Neighbourhood Unit Concept Research Articles

Study of the Provision and Utilization of Shared Space in the Taman Royal Housing Complex, Tangerang City

Formal housing (planned settlement) is a housing built by clear rules and equipped with services and completeness of settlements designed before being occupied so that housing has a regular pattern. The availability of shared facilities in a residential area has an important role for the development of housing residents' activities. In the Neighborhood Unit concept, it is explained that the availability of social facilities in housing serves to increase the desire to interact with its inhabitants. The problem that arises now is the availability of shared facilities that are not in accordance with the needs of its users, resulting in low utilization of facilities. The study was conducted to assess the supply, utilization, and knowing the perceptions of occupants regarding the priority of shared facilities needs in Taman Royal Housing, Tangerang City. The study of the provision and utilization of shared facilities is carried out using three research variables, namely the availability, location and intensity of utilization variables. The study used quantitative descriptive analysis method. Meet the study as follows: 1) the availability of shared facilities that are most in accordance with the regulations on urban housing planning in urban areas are worship facilities. 2) facilities that have the lowest utilization rate are health facilities, this is due to poor quality of service. 3) the facilities that are most needed based on residents' perceptions are playing facilities.

The Characteristics of Vietnamese Collective Living Quarters - From the Foundational Concepts to Changes

The development of the modern urban city has always been accompanied by problems related to the urban planning and adjustment of its internal infrastructure. All the planning and construction of cities are associated with a specific plan, also there are some theories of planning and housing sector included. The theoretical system is built and adjusted, applied from the practice of model designs or pilot designs then adopted and used by experts of different countries. However, each region has different political, socio-cultural, economic, and environmental conditions; therefore, applying such theoretical systems will have active adjustments based on separate circumstances and contexts. Throughout the history of urban development of many countries in the world, the characteristics of the model “group of houses” have been used thoroughly and effectively of social issues and seen not only as a situational but also long-term approach to the development of cities. From the Neighbourhood Unit concept to the Collective living quarters concept then applied in Vietnam - although there is a certain adjustment - still shows the visions of designers and intentions as well as the look for deeply social value. To Vietnam’s situation, in particular, the collective living quarters concept is considered an ideal model and a changing step not only in the history of architecture but also the social development history in general, representing a whole generation of humanity with socialism, closely attached to the historical context of Vietnam. Received 18th December 2021; Revised 12th February 2022; Accepted 20th March 2022

The Assessment of Social Housing through The Availability of Social Facilities

Social facilities are one aspect that must be fulfilled in a residential environment. The orientation of the provision of facilities as a component of the housing environment and easy-to-reach use should be a consideration of housing development and management. Social housing built by the government through Perumnas was built with a large number of units. Over time and the age factor, Perumnas experienced developments and problems so that the quality of the environment in Perumnas decreased. This paper aims to assess social facilities services, using distance and travel time factors based on the concept of neighborhood units. The research uses a quantitative approach as a basis for finding the concept of neighborhood units in mass housing. The results in this study are the level of accessibility to reach social facilities in the Perumnas Banyumanik based on distance and travel time to access social facilities included in the medium accessibility. Besides that, the study found that social facilities as supporting life in mass housing Perumnas can be a strong bond in the neighborhood unit concept. Sustainable housing development requires the management and provision of social facilities through easy access in the concept of neighboring units.

Exploring Neighborhood Unit’s Planning Elements and Configuration Methods in Seoul and Singapore from a Walkability Perspective

This paper is to explore how the neighborhood-unit concept, which had been initially promoted by North America and the United Kingdom, was adopted and utilized in the Asian cities of high-density developments, such as Seoul and Singapore from a walkability perspective. Among various environmental elements of walkability in a given neighborhood unit, 10 planning elements, as well as their configuration methods, were drawn from the review of the existing studies, which became an analytical framework for this paper. The findings of the analysis are as follows. First, there were similarities, yet also marked distinctions between the cases of Seoul and Singapore, on the one hand, and those in North America and the UK on the other, with respect to the configuration methods, categorized into four groups of typologies: ‘Neighborhood Size’, ‘Neighborhood Structure’, ‘Neighborhood Network’, and ‘Neighborhood Facilities’. The differences largely resulted from the high-density developments in Seoul and Singapore. In the years since the 1990s, however, when the concept of sustainable development was strengthened, the configuration methods, related to ‘Neighborhood Structure’ and to ‘Neighborhood Facilities’ in most cases, were enhanced to suit more neighborhood walking. The initial concept of the neighborhood unit was actively modified to accommodate the high-density urban situations in Seoul and Singapore, having both positive and negative impacts on neighborhood walkability.

