Introduction to Site Planning

• Site planning involves organizing the external physical environment to the point of unification and control through structures, land, and physical forms.
• The central objective is arranging objects and activities in a 3D space following a careful analysis of the site and its purpose, leading to a method that interacts with users and adapts to future changes.

Sections in Site Planning

• Program development
• Site investigation
• Plan development

Plans to Prepare

• Conceptual

• Functional

• Schematic

• Site planning is an iterative process refined continuously based on each stage to adapt to problems and solutions. Initial project intentions change during analysis as everything becomes clearer, and solutions are better defined as the plan and program progress, emphasizing its iterative nature.

Program Development

• Involves creating documents with goals, objectives, a list of project elements, and descriptions that emphasize the relationships between these elements.

Program Development Steps

• Preparing a definition of goals and objectives
• Taking into account user needs
• Converting needs into planning elements such as housing units, access points, and community facilities.

Goal & Objectives Considerations

• The purposes for implementing changes.
• The site's affecting factors (physical, social, cultural, environmental).
• The effects the changes will have on future site conditions.

Goals

• Are general definitions that stem from the project’s intent and are tied to human needs.

Example Goals

• Housing people
• Building community-connecting and transport-facilitating installations
• Building a water supply dam

Broader Goals

• Protecting the environment
• Preventing floods
• Protecting endangered species

Objectives

• Are the concrete steps taken to achieve these goals.

Example Objective

• Reducing the pollution coming from a local stream

How to Measure Success

• Measurable
• Quantifiable

Metas

• Are the paths or directions a project takes to solve problems or to achieve goals

Examples of Metas

• Providing safe housing
• Creating a physical environment that leads to community interaction.
• Protecting natural habitats from human destruction.
• Reducing pollution in a nearby stream.

Objectives for complex, multi-faceted Goals

• Should be reduced to specific targets.
• The relationship between goals and objectives is that multiple objectives can serve a single goal, or a single objective can serve multiple goals.

Example Housing Objectives of a Project

• Designing a residential community that serves basic human and social functions like safe housing, appropriate public installations, and easy access to areas for recreation and interaction.
  • Providing housing for families with diverse economic needs while offering opportunities for those with similar activity interests to be located near small areas.
  • Maintaining the viability of residential areas regarding housing quality, infrastructure, and area attractiveness for continued investments.
  • Preserving significant cultural elements
  • Making areas safe in accordance with lifestyle and values
  • Making houses accessible to transit routes
  • Ensuring site densities and layouts are energy-efficient, environmentally acceptable, cost-effective, and visually attractive

Measuring Criteria

• The unit of measurement varies depending on the goal and objective. For example, it can be measured by determining how many out of 100 planned housing units are actually built.

Lifestyle Measures

• Consider the population segment affected by the goal
• Evaluate new housing

Goals

• Prevent building on a high slope

Objectives

• Providing housing and protecting vegetation and areas with poor soil.

• Developing objectives helps define and secure the objective.

Factors to consider

• Natural
• Human

How to Develop Objectives

• Objectives help determine the criteria used to measure the site planning’s level of success.
• Determine if a school is within walking distance
• Determine if safe access to school does not involve crossing major traffic routes

Impact of new technology

• New roads can be a method to affect alterations

Cultural Changes

• Deforesting planted areas to create spaces for community meetings

• Consider natural factors (earthquakes and landslides) to change a site.

Climate cycles

• Desequilibrate the flooding and soil erosion

• Understanding, and accommodating continuous change contributes to sustainable site development.

Site Investigation

• Involves identifying suitable uses for a site versus looking for suitable locations within a site for appropriate projects.

Components during the Site Investigation

• History of the physical and natural features.
• History of site connections (natural corridors and features made by humans) linked to its environment.
• Topographic maps.
• Climate data.
• Important access and circulation routes.
• Combining the above elements to be represented on a basic map requires incorporating site perimeters, legal lines, settlements, restrictions, urban services, sources, swamps, vegetation, and geological characteristics.

Topographic Maps

• Feature:
  • Roads
  • Contours
  • Slopes
  • Vegetation
  • Watersheds

Site Visitations

• Can confirm ground-level observations that are used for
  • Estimating distances between known points on the map and site
  • Spotting tree lines
  • Locating terrain shifts on maps and the ground

Initial Investigations

• May reveal some map discrepancies

Key investigations

• Character analysis
  • Possible views
  • Approaching corridors
  • Identifying special problems

The final Site Plan:

• Requires a site map (base)
• List of problems
• List of primary opportunities
• Complete understanding with description in report

Site Plan

• The initial base drawings on a large sheet of paper are typically created by architects and engineers with programs such as CAD and GIS on computer systems.

Iterative process

• The physical and social site information is incorporated by the review, approval, and update programs for the site, objectives, and goals.

Site Design stages:

• Conceptual plan
• Functional plan
• Schematic plan

Conceptual Plan

• Shows locations for the proposed developments and human activities within its boundaries
• Should indicate human and physical characteristics
• All proposed development areas should be labelled
• All areas to avoid developing should be labelled

Functional Plan

• Indicates how project aspects will be organized and relate to one another
• This should include natural and man-made elements, points of interest, or activity locations. The key should include environmental blocks used for sensitive areas, housing, and groupings.

Schematic Plan

• Derived from the Functional Plan
• The final step in creating the site outline
• Detail what will be constructed
• Provide for the red of car-ways construction
• Different site designs
• Help better determine problems

Elements Needed:

• Access to Community
• Access to Transportation Centers
• Access to neighborhood/community merchants

Overall layout:

• Used as public information document for funding or information.

Site Plan Sections

• The site details
  • Existing structures
  • Topography, terrain,
  • General access
  • Circulation
  • Location that is easily identified in the development

Grading Plan

• Showing finished elevations
• Used to prepare the site for building paths and making elevation changes to drain storm water

Parcel Map

• It shows all property lines, roads, landscape structures, and connections with recreational spaces.