It is not just another software.. It is GIS

GIS stands for geographical information system . It's technicalities are known to most urbanises and teams engaged in urban planning because of the versatility and the diversity in which it's base map and database is built ..
During the years , working with private and public sectors institutions , I realised that the focus on the output and the form in which the analysis need to shown especially the interactivity of the web-view made GIS a one time exercise ..
As a professional , I perceive GIS as a decision making tool on the planning decisions ranging from land use allocation to height .. It is this focus and function that optimises and justifies the investment in the application and the training it needs ..
For GIS to be that, it has essentially to be adopted as an essential part of the organisation policies and development procedures .. The management as well as the employees need a change management strategy that focus on true challenges in the organisational culture as well as the technical skills upgrade program that need to roll out ..
So may argue that GIS is a tactical decision .. It is just a software .. Well, it is not .. It is a strategic decision that implies that we need a more sophisticated platforms that enable multiple decision points to weigh in before we approve a a direction or approach..
So, before you sign the procurement form or the invoice for acquiring a GIS in your company , ask one question : what is your strategy to make it a part of the daily tasks of the employees ?

What about urban design ?

As the property development became more obsessed with the investment analysis ratios and crunching. The bottom line numbers , we lost the spontaneity of urban design being essentially a creative process
Urban designers in mature property markets became the tool to prepare ready made streets sections , ready made urban form , ready made urban typologies that enables the developer to get the yield - of course financial yield
This short term thinking defies the current research whereby more and more people chooses communities that make them enjoy a sense of place - place being the holistic experience which the space attributes and values convey...
One time , I was asked to produce in one day a sketch for an urban square in order for the development team to plug the numbers in their sheet and calculate the value driven from these design changes .. Everything else became secondary although the main and essential meaning of the square is about the sense of place and the meaning it conveys ...
Urban design is a creative activity ... Creativity means leaving the known to venture into the unique and original ..
This essentially means an industry who has the guts to embrace the original .. Do we have what it takes for that ?

More life energy in urban space

Cities are one of the most intricate human inventions ..multiple generation think , imagine , plan and incrementally build neighborhood , communities which grew into districts connected by an increasingly interconnected flows of goods and people .. It is the largest laboratory to see in real time how human shape their physical environment by the way they think about their relationship with space
We are the space .. Because urban space essentially is born in our minds
So to answer the question , if we need to have more life energy In our cities , we need to study the beliefs system of its communities regarding how they energize themselves
Is it through socializing in open public spaces ?
Is it through small gathering in their houses ?
Is it through exchanging knowledge ?
Is it through getting in touch with nature ?
What are their habits in shaping their urban space?
It is in these simple questions that the civil contract by which they decided to live together is revealed ... That civil contract that list of values , habits and beliefs will point out to the sources of life energy that are needed to be injected in failing cities , sad cities , unhappy cities , soulless cities .

Urban Design Controls

Urban design controls are The tools by which urban design strategy is reinforced and implemented
It is essentially the design elements of both private and public spaces coordinated in a way to reinforce the place identity and bring about a sense of community
We need to caution sometimes not to restrict the potential of space by putting comprehensive design guidelines that inhibit creativity and may prevent organic growth of the urban fabric through different phases
This said, it is important that before we put the guidelines , we are extremely clear about what is the main driving principles in design that we want the guidelines to address
The plot guidelines document rarely these days are modeled. It is. A written text with various two dimensional sketches . Recent technology tools enable us to test the consistency of the guidelines . By modeling the materials finishes, we can understand more easily the overall pattern and texture of the space. It will also place in context color , a factor usually put on the side in design guidelines although cognitive research has proved that it is one of the important experiential factors of perceiving space and classifying it.
Testing guidelines in terms of urban form , the impact it has on the fabric and the typologies it can engender is bother tool of verifying integration.
Building a virtual mock up of a street interpreting the guidelines is another important tool to observe if the emphasis on massing has lead to a monotonous space and that buildings response became too constrained to form an interesting fabric.
As reviewed, urban design guidelines are the tools to implement an urban design strategy but unless this tool is tested in our drafting virtual studios, we my be at risk of the tool becoming the end not the mean

master planning and urban planning ,obviously different?

