 URBAN DESIGN

Urban design is the process of designing and shaping cities, towns and villages. In contrast to
architecture, which focuses on the design of individual buildings, urban design deals with the larger
scale of groups of buildings, streets and public spaces, whole neighborhoods and districts, and entire
cities, with the goal of making urban areas functional, attractive, and sustainable.[1]

Urban design is an inter-disciplinary subject that utilizes elements of many built environment
professions, including urban planning, landscape architecture, architecture, civil and municipal
engineering.[2] 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 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), Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk and Kelvin Campbell.

 PRINCIPLES OF URBAN DESIGN.

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.

Most urban design work is undertaken by urban planners, landscape architects and architects.
There are also 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

Urban renewal

is a program of land redevelopment in areas of moderate to high density urban land use. Renewal has
had both successes and failures. Its modern incarnation began in the late 19th century in developed
nations and experienced an intense phase in the late 1940s – under the rubric of reconstruction. The
process has had a major impact on many urban landscapes, and has played an important role in the
history and demographics of cities around the world.

Urban renewal involves the relocation of businesses, the demolition of structures, the relocation of
people, and the use of eminent domain (government purchase of property for public purpose) as a legal
instrument to take private property for city-initiated development projects. This process is also carried
out in rural areas, referred to as village renewal, though it may not be exactly the same in practice.[1]

In some cases, renewal may result in urban sprawl and less congestion when areas of cities receive
freeways and expressways.[2]

Urban renewal has been seen by proponents as an economic engine and a reform mechanism and by
critics as a mechanism for control. It may enhance existing communities, and in some cases result in the
demolition of neighborhoods.

Many cities link the revitalization of the central business district and gentrification of residential
neighborhoods to earlier urban renewal programs. Over time, urban renewal evolved into a policy based
less on destruction and more on renovation and investment, and today is an integral part of many local
governments, often combined with small and big business incentives.

 REVITALIZATION

In 1956, Anthony F. C. Wallace published a paper called "Revitalization Movements" [1] to describe how
cultures change themselves. A revitalization movement is a "deliberate, organized, conscious effort by
members of a society to construct a more satisfying culture" (p. 265), and Wallace describes at length
the processes by which a revitalization movement takes place.

Wallace's model 1956 describes the process of a revitalization movement. It is derived from studies of a
Native American religious movement, The Code of Handsome Lake, which may have led to the
formation of the Longhouse Religion.

I. Period of generally satisfactory adaptation to a group's social and natural environment.

II. Period of increased individual stress. While the group as a whole is able to survive through its
accustomed cultural behavior, changes in the social or natural environment frustrate efforts of many
people to obtain normal satisfactions of their needs.
 III. Period of cultural distortion. Changes in the group's social or natural environment drastically reduce
the capacity of accustomed cultural behavior to satisfy most persons' physical and emotional needs.

IV. Period of revitalization: (1) reformulation of the cultural pattern; (2) its communication; (3)
organization of a reformulated cultural pattern; (4) adaptation of the reformulated pattern to better
meet the needs and preferences of the group; (5) cultural transformation; (6) routinization, when the
adapted reformulated cultural pattern becomes the standard cultural behavior for the group.

V. New period of generally satisfactory adaptation to the group's changed social and/or natural
environment.[citation needed]

Wallace derived his theory from studies of so-called primitive peoples (preliterate and homogeneous),
with particular attention to the Iroquois revitalization movement led by Seneca religious leader and
prophet Handsome Lake (1735-1815). Wallace believed that his revitalization model applies to
movements as broad and complex as the rise of Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, or Wesleyan Methodism.

Scholars such as Vittorio Lanternari (1963) and Peter Worsley (1968) have developed and adapted
Wallace's insights.

 REDEVELOPMENT

Redevelopment projects can be small or large ranging from a single building to entire new
neighborhoods or "new town in town" projects.

Redevelopment also refers to state and federal statutes which give cities and counties the
authority to establish redevelopment agencies and give the agencies the authority to attack
problems of urban decay. The fundamental tools of a redevelopment agency include the authority
to acquire real property, the power of eminent domain, to develop and sell property without
bidding and the authority and obligation to relocate persons who have interests in the property
acquired by the agency. The financing of such operations might come from borrowing from
federal or state governments and selling bonds and from Tax Increment Financing.

Other terms sometimes used to describe redevelopment include urban renewal (urban
revitalization). While efforts described as urban revitalization often involve redevelopment, they
do not always involve redevelopment as they do not always involve the demolition of any
existing structures but may instead describe the rehabilitation of existing buildings or other
neighborhood improvement initiatives.

