The future of urban block

Abstract

As a foreseeable trend, the automated mobility is believed to change our city in many aspects. It draws out a question to urbanists: is the application of the new technological innovation an urgency in our agenda, or the utilization of it for other urban issues should be. This project is based on the latter one.

Like many other mega cities over the world, Amsterdam is also facing to the explosive of urban population.The following socio-economic and spatial pressures on the built environment like densification and concerns of livability are all the urgencies that we should put in the agenda of future urban development. Especially the present common forms of urban block are at the point of collapse due to its limited spatial capacity and performance on livability. What automated mobility can do? This thesis mainly focuses on the spatial form of urban blocks in Amsterdam, and their performance on spatial capacity and livability, aiming at creating future blocks that meet the demands of densification and quality of life in the coming era of automated mobility. How to understand and measure the relationship between urban form, density and livability based on contexts is the core of this thesis. The design proposals is more like the conceptual models that shows the possibilities of how the automated mobility can be utilized in the processes of formation and transformation of urban blocks when considering densification and livability.