METHODS

The underlying method is using this blog and posts as a vehicle of urban design.

The approach to creating these posts follows urban design fundamentals: mental maps, serial vision, urban process, nomenclatures, street scenes.

Mental Maps
Mental maps refer to the spatial sense of urban context we form as a support to urban experience through memory. Kevin Lynch reduced mental maps as a concatenation of focal points, nodes, paths, edges, districts. They are ideally created by walking about urban space and recording these five elements in plan view, and can be expanded to create obliques, elevations or panoramics. A good substitute is to analyze urban space at the onset of a sketching trip from a thumbnail map sketched from a town map - or these days even better with Google Earth, and identifying these five elements before sketching them, and aiming to sketch them in their inter-relationships.

Serial Vision
Serial vision aims to sketch series of inter-connected views. This is done by moving from point to point with a series of thumbnail sketches to show distinctive elements as they appear in the distance, then come into the forefront as other elements appear in the distance which are in turn tracked down with sketches. This is supported by identifying the Here and There(Place) - which is the visual contrast in the spatial definition between what we see where we are and what we see next to it. It is further supported by identifying the This and That(Content) - which is the texture or combination of materials and elements that define where we are from where we will continue to. The ultimate aim is to reveal Functional Tradition, or the subliminal process by which we read the urban context from form to function as the underlying condition of urban experience. This is the fundamental method explained by Gordon Cullen in his work Townscape.

Nomenclatures
Nomenclatures are built up from a series of posts that show typical elements of the urban context: these can be, and need not be limited to skies, clouds, trees, vegetation, churches, hospitals, shopping areas, city hall, institutional buildings, historic buildings, residential buildings, street furniture, signs and recurring landscape features. They define the fundamental elements that make up the features and ultimately the identity in the town. They are an extension of land use and zoning from such theorists as Ian McHarg and Pierre Dansereau.

Street scenes
Street scening is the use of the maps and serial vision to further create sketches in their ultimate urban context. This involves seeking typical human activities, dress, behaviour and anything endemic to the particular urban context. Street scenes also aim to showcase the urban context at different time of the day, with different lighting conditions, and also in different weather conditions and throughout the seasons. Street scenes are an expression of underlying urban processes as suggested by urban design theorists like Jane Jacobs.