History of Urban Design

The building of cities is one of
man’s greatest achievements . The
form of his city always has been
and always will be a pitiless
indicator of the state of his
civilization.
Bacon, E., (1974), “design of cities”

Zaqaziq University
Faculty of Engineering
Architecture Department
the law of human history
…that mankind first of all must’ eat, drink, have shelter and
clothing, before it can pursue politics, science, art, religion
etc’.

Zaqaziq University
The first cities obviously were built
when humankind had got beyond the
struggle for mere existence.
The earliest known city, Jericho
“Ariha” (c. 7000 BC) was an oasis near
the River Jordan
whilst Catal Huyuk in Central Anatolia
(Asian Turkey c. 6500 BC) seems to
have flourished on trade
Both depended on sophisticated
agriculture, including the rearing of
livestock.

Jericho “Ariha” (c. 7000 BC)

Zaqaziq University
In Catal Huyuk
the houses were made of mud
brick.
Houses were built touching against
each other. They did not have
doors and houses were entered
through hatches in roofs.
Presumably having entrances in
the roofs was safer than having
them in the walls.
(Catal Huyuk was unusual among
early towns as it was not
surrounded by walls). Since houses
were built touching each other the
roofs must have acted as streets!
People must have walked across
them

atal Huyuk in Central Anatolia (Asian
urkey c. 6500 BC)

Zaqaziq University
In Catal Huyuk
there were no panes
of glass in windows
and houses did not
have chimneys.
Instead there were
only holes in the
roofs to let out
smoke. Inside houses
were plastered and
often had painted
murals of people and
animals on the walls.
People slept on
platforms.

Zaqaziq University
So it is hardly surprising that traces of the first great cities on
the whole are to be found in great river valleys and basins.
The presence of great rivers made irrigation possible but it
had to be organized:
The successful practice of irrigation involves an elaborate control
system. A system of main channels feeds subsidiary channels,
watering the fields when the necessary sluice gates are closed.
The implications therefore are that there must be some central
communal organization and the beginnings of a code of laws
which the organization enforces …the evidence that there was an
efficient communal organization is to be seen in the great
defensive systems.

None of this could have been achieved
without centralized planning.
Small wonder then, that the first cities
show evidence of social stratification
and the development of craft
specializations.
Zaqaziq University

Zaqaziq University
So, four things in the first place, made the city
possible:
3. and the development of craft- specialties to
serve not only the needs or the desires of the
urban population but also as bases for trade.
4. the development of power structures by which
the irrigation systems, and other aspects of
urban life, could be controlled—usually by
kings and priests;
1. the separation of the built-up area from the surrounding countryside, possibly by
defensive walls;
2. the development of irrigation systems for intensive agriculture;

Zaqaziq University
As for their physical design, cities and parts of cities, have grown in two ways.
The first:
is described by Alexander (1964) as the natural way in which people simply start
building, as they still do in the shanty towns of the emerging world.
The second:
And then there is the artificial way in which a
master plan is prepared; streets laid out, squares
and urban blocks on to which buildings are then
placed according to some planners’ sense of order
(Stanislawski, 1947).
So will another contrast: between formality and
informality.

Zaqaziq University
Classical planning
Straight streets, meeting at right angles, were known
in Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylon which was planned
between 1126 and 1105BC

Zaqaziq University
The Egyptian pyramid
stands as the
consummate
expression of a form
which emerges from
the earth as dominant
mass. It is a statement
of unchangeable
absolutes.

Zaqaziq University

Classical planning
Such planning was invented by
Hippodamus of Miletus (479 BC) “the
father of urban planning.
Miletus was planned on a checkerboard or
grid as many later cities have been
Zaqaziq University

Zaqaziq University
Priene built on steeply
sloping ground with the
main streets running
along the contours and
the (stepped) minor
streets crossing them

Zaqaziq University
Alexander laying out the city of Alexandria

Zaqaziq University
Classical planning
The typical Roman city had a rectangular plan and resembled a
Roman military camp with two major roads, the
decumanus (east-west) and the cardo (north-south)
a grid of smaller streets dividing the town into blocks, and a
wall circuit with gates

Zaqaziq University
This Plan too is evidence indeed that geometric instruments were used by the Roman surveyors, not just
straight edges and squares but also compasses. If such instruments were available for map-making and
measured drawings then of course they were also available for designing.

