ABSTRACT
Urban codes are used to effect urban form towards desired cultural ends. They may take the form of regulations, guidelines, or prescriptive frameworks, which can be expressed in words, tables, diagrams, plans, 3D or even animated images. Codes embody design intent to give shape and form to the layout, buildings, spaces, and sometimes to physical details (materials, building components, signs, pavement dining, etc.), and are directed towards the achievement of particular cultural conditions. The relationship between built form and these broader conditions may be explicit or not: whichever, there will always be underpinning ideas about the kind of physical city that is sought – that is, about the morphological outcome and its component building and spatial typologies, physical appearance, etc, and associated lifestyles and culture. The focus of this chapter is city form and the design theory and the coding documents that shape it.
