C.A.

DOXIADS

SHUBHAM GOENKA
BARCH/15021/14
PRINCIPLES OF HUMAN SETTLEMENT

ARCHITECTURE
 CONSTANTINOS APOSTOLOS DOXIADIS
Born 1913

He came from a family that played an important role in the settlement of

Greek war refugees in between the two World Wars.

He is a Greek architect and Town planner. He became known as the lead

architect of Islamabad.

Worked
• Chief Town Planning Officer, Greater Athens Area (1937 - 1938).

• Head, Department of Regional and Town Planning, Ministry of Public

Works, Greece (1939 - 1945).

Major Projects
In the application of his theories on Ekistics, C.A. Doxiadis studied,
programmed, planned and designed, in collaboration with his colleagues, a
great number of human settlements and other development projects.

These projects cover several fields like -

“ rural settlements, agriculture and irrigation, industrial settlements,

manufacturing, power and public works, commerce and tourism,
transportation and communications, housing, urban renewal and
development of new cities,etc.”

“Dimensions increase and will continue to increase for a few

generation and thus the most probable future in definable terms
will mean a very large increase of population and energy in the city
of Anthopos (man). This is the city where the whole mankind will
live or tend to live.” – C.A. DOXIADS
His Books
- Ekistics 1968

- Anthropopolis 1974

- Ecumenopolis 1975

- Building Entopia 1975

- Action for Human Settlements 1976

He described cities as …
 Urban nightmares, irrational structure, clogged arteries, congested
streets, pollution & environmental degradation, lack of sufficient
housing, facilities and services are poor.

C.A. DOXIADS AND HUMAN SETTLEMENT :

ACCORDING TO DOXIADIS

In order to create the cities of the future, we need to systematically develop a

science of human settlements.

The principles man takes into account when building his settlements, as well as
the evolution of human settlements through history in terms of size and
quality.

Doxiadis posited a convenient way of organizing information and mapping out

the components and relationships of the elements within the human
settlements realm. He suggests to have a Classificatory System that will be a
methodology to establish the hierarchical structure and links among elements
of a system.
EKISTICS
Ekistics is the science of human settlements; this characteristic refers to
functions expressed in space by area of certain dimensions. In practice,
Ekistics has set the goal of human happiness

Ekistics aims to encompass all scales of human habitation and seeks to learn
from the archeological and historical record by looking not only at great cities,
but, as much as possible, at the total settlement pattern.

 BASIC PARTS OF COMPOSITE HUMAN SETTLEMENTS

• Homogeneous parts - fields;

• Central parts-built - up villages;

• Circulatory parts - roads & paths within the fields; and

• Special parts - i.e., a monastery contained within the homogeneous

part.

CLASSIFICATION OF HUMAN SETTLEMENTS

1. Based on Sizes
• Small and sparsely spaced (rural settlements or villages specializing in
agriculture)

• Large and closely spaces (urban settlements specializing in secondary and

tertiary activities)

2. Based on Location of Settlements - plains, mountains, coastal,

etc.
3. Based on Physical Forms - form as the expression of content,
function, and structure .
4. Based on Five Elements of Human Settlements.
 5. Based on Functions - which are important to an understanding of the
meaning and role of settlements:

• Reveal nature, specialization, & raison d’etre of settlements

• Based on activity (economic, social), their performance,or special role (as

dormitories, retirement villages, etc.)

6. Based on Time Dimension - age of settlements, their place in

continuum (past, present, future), their relative static of dynamic
character, the whole process of their growth .
7. Based on degree of society’s conscious involvement in
settlements creation natural and planned settlements .
8. Based on institutions, legislations and administrations which
society has created for settlements.

CLASSIFICATION OF HUMAN SETTLEMENTS

 By Ekistics Units
 By Ekistics Elements
 By Ekistics Functions
 By Evolutionary Phases
 By Factors & Disciplines
1. BY EKISTICS UNITS :

- FOUR BASIC GROUPS

• Minor shells or elementary units - Man(Anthropos), room, house;
• Micro-settlements - units smaller than, or as small as, the traditional
town where people used, do & still do achieve interconnection by
walking (housegroup, small neighbourhood);
• Meso-settlements - between traditional town & conurbation within
which one can commute daily (small polis, polis, small metropolis, small
eperopolis, eperopolis); and
• Macro-settlements - whose largest possible expression is the
Ecumenopolis.

- Physical Units
• Man (as individual)- smallest unit
• Space- second unit either personally owned or shared with others
• Family Home- third unit

- Social Unit
• Group of Homes

- Large City- a city with large population & many services having less
than 1 million but over 3 lakhs people.

- City - a city with abundant but not with as many services as in a large
city ,having over 1 lakh upto 3 lakhs people

- Large Town- Population of 20,000 to 1 lakh.

- Town - population of 1,000 to 20,000.

- Village - population of 100 to 1000

- Hamlet - tiny population (<100) and very few (if any) services, &
few buildings
- Isolated dwellings – 1 or 2 buildings of families with negligible
services, if any.
THE FIGURE BELOW ARE FOR DOXIADIS' IDEAL FUTURE EKISTIC UNITS FOR THE
YEAR 2100 AT WHICH TIME HE ESTIMATED (IN 1968) THAT EARTH WOULD
ACHIEVE ZERO POPULATION GROWTH AT A POPULATION OF 50,000,000,000
WITH HUMAN CIVILIZATION BEING POWERED BY FUSION ENERGY.

