Week 02 // Reading Reflection : Urban Form & Locality

Strategic Neighbourhood Planning : Linear Concentration as a Framework

 

4 Key Spatial Issues 

1 // Dispersal v. Concentration

2 // High v. Low Density 

3 // Segregated v. Integrated Land Use Patterns, and

4 // Nucleated v. Linear Form

The Concentration Model

• The 'dispersed concentration' model can be equated with a polycentric city or cluster of linked towns.
• Dispersed concentrations should not be equated with amorphous suburban sprawl.
• Linear networks of water and public transport provide the framework upon which diverse urban land uses can be based.
• Mixed use town centres does not imply a dispersed pattern of activities. Rather it is to be highly structured at both the neighbourhood and the township level.
• Compact linear patterns for any necessary greenfield development rather than simple annular expansion complemented by extensive open space networks based on water courses
• Maintain/enhance green parkways and to maximise public transport accessibility.
• Experience of epanded/new town designs employing linear principles suggests that linearity should not ideally take the form of stellar or radial growth but adopt a tangential or loop pattern instead.
• It is not suburbia per se which is wrong - it is its lack of shape.

 Suburbia - Urban Sprawl without Shape?

Photo: Frank Maurer