Urban density: webinars "Space, Density and Urban Form"

On 23 February, the third episode of our webinar series concerning urban density was held. Meta Berghauser Pont shared her vision of proper density measurement with nearly 100 listeners. Next meeting: 23 March to discuss nature in the city.

This series is part of a season of reflection and production which perspective.brussels is devoting to the definition of a density which can be combined with the quality of life. One Tuesday every month for 6 months, perspective.brussels will be inviting an international practitioner or researcher to talk about their vision of density. For this third webinar, the guest was Meta Berghauser Pont (researcher at the University of Chalmers in Sweden and a world expert on urban morphologies). She questioned the link between urban density and urban forms.

Watch the entire "Space, Density and Urban Form" webinar on YouTube.

There are five main lessons learned from the presentation of Meta Berghauser Pont:

1. Density is more complex to measure than it seems. A combination of scales, indicators and effects is needed.
2. Quality density is a density chosen and controlled according to the context and the project. There is no such thing as good or bad density.
3. A determining parameter of quality density is the ratio of built to unbuilt space.
4. Particular attention should be paid to the interface between the public and private domains for the density to be well experienced.
5. The impact of all urban developments upon health must be measured.

You can also watch previous episodes in this series:

• Jens Aerts and his vision of a healthy city
• David Sim and his vision regarding eveyrday density