Effects of 'Good Urban Design' on Social Sustainability: A Survey Study in UK Neighborhoods

Derya Oktay (Faculty of Architecture, Ondokuz Mayis University)

Social sustainability, one of the three-pillars of urban sustainability, is a life-enhancing condition within communities, and a process within communities that can achieve that condition. Studies showed that the intensity of social interaction and contacts were affected by social demographic and cultural variations. However, there is little research interrogating the affect of urban design qualities of housing settlements on social interaction and community development. This paper therefore aims to investigate whether 'good urban design' features of the new development schemes lead to social sustainability and if they do not, to explain why not. The research questions the hypothesis that the situational, formal/morphological, spatial and functional qualities of the housing environment may influence social interaction and community development, and tries to find out how and to what extent the attributes can be influential on social quality. The study was pursued during the author's visiting fellowship at Oxford Brookes University, UK, and funded by the European Commission for the periods for two periods in 2009. In the first period, literature survey was carried out and interviews were held with academics and professionals in the field. In the second period, drawing on the results of the research in the first phase, a comparative case study methodology was used. In order to understand whether certain principles of 'good' urban design lead to social quality, the social behavior and attitudes of occupants living in two incongruous schemes were to be assessed and compared. The urban design features considered were accessibility, character and legibility, development mix, continuity and enclosure, robustness, open spaces, design for change, height-to-width ratio, facade treatments, miscellaneous structures, etc. were the major titles in the urban design checklist. The results of the analysis indicated significant differences between the two cases that should be considered in the planning and design of future housing environments.