What is a functional area? What can she be? In accordance with what is its framework established? What are the basic rules for zoning? In what areas is this concept applied? In accordance with what regulations are urban areas allocated? What is primary in planning settlement arrangements?
What is it? Definition
According to a generalized definition, functional zones are places for which the boundaries are clearly indicated by documentary acts of territorial planning and cadastral registration and a specific purpose of intended use is prescribed.
This concept is often confused with the term “territorial zone”. Meanwhile, these concepts have different meanings, although, of course, there is some similarity between them.
What is the difference from territorial zones?
The concept of “territorial zones” has a slightly different meaning. Functional zoning, of course, is also adhered to when dividing areas according to the territorial principle. However, this term has a more specific, narrow meaning.
These are areas intended for the specific purposeful placement of any objects, for example, parks or residential areas, landfills, industrial buildings. Within each territorial zone several functional ones can be located, however, an inverse relationship also exists.
That is, the definition of this concept is as follows: a zone for which restrictions on development are defined and spelled out in the relevant land use regulations, as well as territorial boundaries.
Main types
Territorial, as well as functional, zones are divided into several main types. Each of them is characterized by its own purpose and specific features or limitations in operation.
The main functional areas of the territory are:
- residential;
- social business;
- production;
- agricultural;
- recreational;
- special;
- protected.
Each of these species is subdivided into more narrow-profile subspecies that correspond to their immediate purpose or use.
What are recreational areas?
Recreational functional areas of the city are the following places:
- afforestation;
- parks;
- walking pedestrian streets;
- gardens;
- objects intended for sports activities;
- water bodies and stuff.
That is, these are the places of the city in which people do not live or work, and where they spend leisure time, walk, relax, play sports. For example, the city embankment or a park with attractions are recreational functional areas within the common territory.
What are business areas?
Public-business places include those territorial areas on which such objects are located:
- utilities and household services;
- hospitals, clinics and other health care facilities;
- commercial and office buildings;
- the shops;
- cultural, educational centers and more.
That is, for example, the theater building, as well as the shopping center, is part of the city’s public and business zone.
What are residential areas?
It would seem that with what the functional functional areas of the master plan of the city are, there can be no ambiguities. However, everything is not quite simple, and these territories also have their own divisions by type.
The main differences between these territories are determined by the maximum possible number of storeys of the building and its density. That is, there are low-rise construction zones and others.
What are agricultural zones?
A rather specific use of territories for urban settlements, but this is only at first glance. Such functional zones include not only land on which any crops are grown or cattle are bred, but also places that have no relation to farm production.
These areas include territories located on them:
- horticultural partnerships;
- holiday villages;
- private sector homes (in some cases);
- flower farms and so on.
That is, for example, a territory with summer cottages arranged at the end of the century before last, as well as horticultural plots near a city line that are just beginning to be developed, this is an agricultural zone.
What are production areas?
This is a functional territorial zone, site or district in the city where industrial buildings are concentrated.
However, in addition to the places in which the buildings of factories or factories are built, the plots of various utilities, the transport network, and much more belong to the same type of zones. For example, the territory in which the city substation is located, providing electricity, is also part of the production zone.
What are special zones?
The urban functional areas of the common area used in a peculiar way are:
- cemeteries;
- places of accumulation of any waste products;
- sanitary control strips and so on.
That is, these are the territories on which specific target objects or adjacent areas are located.
What are protected areas?
These are the territories that are given special importance, for example:
- historical reserves;
- monuments of nature or culture;
- places of aesthetic value;
- strategic objects;
- sites important for the implementation of scientific activities, and so on.
That is, if archaeological excavations begin in any district of the city, then this territory becomes a protected zone. Also, this type of zone includes areas adjacent to railway bridges, river banks, and many other places that need protection or imply restrictions on access to them due to their intended purpose.
What is the purpose of zoning? Main types
The main goal with which functional zoning is carried out is to highlight areas within the city line that are uniform in their natural qualities and are most suitable for a particular type of anthropogenic load. Of course, this is done for the most rational use of land, taking into account the interests and convenience of local residents and the geoecological situation, of course.
The main functional areas within the city limits and in the immediate vicinity of it are divided into three large types:
- industrial;
- residential or residential;
- recreational.
The allocation of these zones as the main ones is due to the fact that they are of the greatest importance for urban development and, as a rule, occupy large land plots in comparison with others.
The remaining zones are secondary in value and are, as it were, auxiliary. That is, they appear because there is a need for this that arises in the process of using territories belonging to one of the main types of urban zoning.
Boundary and Rules
The border of the functional zones is established taking into account the intended purpose of the site. As a rule, according to the type of destination, the territories within the city limits are divided into the following types:
- suitable for residential development;
- allocated to special groups;
- optimal for arranging production;
- necessary for life support, that is, for engineering, transport networks.
The rules that guide the zoning of free territories are spelled out in the Town Planning Code of the Russian Federation, in the article under serial number 35.
Typically, the functional areas of the master plan of a city or other settlement are geographically limited by streets, freeways, and highways. They can occupy any area in one quarter or in several areas.
The main parameters, according to which during the initial planning, that is, in the case of the commissioning of free new land plots, the boundaries of the functional zones are determined, are spelled out in the collection of normative acts called “Urban planning. Planning and development of urban and rural settlements. ” The document was approved as a fundamental guide for developers in 2016 at the Ministry of Construction and Housing and Communal Services of the Russian Federation.
Usually this collection of normative acts and regulations is called more commonly in the everyday life - “Rules”. It is this document that indicates what is permissible to place, where it can be done, and where not. For example, this may look as follows. Suppose, at the beginning of the last century, a factory was built that has been safely preserved to this day and continues to function. Of course, this production became city-forming, the settlement grew around it. However, according to the compilation of regulatory requirements, new buildings near the production building are not permissible, and the housing next to it should be gradually decommissioned, that is, resettled and demolished, or used for other purposes.
Of course, its intended purpose also affects the determination of the boundaries of a particular zone. Some of the secondary types, in principle, cannot have a clear framework. For example, power grids on plans for urban functional zoning are indicated by thin lines that permeate all territories without exception. The same can be said about the transport infrastructure, roads, sewers and various public utilities. That is, such functional zones, the purpose of which is to ensure the basic needs of the population, do not have clear boundaries. In principle, they cannot be limited by anything. But this does not mean at all that for such secondary zones there are no clear instructions on their location. That is, poles with electric wires are not installed in the center of the roadway, and cables are not buried deeper than what is prescribed in the rules.
The placement and arrangement of such zones is regulated not only by urban planning regulations, but also by a number of other legislative requirements, the list of which directly depends on the intended use of certain functional zones. For example, the arrangement and arrangement of cemeteries, sewers, gutters with sewage and other similar objects is also coordinated with sanitary and environmental regulatory acts.
