Type and Size of Urban Cell as Tools for Sustainable Urban (Re)Development

Abstract

Throughout the history of a human civilization, a demographic explosion imprinted in the Earth's surface is being witnessed. Our environment bears a footprint of evolutionary signs of human activities - creating settlements growing in the sense of geometric progression: bigger areas, higher buildings, more inhabitants. On the basis of newly discovered activities, economically profitable locations and materials, human society builds its dwelling and working settlements on the “Greenfields”, undergoing the “golden era” of the business bloom and coming to the decline in future economy. This enclosed process can be observed in historical villages, in rush mining towns, in artificially supported planned mass housing estates in socialist countries; but is the misunderstood and misused way of building and swallowing the natural and arable earth's surface still being taken for normal and tolerable?On the example of several large-sized development plans from different part of the world, we would like to take a closer look at what is the precarious pattern that has been copied since the era of 1930's. In recent, so-called “eco-cities” and “sustainable developments”, the urban design section of 21st century master plans will be watched closely. Taking a consideration of current state-of-art of the project and its real form, basic planning tools will be defined, excluding the principals of ecology and sociology for this purpose. Within the complex of multidisciplinary urban design will be extracted to its primary elements: the form and the function.