A new example of other neighborhood improvement initiatives is the funding mechanism

associated with high carbon footprintair qualityurban blight. Assembly Bill AB811 is the State of
California's answer to funding renewable energy and allows cities to craft their own
sustainability action plans. These cutting edge action plans needs the funding structure; which
can easily come forward through redevelopment funding.
  URBAN RENEWAL

Some redevelopment projects and programs have been incredibly controversial including the
Urban Renewal program in the United States in the mid-twentieth century or the urban
regeneration program in Great Britain. Controversy usually results either from the use of eminent
domain, from objections to the change in use or increases in density and intensity on the site or
from disagreement on the appropriate use of tax-payer funds to pay for some element of the
project. Urban redevelopment in the United States has been controversial because it forcibly
displaces poor and lower middle class populations and turns over their land to wealthy
redevelopers for free or for a below-market-value price. They then use that land to construct
private shopping malls, office buildings, automobile factories and dealerships, and even
gambling casinos. This is done and permitted by American courts in spite of the fact that the
Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution allows the use of eminent domain only for
"public use."[citation needed]

The residents displaced by redevelopment are routinely undercompensated,[citation needed] and some
(notably month-to-month tenants and business owners) are not compensated at all. Historically,
redevelopment agencies have been buying many properties in redevelopment areas for prices
below their fair market value, or even below the agencies' own appraisal figures because the
displaced people are often unaware of their legal rights and lack the will and the funds to mount
a proper legal defense in a valuation trial. Those who do so usually recover more in
compensation than what is offered by the redevelopment agencies.

The controversy over misuse of eminent domain for redevelopment reached a climax in the wake
of the U.S. Supreme Court's 2005 5 to 4 decision in Kelo v. City of New London, allowing
redevelopment takings of sound, unblighted homes, solely to allow redevelopers to put the taken
land to more profitable uses and thus increase the revenue flow to the local municipality. Th

Kelo decision was widely denounced and remains the subject of severe criticism. Remedial
legislation has been introduced and in some cases passed, in a number of states.

New Urbanisms in India: Urban Living, Sustainability and Everyday

Life (ESRC 2013 - 2016)
Principal Investigator: Dr Sophie Hadfield-Hill

India’s economic growth has been matched by rapid urban development in recent years; the
urban landscape is being significantly re-modelled in line with the principles of New Urbanism –
the creation of ‘walkable,’ diverse, inclusive, sustainable spaces where people will want to live
both now and in the future. New large scale developments are emerging to meet the demand
for housing in the Indian context.

This is a unique opportunity to gather empirical evidence of the experiences, issues and needs
of residents living and moving through new urban environments. Current research into the
lives of families in large scale, inclusive, sustainable communities is lacking, particularly in the
emerging market context. The research is predominantly qualitative; however, an innovative
mobile ‘app’ will be developed to explore family mobility.

PROJECT AIMS:
i) Investigate the everyday lives of families living within this new environment, researching their
interactions, issues and experiences;
ii) Develop innovative tools for conducting community based research in rapidly-developing
urban environments;
iii) Develop academic and practitioner understanding of how models of urban design are being
transferred between contexts and communities.
Objective 1: Sustainable design and mobility - everyday routines, transport and
access
- How has sustainable urbanism been integrated into the landscape? How are residents moving
through and interacting with their new surroundings?
- What are the successes of this urban design and what are its limitations, from the perspective
of the residents what lessons can be transferred to other contexts and communities?
- Focusing on children and young people, what is the scope for their mobility within the planned
case study city?
Objective 2: Nature and green space in a planned city
- How are these spaces being used by children and young people and their families in their
everyday lives?
- How is 'nature and the city' perceived and transferred to the emerging context of India?
- What are the child and parental concerns about risk and safety for children and young people
in this new urban environment?

Objective 3: Internationalising New Urbanism

- What lessons can be learnt from applying the principles of New Urbanism to an emerging
market setting? Are there examples of best practice which can be transferred to future Indian
developments?
- Are there specific design features which can (or cannot) be effectively transferred between
cultures and communities?

URBANIZATION IN INDIA
Urbanization in India was mainly caused after independence, due to adoption of mixed system of
economy by the country which gave rise to the development of private sector. Urbanisation is
taking place at a faster rate in India. Population residing in urban areas in India, according to
1901 census, was 11.4%.[1] This count increased to 28.53% according to 2001 census, and
crossing 30% as per 2011 census, standing at 31.16%.[2][3] According to a survey by UN State
of the World Population report in 2007, by 2030, 40.76% of country's population is expected to
reside in urban areas.[4] As per World Bank, India, along with China, Indonesia, Nigeria, and the
United States, will lead the world's urban population surge by 2050.[2]

Mumbai saw large scale rural-urban migration in the 21st century.[see main] Mumbai
accommodates 12.5 million people, and is the largest metropolis by population in India, followed
by Delhi with 11 million inhabitants. Witnessing the fastest rate of urbanization in the world, as
per 2011 census, Delhi's population rose by 4.1%, Mumbai's by 3.1% and Kolkata's by 2% as per
2011 census compared to 2001 census. Estimated population, at the current rate of growth, by
year 2015; Mumbai stands at 25 million; Delhi and Kolkata at 16 million each; Chennai,
Bangalore, and Hyderabad at 10 million.[5]