Urban Form and Greenhouse Gas Emissions

The research reported in this dissertation contains three complementary and overlapping parts: One, “findings”: It assesses the factors of urban morphology that contribute to increased rates of greenhouse gas emissions per capita, and the ways they interact. It finds a significant but underrepresented set of factors, distinct from but relating the factors at the individual building scale and the scale of regional transportation systems. Two, “strategies”: It assesses the methodologies by which such findings might be put to use in identifying and achieving reductions through changes in urban design, and proposes new strategies to do so using innovative forms of design decision support tools. Three, “design decision support tools”: It then proposes a specific new technology, namely a new class of open-source scenario-modelling tool, embodied in new prototype software. The tool utilizes a new kind of “federated” web-based wiki technology incorporating design pattern languages, which was developed in collaboration with the software engineer and wiki inventor Ward Cunningham. As part of this research, it has been necessary to examine fundamental methodological questions, and to account for limitations of current data as well as current significant gaps in research. In the process, this research has made a modest contribution to the state of knowledge about additional research needed. For me, this work has also highlighted the need for urgent and effective reforms to current “business as usual” practices. The need is all the more urgent given unprecedented rates of urbanisation – much of it sprawling and resource-inefficient – taking place in many parts of the world today

Patterns of Growth: Operationalizing Alexander's "Web Way of Thinking"

Christopher Alexander was often characterized - and sometimes seemed to characterize himself - as "sui generis," a radical and perhaps even eccentric thinker on architecture, technology, culture, and nature. That perception in turn has led many to dismiss Alexander's work as too idiosyncratic to be operationalized in the pragmatic world of planning and building. Here we show, however, that Alexander's core ideas have strong parallels in contemporary network science, mathematics, physics, and philosophy, and in the pragmatic world of technological design (including computer software). We highlight a remaining gap in translating Alexander's work into practical tools and strategies for implementation - a gap that is tantalizingly near to being bridged

Urban Form and Greenhouse Gas Emissions

The research reported in this dissertation contains three complementary and overlapping parts: One, “findings”: It assesses the factors of urban morphology that contribute to increased rates of greenhouse gas emissions per capita, and the ways they interact. It finds a significant but underrepresented set of factors, distinct from but relating the factors at the individual building scale and the scale of regional transportation systems. Two, “strategies”: It assesses the methodologies by which such findings might be put to use in identifying and achieving reductions through changes in urban design, and proposes new strategies to do so using innovative forms of design decision support tools. Three, “design decision support tools”: It then proposes a specific new technology, namely a new class of open-source scenario-modelling tool, embodied in new prototype software. The tool utilizes a new kind of “federated” web-based wiki technology incorporating design pattern languages, which was developed in collaboration with the software engineer and wiki inventor Ward Cunningham. As part of this research, it has been necessary to examine fundamental methodological questions, and to account for limitations of current data as well as current significant gaps in research. In the process, this research has made a modest contribution to the state of knowledge about additional research needed. For me, this work has also highlighted the need for urgent and effective reforms to current “business as usual” practices. The need is all the more urgent given unprecedented rates of urbanisation – much of it sprawling and resource-inefficient – taking place in many parts of the world today

Poststructuralist fiddling while the world burns: Exiting the self made crisis of “architectural culture”

We critique the current crisis for the environmental design professions: facing urgent ecological, social and economic imperatives, key leadership has become mired in the confusions of do nothing postmodernist artistic doctrine. The result is a self made state of paralysis, leaving the egregious mistakes of the past to be endlessly repeated, while it only matters that they are cloaked in ever more aesthetically extravagant artistic garb. We argue that this self excusing paralysis arises because, under a poststructuralist infatuation with ambiguity, multiplicity and constructed meaning, an effective shared framework to address the urgent challenges of the built environment becomes impossible. This paralysis is rewarded, however, because it serves narrow economic interests, which are happy to find rationalisations for projects that might otherwise be rejected as of inferior quality. We conclude with the hopeful observation that the ingredients of such a framework are indeed emerging from the biological sciences and other fields. However, to make use of them, we argue, professionals must learn to critique, and finally to dispense with, the misapplications of non productive forms of thinking, a number of which we specify herein. We hope this paper will serve as one small step on that important path

New Urbanism in the New Urban Agenda: Threads of an Unfinished Reformation

We present evidence that New Urbanism, defined as a set of normative urban characteristics codified in the 1996 Charter of the New Urbanism, reached a seminal moment - in mission if not in name - with the 2016 New Urban Agenda, a landmark document adopted by acclamation by all 193 member states of the United Nations. We compare the two documents and find key parallels between them (including mix of uses, walkable multi-modal streets, buildings defining public space, mix of building ages and heritage patterns, co-production of the city by the citizens, and understanding of the city as an evolutionary self-organizing structure). Both documents also reveal striking contrasts with the highly influential 20th century Athens Charter, from 1933, developed by the Congrès Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne. Yet, both newer documents also still face formidable barriers to implementation, and, as we argue, each faces similar challenges in formulating effective alternatives to business as usual. We trace this history up to the present day, and the necessary requirements for what we conclude is an 'unfinished reformation' ahead

