A key and a hero1
An essay on the current state of urban design
‘Urban design is a powerful tool. It plays a key role in the
formulation and realization of strategic urban projects. It is
a crowbar for innovation and a gate to unexpected solutions.
It has the capacity to serve as a medium for negotiation and
consequently leads to strong, stimulating and simultaneously
open-ended plans, leaving margins for evolution and adapta-
tion; contradictions can transcend into productive paradoxes.
While urban design is the ‘key’ to the strategic urban pro-
ject, the ‘hero’ is urban space itself. No matter how good an
urban design might be, in the end it is merely addressing the
endless capacity of and possibilities existing space offers, such
as making use of the resourcefulness of space and the medi-
ating capacity of space, strategic urban projects deal with
urban space and urbanity remaining, by definition, related
to an urban place. Organisation, servicing and management
of city form are consequently the main tasks for urban policy
and fundamental dimensions for a vast majority of strategic
urban projects. They are structured in a manner by which
the essential principles and concepts – derived from the spe-
cifics of the context as well as related to an interpretation of
sustainability – are not lost.’
Bruno de Mulder et al., A Project of Projects (2004: 196)
This issue of Atlantis highlights the ‘old question’ of
urban form and the role of Urban Design2 within it.
This is not without reason. In the past decades remark-
ably negative opinions were voiced on the urban con-
dition and particularly on public space. In the 1990s
Michael Sorkin’s well known Variations on a theme
park was given the subtitle ‘The end of public space’.
Soon thereafter Rem Koolhaas spoke of the ‘evapora-
tion of public realm’ in his cult essay The Generic City,
and Bruce Robbins named his book The phantom of
public realm.
This wave of publications has made it seem as if urban
form – of which public space is the most targeted aspect
– has suffered permanent erosion and loss of qual-
ity, and is no longer a matter of concern to Urbanism.
True? True. We do not need to take overseas exam-
ples to admit it. We just need to open the window and
look outside. The Dutch case – with a few exceptions –
shows that the making of the modern and contemporary
city has been characterized mainly by basic pragmatism
and bird-eye views. Four concerns were, and in my
view still are, leading decision making in Dutch Urban
4
luisa maria calabrese
Planning: accommodating quantities, solving technical
problems through sound technical solutions, satisfying
the market demands and speculating on ‘new’ urban
identities through the experimentation of ‘new’ urban
models3. The motto was and is ‘order, control, technique
and economic feasibility’; all of this lately spiced up with
a flavor of ‘sustainability’, the unavoidable byproduct of
global issues.
This awkward situation begs a number of questions.
In the best academic tradition I offer five propositions
regarding two specific questions: the possible role of
urban design in contemporary (Dutch) urbanism and
the role we (urban planners and urban designers) could
play in ongoing planning processes. I choose my posi-
tion. I challenge you to single out yours.
proposition 1
There is no present and no future for Urban Planning
without Urban Design.
Planning through politics, policies and bureaucracy is
doomed to fail. The present Dutch situation speaks for
itself. The Ministry traditionally appointed to produce
large-scale planning policies, countless paperwork and
toolboxes lost its raison-d’être and has been shut down4.
Infrastructure Planning wins 1-0 on Urban Planning;
and even worse than that, public money is currently
invested in road development instead of in improving
public transportation. People’s needs and people’s voices
are unheard, whilst developers and politicians talk end-
lessly. Effective normative tools are missing, especially
at those scales of design and interventions where it’s
all about ‘quality of life’. Historical heritage is usually
considered a burden; therefore demolition is easier than
restoration. Urban composition is arbitrary, even unnec-
essary when developers and politicians are satisfied with
the allocation of functions. Urban Design disappears and
Architecture takes over. ‘It’s all about the process’, they
say. Should we still believe it? Recent history teaches us
that only a few of those planning processes survive the
‘polder model’ and finally get built5.
