Fundamentals of Urban Design and Community Planning

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering urban design definitions, community planning frameworks, cultural and historical considerations in development, and Metro Manila waterway urban renewal concepts.

Urban Design

The art of designing cities—architecture expanded to the urban scale, neighborhood, or city—focusing on the spatial relationships between buildings and the spaces created between them.

Public Realm

The open spaces and voids created in between buildings, which serve as the primary focus of urban design.

Community Planning

A practice typically referred to as 'long range planning' that focuses on designing and regulating the uses of space, physical form, economic functions, and social impacts through meaningful civic engagement.

Civic Framework

The network of public agencies, organizations, institutions, and local residents that collectively shape places and provide the starting foundation for community planning.

Day-to-Day Development Planning

A planning practice focused on the ongoing review of current development proposals to verify their conformity with established official community plans, sector plans, and neighborhood strategies.

Actors in Community Planning

The three primary participant groups that drive the planning process: decision-makers, technicians, and users (end-users).

Master Planning

The creation of a comprehensive regulatory framework defining development parcels, massing, building heights, relationships between structures, circulation, and streets with predictable outcomes and designer flexibility.

Planned Unit Developments (PUDs)

A special planning designation, often associated with small area plans, in which the master plan and the actual development plan are collapsed into a single document.

Culture

The shared products, symbols, and ways of life of a society that accumulate common meaning over time, comprising ideas, rules, and material dimensions.

Ideas (Cultural Dimension)

A core dimension of culture that encompasses the accumulated knowledge, technical experience, and values held by a society.

Values

Abstract, shared beliefs about what is morally right, wrong, or culturally desirable, frequently rooted in religion or tradition and guiding collective rules of conduct.

Rules

Accepted ways of doing things that serve as prescriptive guidelines for how individuals should conduct themselves and behave toward others within a community.

Social Solidarity

A sense of shared identity and mutual commitment among residents that builds local confidence to unite and address community-specific needs and challenges.

Sectoral Approach

A top-down, government-led development strategy focused on specialized economic sectors, frequently criticized for being too broad to address the diversity of rural communities.

Territorial Approach

A bottom-up development framework tailored to the specific geographical, cultural, and environmental characteristics of a locality by optimizing local resources, businesses, and populations.

Anti-Local Development

External development pressures or exploitation from outside the locality that communities can resist by leveraging cultural attachments and local solidarity.

Priority Waterways

The network of critical drainage channels identified in Metro Manila—including Tullahan River, San Juan River, Pasig River, Manggahan Floodway, and Estero de Tripa de Gallina—associated with informal settler family (ISF) evictions and river rehabilitation.

Estero de Tripa de Gallina

A priority waterway spanning Makati, Pasay, and the City of Manila identified as a target site for urban renewal concepts and community design interventions.