Marie Schieferstein
Urban planning; ways for learning

ABSTRACT
The author is currently living in the UK, therefore the reference country of my thoughts is the south-east of England. My research work will describe the pluses and minuses of urban planning procedures both in the UK and generally.
To begin with, it will research most convenient placement of greenery within a town. There must be very important consideration being made, as the most workable greenery is usually being established near the towncentre, where the land price is very high. Therefore, the park must be so designed, to compensate for the situation when it was used for rather commercial purposes. It is not an easy task to deal with, the considerations to be met are more expensive than it seems to.

INTRODUCTION
The townscape can be in a simplyfied way divided into negative and positive spaces, seen as if in black and white. But because the real world does not consist of black and white colours only, also the town composition is more complex than negative and positive spaces. When learning to manage a drawing technique, it is easier to start with black pen on a white piece of paper, than other colours can be added. The colours make overall impression of a picture softer, harder, stressing a point, ect. according to usage of colours. Also my research work will add urban elements to the image of a town drawn firstly in negative and positive spaces. Therefore, moving towards conclusion, there will more and more influential factors for natural urban environment be taken into consideration.

1.1 NEGATIVE SPACES IN TOWNSCAPE
Negative spaces within a town commonly are: parks (recreational purposes), gathering points (squares), means for moving (routes, communications). The same in a smaller scale applies to domestic dwelling situation: these are: gardens, paths, entrance area. The placement, structuring, orienting, design of these is very simple. Gardens within private part of property, path leading to entrance or garage, gathering point where dwelling intersects with public space. Squares - gathering points in the example from the past used to emerge around city-houses in premium part of a town - at its centre. Nowadays, these are rather shopping centres and moneyrising orientated objects than city-houses. Means of movement used to be planned from one square to the other joining row of city-houses.

Nowadays, there are modern means of transport that helped to newly formulate the structure of a town. Railways, motorways, airports remodelled the pattern �from one gathering point to the other� to from one traffic nodal point to the other. Nodal points not only emerged in communal/traffic planning, but also in design of street related buildings (shopping malls). There, the principle of over-roofing the street contains nodal points in itself - where former the street crossing used to be. Urban planning moved to overwhelming the mass/quantity, rather than co-operating with nature. Type of block of flats instead of domestic dwelling shows the same motion in urban planning.

In the past, gardens used to be planned, treated carefully, almost as an interior of a castle. Each castle used to have a staff carrying out interior services, garden belonging to it had staff as well. Nowadays, public parks/greenery are being established at places, that are not suitable for commercial use - around rivers (risk of flooding), rails, motorways (noise). Places of waste are being efficiently used as park. At times, we care about recycling of sources, it is an environmentally mind issue.

1.2 GUIDANCE FOR BEST PLACEMENTS OF PARKS
Large areas of greenery, parks will often become a place of deliquency. Careful planning can avoid the need for expensive security precautions and help to prevent from crime. It is wise to plan: 1) Along a river, the out-coming recreational area to be long and narrow, following the river. At one side to be sheltered by row of trees from heavy traffic, or the traffic road can be elevated ect., the other side is naturally created by the river bank. 2) Along a pond, this creates a central element, focus point to the whole area of park. 3) Multi-purpose playgrounds on sloping sites, which creates an opportunity for variability of activities and becomes more legible; the place gets its order. If a playground for particular purposes e.g. tennis, they are best to be set lower in a valley in dense urban context; sheltering them by lowering creates an intimate space and allows the rest of urban context to be planed closest possible to the playground. Enormously impressive are parks grounded at the top of a hill.

Pict. 1: Park in the centre of Chelmsford. Elevated surrounding adds the place more pleasant image and makes recreational zone distinguished from residential one.

It is recommended to join places of parks within the town by paths. Sometimes a good opportunity for very intimate paths can occur. Such intimate paths are important for recreation in densely built town centres. They create a tension between public places, heavy traffic and parks.

1.3 WAYS TO MAKE PARK ATTRACTIVE / SUTURES IN PARKS
Parks create an ideal opportunity for placing so called �sutures/grafts� within these. I would divide two types of these; first group adds dynamics to still central elements (ponds). A tool for adding dynamics in a case of ponds can be vodotrysk, little island with trees, planting of trees on one side of a pond, ect. These can be viewed as points, around which the still central element rotates. Still scalar-like places need motion to be brought in.

2.1 AXES IN URBAN CONTEXT
As axes can in urban context be regarded rivers, railways. These are narrow, long, possibly straight elements, within which a movement is enabled. Town context taken as a �laboratory� creates many opportunities for motion at variety of levels e.g. pedestrians, vehicles on the streets, within car-parks with open facades, trains, aircrafts. Movement within railway and river is restricted to one or opposite simple travelling of an object, therefore creates strong axes, vector-like in a town. Vector gives by its mathematical definition direction & scale. Scale by railway, rivers it in architectural terms elaboration, decoration of its form. For example: Victorian type of railway bridge, Italian type of elaborating of river banks. Because vector-like moving principles need forming up. The result is obvious by comparing ordinary drawing/existing place of a park and diagrammatic principles of rotating scalars and forming up (adding up scale to) vectors.

