THE COMMUNITY NETWORK SYSTEM OF CONVENIENCE STORE WITHIN URBAN DESIGN

By Kang-Hsin Fan

What is the new settlement for using the community network system of
convenience store as case within urban design? Employing the concept of
community network system for the development of urban design hopes to yield a
more effective life-place. Therefore, it will provide a best method to save land
and sensitive areas by building, and create more effective densities.

Taiwan has Asian-Pacific’s and perhaps the world’s highest density of convenience stores per person. The community service center concept is the central key. Either by population percentage or life style habits, convenience stores in Taiwan contributes to the society by providing a wide and ever changing scope of services depending on the local environment and market trends.

A city is experienced in motion. It makes sense that our streets are in part
a measure of these movement systems. A new circulation system should
anticipate future forms of movement in the city. With the new circulation systems
in a city, walking is the other issue for the development of settlement within
urban design. The motion of the city dweller engaging with the spaces and
systems of the city can also measured to inform urban design decisions.
Moreover, for recent years, green has become the new goal in the development
of Urban Design. Urban Design has to support sustainable objectives by
improving pedestrian and cycle access. “The building mass, land use, height,
and street width can combine to create balanced street scenes and successful
urban compositions” (Madanipour, 2010).

Systems shape urban forms. In Basic landscape Architecture: Urban
Design, the author states that “cities are composed of interdependent systems
from the city-wide scale such as transport and utilities, to the microelectronic.
They support urban forms and promote opportunities for growth. These urban
systems can create form in the city landscape”(Wall & Waterman, 2010). The
network e-system also creates an invisible city network to piece people’s life
together. A city is a composition of solid and void elements. In other word, a city is the physical environment in which is consisted the natural world and the built world. These void elements include landscape, garden, park, and so on. With
the community network, these void elements will be rearranged to a new green
urban settlement.

“Environmental improvement is considered to be a catalyst, of the essential drivers in city center regeneration. Successful urban regeneration cannot be examined merely in terms of physical improvement; it is necessary to measure how beneficial the regeneration strategy is in improving the social and economic conditions in the declining city” (Hubbard, 1995). Taiwanese cities now face the challenge of shrinking cities, the increasing scarcity of energy, global warming and relatively little population growth. Therefore, as energy becomes more expensive, city form in the Taiwanese landscape will mutate once again. What might this new recombinant urban landscape look like as urban actors begin to restructure their environment to meet the challenge of the contemporary network city? “Original landscape as the material”, the proposal brings the landscape to the public spaces, pulls the public into the landscape and creates effective living typologies between urbanity and nature.