1. Urban design transformations
reducing public paved surface
WSEAS URBAN PLANNING and TRANSPORTATION (UPT'07)
Heraklion, Crete Island, Greece, July 22-24, 2008
Prof.dr.ir. Taeke M. De Jong, chair Technical Ecology And Methodology, Regional Design
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Faculty of Architecture, department Urbanism

2. Design transformations 30x30m >60x30m W-E mirroring
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3. 30x60m N-S Turning and repeating 30x60m N-S mirroring
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4. 30x60m elongating 60x60m mirroring
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5. 30x60m L-shape 60x60m U-shape
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6. 90x60m Closing, Elongating and adapting 100x60m
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7. Land use per lot of the experiments1 2 6 8 3 4 5 7 9 10
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8. Transformation rules applied
centre lines of surrounding roads are chosen on a multiple of 30m (preliminary main grid);
roadways are everywhere 6m wide; that is not needed everywhere, but it includes a reservation for wider roads of higher level in the traffic network elsewhere;
the parking standard is everywhere more than 1 parking place per dwelling along the road, starting at least 5m from road corners, only drawn along roads North and South (indicated as ‘N’ and ‘S’) in the drawing of the urban island; the North an South sides of an urban island are chosen because they are best suitable for parking for two reasons: their surface enlarges the North-South distance between outer walls of dwellings, giving more acces to sunlight, and the shadow of North walls is welcome to parked cars;
sidewalks are seldom smaller than 2m wide;
there are no front gardens;
dwellings are 5x10m, 2 floors high with roof timbers of 3m on lots of 100m2, housing 2.25 inhabitants in rows not exceeding 40m to avoid extra dilatation;
paths around the back are 1m wide;
supposing a location in the Northern hemisphere green areas are drawn East and South filling up the main 30m grid. They show the space saved by design operations (see Fig. 2), but they could be used to enlarge the lots for sale as well, diminishing public space (pavement + green) per lot.
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9. A neighbourhood
repeating the urban island reaching a radius of 300m (circles drawn with a radius of 100m and 300m)
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10. 100m concentrated parking: 1 minute more walking to your car
100 dwellings along residential streets with parking in front of the house: 32% pavement, 6% green area
Reduced pavement by residential paths, parking at 1 minute walk: saving 45% pavement, a profit of 350% green area
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11. 300m concentrated parking: 10 minutes more walking
300m central road
1800m peripheral one way road substituting 600m residential street
900m peripheral road substituting 300m residential street, central parking
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12. 1000m T-crossings with open centre
Same built-up area optically full or empty
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13. Simulations
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14. Conclusion
Reducing the surface of public pavement by urban design could have positive side effects without loosing accessibility substantially.
The first measure is to increase the surface of urban islands improving the area/circumference ratio.
Secondly concentrating parking space could produce a substantial reducton of paved surface, applied on a lager scale partly by double use.
Thirdly, parts of a grid could be left out replacing X-crossings by T-crossings.
November 30, 2018