Zaqaziq University
The Acropolis was by no means a
typical part of the city

Zaqaziq University
Islamic planning
Whilst the rules for regular planning were well known in Classical times those for informal
planning were developed in quite a different culture, Islam, during that period which we in the
West tend to think of as the Dark Ages.

Zaqaziq University
As Hakim says (1986) Islamic Law itself
was extracted from the Qu’ran and the
Sunna by al-Shafi’i (died 819), al-Bukhari
(died 870) and Muslim (died 875).
Once a system of Laws had been encoded,
others, such as Isa ben Mousa (996) and Ibn
al-Rami (1334) extracted and codified
Ahkam or building solutions out of the
more general Laws.
Hakim (1986) analyses the Principles behind
these ‘solutions’, finding that each is based,
directly, on specific verses from the Qur’an
or the Prophet’s own practices from the
Sunna. Hakim analyses these in terms of
their effects on the form of the Islamic city.

Zaqaziq University
He distinguishes between the public street (the Shari) which is open to
everyone and the cul-de-sac (Zanqa) giving acess to a small group of houses
belonging in co-ownership, to those who live along it.
The Principles include those of:
1. Harm: by which one is
encouraged to exercise one’s personal
rights to the full, provided that in
doing so one causes no harm to
others.
Guidelines of many kinds were
derived from this including those
concerned with locations within the
city for activities that smoke, created
offensive smells, made offensive
amounts of noise and so on caused
Tunis: plan of the Suq south of the Zaytuna Mosque

Zaqaziq University
2. Interdependence : by which people within the
city and the structures they inhabit are considered
interdependent in what we would call an ecological
sense.

Zaqaziq University
3. Privacy: by which every family is entitled to
acoustic, visual, and other kinds of privacy.
Given the nature of the Muslim family and the way
in which the women had to be protected from the
eyes of strangers, there were strict rules indeed
against overlooking of any kind. These affected the
positions of windows including their height above the
street so that people could not see in. Nor should
doors or windows face each other directly across the
street into someone else’s doorway or windows.
Above all, visual corridors of any kind had to be
avoided, which of course led inevitably to
irregularities in façade design. Nor should one be
able to look into any part of one’s neighbor's
premises, especially the courtyard and the roof where
his women might be. Even the Muezzin, as he climbs
the minaret of the mosque to call the faithful to
prayer, is forbidden to overlook neighbouring
premises.

Zaqaziq University
5. Building higher: consisting, surprisingly, of a right to build as high as one pleases, provided
the construction is contained within one’s own air space. This right applies even if such building
will deprive one’s neighbours of air and sun. It will be refused, however, where there was
evidence of intent to harm one’s neighbour(s).
6. Respect for the property of others.
7. Pre-emption: by which in selling one’s property one must, in the interests of social cohesion,
offer first refusal to one’s neighbour(s), adjacent property-owner(s), or even one’s partner.

Zaqaziq University
8. Seven cubits as the minimum width of
public sharis. A cubit is about half a metre and
this dimension allows two fully laden camels to
pass without colliding.
As Hakim points out, a fully laden camel might
be seven cubits high which gives a minimum of
headroom under any building which spans
across the street.
The cul-de-sac of course may be narrower than
the public street (shari) but at least one laden
camel should be able to pass down it so the
minimum width will have to be four cubits.
9. Any public thoroughfare should never be obstructed by permanent or even temporary
obstructions.
Each owner, however, had a right to use that part of the fina immediately outside his house for the
loading and unloading of his beasts, and so on, but still he had no right to block the fina (the fina is
the exterior space immediately adjacent to the exterior wall of a building, approximately one meter
in width).

Each of these Principles interacted with the predominant
urban and architectural elements, and each of them too has a
name which is deeply embedded in Arabic.
And of course there were regional variations depending on
local climate.
Zaqaziq University

Zaqaziq University
Arab influences in Europe
We know from history, of course, that Arabs carried Islam along the north coast of Africa and
converted the Berbers to Islam who, with their converters, came to be known as the Moors.
Medieval planning : The Dark Ages
Having moved to the
north-west tip of
Africa, the Moors
crossed the Straits of
Gibraltar then
moved up and into
Spain and even into
France (where
Charles Martel turned
them back… and so
on.

Zaqaziq University
The precepts of Islam itself,
and the nature of family life,
forced irregularity on to
Moslem urban design and,
most particularly, on to the
layout of housing.
But many cities of medieval
Europe also were irregular.

