Defining the unitary types of urban uses: urban uses, land uses and land-use zones

Abstract

It is clear that urban planning is not a theoretical science, but an applied field. However, this does not imply – or justify – the lack of an analytical field that would lay the scientific foundations of urban planning and guide planning practice. This field, which we call urbanology, must consist of a theory of urban uses, since the latter constitute the foundation of all international planning practice. As part of the process of formation of this theory, the present paper focuses on defining the unitary types of urban uses, that is, the units which constitute the smallest, not further divisible typological elements of the organisation of urban space. We begin with the definitions of the basic concepts of urbanology, namely: urban use, unitary type of urban use, land use and institutionalised land-use zone. We then attempt to specify the criteria for determining the unitary types of urban uses, which when applied to Greek space leads to the specification of 330 types of urban uses. We also demonstrate that this work does not only concern the analysis of urban space and the survey stage of urban planning, but also planning proposals and legislation.

Keywords:

• urban survey
• inventory
• urban use
• land use
• land-use zones
• NACE

ORCID

Ioannis A. Pissourios http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8771-8995

Notes

1 The term ‘urbanology’ is used today either in a very broad sense covering urban subjects from sociological and political issues to urban planning, or more commonly in a more specific sense as a branch of sociology (cf. urban sociology). The term ‘regionology’, on the other hand, is a neologism, with the exception of a Russian journal which has this term as title and deals with regional economic, social and political problems, as well as regional development. Our definitions correspond to neither of these aspects, since what we are looking for is the analytical science, epistemologically defined, behind urban and regional planning practice (on spatiology, see Lagopoulos 2018, pp. 3, 5–10).

2 For this concept and the other main concepts discussed in the present and the following two sections, see also Lagopoulos (2018, pp. 9–10).

3 The concept of urban use coincides with that of regional use, since there is no break in continuity between urban and regional planning. For the sake of simplicity, the present paper uses the term urban use, though we do not mean to imply that the concept cannot be equally well applied in a regional approach to uses.

4 See analytically on the above (Pissourios 2010, pp. 345–396, 2012, 2015). The theoretical background for the selection of the countries of the EU was Peter Newman and Andy Thornley’s (1996, pp. 28–35) typology of the legal-administrative regions of Europe. They distinguish four such families in the EU: the British, the Napoleonic (whence our selection of Greece and Italy), the Germanic and the Scandinavian.

5 We fully agree with one of our reviewers, who observes that the legal restrictions on land-use and the attitude of administrative courts frequently leads to less flexible and innovative planning.