Dense Living, and the Urban Grid
Compact urban form refers to spatial structures that would accommodate people and buildings within a given geographical area with some essential urban qualities. With mounting pressure on economic growth and urbanization, cities in China however have been rapidly turned into clusters of structure which are dense in many ways, while lacking conspicuously one fundamental quality of urban living as well as urban form, the grid. In this paper, the grid as an essential attribute of human settlements is discussed; and its role in preserving urban land as a precious resource, in permitting virtuous circle of building development, and above all in sustaining an integrated and vibrantly used public realm characteristic to true urbanity will be examined with reference to current debates on sustainable development and city form. The causes and factors that have lead to the gradual disappearance or complete eradication of the street-block configuration in modern cities are explored. The issues as raised by dense, built structures now created everywhere in Chinese cities will be discussed in terms of an alien urban environment they help to shape and its long term implications for sustainable development goal. The paper ends with a discussion of what role the grid can play in sustaining some essential urban qualities which current solutions to dense living seem unable to attain, and the imperative to re-appreciate, and re- introduce this attribute in our search of compact forms for dense cities in the 21 century.
urban grid dense living urbanity
CHARLIE Q. L. XUE ZHOU MINGHAO
Division of Building Science and Technology, City University of Hong Kong Department of Architecture, Tongji University Shanghai,China
国际会议
广州
英文
320-321
2006-12-01（万方平台首次上网日期，不代表论文的发表时间）