SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITIES

Code 3675

Lecture Six

PROF. DR. NOMANA ANJUM

ALLAMA IQBAL OPEN UNIVERSITY
ISLAMABAD
Unit 5 Urban Form and Locality

5.1 Disposal versus Concentration

5.2 Location of Neighborhoods
5.3 Mix use development
Local Densities
Unit 6 Design of Neighborhoods
6.1Traditional Concepts
6.2 Size and Identify of Neighborhoods
6.3 Social Identity and Home Zones
6.4 Open and closed Neighborhoods
6.5 The Urban Continuum
6.6 Shaping Neighborhoods
6.7 The Open Spaces Network
Unit 6 Design of Neighborhoods
6.1Traditional Concepts

“A neighbourhood is formed naturally from the

daily occupations of people, the distance it is
convenient for a housewife to walk to her daily
shopping and, particularly, the distance it is
convenient for a child to walk to school. He (sic)
should not have a long walk and he should not
have to cross a main traffic road. ne planning of a
neighbourhood unit starts from that: (Boyd et al,
Homes for the People HMSO 1945) “
Unit 6 Design of Neighborhoods
6.1Traditional Concepts
In both Homes for the People and Radburn we get the
idea not only of local catchment but also of an
environmentally protected area. Both principles have
functional implications that help determine appropriate
size of neighbourhoods. The traffic management
implications were later developed by Buchanan in Traffic
in Towns (1963), with maximum traffic flows on residential
streets within a defined ‘environmental area’ being 300
passenger car units. The population implications of
different catchment, density and access standards were
usefully explored in The Hook Book (Greater London
Council, 1965).
Unit 6 Design of Neighborhoods
Size and Identify of Neighborhoods
The size of a neighbourhood may be defined by
reference to population and/or access. The
catchment population required to support a
primary school and local center is one key
criteria. For example Runcorn has a string of
neighbourhood ‘beads’, each with a bout 5000
population, along its integrating bus-way. Almost
every house in the neighbourhood is within
easy walking distance (conventionally defined as
five minutes or 400m) of local facilities.
Unit 6 Design of Neighborhoods
Size and Identify of Neighborhoods
However the size of neighbourhood varies widely.
For ‘transit oriented developments’ (TODs) in the
US, the maximum walking distance is recom-
mended as 2000 feet (600m) and densities set at
a minimum average of 18dpa (44dph or about
100pph) in order to generate sufficient demand for
a light rail station (Calthorpe, 1993). Ironically,
given the half circle shape of TODs the population
ends up as rather less than Runcom ‘beads on a
string’ despite the larger catchment distances.
Unit 6 Design of Neighborhoods
Size and Identify of Neighborhoods
The recent study of Sustainable Residential Quality
in London selects 800 metres (ten minutes walk)
as the critical thresh- old for pedestrian access to
district centres (Llewelyn Davies, 1997) - the same
as that adopted by Red ditch new town corporation
some decades earlier; and the key walking
distance in the aspiring eco-city of Waitakere in
New Zealand is taken as 1000m. By contrast the
Peterborough neighbourhoods in the Bretton
township average 2000 people, and are more about
identity than they are about discreet local services.
Unit 6 Design of Neighborhoods
Size and Identify of Neighborhoods
This range and variety gives the designer pause for thought.
While the general principles are clear the justification for
specific standards and sizes is often obscure.
There is sometimes an element of slight of hand. The
4OOm/five minute standard is probably pretty robust,
recommended by public transport operators in the UK
(Addenbrooke, l98l), and quoted in several continents.
Interestingly it is advocated in The Netherlands, where the
quality of public transport is legendary. With very fast
efficient public transport services people are generally,
however, willing to walk further. In relation to the London
under- ground 800m marks the significant fall-off in ridership.
Obviously local conditions will vary, and sensitivity to those
conditions is essential.
Unit 6 Design of Neighborhoods
Size and Identify of Neighborhoods
Design guides now emerging are stressing responsiveness to
local culture in terms of materials, built form, landscape and
urban morphology - making places appropriately different
from each other (Essex County Council, 1998; Forest of
Dean District Council, 1998).

The main contrast of approach is perhaps between those

who believe that clear edges and physical separation help
neighbourhood identity (eg. Gibberd, Krier) and those who
believe permeability between localities is vital, and the city
is a seamless web (eg. Bentley et al, 1985; Calthorpe,
1993).
Unit 6 Design of Neighborhoods
Social Identity and Home Zones

There are also community and health reasons for being

concerned with local identity. There is widespread
agreement that local social networks and the
‘supportive environments’ that enable those networks to
function effectively are important to mental health
(Halpern, 1995). The social identity of the local area - in
terms of social class and ethnic group - help to
determine feelings of security (or fear). An enormous
range of evidence, according to Halpern, suggests that
‘where group concentration at the local level falls below
a certain critical mass, the level of mental ill-health found
in that group markedly increases.’
Unit 6 Design of Neighborhoods
Social Identity and Home Zones

Thus the home-zone becomes the essential

building block of the town. Within it social diversity
is consciously limited, extraneous traffic excluded or
calmed, and clear physical identity established. The
neighbourhood is made up of a number of such
home-zones, and the town a mosaic. Milton
Keynes has pursued this kind of strategy with
success. Every grid square neighbourhood of 2000-
4000 people has a mix of housing.
Unit 6 Design of Neighborhoods
Open and closed Neighborhoods

