A city quarter or just a quarter (from lat. Quarta - a quarter) is the smallest element of a city ; It is surrounded by streets and is a central element of urban planning and urban design . The quarter is a space for buildings within the street drawing of the city and forms the main unit of the city structure.
City blocks can be divided into a number of small plots of land , usually privately owned , although in some cases it can be other forms of ownership. Quarters are usually built up to varying degrees. Most cities consist of blocks of various sizes and shapes. For example, many pre-industrial cities in Europe , Asia and the Middle East , as a rule, have an irregular shape of the streets and city blocks, while cities built on the principle of networks have a much more correct location of blocks.
Content
Grid
In most cities of the world that were planned rather than built gradually over a long period of time, the streets are usually arranged in a grid, so that city blocks are square or rectangular . Using the principle of development along the perimeter, city blocks are designed in such a way that the buildings have entrances overlooking the street and semi-private courtyards in the rear. This structure is designed to provide social interaction between people [1] .
Since the distance between the streets is very different for different cities or even within a city, it is difficult to generalize data on the size of a city block. However, reference values include dimensions: 79 × 79 m, 100 × 100 m, and 120 × 120 m. Oblong quarters vary significantly in width and length. The standard quarter in Manhattan is about 80 × 270 m, the blocks in Edmonton ( Canada ) are 170 × 100 m in size. The quarters in the center of Melbourne (Australia) are 200 × 100 m [2] .
Varieties
- Residential quarter
- Business Quarter ( La Defense in Paris; City and Canary Wharf in London; Russian Business Quarters )
- Shopping quarter
- Embassy quarter (e.g. in Beijing )
- Historical
- Categories
- high-rise residential buildings
- mid-rise buildings
- low-rise buildings
- Benefits
- protects the yard space from the noise, dust and exhaust gases of cars from the street
- contributes to good neighborly relations
- economically advantageous
- profitable by planning structure
- Rectangular, oriented along the meridional axis, the quarter provides optimal and uniform insolation of buildings
- clear and understandable street structure
See also
- Microdistrict
- Hippodamic system
Notes
- ↑ Frey, Hildebrand Frey. Designing the City: Towards a More Sustainable Urban Form. - E & FN Spon, 1999. - ISBN 0-419-22110-7 .
- ↑ Melbourne on Google Maps
Literature
- Jacobs, Jane. The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Random House (1961).
- The Great American Grid: Block Size Dimensions