Urban Design: Urban Design Factors and Guidelines

Fig 1.1 Aerial view of Brasila, Brazil

Brasilian Syndrome

Brasilia is one of the most famous modernistic cities, completed in 1955.

Weakness:
It has no human scale. What looks from the aerial view, bare green plot of land, actually doesn't look nice on human level. The planning was planned from an aerial view (floor plan) and not designed from human scale.

Fig 1.2 Panorama view of Brasilia

Brasilian Syndrome is to design a city from the aerial view.
(also known as "bird shit architecture" by Jan Gehl) used in cities like China and Dubai.
Architects are more focused on the forms than the design of the surroundings and the environment.
Jan Gehl mentioned that the architects are twisting their architecture, capturing their imagination, but it is not the right way to plan a city. The architects are not planning according to the needs or the likings of the residents but to show off their creativity and idea of a utopia. Higher skyscrapers is causing scale confusion in cities. He also mentioned that people like to walk in a place with more human scale than a place without proper human scale.

Important points of architecture is the interaction between lives and forms but not only the forms itself.
As mentioned by one of the lecturers in school:

"It is not the design that defines the environment but is the environment that should shape your design.

Maybe that's a reason why site analysis always comes first in projects.
Well, as the city grow bigger, more people moving from rural areas into cities. These people can be a benefit to the city's economy. Soon cities will lose its cultural and historical identities because it is more important to house the people who are living in the cities.