It does seem obvious for the professionals of the built environment that urban planning is one set of skills needed to get a master plan out , but do we really understand what it takes to transform a shape representing a tract of land into a living organism called communities.

Master planning has always been associated historically with either town planning or urban planning. Town planners work on the urban fabric qualities in order to enable legible and permeable urban structure to emerge- street layout, urban form , vistas , perspectives and other spatial elements become essential in bringing an overall vision into fruition. Urban planners are interested in the demographic analysis and the land use budget that will enable the developers to understand their implementation plans when it comes to infrastructure demand and public facilities.

But definitely, there is more to a master plan than the land use numbers it add to, the development controls of its urban form and the shape of its networks. There is an intangible that we all strive to bring about in a master plan - breath into its structure , a unique persona based on mixture that build on the existing resources and extend its cultural identity- Master planning is a transformation exercise not only of the natural, built and social dimension- it is a transformation program that adds, enrich and extend the existing cultural, human dimensions.

Such a holistic program will need skills beyond the technical expertise of  designing large scale environment- it needs skills and abilities that touches on cultural understanding, open-mindedness, negotiation and mos importantly perception .

Perceptive thinking instead of critical thinking is a major skill that will be more and more in demand in planning new communities .

Perceptive thinking sees connections, coherence and way forward in what seems separate, dismantled part and bring it into fruition - be it between different stakeholders, different consultants or working across different disciplines .

 It goes beyond logic to the deep value and belief systems that drives our value and expectations of what vibrant livable and sustainable communities are and build it on it a PLAN that takes us there..

what urban designers and planners can learn from landscape ecology?

I have read the ecology of landscapes and regions written by Dr Forman a decade ago when I was an assistant teacher to one of the world experts in ecological landscape design, Dr. Jala Makhzoumi. The book opened for me my horizons on what landscape ecology has to do with urban design .Although it has never coined the terms of “Landscape Urbanism”, it definitely touches on the founding principles of what will grow to be a mainstream urban design paradigm.I have just gathered below the reflections gathered from the book comparing its holistic view to the tools I have been applying in urban design and seeing the big synergies with regional and local planning also in terms of scale analysis and sustainability tools.

Land Mosaic change in their gradient and may be spatially heterogeneous due to the mosaic they form. This heterogeneity is due to natural disturbance, human activities and in some cases to substrate (below ground) natural conditions.

FORM is The Diagram Of Force and STRUCTURE is the Function of change  _  one of the main principles on which the changes in landscapes and regional landscapes might be explained.An interesting analysis explains further the intersections between Urban Design and Landscape Ecology although both uses the same spatial language, the different terminology affect the gap in communication .

Landscape Ecology – for the definition and to introduce the subject, I will bring forward the definition that I have read in Carl Troll book -1968)- “it is the study of the entire cause effect network between the living communities and their environmental conditions which prevails in a specific section of the landscape and become apparent in a specific landscape pattern or in a natural space classification of different orders”’ .

Another interesting definition for landscape ecology stems from the research conducted in 1984 by Paul Risser .He speaks of Landscape Ecology in terms of its focus rather its activities . Landscape Ecology considers the development and dynamics of spatial heterogeneity wether it is the spatial and temporal interactions and exchanges across heterogeneous landscapes, the impact of the spatial heterogeneity on biotic and abiotic processes as well as the management of spatial heterogeneity.

Landscape Ecology uses the Patch ,Corridor, Matrix to differentiate between the different landscape types and regional territories. Urban Design uses District, Edge, Path to study the different urban and rural fabrics. The variations of the different territories (whether it is a natural landscape or urban fabric) are attributed to the same factors – Movements (transport or fauna), Patterns(Organic versus Manmade),Scale( regional versus local). The granularity is affected by Time  - the responses of the landscape or the fabric through TIME might lead to Fine or Coarse fabric or landscape pattern.

