Urban design is the process of designing and shaping cities,
towns and villages. Whereas architecture focuses on individual buildings, urban
design address the larger scale of groups of buildings, of streets and public
spaces, whole neighborhoods and districts, and entire cities, to make urban
areas functional, attractive, and sustainable.
Urban design is an inter-disciplinary subject that unites
all the built environment professions, including urban planning, landscape
architecture, architecture, civil and municipal engineering. It is common for
professionals in all these disciplines to practice in urban design. In more
recent times different sub-strands of urban design have emerged such as
strategic urban design, landscape urbanism, water-sensitive urban design, and
sustainable urbanism.
Urban design demands a good understanding of a wide range of
subjects from physical geography, through to social science, and an
appreciation for disciplines, such as real estate development, urban economics,
political economy and social theory.
Urban design is about making connections between people and
places, movement and urban form, nature and the built fabric. Urban design
draws together the many strands of place-making, environmental stewardship,
social equity and economic viability into the creation of places with distinct
beauty and identity. Urban design is derived from but transcends planning and
transportation policy, architectural design, development economics, engineering
and landscape. It draws these and other strands together creating a vision for
an area and then deploying the resources and skills needed to bring the vision
to life.
Urban design theory deals primarily with the design and
management of public space (i.e. the 'public environment', 'public realm' or
'public domain'), and the way public places are experienced and used. Public
space includes the totality of spaces used freely on a day-to-day basis by the
general public, such as streets, plazas, parks and public infrastructure. Some
aspects of privately owned spaces, such as building facades or domestic
gardens, also contribute to public space and are therefore also considered by
urban design theory. Important writers on urban design theory include
Christopher Alexander, Peter Calthorpe, Gordon Cullen, Andres Duany, Jane
Jacobs, Mitchell Joachim, Jan Gehl, Allan B. Jacobs, Kevin Lynch, Aldo Rossi,
Colin Rowe, Robert Venturi, William H. Whyte, Camillo Sitte, Bill Hillier(Space
syntax), and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk.
While the two fields are closely related, they differ in two
respects. Firstly, urban design can be argued to relate to the proactive design
of urban areas, whereas the urban planning tends, in practice, to focus on the
management of private development through established regulatory planning
methods and programs, and other statutory development controls, although the
extent to which this is actually the case will depend on the systems of urban
governance and development management in place. Secondly, urban design focuses
on the design, quality, character and appearance of places, including buildings
and the spaces between them. Urban planning, on the other hand, also relates to
the uses to which those places and spaces are put, and the ways in which they
relate to each other. Again, the distinction between the two highly
interrelated activities will depend on the local legislative context.
History
Although contemporary professional use of the term 'urban
design' dates from the mid-20th century, urban design as such has been practiced
throughout history. Ancient examples of carefully planned and designed cities
exist in Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas, and are particularly well-known
within Classical Chinese, Roman and Greek cultures (see Hippodamus of Miletus).
European Medieval cities are often, and often erroneously,
regarded as exemplars of undesigned or 'organic' city development. There are
many examples of considered urban design in the Middle Ages (see, e.g., David
Friedman, Florentine New Towns: Urban Design in the Late Middle Ages, MIT
1988). In England, many of the towns listed in the 9th century Burghal Hidage
were designed on a grid, examples including Southampton, Wareham, Dorset and
Wallingford, Oxfordshire, having been rapidly created to provide a defensive
network against Danish invaders. 12th century western Europe brought renewed
focus on urbanisation as a means of stimulating economic growth and generating
revenue. The burgage system dating from that time and its associated burgage
plots brought a form of self-organising design to medieval towns. Rectangular
grids were used in the Bastides of 13th and 14th century Gascony, and the new
towns of England created in the same period.
Throughout history, design of streets and deliberate
configuration of public spaces with buildings have reflected contemporaneous
social norms or philosophical and religious beliefs (see, e.g., Erwin Panofsky,
Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism, Meridian Books, 1957). Yet the link
between designed urban space and human mind appears to be bidirectional.