The neighbourhood unit adequacy: An analysis of the case of Gaza, Palestine

Urban planning in the Gaza Strip faces several challenges as a result of rapid population growth and limited available resources. Planning for housing development in Gaza is based on the neighbourhood unit concept. However, it is not clear to what extent this trend is responsive to local housing needs, and what should be done to improve it. This paper presents the results of a survey of local housing specialists followed by a real-time case study of neighbourhood planning. The study concludes that the use of neighbourhood unit concept as a planning base is appropriate for the Gaza Strip, considering the social context and the limited size of the local housing projects, which requires an incremental development policy. However, several challenges remain, including the absence of a national housing policy and unified legislation, fund shortages, and land limitations. The study recommends to policy makers that adequacy of this social-oriented planning model should be investigated considering the principle of localisation instead of standardisation. This is essential in avoiding the absolute rejection or adoption of this model on the one hand, and in ensuring a subjective process of reinventing rather than mere borrowing on the other one.

Mapping and Making Community in the Postwar European City

This article examines how midcentury European sociologists, planners, and architects mapped the existing city to build future communities. The neighborhood unit concept spread globally in the first half of the twentieth century. In Europe, its deployment was supported not just by modernist planning principles but by sociological abstractions of community life. Current scholarship emphasizes how these modernist principles were contested by sociologists. The present article demonstrates instead that sociological mapping was instrumental in making the concept of community legible and operable in the postwar European city. During the 1940s, mapping social relationships in urban space was increasingly thought to reveal “authentic” community life in working-class urban neighborhoods, which previously were dismissed as chaotic and promiscuous. Such new sociological mapping shaped, if often only implicitly, the planning and design of modern housing estates and New Towns across Europe and thus connected representations of bottom–up, grassroots communities to an essentially top–down planning apparatus.

The impact of planning on pedestrian movement: contrasting pedestrian movement models in pre-modern and modern neighborhoods in Israel

Most pedestrian movement volume models were constructed for urban areas that developed on the basis of pre-modern planning. In this paper, we confront neighborhoods that were built upon modern planning doctrines, combining the functional hierarchy of streets with the neighborhood unit concept, with neighborhoods that developed from pre-modem non-hierarchical street-based planning. We use space syntax analysis to investigate how their street network’s structural attributes interact with pedestrian movement distribution. The investigation was conducted in 14 neighborhoods from 4 cities in Israel by examining the correlation of observed pedestrian volume with models using different axial- and segment-based topological, angular, and metric syntactic attributes across different radii (scales). The results indicate that the street network and the distribution of pedestrian movement interact differently in the two neighborhood types. In pre-modern neighborhoods: (i) there is significantly more walking; (ii) the street network’s syntactic attributes tend to be much more consistent in their correlation with pedestrian volume across all scales; (iii) the correlation of pedestrian volume with these attributes and with commerce is relatively high; and (iv) pedestrian movement distribution is more predictable. We relate these differences to the absence of a self-organized circular causality between street network structure, commerce, and movement in modern planned neighborhoods.

The Neighbourhood Unit Concept and the Shaping of Land Planning in the United States 1912–1968

Although one of the more well-known concepts in planning, both planning scholars and professional communities such as the New Urbanism have neglected the neighbourhood unit concept's historic influence in shaping suburban land planning norms. This paper analyzes contemporaneous professional and governmental literature in order to understand the context of land planning and development during the time that the neighbourhood unit became a leading idea. Between 1912 and 1968 the neighbourhood unit concept bridged planning, design, development and policy-making communities to improve standards in the construction of residential environments by shifting the scale of development to an area as a whole. In this time period the neighbourhood unit concept shaped land planning norms, facilitated execution of policies, framed new institutions, and became associated with the changes that it helped to bring about.

Introduction: the ‘Second World's’ architecture and planning in the ‘Third World’

This themed issue of The Journal of Architecture focuses on what appears to be a major blind-spot of current architectural historiography of the post-war period: the transfer of architecture and pl...

Inappropriately Appropriated or Innovatively Indigenized?: Neighborhood Unit Concept in Post-independence India

This article traces the long-term development of the neighborhood unit concept in Indian planning practice and literature. By concentrating on the role and actions of post-independence planners, this article also explains the steps through which they reconciled neighborhood unit’s perceived foreign-ness with its imagined potential for national development. It concludes that while planners assimilated the concept in planning practice rather successfully, their efforts eventually mattered little because a host of urban actors gradually transformed the built neighborhoods to the extent that they represent a distinct form of urbanism today.

