Urban Design

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Urban Design is the process of understanding and shaping the built environment, combining the skills of different disciplines to produce well-informed masterplans and planning advice. It involves the design of buildings, streets, landscapes, and the public domain, while working out how all of these elements fit together.

Good urban design ensures that the different parts of a city support each other, as the design of a place will influence how we experience it, and determine where we want to live, visit, and work. This could mean creating safer streets that draw people to local businesses, ensuring housing is close to shops and services, and locating parks where they’re useable and safe.

Advocating for better urban design involves providing guidance in the planning process and requiring a high standard of design in new development. Camden is a fast-growing Council, and design plays a crucial role in making sure our new suburbs support the needs of residents and remain thriving and sustainable into the future.

Camden Council is committed to good urban design and creating places where people want to live, with growth that respects our environment, rich history, and rural character.

Urban Design Key Considerations

Urban design helps shape the quality and character of our cities, which is determined by how the built environment is structured and organised. Features of the built environment include:

  • Lots: The size and location of lots are used to create different streetscapes, building types, and densities. Masterplans are prepared to organise the structure of new developments or improve the layout of existing suburbs.
  • Building height and form: A building’s size affects the character of a street and may impact views or sunlight access. Development controls are created to limit heights and produce different building forms.
  • Land use: Vibrant cities contain a mix of uses, allowing services, amenities, and employment to be found in one place. Planning for the right mix of uses ensures a place is attractive to visitors and businesses, and convenient for residents.
  • Interfaces: An interface is where a building meets the public domain, allowing for movement and visibility between indoors and outdoors. Good interfaces provide vibrancy and activity to streets and public spaces.
  • Public domain: Parks, plazas, and streets make up the public domain, the spaces we share and the foundation of a city’s vibrancy. Ensuring these areas are accessible, safe, and have the right mix of uses and users is crucial to their success.
  • Country: Whilst not itself a feature of the built environment, Country is everywhere in the landscape and encompasses the land, water, sky, and cultural identity of Aboriginal peoples. Good urban design retains and celebrates elements of Country.

Urban Design Key Considerations

Built Environment

The built environment is the physical expression of urban design. It consists of relationships, shapes and size of buildings, structures and spaces. It will influence the users activity and movement in a place and quality of the life. The quality of built environment is informed by urban design components including:

  • Urban layout – structure and grain

Relationship between the development and the nature and extent of the subdivision area, pattern, street scale, and building frontage

  • Urban scale – building type, height, and massing

Building size and its relationship to its context and impact to the views and skyline

  • Public domain interface – streetscape, façade, and  landscape

Relationship between the building and the street

Open Spaces

As more and more people live in densifying urban areas, the need and importance of open spaces and encountering natural environment increases. The everyday experience of connecting with nature is a key factor in health an well being of urban citizens. A  good open space will encourage and enable healthy and sustainable travel choices and promote biodiversity. Also spending time outdoors provides opportunities to meet other people and have shared experiences to build stronger communities.

Public open spaces are one of our priorities in growth areas and creating a sustainable Camden. 

Sustainable Building

Good urban design can reduce the impacts of extreme weather conditions and climate change through sustainable planning and practices to optimise energy and water efficiency and minimise waste and carbon emissions.

At Camden, sustainability is about creating urban environments that protect our rural heritage, protect and enhance our natural environment, while ensuring we are a resilient, healthy and connected community.

Urban Heat Island

Changes in land-use (i.e. rural to urban) has the potential to double the temperature increases caused by climate change. As cities expand and land is redeveloped, urban microclimates change. Urban areas tend to be significantly warmer than its surrounding rural areas, when there is less green cover and more hard surfaces which absorb, store, and radiate heat. The urban heat island (UHI) effect defines urban areas become significantly warmer than surrounding vegetated areas, creating ‘islands’ of urban heat.

UHI is a significant and growing issue for urban areas in particular Western Sydney. Trees, green roofs, cool materials (i.e. high albedo materials for paving, cladding, etc.), and vegetation can mitigate the UHI effect.

Camden aims combating the impacts of climate change and the UHI effect by promoting good urban design and planning strategies to reduce, adapt and respond to climate change and extreme events. We actively investigate opportunities to protect and enhance urban tree canopy cover in new and established areas (including the retention of remnant vegetation) as well as improve connectivity and accessibility to high quality open space and waterways to mitigate urban heat and contribute to the amenity of neighbourhoods.

 

Useful Resources

Access the following links for more information: