Urban Design, Town Planning and Housing
What the domain tests
Urban Design, Town Planning and Housing tests settlement-scale thinking: how streets, blocks, densities, public space and housing supply interact. Expect plan-reading, density calculations and development-control questions.
Core rules
- Urban design: Kevin Lynch's five elements are paths, edges, districts, nodes and landmarks. Good places also have permeability, legibility, enclosure, human scale and active frontages.
- Town planning: survey and analysis inform land use, zoning, density, FAR, public space and street hierarchy. The neighbourhood unit and transit-oriented development are common models; neither is a universal template.
- Plans: master plans, structure plans, local plans and action plans operate at different scales. Development control translates them into permissions; subdivision rules govern plot creation.
- Housing: demand and supply, affordability, tenure, incremental housing, sites-and-services, katchi abadi regularization and urban renewal all affect supply. Infrastructure capacity must match density.
Worked example
A 40-hectare site is 60% residential, giving 24 hectares. At a net density of 300 persons per hectare, population = 24 x 300 = 7,200. At 5 persons per dwelling, units = 7,200/5 = 1,440. If roads and services take 25% of the residential area, the net developable area falls, so the same population requires a higher net density. Always state whether density is gross or net.
Traps that cost marks
Confusing gross and net density. Treating zoning as the same as FAR. Ignoring infrastructure capacity. Designing only for cars. Romanticizing informal settlements without addressing tenure and services.