Today the term urban design is used to describe almost any design that takes

place in any city setting. It seems that every person and their dog is an urban
designer; its sexy and its chic (Tennant, 2004). Legally any person can call himself
or herself an urban designer. Many people in the design fields without experience
or formal training or any observable interest in dealing with urban design
concerns automatically tag the title on to their basic qualification in order to
better market their services.

Urban design deals with the creation of the physical public realm of human
settlements within the public realm of decision-making. The objective in the
opening chapter is thus not only with giving a broad definition to urban design
but also with coming to some understanding of the nature of the public realm of
the physical fabric of cities and the public realm of decision-making. There are
many questions about what actually constitutes the physical public realm. The
answers depend on prevailing political attitudes towards community and individual
rights. The stand taken here is a broad one and with it in mind the nature
of urban designing is described and explained in Chapter 2: Urban design
processes and procedures.

Urban design draws together the many strands of place-making, environmental

responsibility, social equity and economic viability; for example into the
creation of places of beauty and identity. Urban design is derived from but transcends
related matters such as planning and transportation policy, architectural
design, development economics, landscape and engineering. It draws these and
other strands together. In summary, urban design is about creating a vision
for an area and the deploying of the skills and resources to realise that vision

Urban design should be taken to mean the relationship between different buildings;
the relationship between buildings and streets, squares, parks and waterways
and other spaces which make up the public domain . . . and the patterns of movement
and activity which are thereby established; in short, the complex relationships
between the elements of built and unbuilt space (DoE, 1997: paragraph 14).
Urban design consists of multi-building projects that vary in size from building
complexes to precincts of cities to whole cities. Sometimes urban design includes
the design of the buildings themselves, but often it impinges on the architecture
of buildings only to the extent that their uses and faades, particularly on the
ground floor, define the public domain. But what then is the public domain?
Human organizations consist of public and private components. The distinction
is not always clear because there are also semi-public and semi-private behaviours
and places. In addition, what is considered to be private and what is
considered to be public varies from culture to culture and within cultures over
time (Madanipour, 2003). For professionals involved in any of the environmental
design fields the public realm is comprised of two parts. The
The Physical Public Realm
Does the physical public realm simply consist of all the open spaces outside the private
domain of building interiors, secluded courtyards, and gardens? Is it everything
that can be perceived (seen, smelled, heard or touched) from places to which
everybody has right of access? Does it consist of all those elements that have an
impact on the quality of publicly owned open space and/or space to which the public
has freedom of access? All answers to these questions are politically charged.
The physical public realm is not necessarily conterminous with publicly
owned property. In a society where property rights are sacrosanct and where
individuals have the right and freedom to build what they desire, the public realm
and public open space spaces to which the public has right of entry may refer
to the same thing. The definition has, however, often been extended to include all
publicly owned property, such as schools and libraries, whose location is determined
by the public sector.
In an editorial (27 December 2002), the French newspaper, Le Monde, took the
position that anything visible in situ should be part of the public realm in terms
of photography work. The position taken here is that the public realm consists of
those places to which everybody has access, although this access may be controlled
at times. It consists of both outdoor and indoor spaces. The outdoor
spaces include streets, squares and parks, while the indoor may include arcades,
and the halls of railway stations and public buildings, and other spaces to which
the public has general access such as the interiors of shopping malls.
The problem is that the nature of many public places is ambiguous because
although the public has relative freedom of access to them they are under
private ownership. As the common domain of cities is increasingly privatized
(or rather, the private domain is providing public spaces), this ambiguity is likely
to continue. If past history is any guide, attitudes towards what is private and
what is public will follow a cyclical pattern in the future. The scope of what is
regarded as public will wax and wane. The perceived need to control or not control
in the name of the public interest what is designed will follow as political attitudes
vary.

The qualities of streets, squares and other urban places and the links between
them, as behaviour settings and as aesthetic displays, are amongst the core concerns
of urban design. The distinction between landscape architecture and the
core of urban design work described in Part 3 depends on whether the enclosing
elements form part of the design or whether it is simply the ground surface
between buildings that is of concern. The first is urban design; the latter falls into
the realm of landscape architecture. Many landscape architects will dispute this
position saying that any design in cities is urban design. In this way, landscape
architecture differentiates itself from horticulture and garden design. If landscape
architecture broadens its concerns to embrace the three-dimensional world
of buildings it is well placed to claim urban design as its very own.