ELEMENTS OF URBAN

STRUCTURE
TOWN PLANNING
Physical Elements of the City

Networks

Buildings

Open spaces

Cliff Ellis
Networks

A city contains numerous pathways to carry flows of

people, goods, water, energy, and information
Transportation networks are the largest and most visible
of these
Ancient cities relied on streets, most quite narrow, to carry
foot traffic and carts
Modern cities contain a complex hierarchy of transportation
channels, ranging from highways to footpaths
Modern cities rely on complex networks of services
water supply, drainage, sewage
Since the late 19th century, cities have also been laced
with wires and conduits carrying electricity and
communication facilities
Buildings

The most visible elements of the city, the features

that give each city its unique character
Residential structures occupy almost half of all
urban land - the building types ranging from scattered
single-family homes to dense high-rise apartments
Commercial buildings are clustered at the CBD and
at various subcenters
Industrial buildings - from large factory complexes in
industrial districts to small workshops

High rise mostly in the CBD, low rise elsewhere, though

changing now
Buildings

Town planners engage in a constant search for the

proper arrangement of these different types of land
use, paying particular attention to
compatibility of different activities
population densities
traffic generation
economic efficiency
social relationships
the height and bulk of buildings
Open Spaces
Open space is sometimes treated as a leftover, but
it contributes greatly to the quality of urban life
"Hard" spaces such as plazas, malls, and courtyards
provide settings for public activities of all kinds
"Soft" spaces such as parks, gardens, lawns, and
nature preserves provide essential relief from harsh
urban conditions and serve as space for
recreational activities
These "amenities" increasingly influence which cities
will be perceived as desirable places to live
HUMAN SETTLEMENTS
Origin & Evolution
Human Settlements
Human settlements means the totality of the
human community - whether city, town or village -
with all the social, material, organizational, spiritual
and cultural elements that sustain it.
The fabric of human settlements consists of physical
elements (Shelter, infrastructure) and services to
which these elements provide the material support

Vancouver Declaration on Human Settlements (1976)

Human Settlements
Shelter, i.e. the superstructures of different shapes, size,
type and materials erected by mankind for security,
privacy and protection from the elements and for his
singularity within a community
Infrastructure, i.e. the complex networks designed to
deliver to or remove from the shelter people, goods,
energy or information;
Services cover those required by a community for the
fulfilment of its functions as a social body, such as
education, health, culture, welfare, recreation and
nutrition
Vancouver Declaration on Human Settlements (1976)
Origin
Simple origin in the primitive efforts of
mankind to provide protection against

Inclement weather
Wild beasts

Human enemies
AGE PERIOD TOOLS ECONOMY DWELLING SITES SOCIETY RELIGION
Handmade tools
and objects found
in nature cudgel, A band of edible-
club, sharpened plant gatherers
Paleolithic
stone, chopper, and hunters (25
hand axe, scraper, Mobile lifestyle 100 people)
spear, harpoon, Hunting and caves, huts, tooth or
needle, scratch awl gathering skin hovels, mostly
by rivers and lakes Evidence for
Handmade tools belief in the
and objects found afterlife first
Mesolithic in nature bow Tribes and bands appears in the
Stone
and arrow, fish Upper
age Palaeolithic,
basket, boats
marked by the
Handmade tools
appearance of
and objects found Neolithic
burial rituals
in nature chisel, Revolution -
and ancestor
hoe, plough, transition to worship.
yoke, reaping- agriculture. Tribes and
Neolithic Priests and
hook, grain pourer, Gathering, formation of sanctuary
barley, loom, hunting, chiefdoms in
Farmsteads servants appear
earthenware fishing and some Neolithic in the
(pottery) and domestication societies the end prehistory.
weapons of the period
Copper and bronze
Bronze Age tools, potter's Agriculture
wheel cattle
breeding,
agriculture,
Iron Age Iron tools craft, trade Formation of
Formation of cities
states
Primitive shelters
Hunters and fishermen - rock caves, the
earliest form of human dwellings
Tillers of the soil - arbours of trees,
and from them fashioned huts of wattle
and daub
Shepherds followed their flocks lay down
under coverings of skins
later raised on posts to form tents

