Urban performance and density: Generative study on interdependencies of urban form and environmental measures

Abstract Majority of the world population live in urban settlements where for the city dwellers, the quality of life is directly influenced by the environmental conditions as a result of the built environment. The environmental conditions on the public realm and in the buildings, shape how people use outdoor and indoor spaces in their daily life. Correspondingly, the present study implements a generative approach to link urban physical density to performative urban design to investigate the environmental impacts of urban morphology. This approach could be beneficial to implement performance-based planning (PBP), as a method for climate change adaptation and environmental resilience, to improve citizens’ wellbeing. Selected performance measures for this study are: nocturnal Urban Heat Island effect, outdoor solar access (for winter and summer) and indoor daylight availability. The results are analyzed based on the mathematical correlations between building form factors and environmental qualities, within varying range of generated building densities. The study shows that, in the case of buildings with square foot print, maximum potential UHI is highly dependent on height of the urban canyon and optimum outdoor solar access during summer is achievable with intermediate canyon width. Daylight variations mainly depend on window to wall ratio (WWR). In addition, with high WWR values (0.7), canyon height and building geometry sequentially have the highest influence on indoor daylight availability.

[1]  T. Oke,et al.  Local Climate Zones for Urban Temperature Studies , 2012 .

[2]  Douglas C. Baker,et al.  Performance based planning in Queensland : A case of unintended plan-making outcomes , 2016 .

[3]  C. Ren,et al.  Defining the environmental performance of neighbourhoods in high-density cities , 2018 .

[4]  R. Inglehart.  Cultural Evolution: People’s Motivations are Changing, and Reshaping the World , 2018, Social Forces.

[5]  L. D'Acci.  On Urban Morphology and Mathematics , 2019, The Mathematics of Urban Morphology.

[6]  C. N. Hewitt,et al.  Effectiveness of green infrastructure for improvement of air quality in urban street canyons. , 2012, Environmental science & technology.

[7]  Daniel Castro-Lacouture,et al.  Generative design and performance modeling for relationships between urban built forms, sky opening, solar radiation and energy , 2019, Energy Procedia.

[8]  H. Akbari.  Energy Saving Potentials and Air Quality Benefits of Urban Heat IslandMitigation , 2005 .

[9]  J. Xia,et al.  Local climate zone ventilation and urban land surface temperatures: Towards a performance-based and wind-sensitive planning proposal in megacities , 2019, Sustainable Cities and Society.

[10]  Dirk Donath,et al.  Examining Trade-Offs between Social, Psychological, and Energy Potential of Urban Form , 2019, ISPRS Int. J. Geo Inf..

[11]  Brendan Gleeson,et al.  Performance-Based Planning , 2006 .

[12]  Lamia Kamal-Chaoui,et al.  Competitive Cities and Climate Change , 2009 .

[13]  Meta Berghauser Pont,et al.  Spacematrix: Space, Density and Urban Form , 2010 .

[14]  A Skovbro,et al.  Urban densification --a sustainable urban policy? , 2002 .

[15]  Christopher Alexander,et al.  The Timeless Way of Building , 1979 .

[16]  Arza Churchman,et al.  Disentangling the Concept of Density , 1999 .

[17]  Don Alexander,et al.  Smart Growth and Sustainable Development: Challenges, solutions and policy directions , 2002 .

[18]  R. G. Davies,et al.  Urban form, biodiversity potential and ecosystem services , 2007 .

[19]  Rachel Cooper,et al.  Clarifying and re-conceptualising density , 2011 .

[20]  Amos Rapoport,et al.  Human Aspects of Urban Form: Towards a Man Environment Approach to Urban Form and Design , 1977 .

[21]  L. Norford,et al.  The urban weather generator , 2013 .

[22]  Ernest R. Alexander,et al.  Density Measures and Their Relation to Urban Form , 1988 .

[23]  Yosef Jabareen,et al.  Sustainable Urban Forms , 2006 .

[24]  Elizabeth Burton,et al.  The Potential of the Compact City for Promoting Social Equity , 2013 .

[25]  X. Bai,et al.  Relationships between form, morphology, density and energy in urban environments , 2009 .

[26]  Stephen Hamnett,et al.  Designing high-density cities for social and environmental sustainability , 2011 .

[27]  K. Scholz-Barth.  Green Roofs: Stormwater Management From the Top Down , 2001 .

[28]  T. Oke.  The energetic basis of the urban heat island , 1982 .

[29]  Jon McCormack,et al.  Generative design: a paradigm for design research , 2005 .

[30]  Simin Davoudi,et al.  Planning for climate change: Strategies for mitigation and adaptation for spatial planners , 2009 .

[31]  Koen Steemers,et al.  Building form and environmental performance: archetypes, analysis and an arid climate , 2003 .

[32]  M. Jenks,et al.  The Compact City : A Sustainable Urban Form? , 1996 .

[33]  Bao-jie He,et al.  Enhancing urban ventilation performance through the development of precinct ventilation zones: A case study based on the Greater Sydney, Australia , 2019, Sustainable Cities and Society.

[34]  J. Christoffersen,et al.  Sunlight and Insolation of Building Interiors , 2015 .

[35]  Vicky Cheng,et al.  Understanding Density and High Density , 2009 .

[36]  T. Oke.  Canyon geometry and the nocturnal urban heat island: Comparison of scale model and field observations , 1981 .

[37]  Michael W. Mehaffy.  Generative methods in urban design: a progress assessment , 2008 .