Creating new communities: The role of the Neighbourhood unit in post‐war British planning

The use of the neighbourhood unit concept was a key element in the majority of the first ‘mark one’ new towns constructed following the New Towns Act of 1946. The neighbourhood unit represented an attempt to reverse the perceived breakdown of ‘community spirit’ during the inter‐war years. The concept was also used by the 1945 Labour government as a means to eradicate class divisions, and thus make society more cohesive. This article traces the rise and rapid decline of the neighbourhood unit policy from its American origins to its ignominious disappearance in the face of opposition from town planners, architects and sociologists. It evaluates the successes and failings of this policy and argues that the concept reveals much not only about the governance and planning of Britain in the immediate post‐war period, but also raises issues about class and social ‘cohesion’ in British society.

Ceausescu's Bucharest

PERHAPS no present-day city exhibits the imprint of an individual to the extent that Bucharest shows the effect of Nicolae Ceausescu, who ruled Romania in dictatorial fashion from 1965 to his overthrow and execution in December 1989. An account of his transformation of Bucharest and of the destruction wrought during the revolution and subsequent changes provides a valuable perspective for analyzing this important southeastern European capital. The account also allows a unique opportunity to reveal how Marxist planning concepts went astray in the hands of a megalomaniac. Long associated with Romanian history, Bucharest dates at least to the fifteenth century, when it was little more than a village on the banks of the Dimbovita River (Turnock 1990, 107-110). The city became the capital of Wallachia in 1659 and later emerged as a key link in overland trade with Turkey. During the eighteenth century, it acquired a manufactural base. Bucharest greatly increased its importance when in 1862 it was designated the capital of Romania. Its population then was slightly more than 120,000, or double the 1831 figure (Ianos and Guran 1991, 7). By the end of the nineteenth century, the city was capital of an independent kingdom and could boast two train stations, an electric tram line, electrical, telephone, and sewerage systems, and street lights that had been installed in 1857 and that represented the first such system in the world (Cucu and Sandru 1987, 82-83). By 1914, a program of city planning, house construction, and industry helped swell the population of Bucharest to almost 350,000 and the administrative area to almost 6,000 hectares. After World War I, Bucharest enjoyed a reputation as the Paris of the East (Lewis 1987, 466). The most fashionable district was the northern section, along Lake Floreasca, where a triumphal arch, palaces, fine villas, wide boulevards, parks, and lakes contrasted with the crowded, bustling, poorly serviced districts in and around the city center. INITIAL SOCIALIST DEVELOPMENT After World War II, the newly installed communist government set about the task of city development, in line with accepted Marxist-Leninist doctrine as promulgated from Moscow. Specific pieces of urban legislation were enacted in 1956 and 1962 (Church 1979, 497; Turnock 1990, 111). The most pressing needs of the period were to repair the damages of the war, during which almost 13 percent of the buildings in the city were destroyed, and to increase the number and size of heavy-industrial plants. The government also changed the designated use of certain buildings. For example, the former royal palace in central Bucharest in 1950 was assigned to house the new State Council as well as other public services, and to display art exhibits (Church 1979, 502-503). Many former villas in the northern section were converted to use as governmental offices and foreign embassies. In ideological terms, these actions were intended to transform structures and hence the built environment of the city from its former exclusionary use to involvement in the daily life of the proletariat. They represented one step in creating a socialist society. Furthermore, the names of many streets and administrative districts were changed to honor revolutionary heroes and events; parks and other publicly accessible recreational facilities were constructed (Church 1979, 504). The government also embarked on a program to construct new housing projects in the outer districts to accommodate the influx of workers, to replace substandard housing, and to reflect the emerging socialist egalitarian order (Sampson 1979, 512). The districts included Drumul Taberei, Berceni, and Titan Balta Alba, which were developed according to the neighborhood-unit concept. Initially, apartment blocks were limited to a height of four stories and separated by sufficient open space for vegetable gardens. Housing projects of this sort were a common feature in Eastern European cities. …

Planning Residential Environments: The Social Performance Standard

Recent research and practice have led to the realization that the neighborhood unit concept may be outdated as the basic model of residential planning. With this in mind, a residential planning process built upon social and physical needs, human behavioral patterns, and user-oriented environmental functions is described. A performance standards approach is advocated to facilitate translation of these factors into developable designs. To complement environmental performance standards, the social performance standard is introduced. Criteria illustrating such an approach to recreation planning are presented to suggest how these standards might be applied by the planner, and what purpose they might serve.

Town Planning and the Neighbourhood Unit Concept

Town Planning and the Neighbourhood Unit Concept