Caves, huts, and tents - the three germs of later

architectural developments
Nature to architecture
Evolved from the three natural prototypes
Caves with their rough openings and walls and
roofs of rock, inevitably suggested the raising of
stone walls to carry slabs of rock for roofs

Natural arbours suggested huts with tree trunks for

walls and closely laid branches, covered with turf,
for roofs

Tents of sheepskins obvious development and are

still as much in use among Bedouin Arabs and other
nomadic tribes as they can have been in
prehistoric times
Evolution of housing
Early housing in Mesolithic period was
circular in plan and widely distributed
throughout SW Asia where the transition to
rectangular houses tok place between 10th
and 8th millenium BC
The transition was
from semi subterranean dry stone huts
to apsidal houses in mud or stone
to rectangular in earth or mud brick
Beehive houses
Beehive house, Dabaghein, Syria
Dry stone prehistoric beehive hut,
Ireland
Wattle and daub
PIT HOUSE
JERICHO
9th millenium BC
Jericho
Oldest continually inhabited city of the
world; 800 ft below sea level
The site had the main ingredients needed
for an important city:
An abundant water supply
Good climate

A central location
Aerial View
Tell
Jericho was built atop a great
mound that was nearly 70 feet high
The ancient tell is a testament to this
site.
In antiquity, instead of tearing down
an old city, people would just build a
new one on top of it. They would
keep building new cities in this
manner for many generations, thus
forming an artificial hill or tell.
Archaeologists found a tower
standing 25 feet high at the tell in
Jericho.
The entire city seems to have been
fortified by various sets of walls.
Archaeological evidence suggests
that at differing times in history one
set of walls would be built atop a
previous set.
Tower
When the walls of Jericho came down
Houses
Early houses - Solid domed houses of mud
brick with entrance porch and curved walls
(origin round tents of nomadic hunters)
Floor sunk below ground level and reached by
means of stairs; Dead buried beneath
Later Rectangular, with Several rooms arranged
around courtyards
The sizeable population, defensive walls, and
interweaving of public buildings (cisterns, shrines)
and houses point to Jerichos urban character.
Houses and shrines were communicated by means
of courtyards
CATAL HUYUK
7th millenium BC
CATAL HUYUK
Anatolia, Modern Turkey

Very large Neolithic and Chalcolithic

proto-city settlement
Declared UNESCO world heritage site in
July 2012; largest and best preserved
Neolithic site to date
CATAL HUYUK
Anatolia, Modern Turkey
 Composed of entirely domestic buildings with
no public buildings
Large numbers of buildings clustered together
Mudbrick houses crammed together in an
aggregate structure
No footpaths or streets between dwellings,
which were clustered in a honey-comb like
maze
Accessed by holes in ceilings
Rooftops effectively streets
Ceiling holes only source of ventilation
Settlement plan
Settlement Pattern
Settlement view
Interior
Shrine
Site
Artists impression
KHIROKITIA
(6th millenium BC)
Khirokitia
Also spelled Choirokoitia

Pronounced
Heroquitia (found in Latin documents of the
early 14th century)
Chierochithia , or Chierochitia , or Chirochitia
(in Italian chronicles by Amadi)
Khirokitia
In Cyprus
Listed as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO
since 1998.
One of the most important and best
preserved Neolithic sites
Much of its importance lies
in the evidence of an organised functional
society in the form of a collective settlement, with
surrounding fortifications for communal
protection
Earliest true street recorded
Khirokitia
Khirokitia
Street defines settlement
Raised considerably above ground level
In places, widened to form platforms
Formal cohesion contributed to community feeling
Street gave rise to organisational and legal
consequences