Location based urban block types

Abstract

This thesis aims to develop urban blocks that fit the local context while complementing the city-wide scale. Enhancing the city as a spatial and functional whole comes from understanding that places are not only local things. The structure of the urban grid sets a potential for each location, in terms of the expected pedestrian movement, based on its relationship with the rest of the city. Currently, buildings do not always match the location’s potential, which results in urban blocks that are not dense enough, or too dense, when considering their location. To accomplish this aim, the thesis explores the relation between potential pedestrian movement on the street, which relates to the city-wide scale, and territories of occupation and movement in the urban block, which defines the local context. Morphological analyses, more specifically – space syntax tool is used to define the potential qualities of the location and suitability of the design solution for the urban block. The focus in this thesis is on designing the structure of the urban blocks which in the best possible way supports streets with given centrality on the city-wide scale. For instance, in a street with high intensity of movement, it is important to organize the interface between what is private and what is public territory. Further, such streets have more potential for commercial activities that should be accommodated by the buildings along the street. Street centrality itself, which has empirically been shown to well capture the number of people distributed through streets, will be used as a constant guideline in this thesis. The main outcome of the thesis is design principles to create urban block types which are not randomly developed but rather spatially related to their location. These design principles will especially focus on developing a diversity of spatial qualities that relate to the diversity of surrounding street types. Territories within the block should provide diverse life qualities and thus make a transition from dynamic/active street life on the outside to semi-dynamic/community life and semi-static/private club life on the inside of the urban block.