ABSTRACT

Traffic is the main structure of the application in urban design. This thesis explores how transport provision can be used towards the design of urban structure and hence the physical layout and design of urban areas.

The thesis considers different conceptions of urban structure, and how these relate significantly to transport. The relationship between history and modernity in transportation development. Although the new traditional urban design does not suggest the traffic layout and road grade as the dominant urban structure, there is no better way to replace the traffic structure at present, so we remain as the preferred structural form.

Therefore, based on the basic nature of urban structure, we put forward the obvious form types such as urban traffic network type and line type, and discuss the problem of traffic structure at different levels. Layout composition. The difference between structure configuration and road hierarchy.

The thesis develops a method of route structure analysis, appropriate to route networks at the urban scale, which can distinguish both network type and route type, in relation to key properties such as connectivity. A series of example networks are analyzed, and graphical constructs devised which can identify those structures and route types considered desirable by contemporary urban designers.

The route structure analysis also allows exploration and explanation of patterns characteristic of traditional street networks, suggesting a theoretical basis for the evolution of typical forms. Relationships between‘programs'of structural formation and resultant patterns are suggested.

This suggests a way forward for the design of urban structure based on a bottom-up, take the standardization traffic as the direction, which has the flexibility to create a diversity of forms, while incorporating the robust and transparent means of generation of conventional highway engineering approaches. This offers an alternative to master planning of urban structure -whether in the style of monolithic modernism or neo-traditional urbanism.

An integrated design framework is devised which draws together the analytic and design components of the thesis.