Supplementary files for today's seminar:
251023 Hello Urban Generator! - Google Drive
In this session we will try to build our first Urban Generator. It will be capable of subdividing a drawn plot boundary into city blocks by drawing streets, parcelling the resulting city blocks and generating building massing on all suitable parcels. On our next meetings we will base our work on this simple urban generator, replacing its parts bit by bit in an attempt to come to a more elaborated, controllable, and thoughtful city builder design.
Welcome back to our seminar series on algorithmic thinking in urban planning. Today, we delve into a more interactive session to discuss, dissect, and enhance the scripts we've previously developed. It's paramount for us to engage in this discussion because your feedback is crucial in iterating and refining our approach to algorithmic urban design.
During our last session, we constructed an initial urban layout algorithm that could handle various tasks such as subdividing city blocks and generating building parcels. To assist your understanding of complex components, such as 'divide domain', I've uploaded annotated versions of our scripts to Google Drive. These comments should help elucidate any tricky parts of the script you may not have fully grasped during our live coding session.
Reflecting on the previous session, I put forward an animation illustrating the script's function. However, here's the actual script in action:
But, like any algorithm, ours isn't without its flaws. By analyzing and evaluating what we've developed, we can uncover the potential pitfalls in the algorithm's logic or performance. Maybe you've observed issues that didn't stand out initially. Let's look at some screenshots from our session and discuss the script's disadvantages:
I encouraged you to form groups and examine the script with a critical eye. Despite its effectiveness, many issues emerged, including oversized buildings, large empty areas, and uniform street widths, which don't reflect the diverse nature of urban environments.