World Architecture Day - Resilient Communities
Contents
- The 15-minute City
- Diversity and Inclusion in Urban Design
- Creating Safe Public Spaces
- Urban Resilience to Climate Change
- The Role of Urban Planning in Promoting Social Justice
- Five Elements of the City
- Examples
1. The 15-minute City
How to Design for walkability and biking in cities?
The 15-minute city is an urban planning concept in which a city is designed to make necessary areas easily accessible by a 15-minute walk or bike ride. Implementing this design concept can help reduce car usage and pollution and improve public health. This allows for a more access-focused urban planning technique and the transformation of a city into a more sustainable community.
2. Diversity and Inclusion in Urban Design
How to encourage diversity and inclusion through Urban Design?
Designing resilient communities factors in designing cities that are accessible and inclusive for all people regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, ability, and income.
A universally inclusive urbanscape is a city that is designed based on ease of access and is user-centric. This means including all stakeholders and taking under consideration the accessibility for people with disabilities by including more pedestrian ramps. Here, the concept of a 15-minute city comes into play again as this would reduce the usage of vehicles, hence cutting fuel costs and thereby catering to a wider income range of the public. Similarly, urban planning can cultivate a space that is accessible for all genders and can eliminate racial discrimination simply by creating connectivity through spaces and designing open social spaces allowing and promoting acceptance of public diversity.
3. Creating Safe Public Spaces
How to create public spaces that are safe and welcoming?
The key to creating safe and welcoming spaces is designing public spaces with everyone in mind including people of all ages, abilities, and backgrounds. This would further lead to creating spaces that are well-lit, clean, and accessible.
An urban space that is safe and secure for everyone is an essential factor in designing a resilient community. The planning of such an urban space should incorporate visual connectivity of all public areas through levels and by keeping a sense of “open-ness” in the design. Other than that, access to a single space from more than one side and including shortcuts while planning circulation around public spaces becomes essential. The safety of a community can further be ensured by creating open and clear pathways that will help keep the city clean and accessible while at the same time, such pathways are easy to keep well-lit with streetlamps at nighttime. A safe community is designed to encourage engagement and harmony.
4. Urban Resilience to Climate Change
How to make cities more resilient to climate change?
With the adverse effects of global warming and rising sea levels, it has become more important to design sensibly and to cater to these environmental and climatic changes when planning a city. It is crucial to design cities that are adaptable to extreme weather changes and rising sea levels. This includes disaster resilience in coastal communities by considering design strategies such as elevating the ground levels of buildings and infrastructure as well as creating efficient evacuation routes in case of emergencies. Another important design strategy is to incorporate green infrastructure and landscaping into the city to not only make it aesthetically appealing but also to create a more sustainable and eco-friendly living space. Sustainable design practices include the use of vernacular building materials, solar panels, consideration of daylight and wind direction to design energy-efficient buildings and spaces, and incorporating local vegetation in the landscape design. We can design a fully aware city that is eco-friendly and functions in a way that emphasizes on waste-management, fuel efficiency, and minimal energy consumption. Sustainable design not only promotes these values but also educates a community while implementing it at the same time.
5. The Role of Urban Planning in Promoting Social Justice
How to design spaces that promote social justice in a community?
Urban planning can be used to address issues such as poverty, inequality, and discrimination. By creating equitable and inclusive communities, urban planning can promote social justice.
The impact of building cities with communities in mind is that it leads to promoting social justice and opens the minds of the stakeholders to become more socially accepting. By designing inclusive and accessible urban spaces, we can open the minds of communities and create a more aware and educated community where people from different backgrounds, races, genders, abilities, ages, and income are all welcome.
6. Five Elements of the City
Five elements of the city ; The Image of the City by Kevin Lynch
A brief summary of the book:
Lynch’s book “The Image of the City” talks about the five elements if a city that should be taken under consideration while urban planning and designing. These five elements, as Lynch says, are:
- Paths
- Edges
- Districts
- Nodes
- Landmarks
Lynch talks about these five distinctive elements that are the main components of designing and planning an urban landscape. The book is a descriptive representation and analysis of how these five elements impact the mental image of a city in the minds of the members of a community, which is why it is essential to mention this book here.
7. Examples
1. Stockholm Wood City
Stockholm Wood City in Sweden is a prime example of a city that is designed based on the theme of resilient communities. It has the interest of the community in mind and is set to begin construction in the year 2025 on a 250,000-square-meter site. This project is designed by the Scandinavian studios Henning Larsen and White Arkitekter and is set to become the “world’s largest timber development”. It is designed to capture the serenity and ambiance of a forest and will include 7,000 offices and 2,000 homes. This forest-inspired city will be built to be sustainable, cheap, and climate-friendly.
2. Copenhagen, Denmark
Copenhagen is known to be one of the “greenest cities” on earth. In the year 2009, the city made its goal to become the world’s first-ever carbon-neutral capital by 2025. This is another great example of cities that are designed for communities. Copenhagen has not only incorporated several methods of energy efficiency to reduce the city’s energy consumption but is also focused on reducing its carbon footprint and improving public health by creating ease of mobility and introducing “super cycle highways”, leading to 45% of the population of Copenhagen to commute by bike every day.