Introduction: Toward a "Post-Alexandrian" Agenda

Christopher Alexander, who died in March 2022, was undeniably one of the most influential, if sometimes controversial, urban thinkers of the last half-century. From Notes on the Synthesis of Form, his first book and Harvard PhD thesis, to the landmark "A City is Not a Tree," to the classic best-sellers A Pattern Language and The Timeless Way of Building, to his more difficult and controversial magnum opus, The Nature of Order, Alexander has left a body of work whose breadth and depth is only now coming into view. Yet Alexander’s legacy is also the subject of intense debate and critique within the planning and design fields. This introduction provides an overview of the thematic issue of Urban Planning titled "Assessing the Complex Contributions of Christopher Alexander." Its purpose is to provide greater clarity on where Alexander's contribution is substantial, and where there are documented gaps and remaining challenges. Most importantly, the thematic issue aims to identify fruitful avenues for further research and development, taking forward some of the more promising but undeveloped insights of this seminal 20th-century thinker

Public Space in the New Urban Agenda: Research into Implementation

The New Urban Agenda is a landmark international framework for urbanisation for the next two decades, adopted by acclamation by all 193 countries of the United Nations. Nonetheless, implementation remains an enormous challenge, as does the related need for research evidence to inform practice. This thematic issue brings together research from a number of participants of the Future of Places conference series, contributin new research to inform the development and implementation of the New Urban Agenda, and with a focus on the fundamental topic of public space creation and improvement

Neighborhood “Choice Architecture”: A New Strategy for Lower-Emissions Urban Planning?

Recent advances in the field of behavioral economics offer intriguing insights into the ways that consumer decisions are influenced and may be influenced more deliberately to better meet community-wide and democratic goals. We demonstrate that these insights open a door to urban planners who may thereby develop strategies to alter urban-scale consumption behaviors that may significantly reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions per capita. We first hypothesize that it is possible, through feasible changes in neighborhood structure, to alter the “choice architecture” of neighborhoods in order to achieve meaningful GHG reductions. We then formulate a number of elements of “choice architecture” that may be applied as tools at the neighborhood scale. We examine several neighborhoods that demonstrate variations in these elements, and from known inventories, we generate a preliminary assessment of the possible magnitude of GHG reductions that may be available. Although we acknowledge many remaining challenges, we conclude that “neighborhood choice architecture” offers a promising new strategy meriting further research and development

Optimizing urban structure: toward an integrated new urbanist model - urban nuclei and the geometry of streets: the 'emergent neighborhoods' model

A controversy remains among planners and urban designers about the proper location of the non-residential core (nucleus) of a neighborhood in relation to thoroughfares. One school of thought suggests that the nucleus should be located along the busiest thoroughfares; a second school holds that it must be some distance away from them - which, because of their disruptiveness, should form the edge of the neighborhood; and a third school proposes that it should be somewhere between the two as an 'eccentric nucleus'. The three schools may be overlooking the underlying variables that govern this problem under different conditions, and so we propose a model for establishing the best location and distribution of urban nuclei as these conditions vary. This requires firstly, a redefinition of the 'neighborhood' as distinguished from a 'pedestrian shed'. We argue that a 'neighborhood' can either emerge within a 'sanctuary area' between thoroughfares, or span across both 'sanctuary areas' and thoroughfares, if the latter are properly designed; a 'pedestrian shed', by contrast, can overlap with neighborhoods and with other pedestrian sheds. We propose a '400 meter rule', a surprisingly small maximum spacing of main thoroughfares that empirical observation shows that traditional, pedestrian-governed urban fabric has always tended to obey, for reasons that are likely to have to do with the self-organizing logic of pedestrian movement and social activity. In so doing, we advance a more fine-grained, permeable, potentially lower-carbon model and illustrate its advantages with several historic and modern examples

Main street plot scale in urban design for inclusive economies : Stockholm case studies

This paper explores evidence that entrepreneurial opportunities for migrants and other lower income populations can be expanded in part through increasing the presence of fine grained scales of plots and plates along main streets, as part of a systematic urban design strategy. It describes that systematic strategy herein. The paper encompasses the study of three main streets with varying plot sizes in the inner city of Stockholm, Sweden, and examines the outcomes for different types and scales of businesses. After presenting the findings, analysis and conclusions, larger questions of urban design for more inclusive economies are discussed