Development of an Intensity of uses index to support design decision-making and improve urban development quality

Urban environments are considered as complex systems where various dimensions are overlapping. Partly as a consequence of this stratification, they are facing a multitude of challenges and issues which have an impact on the quality of spaces. Efficient, responsible and reflective design of urban spaces is essential to progress towards sustainable urbanism and to improve life quality and the response to users' needs. Especially with the increasing complexity of today's urban systems. For these different reasons, design, analysis and evaluation methods must be adapted and take into account all the layers constituting the urban system. Following this line of thinking, a new intensity of uses index is developed in order to provide a holistic approach and to support sustainable planning as well as design and decision process for the development and improvement of spaces. In this article we present an analysis and design method for this index and more particularly the characterization of one of the variables that we call "Uses Potential", based on different criteria. We define the structure whereby we develop the Uses Potential, i.e., on the basis of three elements constituting the urban systems: the spatial environment, the proposed content in its built components and its relative population. Then we review the technical content of the components on which the Uses Potential is based. We also address the question of its evaluation by means of a City Information Model (CIM) in our research and its contribution to future urban analyses.