Measuring building densities (FSI/GSI) for the Netherlands

Book of proceedings: Annual AESOP Congress, Spaces of Dialog for Places of Dignity, Lisbon, 11-14th July, 2017Densities are a key feature in urban planning and design. Density influences amongst others energy consumption, mobility, livability, food production and economy. Building densities (that is Floor Space Index (FSI) or Floor Area Ratio(FAR)) relate the gross floor area to the surface of the accompanying base land area. The surface of the base land area can be defined on many scales, from plot to municipality. By now floor areas, parcels shapes and building footprints etc are available as open data for the whole of the Netherlands, so we can script the calculation of building densities for the whole of the Netherlands. We did this according to the recent Dutch standard: NEN 9300:2013 nl, Areas and densities in urban planning - Terms, definitions and methods of determination. The first results have been tested in a mobility study. The results can be applied as well for morphology studies and as reference projects for future urban design. Along with FSI we can easily calculate the Ground Space Index (GSI) which relates the footprint of a building to the surface of the accompanying base land area and an index for the mixed use of functions (MXI). This paper describes the datasets used in the script and the main steps that were scripted to calculate the building densities on several scales.Published versio