Indeed, the reverse impact of urban structure upon human behaviour and upon
thought is evidenced by both observational study and historical record. There
are clear indications of impact through Renaissance urban design on the thought
of Johannes Kepler and Galileo Galilei (see, e.g., Abraham Akkerman,
"Urban planning in the founding of Cartesian thought," Philosophy and
Geography 4(1), 2001). Already René Descartes in his Discourse on the Method
had attested to the impact Renaissance planned new towns had upon his own
thought, and much evidence exists that the Renaissance streetscape was also the
perceptual stimulus that had led to the development of coordinate geometry
(see, e.g., Claudia Lacour Brodsky, Lines of Thought: Discourse, Architectonics,
and the Origins of Modern Philosophy, Duke 1996).
The beginnings of modern urban design in Europe are
associated with the Renaissance but, especially, with the Age of Enlightenment.
Spanish colonial cities were often planned, as were some towns settled by other
imperial cultures. These sometimes embodied utopian ambitions as well as aims
for functionality and good governance, as with James Oglethorpe's plan for
Savannah, Georgia. In the Baroque period the design approaches developed in
French formal gardens such as Versailles were extended into urban development
and redevelopment. In this period, when modern professional specialisations did
not exist, urban design was undertaken by people with skills in areas as
diverse as sculpture, architecture, garden design, surveying, astronomy, and
military engineering. In the 18th and 19th centuries, urban design was perhaps
most closely linked with surveyors (engineers) and architects. The increase in
urban populations brought with it problems of epidemic disease, the response to
which was a focus on public health, the rise in the UK of municipal engineering
and the inclusion in British legislation of provisions such as minimum widths
of street in relation to heights of buildings in order to ensure adequate light
and ventilation.
Much of Frederick Law Olmsted's work was concerned with urban design, and so
the (then-new) profession of landscape architecture also began to play a
significant role in the late 19th century.
Modern urban design
Modern urban design can be considered as part of the wider
discipline of Urban planning. Indeed, Urban planning began as a movement
primarily occupied with matters of urban design.
Ebenezer Howard's influential 1902 diagram, illustrating
urban growth through garden city "off-shoots"
Planning and architecture went through a paradigm shift at
the turn of the 20th century. The industrialised cities of the 19th century had
grown at a tremendous rate, with the pace and style of building largely
dictated by private business concerns. The evils of urban life for the working
poor were becoming increasingly evident as a matter for public concern. The
laissez-faire style of government management of the economy, in fashion for
most of the Victorian era, was starting to give way to a New Liberalism that
championed intervention on the part of the poor and disadvantaged. Around 1900,
theorists began developing urban planning models to mitigate the consequences
of the industrial age, by providing citizens, especially factory workers, with
healthier environments.
The first major urban planning theorist was Sir Ebenezer
Howard, who initiated the garden city movement in 1898. Howard's ideas,
although utopian were also highly practical and were adopted around the world
in the ensuing decades. His garden cities were intended to be planned,
self-contained communities surrounded by parks, containing proportionate and
separate areas of residences, industry and agriculture. Inspired by the Utopian
novel Looking Backward and Henry George's work Progress and Poverty, Howard
published his book Garden Cities of To-morrow in 1898, commonly regarded as the
most important book in the history of urban planning. His idealised garden city
would house 32,000 people on a site of 6,000 acres (2,428 ha), planned on a
concentric pattern with open spaces, public parks and six radial boulevards,
120 ft (37 m) wide, extending from the centre. The garden city would be
self-sufficient and when it reached full population, another garden city would
be developed nearby. Howard envisaged a cluster of several garden cities as
satellites of a central city of 50,000 people, linked by road and rail.
The first garden cities were created at Letchworth and Welwyn Garden City in Hertfordshire. Sir
Frederic Osborn extended the movement to regional planning.
Urban planning became professionalized at this period, with
input from utopian visionaries as well as from the practical minded
infrastructure engineers and local councilors combining to produce new design
templates for political consideration. The Town and Country Planning
Association was founded in 1899 and the first academic course on urban planning
was offered by the University of Liverpool in 1909.
