The Quality of Urban Layouts
+ Patrick Lamson-Hall, Shlomo (Solly) Angel, Alejandro Blei, Manuel Madrid, Nicolás Galarza, Kevin Thom
The research showcased in this paper seeks to explore and quantify the differences in urban layouts in a global sample of 200 cities. This important research allows for the comparison of the quality of urban layouts over time – specifically, between the areas of cities built before 1990 and the areas of cities built more recently. This comparison demonstrates that the quality of urban layouts has gone down significantly in the last 25 years – cities are now reserving less land for streets and roads, average block sizes are increasing, development is occurring further from arterial road networks, and informality is becoming more common. This paper outlines those findings for each of the five UN Regions and also analyzes differences between More Developed and Less Developed countries, as defined by the UN.