Pict. 2: Victorian bridge in Chelmsford park. The same type of bridge elevates the railway at more than one place within the town of Chelmsford.

2.2 AMPUTATIONS THOUGH URBAN FABRIC
The role of rivers and rails within the town should not be underestimated. These can not be flexibly accommodated within the urban context. Rails should be as straight as possible, avoiding curves; rivers should be respected by its natural flow of water. These do not dominate the urban fabric, but they amputate pieces of it. The grid, the structure of town is very often being cut off by either a river or a railway. It creates a conflict, enables a rapid change in urban pattern. Conflict of amputation gives opportunity for so called dislocation as one pattern overlaps / intersects with another one.

Urban design consists of three main principles, which need to be taken into consideration, that are forming workable urban spaces. These are: unmovable objects e.g. routes for transport, historical objects (these can not be re-designed, these are creating conflicts, tensions), planes, and points of view. Points of view enable to explore the urban spaces. These fall within a group of symbolisations in urban design.

Planes create i.e. private/public spaces, negative/positive spaces, on them there is so called urban fabric. This urban fabric can be further worked with by design tools like amputations, dislocations, cuts, sutures. Amputations in urban context are necessary, when there is an important primary unmovable object e.g. transport route is leading through the town.

Urban design is very much determined by unmovable objects. Throughout the history, when urban life was not developed to a level it is nowadays, the towns used to be established nearby a river. River offered to citizens not only water, food (like fish) but also means of an easy transport. River was therefore primary condition for establishing of a town. Nowadays, we are not dependant on sources coming out of a river, but there still remain objects similarly important to us in urban planning. Some time ago, importance of a town was newly determined by routes of transport connections (airports, railways, motorways). These were important for further development. The lines creating a railway was cutting through the town and urban planning needed to be re-established in its principles. It was not a river that was primary for town establishment, but man-made railway. Because of its public importance, it was allowed to knock down number of private houses in order to make way for a rail. Pieces of towns became to be �amputated, dislocated, cut through�. New principles in town planning raised.

Pict. 3: The surrounding of maintained historical objects must be kept as original as possible, even if placed nearby developing modern town centre.

Nowadays, it is very important for us to keep old objects in urban planning. It is more important, that it ever has been. In order to keep an old object within modern town, one must respect the requirements of keeping such an object there. Again, there originate new urban planning principles there: �sutures/grafts�.

2.3 DAYLIGHT VS. NIGHTLIGHT IN URBAN PLANNING
The criteria for modern urban planning differ from the criteria applied in the past. Today, urban planners and architects are not asked to design a building visualized in daylight only, but a lighting fa�ade acceptable at night.

With night façade planning, environmental issues arise. Life in towns is busy not only during the day, but also and in some regions mostly during the night. Well lit streets at large scale are common. Also facades of large office buildings are issuing artificial light. The town/city at night becomes an artificially lit spot when viewed from a distance. Authorities such as... disagree with light being used at night at large scale: it is said not to be healthy. At night, the surrounding of a building becomes dark, creates �negative space� around it. When seen during the day, landscape, surrounding, other buildings on horizon create together with the building a built environment. At night, these become hidden and other type of background (lit streets) emerges.

3.1 CONCLUSION
Town planning is optimal in England. There, the categorisation of population is not common. In England, there is less distinguishing given to high level professionals like architects, doctors, ect. The community is generally multi-national with greater tolerances than common in the rest of Europe. Also youngsters have significant impact on the overall opinion and modelling of the society. Town planning takes into account no restriction or little of it, for religion, profession, race, age, ect. The new areas being created are open, sincere. The overall temper of the whole society impacts on the way urban planners are urged to design. If ordinarily, great tolerance is being given to the e.g. not appropriately qualified but skilled person to reach high level of responsibility, than great freedom is being given to urban planners with no categorisation that would exclude this group out of the whole society.

It is commonly used practice to allow public to visit open discussions about the future planning concepts of a town. Thus, the public may participate in changes made to proposed solutions, may express their opinion (and is urged to), make contributions to professionally processed plans. Also, professionals drawing the intervention must be aware of the plans being comprehensive also to not-educated persons in technical drawings. The profession of urban planning is open to everyone, who would like to participate.

In the UK, criterions of good design are being met. Spaces are rather intimate, closed; dislocations, amputations, cuts are being used in plenty. What adds also to good appearance and creating of a good conditions are usage of materials within the buildings (bricks, traditionally worked steel fences, white lintels above doors and windows as well as white painted wooden windows sills or entrance doors), incorporating of greenery (within town centres, busy roads,), change of urban pattern (parks next to large buildings, heavy traffic, family houses)..... Standard of living/housing in the UK is being regarded as low compared to European standards, which is appropriate to be mentioned at this point. High mortages, rainy weather which creates high moisture content in the air (which has further impact on performance of building material and comfort within the building), residential houses built often in noisy places, usage of material that would not comply with European standards. That may be the reasons why many people tend to preferably spend their free-time on the streets rather than inside their residential houses.