Doctorate of BEN GUY

SPATIAL URBANISM:
PUBLIC SPACE TYPOLOGY AS URBAN PLANNING ZONES

ABSTRACT

A novel space-based urban planning zone, and a rational technique for its derivation, are invented. A typically complex and compromised British inner urban High Street is used to develop and test the spatial planning method. The diversity of uses and typo-morphological elements allows comparisons between zone designation techniques. It is the characteristics of the three-dimensional street/space that prove most informative for design-led planning zones. The public realm itself is treated as a discrete morphological element and spatio-physically analysed to derive its own set of parameters at different levels of resolution.

The coarsest elements provide the foundation for the spatial zones, proposed for design-led urban management. For spaces expressing an identity, the primary variables express coherence and complexity, but where the basis of the spatial pattern changes, or is lost, the space either changes its type, or loses its 'sense-of-place'.

This theory of maintaining a dynamic tension is revealed as a common thread throughout environmental design and psychology. The derived spatial variables with their ranges, which can be expressed as a simple one-line spatial algorithm or an axonometric diagram, provide the foundation for the urban zone that can be descriptive and prescriptive, and is usually both.

Many physical manifestations can satisfy the algorithms, which are draped across the horizontal street-block frame, promoting diversity between forms and providing development freedoms. The study is extended to the wider city to consider the interface between adjacent and repeating zone typologies and test the method's validity for diverse space types.

A format is suggested for managing greater spatio-physical detail, in any zone, to manipulate character locally or regionally. A town plan delineating existing and intended spatial types, and thus types of public Place, across an urban region results - with a variety of design-led tools for creating a sense-of-Place in every space.