Formal analysis of the urban 'Dutch model' with aims of re-formulating spatial quality concerns for pedestrian precincts in current New Town developments.

Abstract

In the Japanese post WWII urban planning and design field, concerns for formal features regarding the sequential street-front visual image in new high-density urban spaces have been a rather subordinated subject. Famous New Town schemes such as Tsukuba Science City (1963), or Minato Mirai 21 (1965) for instance, are typical inland and reclaimed land examples that summarize the validity and limitations of functional zoning systems applied to these artificial urban developments for the last half century. In those examples, the interaction between space mobility and land use has not been explored sufficiently in order to create attractive street-front images, yet such interaction is essential to the way the cityscape and its character are perceived by the eye. However, current insight regarding the sustainable New Town paradigm has brought a renewed perspective regarding design policy of the pedestrian precinct. This study investigates the formal features of the sequential street-front image of Dutch late-medieval town examples which could help re-formulate the existing design policies regarding the quality of pedestrian space especially in the artificial reclaimed land design field. The purpose is to find out how the principles of those old high-density artificial environmental design models generate such effective interaction between mobility and land usage, creating an enriched aesthetic visual image of street-front space as a result.