Toward a Synthetic Measure of Good Settlement Form

Abstract

By discerning a gap existing in urban design/planning theories and methodologies, this paper develops a synthetic approach which sets out to link “functional” analysis on the one side and multivalented “normative” analysis of community design on the other. Saaty's Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is employed to bridge the gap between functional and normative explanation, and to reconcile certain dilemmas posed by concepts and methods of design and planning in order to address the question of good settlement form. This new approach is tested empirically in the context of the historic Radburn plan (1929), well-known for its ingenuity of conception and treatment of community physical form and function. The AHP is used to “scan” and to make explicit the normative values implicit in the Radburn plan, and the paper shows how the functional (proportional) relationships among the land uses were affected by them.