EKISTIC UNITS: 15 LEVELS

• Also called EKISTICS LOGARITHMIC SCALE (ELS).

• Unit range from Man to Ecumenopolis which turn into four basic groups.

2. BY EKISTICS ELEMENTS :
 Nature
 Society
 Shells
 Networks
 Culture

BASIC PRINCIPLES OF EKISTICS :

 MAXIMIZATION OF HUMAN POTENTIALS –in a certain area, man will
select the location which permits a maximum of potential contact
  MINIMIZATION OF EFFORTS –a minimum of effort, terms of energy,
time and cost Man selects the most convenient routes

 OPTIMIZATION OF MAN’S PROTECTIVE SPACE

 OPTIMIZATION OF MAN’S RELATIONSHIP WITH HIS ENVIORMENT

 OPTIMIZATION OF FOUR PREVIOUS PRINCIPLES

3. BY EVOLUTIONARY PHASES :

 Macro scale- nomadic, agricultural, urban, urban industrial;

 Micro scale- specific area at a limited period of time

4. BY FACTORS & DISCIPLINES :

ANALYSIS
Ò According to Doxiadis, the greatest problem facing cities worldwide
was the problem of managing growth.
Ò He proposed several solutions to leave room for expansion of the city
core.

- SOME OF HIS PROPOSALS INCLUDED:

 Limiting all buildings to three levels or less, with permission to

build higher.
 Separating automobile and pedestrian traffic completely.
 Constructing cities as a "beehive" of cells each no bigger than 2 by
2 kilometers, the maximum comfortable distance.

- DEVELOPMENT OF HUMAN SETTLEMENT:

VILLAGE in Pre Urban VILLAGE in Pre Urban Early

dynapolis Dynapolis:-Industrial Metropolis:-
Industrial Megalopolis (Large political units.)

- WHAT LACKS:

 LONG TERM PLANNING is needed to determine whether such

lands are destined to become urban or not :

• But that ideal works only if the urban planning is for green field projects.
Since most urbanisation is not green field, are our policies encouraging
this integration, or is development just chaotic?

• Today’s chaos may be more visible in Delhi, Mumbai, Ahmedabad,

Bengaluru, Chennai, Kolkata & Hyderabad. But more serious chaos is
probably in other cities like .

• Our modern day cities too can be planned in such a manner that limits
are set to accommodate a certain population and the city is buffered by
an equal area of countryside before another new city is created.

• This equitable land distribution between the city and the village would
be an intercomplementary arrangement.
 • Mega-cities interconnected with high speed transport with green fields
in between Integration, if at all necessary should be evolutionary and
not enforced.

• A city where the scale is within the horizon of the human mind.

• With the planner no longer planning the city since being overtaken by
greedy politicians an builders, emergence of so called millennium city
like Gurgaon which lack the minimum social facility is evident.

DYNAPOLIS:
INTRODUCTION:
The concept of dynamic city goes through four stages

 Dynapolis (monocentric city developing in one direction)

 Dynametropolis (parallel development of several developments

Dynapolises in different directions)

 Dynamegopolis(giant city)

 Ecumenopolis

DYNAPOLIS IS :

- monocentric city development in one direction

- the dynapolis has one center and the solution is usually a parabolic
system
ISLAMABAD- THE CREATION OF NEW CAPITAL
Islamabad, the new Capital of Pakistan, planned by Constantinos A.
Doxiadis and Doxiadis Associates in the late 1950s, is now a fast-growing
city of about 1.5 million inhabitants, forming, together with the adjacent
old city of Rawalpindi and a National Park, a Metropolitan Area (Greater
Islamabad/Rawalpindi Area) of about 4.5 million inhabitants.

Formation of the Metropolitan Area

The principal system of axes in the metropolitan area of islamabad
defines three distinctive areas:

a. the area of Islamabad proper.

b. the area of Rawalpindi, the center of which is the city of Rawalpindi.
c. the National Park area which will retain certain agricultural functions
for several years and where sites must be provided for a national sports
center, the national university, national research institute, etc.

It has been designed on the basis of the ideal city of the future and to
form a dyna-metropolis. Each is planned to develop dynamically towards
the south-west, their center cores growing simultaneously and together
with their residential and other functions.

Islamabad :Application Of Doxiadis Principles

Islamabad was an idea to create a “City of the Future” with the concept
of dynapolis’, that is, a planned unidirectional linear city as the only
solution to cope with the growth of an explosive urbanization era,
relying on strong environmental elements and a synthesis of town
planning and Architectural principles.

The making of the plan of Islamabad4 is an investigation and prospection

into the landscape of the area chosen as project site for the new capital
of Pakistan. The idea, concept and proto-form of ‘Dynapolis’, as
conceived by Doxiadis, is bound to find its manifestation in Islamabad.
The translation of dynapolis into a physical plan, guided by its proto-
form, Landscape and the intuition of the architect is what I describe as
the making of the plan of Islamabad.