Introduction to Urban Design & Town Planning Process

The course "Introduction to Urban design and Urban Planning" is the first approach with the basic significances, processes, methods and theories of big scale Planning. The course investigates the significance and the process of planning and its application in the urban tissue, in the Urban design and the Urban Planning scale. It examines the city’s basic functions and the way they are planned, the kinds of planning as they have resulted from the political history and theory, the processes the kinds and the characteristics of urban planning and finally the allocation theories that have been formulated in order to interpret the city’s structure and form. In the urban design scale, the course aims to the students familiarization with the city’s static elements. That is to say the street, the square, the building block e.t.c. Simultaneously, the dynamic elements of city are examined, such as the vehicles and pedestrians circulation and the infrastructure networks.

Objectives

The lesson is structured by two sections: the theoretical and the project. The aim of the theoretical section is a first approach with the basic principles, procedures, methods and theories of spatial planning. It focuses on the basic urban functions and their planning principles, the kinds of planning as they result from the political history and theory, the procedures, the categories and the characteristics of urban planning and finally the allocation theories as they have been formulated for the interpretation of the city’s structure and form. It also focuses on the city’s structural parts as the building square, the road, the square and the rest elements that compose the urban areas. Finally it examines the levels and tools of planning, their different characteristics and the directions they propose in the framework of spatial planning. In the project section the aim is: 1) The students’ familiarization with the observation and visualization of an area’s urban characteristics as land uses, buildings heights, traffic e.tc. 2) The formulation of proposals in the scale of urban design and urban planning in order to achieve the creation of a more sustainable area and to reveal its comparative elements as they have resulted from the analysis process.

Prerequisites

None

Syllabus

The course is structured by two parts: 1) The first part includes the theoretical approach, with lectures regarding the following subjects: a) Categories and variables of urban space b) Significance and historical development of planning c) The city and its functions. 2) The second part includes the students project. The exercise concerns the surveying of the urban characteristics of a 15-20 building block area inside the Chania city. In a second level proposals for this area’s upgrade are formulated. The students proposals include land uses and layout terms changes, reuse of abandoned existing nutshells, resolution of circulation problems (regulation of vehicles movement, pedestrians etc), plantings.