The master plans created by the British new town

designers worked from the premise that
neighbourhoods are stable and fured. This
assumption sits uncomfortably with contemporary
life-styles and economic restructuring. It also,
arguably, contradicts what can be observed in the
evolution of older towns. Its persistence may be
part of the reason why neighbourhood planning has
lost credibility.
Unit 6 Design of Neighborhoods
Open and closed Neighborhoods
New neighbourhoods are bounded and discrete
this may assist the sense of an identifiable
community, but too often the range of shops
developed in the initial flush of incoming families
subsequently falls off, leaving empty units and
declining turnovers as those families grow up and
spread their wings. This pattern is particularly visible
in suburban council estates suffering from an ebb
of fortune and estate ‘labelling’. The isolation of the
estate contributes to a downward spiral as
residents experience exclusion.
Unit 6 Design of Neighborhoods
Open and closed Neighborhoods
The general lesson from the closed versus open
neighbourhood question, as from the review of
social identity, is that planners cannot ‘buck the
market, but they can help shape it. The ‘market’ in
these cases is ‘the community’ - people individually
and in social and economic groupings. The closed
neighbourhoods have a limited life before they
become out of joint with social and economic
needs. The open forms are more robust, though
involve (on the examples above) environmental
costs, and may still have restrictions on catchment
flexibility.
Unit 6 Design of Neighborhoods
The Urban Continuum

The traditional pattern of neighbourhoods in older

settlements is not normally one of discreet enclaves
but of interconnected districts - more an urban
continuum than a series of cells (Breheny et al,
1993). The urban continuum has the major but
unsung advantage of allowing the very flexibility of
catchment size over time and space that the neat,
stylized neighbourhoods of planning convention
inhibit.
Unit 6 Design of Neighborhoods
The Urban Continuum
The structure of service provision, reflecting market
conditions before universal car ownership, has lessons for
us now, trying to recover the pedes- triadtram-based city.
The trams and buses provided the connections between
localities and the natural foci for pedestrian movement. The
shops and services grew up along the tramways, often
creating a pattern of radial high streets out from the heart of
the city. Densities were highest close to the high street and
graded down away from them, reflecting both the sequence
of urban development and the relative market values.
Identifiable, named neighbourhoods are bounded by the high
street or centred on it (depending partly on the degree to
which the road is heavily trafficked and impedes free
pedestrian movement).
Unit 6 Design of Neighborhoods
Shaping Neighborhoods
The trick for urban planners is to realize the
advantages of traditional inter-connected urban
districts and high streets without the accompanying
disadvantages - principally traffic dominance. The
planners of Hook - in North East Hampshire ten
miles south of Reading -were unimpressed by the
cellular structure of earlier new towns and argued
for interconnection. Hook was perhaps the most
innovative and ‘sustainable’ of UK mid-century new
towns but sadly was never built. It involved quite
high density development based on an excellent
pedestrian cycling system and compact form.
Unit 6 Design of Neighborhoods
The Open Spaces Network

Whereas pedestrian access and public transport

routes provide the structure for higher intensity
development, water courses and hill crests offer a
logic to the organization of open space. In 1963
Sylvia Crowe anticipated the creation of an urban
parkway system linking residential areas to the
countryside and encompassing a wide range of
recreational needs. She advocated the parkways to
bring the green into the town and provide for round
walks, parks, playing fields and allotments.
Unit 6 Design of Neighborhoods

The Open Spaces Network

Such landscape concepts have been influential in

new settlement design but not in urban planning
generally. Suburban open space increments have
been provided on a disaggregated and
discontinuous pattern.
Unit 6 Design of Neighborhoods
The Open Spaces Network
Milton Keynes Development Corporation (1992)
demonstrates the way such greenways link together with
formal and informal open space along river valleys and hill
crests to create a network accessible to all residents.
According to Barton et a1 (1995) elements of this network
should be within 800 metres of all dwellings, with some
playgrounds, parks and allotments closer, within the
residential area. In the long run the potential value of the
open space network for local food production, energy crops
and water treatment together with associated economic
and social functions is impossible to calculate. But the
existence of ample open space within towns gives ecological
resilience and increased structural flexibility, as well as
delight and pleasurable exercise to the citizens.
Unit 6 Design of Neighborhoods
The Open Spaces Network
The traditional planning models treat the neighbourhood as
a cell. Cellular neighbourhoods come in three distinct forms.
The single cell model, with the nucleus of services at its
heart and limited main road or public transport connectivity,
risks isolation for the transport poor and non-viability for
local businesses. The interlocked cell model (as in Milton
Keynes) solves the problem of the visibility of local services,
but there is tension between the grid square neighbourhood
defined as an environmental area, and the catchment- based
neighbourhood which is split by the main road barrier.
Neither of these forms is innately very adaptable because of
catchment limits.
Unit 6 Design of Neighborhoods

The Open Spaces Network

The cell cluster model, illustrated by Harlow, has

more openness and flexibility. The cluster of cells
equates with a township, supporting a wider range
of relatively local services. The cluster can work well
where the possibilities of interconnection are high
and transport links directly between nuclei.
Discussion