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Urban design is an approach to the design of buildings and the spaces between them that focuses on specific design processes and outcomes. In addition to designing and shaping the physical features of towns, cities , and regional spaces, urban design considers 'bigger picture' issues of economic, social and environmental value and social design.
A city block, residential block, urban block, or simply block is a central element of urban planning and urban design. In a city with a grid system, the block is the smallest group of buildings that is surrounded by streets. City blocks are the space for buildings within the street pattern of a city, and form the basic unit of a city's urban ...
The figure-ground theory of urban design and urban morphology is based upon the use of figure ground studies. It relates the amount of "figure" to the amount of "ground" in a figure-ground diagram, and approaches urban design as a manipulation of that relationship, as well as being a manipulation of the geometric shapes within the diagram.
The urban ground, namely in-between spaces and open areas, are designed to a higher level of detail. The carrier-infill approach is defined by an urban design performing as the carrying structure that creates the shape and scale of the spaces, including future building volumes that are then infilled by architects' designs.
Traditionally, urban planning followed a top-down approach in master planning the physical layout of human settlements. [2] The primary concern was the public welfare, [1] [2] which included considerations of efficiency, sanitation, protection and use of the environment, [1] as well as effects of the master plans on the social and economic ...
Urban morphology is considered as the study of urban tissue, or fabric, as a means of discerning the environmental level normally associated with urban design. Tissue comprises coherent neighborhood morphology (open spaces, building) and functions (human activity).
In a way, this is a return to medieval styles: as noted in Spiro Kostof's seminal history of urban design, The City Shaped, there is a strong resemblance between the street arrangements of modern American suburbs and those of medieval Arab and Moorish cities.
The topic itself branches into the boundaries of architecture, landscape architecture, engineering, economics, and urban planning. Site analysis is an element in site planning and design. Kevin A. Lynch, an urban planner developed an eight cycle step process of site design, in which the second step is site analysis, the focus of this section.