This is a quantitative analysis of urban form. We use the American Planning Association’s list of Great Places in America as the core of our ever-expanding sample set of over 100 unique neighborhoods in our search for the fundamental units of good urbanism. We find surprising similarities across these towns and cities and have distilled these lessons into simple-to-follow rules of design.
Questions we explore along the way include:
- How big should a block be?
- How do you analyze urban form? What is ‘urban form’, anyway?
- Is English really better than Metric?
- Is there a way to imbed human dimensions into the plan of a city?
- What is a ‘highly composite number‘ and why should I care?
- How do standard building materials affect urban form?
- What is a master street plan? What are its benefits? How do I design one?
- What are the best neighborhoods to study?
- Why are streets considered to be the framework of cities?
- Is history really all that important in city planning? How is it relevant today?
Now grab a drink, have a seat in your favorite chair, and let’s get started…
(If PDFs are more your thing, you can download a copy here.)