a function of the building
design categories and design specification values that produce shelter capacity
and intensity for occupant activity and revenue performance on each parcel within
a city.
City planning that cannot measure, predict, evaluate, and
monitor revenue potential at the cellular level of its anatomy will continue to
consume its source of life with annexation in a frustrating search for economic
stability. Improving the shelter capacity and revenue potential of a city’s
land area is only the beginning, however. Our cities affect our physical,
social, psychological, environmental, ecological, and economic quality of life
at the very least. These topics exist under the category “welfare” in my
opinion and improvement is affected by the urban design context created by our
shelter capacity decisions. We have only begun to build the tools needed to
predict the implications of these design decisions. The tools we create will
determine the knowledge we can apply to a sustainable challenge we must
anticipate and cannot ignore.
ADDENDUM
In other words, we must learn to survive without
consuming and polluting our source of life and its dependents.
FURTHER INFORMATION
Further information about the building design categories,
design specification topics, prediction panels, and implication modules of
shelter capacity forecast models can be found in my book, “The Equations of
Urban Design”, using the following url:
https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001IR3ODO?ref_=pe_584750_33951330
You may also be interested in some of the 285+ essays on my
blog at www.wmhosack.blogspot.com.
They address topics related to the use of shelter capacity forecast models and
their implication measurement modules.
Walter M. Hosack, September 2026
photo credit: NASA
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