A Co-design Prototyping Approach for Buiding a Precinct Planning Tool

As the world is becoming increasingly urbanized there is a need for more sustainability-oriented planning of our cities. Policy and decision-makers are interested in the use of evidenced based approaches and tools that will support collaborative planning. There are a number of tools in the domain of spatial planning and decision support systems that have been built over the last few decades but the uptake and use of these tools is somewhat limited. In the context of Australia there is significant urban growth occurring across the major cities and a need to provision planners and developers with precinct planning tools to assist in managing infill and the densification of the existing urban fabric in a carbon constrained economy. In this paper we describe the development of a new precinct planning tool known as the Envision Scenario Planner (ESP), which is being applied initially in two cities, Melbourne and Perth to assist in the urban design and planning of Greyfield sites. To set the scene in this paper we firstly provide a brief review of the existing state of play of visualization and modelling tools available to urban planners in Australia. The focus on the paper will be to introduce an iterative co-design prototyping approach for developing a best practice precinct planning support tool (ESP) from an earlier tool known as ENVISION. The first step of the approach is an exposure workshop with experts to refine the proposed tool workflow and its functionality. Subsequent iterations of the prototype are then exposed to larger audiences for validation and testing. In this paper we will describe the process and the preliminary findings in implementing the first phase of this iterative co-design prototype approach

Greening the Greyfields

This open access book outlines new concepts, development models, governance and implementation processes capable of addressing the challenges of transformative urban regeneration of cities at precinct scale

Greening the Greyfields New Models for Regenerating the Middle Suburbs of Low-Density Cities

This open access book outlines new concepts, development models, governance and implementation processes capable of addressing the challenges of transformative urban regeneration of cities at precinct scale

Stratifying and predicting patterns of neighbourhood change and gentrification ‐ an urban analytics approach

While recent debates have widely acknowledged gentrification’s varied manifestations, success in enumerating and disentangling the process and its defining features from other forms of neighbourhood change at-scale and across entire cities, has remained largely elusive. This paper addresses this gap and employs a novel, open and reproducible urban analytics approach to systematically examine the past and future trajectories of neighbourhood change using London, England, as a case-study example. Using suites of datasets relating to population, house prices and built environment development, the nature of gentrification’s mutations and its spatial patterns are extracted through a multi-stage data dimensionality reduction and classification methodology. Machine Learning is subsequently adopted to model gentrification’s observed trends and predict its future frontiers with interactive visualisation methods offering new insights into gentrification’s projected dynamics and geographies

DESIGNING PRECINTS IN THE DENSIFYING CITY – THE ROLE OF PLANNING SUPPORT SYSTEMS

Australia’s cities face significant social, economic and environmental challenges, driven by population growth and rapid urbanisation. The pressure to increase housing availability will lead to greater levels of high-density and medium-density stock. However, there is enormous political and community pushback against this. One way to address this challenge is to encourage medium-density living solutions through “precinct” scale development. Precinct-scale development has the potential to include additional hard and soft infrastructure that may offset the perceived negativities of higher densities. As part of Australian research into precinct-scale development, and as part of our broader Smart Cities approach, or more specifically City Analytics approach, new digital planning tools &ndash; Envision and ESP &ndash; have been developed to support scenario planning and design needs. They utilise a data-driven and scenario planning approach underpinned by Geographic Information System (GIS) functionality.We focus on a case study in the City of Blacktown, Western Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. By 2036 Blacktown is forecast to grow to approximately 500,000 people (an increase of over 30&thinsp;%) and 180,000 dwellings. Most new dwellings will be delivered through urban infill. The Blacktown master plan promotes higher density housing, mixed employment uses and continued improvements to the public domain. Our study provides a unique opportunity to implement this broad strategy within a specific case and location. Specifically, this paper provides information on how these digital planning tools supported Blacktown planners in identifying, co-designing and implementing a new approach for precinct level planning. It also presents the results of an evaluation of digital-planning tools in the context of the Blacktown case study.</p

