Functional zones: definition, types of zones, definition of boundaries and zoning rules

2024 Author: Henry Conors | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-12 02:40

What is a functional area? What can she be? What are its limits? What are the basic zoning rules? In what areas is this concept applied? According to what normative acts are urban areas distributed? What comes first when planning settlements?

What is this? Definition

According to the general definition, functional zones are places for which the boundaries are clearly marked by documentary acts of territorial planning and cadastral registration and the specific purpose of the intended use is prescribed.

This concept is often confused with the term "territorial zone". Meanwhile, these concepts have a different meaning, 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, when separatinglocalities on a territorial basis are also adhered to. However, this term has a more specific, narrow meaning.

These are areas designed for a specific target placement of any objects, for example, parks or residential areas, landfills, industrial buildings. Within each territorial zone there can be several functional ones, however, there is also an inverse relationship.

That is, the definition of this concept is as follows: a zone for which restrictions on development are defined and prescribed in the relevant regulatory acts of land use, as well as territorial boundaries.

Main species

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;
• public business;
• production;
• agricultural;
• recreational;
• special;
• protected.

Each of these species is subdivided into narrower subspecies, corresponding to the direct purpose or use.

What are recreational areas?

Recreational functional areas of the city are the following places:

• forest planting;
• parks;
• walking streets;
• gardens;
• objects intended for sports activities;
• reservoirs and more.

That is, these are those places in the city where people do not live or work, but where they spend their leisure time, walk, relax, play sports. For example, a city embankment or an amusement park are recreational functional areas within a common area.

What are public and business areas?

Public and business places include those territorial areas where such facilities are located:

• communal and domestic services;
• hospitals, clinics and other he alth care facilities;
• commercial and office buildings;
• shops;
• cultural, educational centers and more.

That is, for example, the theater building, like the shopping center, is part of the public and business zone of the city.

What are residential areas?

It would seem that there can be no ambiguity with what the residential functional zones of the city's master plan are. 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 and its density. That is, there are zones of low-rise construction and others.

What are agricultural zones?

Sufficiently specific use of territories for urban settlements, but this is only at first glance. These functional areas includenot only the land on which any crops are grown or livestock is bred, but also places that have nothing to do with farm production.

These sites include territories with:

• gardening associations;
• dacha villages;
• private sector homes (in some cases);
• flower farms and so on.

That is, for example, the territory with holiday villages, equipped at the end of the century before last, as well as gardening plots near the city limits, just beginning to be developed, this is an agricultural zone.

What are manufacturing areas?

This is a functional territorial zone, area 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, sections of various engineering communications, a transport network and much more belong to the same type of zones. For example, the area where the city substation is located, which provides electricity, is also part of the industrial zone.

What are special zones?

Urban functional areas of a section of the common area used in a peculiar way are:

• cemeteries;
• places of accumulation of any waste;
• sanitary control lanes and more.

That is, these are the territories where specific target objects or areas adjacent to them are located.

Whatwhat are protected areas?

These are areas that are given special importance, for example:

• historical reserves;
• monuments of nature or culture;
• places of aesthetic value;
• strategic facilities;
• sites important for scientific activities, etc.

That is, if archaeological excavations begin in any area of the city, then this territory becomes a protected area. This type of zone also 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? Basic Types

The main purpose for which functional zoning is carried out is to allocate areas of uniform natural qualities within the city limits that are most suitable for a particular type of technogenic load. Of course, this is also 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 its immediate vicinity are divided into three large types:

• industrial;
• residential or residential;
• recreational.

The selection of these particular zones as the main ones is due to the fact that they are of the greatest importance for the urbanfacilities and tend to occupy large land plots compared to others.

The rest of the zones are secondary in value and are, as it were, auxiliary. That is, they appear because there is a need for this, which arises in the process of using territories belonging to one of the main types of urban zoning.

Definition of boundaries and rules

The boundary of the functional zones is established taking into account the intended purpose of the site. As a rule, according to the type of destination, territories within the city limits are divided into the following types:

• suitable for residential development;
• dedicated 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 article number 35.

Usually, the functional zones of the master plan of an urban or other settlement are territorially limited to streets, highways, and highways. They can occupy any area both in one block and in several districts.

The main parameters by which the boundaries of functional zones are determined during the initial planning, that is, in the case of the commissioning of free new land plots, are spelled out in a collection of normative acts called “Urban planning. Planning and development of urban and ruralsettlements. The document was approved as a fundamental guide for developers in 2016 by the Ministry of Construction, Housing and Communal Services of the Russian Federation.

Usually this collection of normative acts and regulations is called in everyday life more briefly - "Rules". It is this document that indicates what is permissible to place, where it can be done, and where not. For example, it might look like this. Suppose, at the beginning of the last century, a factory was built, which has been successfully preserved to this day and continues to function. Of course, this production became a city-forming one, the settlement grew around it. However, according to the collection of regulations, new development near the production building is not allowed, and the housing already standing next to it should be gradually decommissioned, that is, resettled and demolished, or used for other needs.

Of course, the definition of the boundaries of a particular zone is also affected by its intended purpose. Some of the secondary types, in principle, cannot have a clear framework. For example, power grids on urban functional zoning plans are indicated by thin lines penetrating all territories without exception. The same can be said about the transport infrastructure, roads, sewerage and various public utilities. That is, such functional zones, the purpose of which is to meet the basic needs of the population, do not have clear boundaries. In principle, they cannot be limited by anything. But this is not at allmeans that for such secondary zones there are no clear regulations 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 it 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 regulations, the list of which directly depends on the intended use of certain functional zones. For example, the arrangement and location of cemeteries, sewers, gutters with wastewater and other similar facilities are also coordinated with sanitary and environmental regulations.

Why is this needed?

A regulatory or legal framework designed for the most optimal functional division, available to a city or other settlement, territory, is necessary to achieve specific goals.

First of all, these include:

• preserving the cleanliness of the ecological environment in places where people live;
• rational and maximum use of available land;
• careful attitude towards natural resources;
• creating the most convenient conditions for living, recreation and work.

Of course, these goals are most easily achieved during the construction of new residential areas, industrial areas, that is, in the case of expanding the territorial boundaries of the settlement.