Cities are complex human made objects. They consist of thousands of elements and need to satisfy numerous human needs. The definition of urban form (street network, plots, building volumes) is a crucial step in the planning of cities because it has the longest lasting effect on their social, economic and ecological performance. Thus, this step needs to be undertaken with greatest care. In this course we will deal with computational methods to support this process.

The course extends the knowledge and methods you learned in PUDA I. You will learn and train advanced parametric modeling techniques and further analysis methods as well as basic knowledge about statistics to study relationships between urban form and its manifold functions.

Learning objectives

The first objective of this course is to enable you to conduct research on relationships between urban form and human activities that take place inside a city. Therefore you get to know different methods for data collection and analyses. This knowledge is applied to the analysis of small cities in Thuringia and Ethiopia.

The second objective is to deepen your knowledge and skills on parametric urban design and analysis. Therefore you will get to know new methods for analysing and generating urban form and apply them in an urban planning project for new towns in Ethiopia (IUDD Study Project “Metabolism-based Planning Strategies for Rural-Urban Transformation in Ethiopia”).

The knowledge provided through online seminars will be deepened in consultations and documented in several exercises.

Requirements

It is highly recommended that you participate in the course Parametric Urban Design and Analysis, since we require basic knowledge in parametric design and visual programming with Grasshopper for Rhino3D.

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