While there is general agreement that urban design exists, there is less agreement on what it is. Definitions vary according to one's point of view. But urban design is a bridge between the professions of urban planning and architecture. Urban design ...
While there is general agreement that urban design exists, there is less agreement on what it is. Definitions vary according to one's point of view. But urban design is a bridge between the professions of urban planning and architecture. Urban design is, therefore, both more or less than planning and architecture.
Urban design is both a process and an objective. It is the process by which the total form of the city is produced as the sum of many public and private decisions. Inadvertent urban design goes on all the time; here, however, the term refers to the process by which the appearance, form, and relationships of landscapes, streetscapes, and buildings are intentionally controlled to create a desirable whole.
Urban design is also an objective, a set of qualities that urban design as a process seeks to achieve. Thus when we talk about good or bad urban design, we are talking about a qualitative result.
There are two ways in accomplishing urban-design objectives. The first is by direct public investment in public property. Examples of this include the construction of parks, city buildings, and infra-structure; and the acquisition with public monies of property for lease or resale, with design restrictions, to private developers-urban renewal. The second method is exercising some form of control over private property where the public interest merits protection from an urban-design standpoint. In other words, it is the attempt to relate certain private decisions to the form of the total urban environment. To a large extent the success of urban design is dependent upon many individuals making independent decisions in such a way that they complement each other. This works particularly well in a community with common values where the whole urban fabric adds up to more than the sum of its parts. That is the ideal situation. More frequently, howerever, individual decisions do not add up to more than the whole. When this occurs there is usually a need for public intervention or controls.