Zaqaziq University
Since few cities developed very
much during Europe’s Dark Ages,
it is important that we establish
just how much the cities of ‘the
Recovery’ of civilization in
Europe owed to Arab
precedents.
Many of them, but by no means
all, were almost as irregular as
Islamic cities.

Zaqaziq University
The great Islamic cities on
the mainland of Europe, of
course, were those which
the Moors built in
Andalucia. There are
substantial, not to say
magnificent, remains of
their building in Cordoba,
Granada and elsewhere.
But apart from 19th century
pastiches, there are few
signs of Islamic influence
on architecture or planning
elsewhere in mainland
Europe

Zaqaziq University
We should look at urban
layouts which display the
unmistakable signs of
labyrinthine planning, with
tortuous, blind alleys, very
narrow, often covered and
ending in private courtyards.
Palermo: survivals of Arabic Planning
We should look for typically
Islamic discontinuities,
irregular aggregations of
houses, the all-of-a-piece
organic planning which is so
characteristic of Islam.

Zaqaziq University
We might look at constructional techniques,
methods of planning and so on, particularly the
hierarchy of various kinds of street, Islamic
distinctions between fortified areas and
residential areas.

Zaqaziq University
Even where they were built many such
developments have been lost or prove difficult to
trace since often they were built on to classical
layouts and themselves overlaid by later,
Byzantine or Norman constructions. What had
been a mosque might well have been
converted into a church. The necessary traces
are to be found in a hundred cities, large and
small, in various parts of Italy.
As in Spain, so in Italy cities which had been
almost entirely Islamic might have been changed
for various reasons: military, general urban
viability—the need, for instance, to
accommodate different means of transport—and
even for aesthetic reasons. So streets might be
widened and straightened, dead-end alleyways
opened up, and so on.

Zaqaziq University
There were several reasons therefore why so many medieval cities were irregular:
1. including the nature of the sites on which they were built,
2. often initially for defensive purposes,
3. the facts of topology, influences from Islam and so on.
4. As Mumford says (1938) (p. 53) the medieval builders had ‘no a priori love for symmetry as
such’. Where it was simpler to ‘follow nature’s contours’ they did so rather than grading them
down or evening them up.
5. Nor were regular streets needed to accommodate wheeled vehicles. Mules were used for
transport so the streets could be even narrower than those of Islam which had to accommodate
laden camels

Zaqaziq University
Medieval regularity
We tend to think of medieval planning, typically, as
irregular. But that was by no means always the case;
medieval drawings exist of regular, geometric
planning. These are plans for monasteries including
one for Canterbury (mid 12th century) showing the
drainage system and the much earlier design
drawing for the Abbey of St Gall (c. AD 820–830)
The Plan fits into a 160 foot grid, three squares deep
from north to south and four squares wide from east
to west. The centre line of the church lies one square
in from the northern boundary and the church itself
is two squares long.
A large cloister is attached to the south side of the
church containing a refectory, quarters for the
monks and so on.

Zaqaziq University
As Europe recovered
from her Dark Ages
some of the new urban
forms came from the
invaders themselves.
Once the invasions
had been halted,
Europe recovered very
quickly. continuing
sources of income.
Medieval planning 2: European recovery

Zaqaziq University
The presence of the merchants naturally attracted artisans and indeed as Pirenne says (1937) there
was a real, if limited, Industrial Revolution.
Thus it was in Flanders particularly that manufacturing and trading began to be developed side by
side which, naturally, had its effects on the form of the medieval city.
The sites most desirable for
entrepreneurs within the town:
merchants, artisans and so on, were those
immediately surrounding the market
place. According to Burke (1975) plots
adjoining the market place, used for
shops, commanded the highest rents.
Indeed as Platt suggests (1976) there was
a premium on sites with desirable
frontages which might be taxed to
encourage efficient planning. Platt shows
ingenious developments in King’s Lynn,
Oxford and other places, planned so that
street frontages were occupied by several
shops but with a single large residence
behind them

History of Urban Design

Empfohlen

Empfohlen

Weitere ähnliche Inhalte

Was ist angesagt?

Was ist angesagt? (20)

Andere mochten auch

Andere mochten auch (20)

Ähnlich wie History of Urban Design

Ähnlich wie History of Urban Design (20)

Mehr von Alshimaa Aboelmakarem Farag

Mehr von Alshimaa Aboelmakarem Farag (20)

Kürzlich hochgeladen

Kürzlich hochgeladen (20)

History of Urban Design