I usually dislike catastrophic thinking and especially
writing about urbanism, however the present and espe-
cially the future of our cities and territories ask for a
radical change. In my view, urban designers need to get
more engaged in realizing such change through design
knowledge, which means producing fewer words and
more meaningful drawings. Design is engagement.
Design is politics. A better urban form needs participa-
tion, smartness, quality and flexibility. A durable urban
form needs durable design. We need to stop supporting
blue print planning and big promises. It’s time to focus
on creating tangible facts on the ground. In order to do
so we should learn to do many things at the same time:
we should have the courage to test our ideas in con-
crete and detailed design (each scale asks for a different
knowledge!) even when we are not asked to do so, to run
risks, and to anticipate the future by means of meticu-
lous scenarios.
Urban designers need to enter fearless and aggres-
sively into the arena of the real challenges, confronting,
contemplating, setting the agenda and engaging the
dialogue. Urban designers need to re-think their pos-
sible role(s) within the actual planning processes. Most
of the tools we need to influence Urban Design in prac-
tice with, exist within the present planning system, but Figure 1. Project from Vertical Cities studio, more info on page 22.
we are not explicit enough in using them. It’s our task
to make Urban Design evident and effective. We must knowledge by communication and participation. Urban
as well show the awareness that creating quality spaces design is also a tool for negotiation towards a workable
involves more than just us. Other roles involved in synthesis of conflicting realities. Design helps in the for-
making a development happen also have an influence on mation of agreements and becomes, in some instances,
the environment and this is often forgotten. a legal instrument. Thus, urban design is an essential
component that steers the entire development process of
proposition 2 strategic urban projects.
Urban Design is an inevitable necessity.
Urban design is premised upon a fundamental rethink-
Realizing strategic urban projects sounds almost like a ing of the discipline of urbanism following the ‘crisis’
mission impossible. They have to comply with an entire of modernist planning methods in the post-war welfare
repertoire of difficult criteria. A strategic urban project state and various self-critical reflections that occurred
has to be structural, multi-dimensional, visibly inno- amongst professionals in the 1970s and 1980s. Unlike
vative and beautiful. The recent developments in the the modernist master plan, urban design in general and
design discipline offer some necessary help. The rein- the strategic urban project in particular, are not consid-
vention and resurrection of urban design over the past ered final. On the contrary, they are seen as intermediate
fifteen to twenty years has reinvigorated the field by steps, mediums that explore the potential of urban sites,
reformulating the roles and methods of urban design. allow for the achievement of qualitative consensus, and
Experiments and projects in a wide range of contexts safeguard and accentuate existing spatial qualities. They
and situations have demonstrated the essential role of are structured in a manner by which the essential princi-
urban design – proved through the development of stra- ples and concepts – derived from the specific reading and
tegic urban projects. The fact that urban design literally opportunities of sites – are not lost throughout the long
contributes to shaping the city is evident – it deals with and complicated development process, while also allow-
forms, the quality of urban space and built form. At the ing for flexibility to deal with changing circumstances.
same time, there are a series of other tasks for urban Urban design, vision-making and strategic urban pro-
design that are perhaps less visible, but by no means less jects start as ‘designerly’ research. The process is initi-
important. Urban design is more inclusive than design ated by a penetrating reading of the site, in which its his-
of objects as such. Urban design is investigative and can tory, characteristics, the structural grounding of the site
be termed ‘design by research,’ which, amongst other in the urban morphology and the problems and oppor-
things, includes the acquisition and use of local social tunities of the given urban site are analysed. Designerly

5
research explores the identity of the study area and crea-
tively speculates upon the possibilities to reorganise or
develop the site with qualitative urban spaces and urban
activities. A variety of fields of knowledge are deployed
in this analysis: urban history and morpho-typology,
urban ecology and landscape, societal issues, such as the
power game of decision-making or processes of inclu-
sion and exclusion, architecture and urbanism, and, last
but not least, local social knowledge concerning daily life
in particular places. From the initial stages, architectural
knowledge is present as a way to question the existing
realities and spatial structures and the desired interplay
between future urban space and urban functioning. This
type of research work oscillates between analysis and
synthesis, between vision and action, between intuition
and rationality, between the global scale of the city and
the actual scale of a building, and between an existing
and desired spatial structure.
propositions 3
If we do not re-learn how to design at the intermediate
scale Architecture will soon erase Urbanism.
