The quality of the places we live in has an impact on all aspects of life.
The human experience in neighbourhoods is influenced by key design issues such as exterior spaces created and scaled by architecture; clarity and legibility of the urban and landscaping structure; diversity, variety, and linkage of elements. Good urban design is essential to create sustainable places on all fronts: places that are socially just, environmentally responsible and thriving. Design parameters and principles must thus be established at the outline stage to clarify what is proposed and what is targeted in the design for activity mix, urban form, transportation, and environmental systems.
Sustainable neighbourhoods should be built around good urban design that must be thoroughly organised around well-planned strategies in an open-ended way, so that neighbourhoods’ versatility and active nature can evolve and survive throughout time in a fast changing reality. The design should bring together principles with elements of local character to invent unique places. It should avoid the imposition of standardised solutions which make it difficult to tell one location apart from another. It should reflect the uniqueness of one location.
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design from context
Sustainable neighbourhood design should derive from each climatic, topographical, social and cultural context where the unique character of a neighbourhood is brought forward. Any new development should thus be done with the community to that designers have a precise understanding of the specificities of local contexts.
resilience, evolution
With wide ranging environmental disruptions, neighbourhoods are uniquely positioned for strengthening a unique ability to face and tackle such risks. Resilience is the ability of a system to bounce back into shape and be restored around three pillars: resistance, adaptation and transformability.
neighbourhood structure and image
Neighbourhoods should never be conceived as isolated entities, they are living organisms part of macro and micro-districts in constant interaction creating complex ensemble of spatial elements.
connect people and street patterns
Streets are the vibrant places where people not only meet each other but also where local economy can flourish. Replacing walkable streets by large scale roads condemns neighbourhoods’ purpose to exist; it hinders interaction to flourish.
Streets as Places for People
The street is more than a traffic canal irrigating the urban grid. It is a complex civic institution, specific to each culture and capable of infinite variations and the subtlest nuances.
the public realm
Public space is the window framing neighbourhood image and experience; it is the matrix of urban space, the scenography for its buildings, the cradle that punctuates the rhythm of urban life, moving and stopping, inviting people to be taken along its poetic patterns.
layout of blocks and buildings
Fine grain urban design are essential for creating human scale since it is created by the size, texture, and articulation of physical elements that match the size and proportions of humans. It is where a neighbourhood identity starts emerging.
Detailed design is where the identity and quality of a place is finally won or lost. The vibrancy of interactions within the public realm happens through high quality detailing, creating rich and changing information for pedestrians.
fine-grain parcels and plots
Sustainable approaches of design engage with the complexity of the city itself; that is an entity with multiple scales, each scale being subdivided into hundreds, or thousands of parcels.
Dividing large scheme into a series of discrete development projects has several benefits including speed, flexibility, risk reduction, value engineering and mixed-use. As for the urban design, the variety, diversity, innovation and visual interest are the key benefits of dividing such large schemes.
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