8 Some invariants for high-density housing

What I have described in this chapter is not a universal living process for high-density housing, but rather a process which can generate one very particular type of plan for high-density housing — one that keeps extremely good characteristics even at the very highest densities of 50 to 80 families per acres — about the highest densities that housing ever reaches.

At 20 families per acre, the gardens dominate and the pedestrian system is very important, cars are separate from pedestrians.
At 40-80 families per acre, the gardens are tiny, though still present; buildings are 2 1/2 stories high, not 2 stories; cars are partly underground and partly mixed with very narrow lanes, leaving the daylight as the all important features which, in a successful project, must dominate the form.

The general morphological features of housing arrangements that will typically come from living process, at such very high densities, are these:
Height is all important. The low eave of the third floor so that the height to the eave is 7 meters, but not 8, is a surprisingly important detail. The shape of the apartments, long and thin along the street, and garden, so that abundant daylight comes in, and windows dominate the interior. Each apartment with a tiny garden — still vitally important. Narrow lanes, able to take cars, at slow speeds, and able to allow a few cars to park, but made so that these lanes are largely pedestrian, small in scale, and parallel to each other. Design of apartments, even at this ultra-high density, by the families themselves.

The essence of any morphology generated by a truly living process for high-density housing will go like this:
The world — where children, old people, human beings walk, pay, exist — is mainly pedestrian. The scale is tiny. Lanes are small, narrow, the total area given to cars is minimized. If the number of parked cars above a certain figure, some of them go underground. Everyone still has a garden, even if it is no more than a patch of sunlight with a pot of geraniums and an old chair. It is yours. The houses are arranged so that they receive a tremendous amount of light. This means that they are, as structures, necessarily vary narrow, with long exterior walls. Within the houses, people can create their own living space, walls, bathroom, kitchen, as they wish. The houses are no more than two-and-a-half stories high: so that the eave of the roof is low enough to create a comfortable human scale and positive feeling relative to human beings in the narrow lanes and gardens.

#book/The Nature of Order/3 A Vision of a Living World/10 “Belonging” in High-density Housing#

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