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Empathy, Values, and Situated Action
Published in Rachel Beth Egenhoefer, Routledge Handbook of Sustainable Design, 2017
To affect significant change at the practice level, Max Neef’s fundamental human needs and human-scale development model serve as an appropriate reference (see Neef, 1991). Neef outlines fundamental needs as subsistence, protection, affection, understanding, participation, leisure, creation, identity and freedom. As applied in strategic sustainable development, human scale development is described as “focused and based on the satisfaction of fundamental human needs, on the generation of growing levels of self-reliance, and on the construction of organic articulations of people with nature and technology, of global processes with local activity, of the personal with the social, of planning with autonomy, and of civil society with the state.” Human centered design aimed at the satisfaction of fundamental needs in harmony with sustainable development is ambitious, yet significant if achieved through behaviors embedded in practice (Fundamental Human Needs, n.d.).
Design composition
Published in Ron Kasprisin, urban Design, 2019
Scale is a reference standard in measurements; a proportion. A progressive classification, of size, amount or importance or rank. Scale is important to the human use of space in that the relationship between humans and their environment is either responsive or sensitive to human scale and perception of space or overpowering, oppressive and out of context to human scale. Buildings and certain master plans can portray power and symbolism, intentionally diminishing the human-scale interaction; and they can be intimate as special “places”.
Developing a measurement scale for sustainable high-rise building in city of Erbil
Published in Journal of Asian Architecture and Building Engineering, 2022
Wezha Hawez Baiz, Ercan Hoskara
(4)Scale and size: Height of the building: Some people feel a high sense of fear when they are on a certain level of height because the visual system can provide data that clashes with those in the somatosensory and vestibular systems if the distance of the eye-object is greater than 20 m in a stationary location. If a person perceives the risk of falling, then they feel a risk (Yuen 2011; Salassa and Zapala 2009).Understanding the human scale is important when designing the built environment to provide users with comfort. Likewise, high-rises also break down the urban scale by squandering nearby buildings, people, and public spaces.
Campus environmental quality and streetscape features related to walking activity
Published in Journal of Asian Architecture and Building Engineering, 2023
Zhehao Zhang, Thomas Fisher, Haiming Wang
The second approach is based on the field audit and questionnaire survey from a micro-level viewpoint. Researchers use questionnaires to obtain subjective perceptions of the investigated areas’ walkability. Additionally, as mentioned in the introduction section, investigators use a list of field audit tools to measure the environment features in streets (Aghaabbasi et al. 2018). As one of the few validated tools, UDQ has been applied in various cities with different built environment characteristics (Ewing and Clemente 2013; H et al. 2015; Hooi and Pojani 2020; Maxwell 2016). Ewing’s team proposes the UDQ theory, which is based on combining the sense of safety; comfort; level of interest; physical street environment; building entity elements; and other environmental features (Ewing and Clemente 2013). It contains five qualities: imageability, enclosure, human scale, transparency, and complexity. Imageability refers to what makes a place distinct, recognizable, and memorable. A high imageability street can capture attention, evoke feelings, and create a lasting impression.Enclosure refers to the degree to which buildings, walls, trees, and other vertical elements visually define streets and other public spaces.Human scale refers to the size, texture, and articulation of physical elements that match the size and proportions of humans and, equally important, correspond to the speed at which humans walk.Transparency refers to the degree to which people can see or perceive what lies beyond the edge of a street or other public space and, more specifically, the degree to which people can see or perceive human activity beyond the edge of a street or other public spaces.Complexity refers to the visual richness of a place and depends on the diversity of the physical environment.
Urban design quality and walkability: an audit of suburban high streets in an Australian city
Published in Journal of Urban Design, 2020
Ewing and Clemente’s (2013) framework encompasses five urban design qualities which can be measured by following a prescribed stepwise procedure. These five urban design qualities coincide with the determinants of walkability, operationalized by Ewing and Handy (2009). To reiterate, they are: imageability, enclosure, human scale, transparency and complexity, defined as follows (by Ewing and Clemente 2013; Ewing and Handy 2009): Imageability refers to the quality of a place that makes it distinct, recognizable and memorable. It is determined by physical elements such as buildings and landmarks – for example, their arrangement in relation to the surroundings, and their ability to capture, create and evoke emotions.Enclosure is the degree to which streets and public spaces are defined by vertical elements. To determine enclosure, buildings, trees, artwork, lampposts and other vertical elements are considered as outdoor ‘walls’, while streets, footpaths and public space become outdoor ‘floors’.Human scale is the proportion of physical elements’ size, texture and articulation to the human form and function. To determine it, human height is compared to the height and length of buildings and their components, such as doorways, windows, awnings, lampposts and planters. Human scale is also a function of human speed (as opposed to the speed and bulk of vehicles).Transparency pertains to the level of human activity that can be seen beyond the edge of the street or public space. See-through physical elements such as non-reflective windows, walls, doors, fences and landscape influence the transparency of the street.Complexity refers to the visual nature and richness of a street. The variety, number and type of physical elements, such as buildings, ornaments, landscape features, street furniture and human activity, shapes the complexity of a street.