MODULE - 1

Behavioural / Perceptual approach

Introduction
 What is Urban Design??
Urban design concerns the arrangement, appearance and functionality of
towns and cities, and in particular the shaping and uses of urban public space
Urban design considers:
 Urban structure – How a place is put together and how its parts relate to
each other
 Urban typology, density and sustainability - spatial types and morphologies
related to intensity of use, consumption of resources and production and
maintenance of viable communities
 Accessibility – Providing for ease, safety and choice when moving to and
through places
 Legibility and way finding – Helping people to find their way around and
understand how a place works
 Animation – Designing places to stimulate public activity
 Function and fit – Shaping places to support their varied intended uses
 Complementary mixed uses – Locating activities to allow constructive
interaction between them
 Character
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and meaning – Recognizing and valuing the differences between
one place and another
 Order and incident – Balancing consistency and variety in the urban
environment in the interests of appreciating both
 Continuity and change – Locating people in time and place, including
respect for heritage and support for contemporary culture
 Civil society – Making places where people are free to encounter each
other as civic equals, an important component in building social capital

 Urban design is the synthesis of the natural and man-made

environment.
 Focus of urban design is people and their physical three-dimensional
environment.
 The goal of urban design is to create flow of pleasing environment for
all urban dwellers with in the entire city.
 Urban design should respond to the distinction more or less important
components of the city, between those that are long lasting, structure
generating and form giving for the city
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Architectural Urban Planning Urban Design
Design
Relates to individual Organises different Relates the building
buildings elements in cities with Urban spaces
Insists on function Deals with Focus is on the
of buildings functional peoples perspective
relationships of relationship
between elements between buildings
of city and elements
Limited Scale Large Scale Intermediate Scale

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Behavioural / Perceptual Approach:
 It can be defined as the “ability of sensing or responding to the
environment/things around us; experiencing the things around in
our own way”
Visual Experience of a City:
 Vision is the main way that people perceive the environment.
 Visual communication and scale, colour and texture are important
factors which impact people’s cognitive result of an urban
environment, the impression of the city .
 The object of visual experiences in three-dimensional built
environments can be considered as a collection of surfaces that
are recognized by the human senses
 It Is the way to interpret mutual visual relationships of surfaces
based on the visual amount of light that reflects between surfaces
 The Visual relation between the space and the object
 Understanding the architectural implications of visual experiences
in three-dimensional built environments
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 Exploring the visual properties of the three-dimensional built
environments and their architectural significance in them
 Steps of recording Visual Experience :
 Walking: Walking through the city
 Observing: Observing the elements of the city
 Documenting: Documenting the observations
 Interpreting: Understanding the inter relationship between the
city and its elements; analysing the surroundings based on our
observations

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Elements of a Urban Design:
It involves design and coordination of all that makes up cities and
towns.
 Buildings
 Most pronounced elements of urban design; They shape and
articulate space by forming street walls of the city, create a sense
of place.
 Public Spaces
 Great public spaces are like living room of the city; it is the space
where people come together to enjoy and interact with each other
 Streets
 They are the connections between spaces and places, being spaces
themselves
 They are defined by their physical dimension and character as well
as the size, scale, and character of buildings that line them
 The pattern of the street network is one the governing factors that
defines a city and makes its unique
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 Landscape:
 It is the green part of the city that weaves throughout – in the
form of Urban Parks, street trees, plants, flowers and water in
many forms
 It helps defining character of the city and its beauty; creates
soft, contrasting spaces and elements.

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Theories – Module 1
Gordon Cullen
 Thomas Gordon Cullen (9 August 1914 – 11 August 1994)
 Was an influential British architect and urban designer who was a key
motivator in the Townscape movement
 He is best known for the book Townscape, first published in 1961.  Later
editions of Townscape were published under the title The Concise
Townscape.
 Townscape is representation  of the physical aspects of a city or urban
area
 Gordon Cullen describes three primary ways in which our environment
produces an emotional reaction key to the planner or architect:
 I. Optics — how we see the environment i.e The concept of serial vision
-  how the town reveals itself in ‘a series of  jerks or revelations’,
always negotiating the existing view and the emerging view
 II. Place – how we find and feel ourselves within the environment - it is
an instinctive and continuous habit of the body to relate itself to the
environment, this sense of position cannot be ignored; it becomes a
factor in the design of the environment
 III. Content – ‘the fabric of towns: colour, texture, scale, style,
character,
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Serial Vision
 Gordon Cullen conceived the concept of “Serial Vision”
 He said: Urban Experience is one of a series of revelations with
delight and interest being stimulated by contrasts.