The first official consideration of these new trends was
embodied in the Housing and Town Planning Act of 1909 that compelled local
authorities to introduce coherent systems of town planning across the country
using the new principles of the 'garden city', and to ensure that all housing
construction conformed to specific building standards.
Following this Act, surveyors, civil engineers, architects,
lawyers and others began working together within local government in the UK to
draw up schemes for the development of land and the idea of town planning as a
new and distinctive area of expertise began to be formed. In 1910, Thomas Adams
was appointed as the first Town Planning Inspector at the Local Government
Board, and began meeting with practitioners. The Town Planning Institute was
established in 1914 with a mandate to advance the study of town-planning and
civic design. The first university course in America was established at Harvard
University in 1924.
The automobile was an important influence on the design of
urban development in the 20th century, and the rise of the "urban
design" movement can be seen in part as a reaction to the adverse impact
of car-use and car orientated design. 'Urban design' was first used as a
distinctive term when Harvard University hosted a series of Urban Design
Conferences from 1956 . These conferences provided a platform for the launching
of Harvard's Urban Design program in 1959-60. The writings of Jane Jacobs,
Kevin Lynch, Gordon Cullen and Christopher Alexander became authoritative works
for the school of Urban Design.
Gordon Cullen's The Concise Townscape, first published in
1961, also had a great influence on many urban designers. Cullen examined the
traditional artistic approach to city design of theorists such as Camillo
Sitte, Barry Parker and Raymond Unwin. He created the concept of 'serial
vision', defining the urban landscape as a series of related spaces.
Jane Jacobs' The Death and Life of Great American Cities,
published in 1961, was also a catalyst for interest in ideas of urban design.
She critiqued the Modernism of CIAM, and asserted that the publicly unowned
spaces created by the 'city in the park' notion of Modernists was one of the
main reasons for the rising crime rate. She argued instead for an 'eyes on the
street' approach to town planning, and the resurrection of main public space
precedents, such as streets and squares, in the design of cities.
Kevin Lynch's The Image of the City of 1961 was also seminal
to the movement, particularly with regards to the concept of legibility, and
the reduction of urban design theory to five basic elements - paths, districts,
edges, nodes, landmarks. He also made popular the use of mental maps to
understanding the city, rather than the two-dimensional physical master plans
of the previous 50 years.
Other notable works include Rossi's Architecture of the City
(1966), Venturi’s Learning from Las Vegas (1972), Colin Rowe's Collage City
(1978), and Peter Calthorpe's The Next American Metropolis (1993). Rossi
introduced the concepts of 'historicism' and 'collective memory' to urban
design, and proposed a 'collage metaphor' to understand the collage of new and
older forms within the same urban space. Calthorpe, on the other hand,
developed a manifesto for sustainable urban living via medium density living,
as well as a design manual for building new settlements in accordance with his
concept of Transit Oriented Development (TOD). Bill Hillier and Julienne Hanson
in "The Social Logic of Space" (1984) introduced the concept of Space
Syntax to predict how movement patterns in cities would contribute to urban
vitality, anti-social behaviour and economic success. The popularity of these
works resulted in terms such as 'historicism', 'sustainability', 'livability',
'high quality of urban components', etc. become everyday language in the field
of urban planning.
Current trends
Jakriborg in Sweden, started in the late 1990s as a new
urbanist eco-friendly new town near Malmö
Various current movements in urban design seek to create
sustainable urban environments with long-lasting structures, buildings and a
great liveability for its inhabitants. The most clearly defined form of
walkable urbanism is known as the Charter of New Urbanism. It is an approach
for successfully reducing environmental impacts by altering the built
environment to create and preserve smart cities which support sustainable
transport. Residents in compact urban neighborhoods drive fewer miles, and have
significantly lower environmental impacts across a range of measures, compared
with those living in sprawling suburbs. The concept of Circular flow land use
management has also been introduced in Europe to promote sustainable land use
patterns, that strive for compact cities and a reduction of greenfield land
taken by urban sprawl.
