Universal Urban Design

Cities should be interesting, and places are interesting. Therefore, a good designer should try to minimize the amount of land occupied by non-places in a city. Having less than 10% of your land categorized as a non-place is desirable. Dedicating more than 50% of your land to non-places is absolutely terrible! 
Distinguishing between Places and Non-Places allows us to distinguish between destinations and the infrastructure and padding between destinations. 

We often talk a lot about density. As an advocate of human-scale urbanism, before we begin considering building up, we should look at building ‘in’. By creating a Place:Non-Place drawing of our own cities or buildings, we can get a good idea of how much land is sitting underutilized. Some Non-Places are necessary infrastructure, but a good city designer should attempt to minimize the amount of Non-Place as much as possible. 

This masterclass would be divided into 3 parts,  first the evolution of these kinds of non – places, second the infrastructural reality of these spaces and third brainstorming activity. First, we approach the concept with a very basic and blank mind , then we learn about theories and real-world case studies and their historical evolution and then one case study in detail and then an interactive session.