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He observed a particular tension between “hereness”
and “Thereness”
 The idea of “Serial Vision”, means people can experience a
revelation of views while walking along the streets at a uniform
pace.

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Kevin Lynch
 Kevin Andrew Lynch January 7, 1918 – April 25, 1984
 He was an American urban planner and author
 He is known for his work on the perceptual form of urban
environments and was an early proponent of mental mapping
 His most influential books include
 The Image of the City (1960), a seminal work on the perceptual
form of urban environments
 What Time is This Place? (1972), which theorizes how the
physical environment captures and refigures temporal processes

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The Image of the
City (1960),
  The Image of the City (1960), is the result of a five-year study
on how observers take in information of the city
 Using three American cities as examples (Boston, Jersey
City and Los Angeles)
 Lynch reported that users understood their surroundings in
consistent and predictable ways, forming mental maps with five
elements:
I. Paths, the streets, sidewalks, trails, and other channels in
which people travel;
II. Edges, perceived boundaries such as walls, buildings, and
shorelines;
III. Districts, relatively large sections of the city distinguished
by some identity or character;
IV. Nodes, focal points, intersections or loci;
V. Landmarks, readily identifiable objects which serve as
external reference points.

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Paths
 Paths are the channels along which the observer customarily,
occasionally, or potentially moves
 They may be streets, walkways, transit lines, canals, railroads.
 For many people, these are the predominant elements in their
image
 People observe the city while moving through it, and along these
paths the other environmental elements are arranged and
related.

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Downtown Boston commercial district.
Edges
 Edges are the linear elements not used or considered as paths by the
observer
 They are the boundaries between two phases, linear breaks in
continuity: shores, railroad cuts, edges of development, walls. They
are lateral references rather than coordinate axes
 Such edges may be barriers, more or less penetrable, which close
one region off from another; or they may be seams, lines along
which two regions are related and joined together
 These edge elements, although probably not as dominant as paths,
are for many people important organizing features, particularly in
the role of holding together generalized areas, as in the outline of a
city by water or wall.
 Edges are often paths as well.
 Many edges are uniting seams, rather than
isolating barriers, and it is interesting to see the
differences in effect
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Districts
 Districts are the medium-to-large sections of the city
 conceived of as having two-dimensional extent, which the observer
mentally enters “inside of,” and which are recognizable as having
some common, identifying character
 Always identifiable from the inside, they are also used for exterior
reference if visible from the outside
 Most people structure their city to some extent in this way, with
individual differences as to whether paths or districts are the
dominant elements
 It seems to depend not only upon the individual but also upon the
given city.

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Nodes
 Nodes are points, the strategic spots in a city into which an observer
can enter, and which are the intensive foci to and from which he is
traveling
 They may be primarily junctions, places of a break in transportation, a
crossing or convergence of paths, moments of shift from one structure
to another.
 Or the nodes may be simply concentrations, which gain their
importance from being the condensation of some use or physical
character, as a street corner hangout or an enclosed square
 Some of these concentration nodes are the focus and epitome of a
district, over which their influence radiates and of which they stand as
a symbol. They may be called cores.
 The concept of node is related to the concept of path, since junctions
are typically the convergence of paths, events on the journey.
 It is similarly related to the concept of district, since cores are
typically the intensive foci of districts, their polarizing center
 In any event, some nodal points are to be found in almost every
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image, and in certain cases they may be the dominant feature.
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Landmarks
 Landmarks are another type of point-reference, but in this case
the observer does not enter within them, they are external.
 They are usually a rather simply defined physical object:
building, sign, store, or mountain.
 It is a physical element with unique and special visual features
that has a “point specific” location, and can be Identified from
distance

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