Miller(1978) has set the different domains in scale when it comes to define the landscapes in which intervention is needed:

Continents /They are characterized by distinct boundaries usually surrounded by water surfaces .Culture, Economics and Transportation connectivity make up for their uniqueness.

Regions/Broad geographical area with a common microclimate and unified sphere of human activity and interest – physical factors such as the macroclimate, soil groups and bioms and human factors such as politics, social groupings, structure, culture contribute to their emergence.

Landscape /Mosaic formed by the mix of local ecosystems – it is an ecological unit that may be formed by a repeated cluster of spatial elements – the essential elements of landscapes can be analysed through :

1-      Geological land forms
2-      Soil types
3-      Vegetation types
4-      Local fauna
5-      Natural disturbance regimes such as fire
6-      Land uses
7-      Human aggregation patterns which is the domain in which regional urban planning engages at

The ecology of regions – regions are usually the scale at which one single macroclimate prevails providing a region wide control over soils, ecosystems and natural processes. A region is the scale at which sustainability can be better pursued for its larger area that may cover many landscape types, its greater adequacy for ensuring resources complementarity and slower rate of change.

Patches are synonyms to boundaries –Patches affect the rates of flows and movements between ecosystems – flows and movements are defined through the array of objects they transfer be it wind carrying air, rivers with water streams ,animals , birds, airplanes carrying passengers or just a couple of neighbors walking a marathon. These six vectors can be flowing in locomotion – slow motion or in mass flow- rapid motion. Usually, mass flow crosses over external boundaries such as TGV crossing over and locomotion are for internal movements such as local breeze. Permeability – same term used in urban design- is linked to how diverse the flows are and how the density of these flows is building up.The flows crossing over the boundaries of the different patches relate to four main ecological processes Supply to Patch, Resistance of Patch, Retention by Patch, Disposal from Patch.

Corridors have been analyzed extensively especially relating to Rivers and Streams _ the analysis will be summarized later in another Blog Post.What I would like to focus on is some of the tools that were presented and which might be useful to reflect on in thinking about our cities as man-made ecosystems. The first spatial tools which are used to approach the territory under study is land use optimization focusing on agricultural production,natural ressources areas  as well as corridors and greenways.

A generic plan might take into consideration some of the priniciples highlighted below:

1-      Context – placing the landscape/corridor/fabric in its regional/continental scale

2-      Flows- evaluating the flows and movements of ground /surface water ,species dispersal, transportation, recreation

3-      Change- looking for changes in the natural environment such as spreading desertification, housing growth, new infrastructure ,water barriers such as damns

4-      Disturbance regimes- Hurricanes, flood, cyclones are repetitive natural phenomena that might affect the future projections and proposed interventions

Another interesting concept that is linked to Landscape Ecology work in the 1990’s is the concept of Whole /Holisitic landscapes. Dr Makhzoumi has written a reference book on landscape ecological design and how its approach can be applied on place making and other urban design spatial interventions.

The concept of whole landscapes apply more to regional scale.it sets again a number of principles if followed can contribute to a more holistic approach to framework planning – the holistic approach comes from integrating the human made environment’s and the natural environment’s in a way that does take into consideration high sensitivity topics for human activity but does not jeopardize the livability of other flora ,fauna species . it calls on identifying and maintaining natural expansion corridors, assigning biodiversity areas ,  taking into consideration natural disturbances phenomena and respecting connectivity, permeability and the granular scale of the landscape mosaic focusing on landscape linkages

I would like to end this post with an interesting statement by Carra made in 1990 .His answer to the ways in which we can  integrate human and natural habitat was:’Only if we view the world differently , we would be able to act differently. So, we need a change of perception, a shift of paradigm in our thinking and in our values. We need a shift from fragmentation to wholeness, from a mechanistic view of the world to an ecological view, from domination to partnership, from expansion to conservation, from efficiency to sustainability”. His answer encapsulated most of the different dimensions that planners, designers, policy makers and citizens deal with in their own way and the direction we all need to take in order to make sure that the aspirations of our cities and towns do not lead to their own destruction.