Greening the Greyfields

This open access book outlines new concepts, development models, governance and implementation processes capable of addressing the challenges of transformative urban regeneration of cities at precinct scale

The potential of geospatial tools for enhancing community engagement in the post-disaster reconstruction of Christchurch, New Zealand

AbstractThe Christchurch, New Zealand, earthquakes of 2010 and 2011 provide ample opportunities to trial new geospatial technologies in the reconstruction of the city. These earthquakes, measuring magnitudes 7.1 and 6.3, resulted in severe damage to housing and building stock. An estimated 75% of residential buildings suffered some form of damage, with 7.5% collapsed or requiring demolition. These impacts were felt most severely in mid-suburban areas closest to the sea and in commercial buildings located in the CBD, where 90% of buildings have now been demolished. The severe damage in these areas has put pressure on housing, retail, and commercial premises throughout the city. Additionally, therehas been great pressure on the below ground infrastructure, transport networks, and social services and amenities; all of which have had to change due to large population and activity movements. This has extenuated longer-term socio-demographic trends in housing and building demands. As a response, a major reconstruction effort is underway. This research looks for ways to integrate new geospatial technologies to promote better community engagement in the decision-making process. The geospatial planning tools being trialled, Envision and ESP (Envision Scenario Planning), assess optimal redevelopment opportunities, identify suitable redevelopment areas, model different scenarios as variables and 3D visualisations, and assess different precinct style design typologies. The tools, developed by “Greening the Greyfields” research teams at Swinburne University of Technology (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia) and Curtin University (Perth, Western Australia, Australia), were utilised in the regeneration of mid-suburban areas in Australian cities, and now the implementation has been extended to post-disaster Christchurch. It is anticipatedthat this will improve communication within communities and enhance development outcomes through greater consensus between residents, developers, planners, and other stakeholders

Assessing the Utility of Procedural Modeling for the Urban Planning Discipline: CityEngine and Missing Middle Housing

In recent years, procedural modeling techniques have been introduced to the urban planning discipline. By enabling the quick generation of design alternatives, these methods have the potential to expedite the public participation process. In this study, we explore ArcGIS CityEngine, an Esri procedural modeling software, and its application for depicting new missing middle housing developments in San Luis Obispo, California. Missing middle housing is an abstract planning concept and the public may benefit from 3D visualizations of the typology contextualized within their own neighborhood. To this end, we procedurally model two existing missing middle developments in San Luis Obispo and transfer them to three alternative contexts. Our team consists of two planning students with no programming background, granting us a relevant perspective on the experience for planning professionals. Through this exercise, we determined that procedural modeling can accelerate the design process when applied to a fitting scenario after the initial training period is complete

Low-income housing layouts under socio-architectural complexities: A parametric study for sustainable slum rehabilitation

Lack of sustainable slum redevelopment guidelines in India is a policy gap that needs immediate attention. A rational design and planning route is necessary to ensure sustainability of the upcoming low-income (LIG) housing stocks. In this study, we performed a cross-sectional evaluation of LIG housing layouts through a socio-architectural and site-based wind-flow analysis route. We hypothesise that a better indoor environment in the LIG housing can be achieved through a better wind driven natural-ventilation in the living spaces, which is a function of the housing layout. Specific objectives of this study were: i) to investigate the influence of socio-architectural and geometric parameters on the LIG housing layouts; ii) to examine the effect of site-wind flow on LIG housing layouts using CFD simulations. BDD chawls of Mumbai were adopted as the case study. Results show that the current form of the LIG houses had a poor indoor environment and social interaction spaces, while the hypothesised iterated layout ‘Form A’ performed better in all the socio-architectural and wind-flow metrics that can promote relatively better quality of life. This study is a first-step approach for the development of regulatory guidelines in LIG housing design that is coherent to the context of the space.Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India Commonwealth Scholarship Commission Cambridge Trus