An Interactive Design Tool for Urban Planning Using the Size of the Living Space as Unit of Measurement

Abstract

<p><strong>Abstract.</strong> In urban planning, a common unit of measurement for population density is the number of households per hectare. However, the actual size of the households is seldom considered, neither in 2D nor in 3D. This paper proposes a method to calculate the average size of the household in existing urban areas from available open data and to use it as a design parameter for new urban development. The proposed unit of measurement includes outdoor and indoor spaces, the latter comprising both residential and non-residential spaces. As a test case, a to-be-planned neighbourhood in Amsterdam, called Sloterdijk One, was chosen. First, the sizes of “typical” households, as well as a series of KPIs, were computed in existing neighbourhoods of Amsterdam, based on their similarities with the envisioned Sloterdijk One plan. Successively, the resulting size of the household was used as a design parameter in a custom-made tool to generate semi-automatically several design proposals for Sloterdijk One. Additionally, each proposal can be exported as a CityGML model and visualised using web-based virtual globes, too. Significant differences among the resulting proposals based on this new unit of measurement were encountered, meaning that the average size of a household plays indeed a major role.</p>

The City of Tomorrow from… the Data of Today

“…These additional "layers" can be conveniently enabled and disabled in Rhinoceros when needed. Further details about the implementation and the functionalities are described in García González [64], a demonstration video can be retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPYT5_cFIgw&t=24s (accessed on 15 August 2020) Figure 22. Example of warning issued by the tool to inform the user that the building height is exceeding the limit allowed.…”