STUDY GUIDE · GKU 4
Urban planning and design study guide (Architecture)
This unit moves from the building to the city. It covers the urban design of streets and public spaces, the planning system and the codes that control density and land use, how neighbourhoods are sized around their schools and parks, the theories that have shaped cities from the grid of Miletus to the fifteen-minute city, the link between land use and transport, and the landscape that makes outdoor space usable in a hot climate. Where planning is computational (density, floor area ratio, catchments, walking radius, street capacity) the guide teaches the calculation, and every standard an example needs is given in its statement, because planning authorities set their own values.
Structured by the official ETEC subject standard for this topic: every listed topic and learning outcome, with formulas, figures and worked examples. The full sections are available to members in the app.
SKU 4.1 · Urban planning and design
Urban design: streets, enclosure and permeability
How the proportions of a street and the size of its blocks decide whether people walk and linger: the height-to-width ratio and the enclosure angle, block size and permeability, active frontage, legibility and the relationship between buildings and public space.
Urban planning: the planning system, codes and density
The levels of planning from national strategy to the plot, the development controls a code sets (land use, floor area ratio, coverage, setbacks, height), and the density measures planners use: net and gross dwellings per hectare and persons per hectare.
Neighbourhood planning and service catchments
Sizing a neighbourhood around the facilities it needs: Perry's neighbourhood unit, the hierarchy of centres, population thresholds for schools and parks, open-space standards, and how far people will walk to reach them.
Theories of urbanism
How ideas about the good city have changed: the grid, the traditional Arab-Islamic city, Haussmann, the Garden City, the modernist city of separated functions, its critics (Jacobs, Lynch, Cullen, Gehl), and New Urbanism, transit-oriented development and the compact city.
Land use and transportation
Land-use categories and zoning, the feedback between land use and transport, the street hierarchy from expressway to local street, walking catchments round stations, and why street space is measured in people moved rather than cars.
Urban planning and design for sustainable cities
What a sustainable city is and how planning and urban design produce one: compact growth, mixed use, walking and transit, green and blue infrastructure, cooling the urban heat island, and the social side of public space, with Saudi examples.
Landscape architecture
The fundamentals of landscape design: its elements (landform, planting, hard landscape, water), its principles of composition, the work landscape does for climate and drainage, plant selection and water-wise design for Saudi conditions, and the hierarchy of open space.