In sustainable construction the recent movement of New
Classical Architecture promotes a sustainable approach towards urban
construction that appreciates and develops smart growth, walkability,
architectural tradition and classical design.This in contrast to modernist and
globally uniform architecture, as well as opposing solitary housing estates and
suburban sprawl. Both trends started in the 1980s.
Principles
L'Enfant's plan for Washington DC
Gehl Architects' project for Brighton New Road employing
shared space
Public spaces are frequently subject to overlapping
management responsibilities of multiple public agencies or authorities and the interests
of nearby property owners, as well as the requirements of multiple and
sometimes competing users. The design, construction and management of public
spaces therefore typically demands consultation and negotiation across a
variety of spheres. Urban designers rarely have the degree of artistic liberty
or control sometimes offered in design professions such as architecture. It
also typically requires interdisciplinary input with balanced representation of
multiple fields including engineering, ecology, local history, and transport
planning.
The scale and degree of detail considered varies depending
on context and needs. It ranges from the layout of entire city regions, cities,
as with l'Enfant's plan for Washington DC, Griffin and Mahony's plan for Canberra
and Doxiadis' plan for Islamabad (although such opportunities are obviously
rare), through 'managing the sense of a region' as described by Kevin Lynch, to
the design of street furniture.
Urban design may encompass the preparation of design guidelines
and regulatory frameworks, or even legislation to control development,
advertising, etc. and in this sense overlaps with urban planning. It may
encompass the design of particular spaces and structures and in this sense
overlaps with architecture, landscape architecture, highway engineering and
industrial design. It may also deal with ‘place management’ to guide and assist
the use and maintenance of urban areas and public spaces.
Much urban design work is undertaken by urban planners,
landscape architects and architects but there are professionals who identify
themselves specifically as urban designers. Many architecture, landscape and
planning programs incorporate urban design theory and design subjects into
their curricula and there are an increasing number of university programs
offering degrees in urban design, usually at post-graduate level.
Urban design considers:
Pedestrian zones
Incorporation of
nature within a city
Aesthetics
Urban structure –
How a place is put together and how its parts relate to each other
Urban typology,
density and sustainability - spatial types and morphologies related to
intensity of use, consumption of resources and production and maintenance of
viable communities
Accessibility –
Providing for ease, safety and choice when moving to and through places
Legibility and
wayfinding – Helping people to find their way around and understand how a place
works
Animation –
Designing places to stimulate public activity
Function and fit –
Shaping places to support their varied intended uses
Complementary
mixed uses – Locating activities to allow constructive interaction between them
Character and
meaning – Recognizing and valuing the differences between one place and another
Order and incident
– Balancing consistency and variety in the urban environment in the interests
of appreciating both
Continuity and
change – Locating people in time and place, including respect for heritage and
support for contemporary culture
Civil society – Making
places where people are free to encounter each other as civic equals, an
important component in building social capital
Equality issues
Until the 1970s, the design of towns and cities took little
account of the needs of people with disabilities. At that time, disabled people
began to form movements demanding recognition of their potential contribution
if social obstacles were removed. Disabled people challenged the 'medical
model' of disability which saw physical and mental problems as an individual
'tragedy' and people with disabilities as 'brave' for enduring them. They
proposed instead a 'social model' which said that barriers to disabled people
result from the design of the built environment and attitudes of able-bodied
people. 'Access Groups' were established composed of people with disabilities
who audited their local areas, checked planning applications and made
representations for improvements. The new profession of 'access officer' was
established around that time to produce guidelines based on the recommendations
of access groups and to oversee adaptations to existing buildings as well as to
check on the accessibility of new proposals. Many local authorities now employ
access officers who are regulated by the Access Association. A new chapter of
the Building Regulations (Part M) was introduced in 1992. Although it was
beneficial to have legislation on this issue the requirements were fairly
minimal but continue to be improved with ongoing amendments. The Disability
Discrimination Act 1995 continues to raise awareness and enforce action on
disability issues in the urban environment.
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