Is design one whole from the spoon to the city? Most
architects would answer yes. What is the answer of
urbanists? The idea that architects would pursue,
throughout their career, a multidisciplinary/multi-scale
production is not a new one: they have always looked
beyond the boundaries of their discipline, appropriating
materials, methods and processes from other industries
as needed. Often in history they disguised themselves
as artisans, scientists, artists and philosophers all at the
same time. In the 1920’s, the Bauhaus founder Walter
Gropius famously declared that architects should design
everything. His school cultivated a totalizing concept
in which Architecture was only one aspect of design. It
promoted the idea of the architect as someone who could
and would design buildings, cities and objects all with
the same involvement6.
Contemporary (Dutch) Urbanism thinks differently.
Scale matters only if it is big. Design matters only when
it is regional and metropolitan. Processes are ‘designed’
more than the physical world is. No hidden or manifest
ambition to ‘design a spoon’ in urbanism. Why?
In his essay Urbanism at the turn of the century (2000),
Joan Busquets talks clearly about the importance of the
intermediate scale in contemporary urbanism, the scale of
the urban project. According to Busquets the urban pro-
ject is a type of project that focuses on an urban fragment,
as a starting point for tackling wider ranging problems in
the city. It is situated on an intermediate scale and should
6
have territorial effects outside its area of intervention (de
Solà-Morales, 1989). Each urban project must have the
ambition to constitute a partial contribution to a consistent
overall strategy. The formulation of this wider strategy
can be considered a project in itself. This wider strategy is
what Busquets has called a ‘project of projects’, a concrete
demonstration of the way in which local projects can be
part of a wider constellation of projects. This distinction
between projects and ‘projects of projects’ corresponds
to what in the French tradition is understood by ‘pro-
jets urbains’ and ‘projects de ville’ respectively. A ‘projet
urbain’ is the expression of concrete intentions to go out
and build an urban fragment. Projets de ville, in contrast,
are as such not realized. Apart from not-counting excep-
tions, one does not make cities, but one builds parts, bits
and pieces. However, as argued by the ‘urban project’ tra-
dition, that in itself should not keep us from developing
projects for the city, from reflecting on the future form of
the city, from constructing ‘projets de ville’ as the horizon
for and the context in which fragmentary projects can be
evaluated (De Meulder, et al., 2004). This view concurs
with Salet’s (2006) definition of strategic projects as stra-
tegic devices with collective missions, visions and plans,
attempting to settle or stimulate certain joint courses in
individual actions.
"Most urbanism students lack indeed
not only design knowledge, but also
basic design skills to be able to work at
the intermediate scale."
The city produces grey by itself. Strategic urban projects
are of no use if they only add to the greyness of the city.
On the contrary, strategic urban projects must make a
fundamental difference and in that sense they are usu-
ally very visible. They change the face and perception
of the city. Strategic urban projects are indicators of
future development, producers of identity. They support
and strengthen the identity of the city and its inhabit-
ants. This characteristic necessitates considerable design
skills and aesthetic sensibilities, qualities that are often
neglected in urban development initiative.
propositions 4
Urban form goes beyond morphology. Urban form is
about the use that people make of space and the meaning
they attach to it.
The city should express the needs of the people and
respond to them, including the need to build up a collec-
tive memory. By analyzing existing places and the com-
plex relationships between their constituent parts we
can learn to recognize and create the qualities of a rich
and stimulating urban environment. This means on all
scales, on all levels of scale, a city should accommodate
change with respect to the past, present and future.
On the other hand, a city consists of certain scale
levels. Each level should have a structure that accommo-
dates change in the next level. Each structure should be
precious to the ones who use it. For example, the scale
level of the neighborhood should have precious street
patterns and accommodate changing use of the streets.
