The effect of topographic orientation in city building and its environmental impact (a case study of Chernozemye cities)

The article describes the current practice of building on the slopes. The steeper the slope, the harder it restricts the orientation of buildings. V.G. Davidovich classified Four levels of slope steepness, depending on their effect on the planning. In the paper, we use a hypothesis that real planning examples will show the reverse dependence of construction disorientation and slope steepness. The paper researched the buildings of five main cities in the Chernozemye region: Kursk, Belgorod, Voronezh, Lipetsk and Tambov. A special procedure to verify this hypothesis was created. The data of the OpenStreetMap and SRTM were used for computations. We presumed that the result construction orientation is reflected by the aggregate orientations of all vertical edges. Nearly 80 thousand buildings in five cities on the total area of 1380 km were analyzed. For each wall we computed its parameters: length, position of start-points and end-points, direction of the wall and also aspects and steepness of the slopes of the base surface. Then we calculated the delta-value of normal directions of walls and aspects. All walls were subdivided into nine groups by delta-values of directions and by values of steepness of the Earth surface. Samples were analyzed in WinExcel. Urban sites are indifferent to topography on flat and subflat surfaces. The buildings reflect the topographical order on slopes with mean steepness. The clarity of this reflection changes from city to city and depends on some reasons. Only the cumulative effect leads to observable results. The article gives major reasons to it . The first reason is the impossibility of erecting a long building on a steep slope. The second reason is the need to effectively correlate the location of new buildings in the streets and districts with the plan of the entire city. The third reason is the need to create a geometrically precise inside-plan of streets or districst. Their combined effect leads to a fact that, for example, the flattened territory of Tambov severely limits the planning. To be more exact, a plan (if it corresponds to the relief) does not conflict with urban development ideas. The rugged terrain of Kursk is tolerant to construction. This city cannot have an effective plan, without neglecting the steep slopes bordering the historic center. The topography effect on city planning can influence the features of urban environment. Geomorphologically subordinate construction demarcates greater the flows of matters (runoff, winds) and physical fields (insolation, noise, etc.).

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