Parametric assistance for complex urban planning processes: Three examples from Africa and South-East Asia

Abstract-This paper will discuss the process of development and application of procedural methods in urban planning and design. Despite a lot of progress being made at architectural scale to consider a planning area as an integrated system of infrastructure, constructions, uses, socio-economic indices and many more, there is a gap in approaching larger urban areas with a similar degree of coherence. Addressing this challenge, we were working on a framework that would facilitate communication and discussion during decision-making processes between various fields of expertise. Using a modular approach, we developed a design and analysis workflow for a city-scale project in Ethiopia, district-scale developments and neighborhood-scale interventions in Singapore. The number of examples shows the flexibility of the approach and its prospect for more effective transdisciplinary collaborations. The method applied has proved a high potential due to approaching several aspects simultaneously: the speed and, hence, number of variations considered can be increased drastically enlarging the design space with no significant time investments; a modular work flow breaks down the linear sequence of the design process and gives opportunity for changes at any stage without affecting all the decisions made afterwards; automatization of a larger part of decisions makes it possible to correct the direction of the initial strategy, as a simple draft with any level of detail is enough to generate the best possible solution on its basis. These case-studies have also shown that parametric interventions can be most effectively made in several phases of project development that include analysis, design generation and evaluation.