The street should be precious in its own. As well as
buildings should be.
propositions 5
Designing at different scales should be taught consistently
throughout the curriculum to all students at our faculty,
not only to architects.
Lately I noticed a blooming production of toolboxes7
and oversized metropolitan strategies as main subjects of
our graduating students in the Urbanism master track.
Sadly few of them choose to develop a project, I mean,
a design project well-articulated at different scales
of interventions, from strategic planning to convinc-
ing strategic design. At first I thought that the reason
why this happens is that there is not enough interest in
design, especially at the intermediate scale. I thought
that the notion of urban form is outdated, as it’s all about
planning processes.
However, talking and working with our students,
I realized that design knowledge is what is missing at
specific scales, not their interest. Most urbanism stu-
dents8 lack indeed not only design knowledge, but also
basic design skills to be able to work at the intermediate
scale. That’s why, when it’s time to choose a graduation
theme or Lab, they mostly go for a toolbox instead of for
a strategic project. One explanation to this – in my view
- embarrassing situation is ‘what you teach is what you
get’. Is it a matter of curriculum structure and content?
It might be. On the other hand, it’s also a matter of offer
and demand. Students should learn to firmly ask for
what they need to become professionals who are capa-
ble of seeing the city from multiple viewpoints and who
relish working with interdisciplinary teams.
From our (teachers) side, we should reflect upon our
choices as educator. In my view, the present curriculum
chooses for a vision of urbanism as a pure process, where
the large-scale issues, the planning and technical aspects
are openly privileged upon design. A few quick insights
in what (urban) design is are offered, however there is
not enough space and time to elaborate in depth on why
(urban) design is a powerful tool to steer planning pro-
cesses. There’s no time to reflect-in-action9, neither to
find out why “urban design is the ‘key’ to the strategic
urban project and why the ‘hero’ is urban space itself”.
(De Mulder, 2004).
Notes
1 I borrowed this title from an essay by Bruno de Mulder et al., A Project of Projects (2004: 196).
2 One important aspect of urban form is the way urban programs are shaped on the ground,
in other words, the way they are composed and ‘designed’ in order to be used.
3 The Dutch New Towns, the Vinex, American style CBD’s, etc..
4 After over thirty years the Dutch Ministry of Housing and Planning (VROM) has been
merged with the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructures in 2010.
5 Examples of lengthy processes are the South Axis in Amsterdam and the missing link of
the A4 motorway in Midden Delfland.
6 In Italy the method ‘Dal cucchiaio alla citta’ (“From the spoon to the city”, Ernesto Rogers,
1952) was born precisely from the meeting between the nascent Prussian industry and the
visionary educational model developed in Dessau. This utopian sentence defined an attitude
that Italian designers have developed and sustained since the 1950’s. This philosophy found
its ground in the optimistic belief that a newly-born industrial production once applied to
Architecture would be able to produce a better and more affordable standard of living for
many people. This social approach was deeply engaged in the political dialogue with a grow-
ing post-war country in need of progress. A famous example of this design philosophy was
the light switch that Castiglioni designed in 1968 for VLM, which he used to call “his little
secret”, because this easily missed piece of inexpensive hardware was for him the ultimate
anonymous design typology that improved the quality of life in millions of European apart-
ments.
7 Toolboxes are catalogues of standardized rules for urban (re)development and a methodol-
ogy to apply them.
8 I say ‘most of’ as we can see a clear difference in design knowledge and skills between MSc
students who were previously trained as architects (abroad) and students coming from our
own Bachelor program.
9 In this well-known book Educating the reflective practitioner: Toward a new design for
teaching and learning in the professions (1987), Donald Schön argues that professional edu-
cation should be centered on enhancing the practitioner’s ability for “reflection-in-action”,
that is “ learning by doing and developing the ability for continued learning and problem
solving throughout the professional’s career”.
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