SCOPE?

UD is neither big architecture nor limited to urban

landscape issues. It does not operate solely at the
interface between planning and architecture.

BUT can be regarded as a problem-solving activity

with applications to spatial decision-making at all
scales of urban planning
Can we define it? THE ART OF MAKING PLACES
It is about the form of cities. An element in the planning process
that is concerned with finding an appropriate physical
framework for human activities in cities.

Urban design creates a framework for our lives,…We feel

and experience urban design every day….Design brings
order and relation into human surroundings……it is the
production of cities by people for people
Planning-Design-Architecture
The relationship is historical:

 In the 1960s, planning and architecture were split.

 Planning concentrated on land use patterns and socio-

economic issues (macro)

 Architecture concentrated on the design of buildings (micro)

 There emerged a responsibility gap where design of public

space was concerned

 Urban design came in to bridge this gap

 Why Design at all?
UD as a discipline has arisen as a result of the fundamental
cultural
political,
social and
economic changes.
Other issues include the impact of environmental issues and
quality of life on the nature of the city and how urban form
can best be adapted to our current and future needs.
 Debate against Urban Design
- Today the city is more shaped by economic /
entrepreneurial forces than planning and design
forces. (communications & transport technology
and markets)

- Cities have in the past developed incrementally and

without master designs, with very good results

- The city form is never finite, but always changing.

Design tends to freeze form and structure hence
prevent the city from adapting to changing socio-
economic changes.
What is your Debate for Urban Design?
- Can it be left to chance?
- Enterprise culture? May the mighty win!
- Economic forces shape the city. Good or bad?

- Economic forces must operate for rather than against the city…their
manifestation in the physical, spatial, structural, and land use terms must be
guided into forms that enhance the city’s quality and identity as a place for
people.
 So…
 Design can help enhance a city’s advantages: physical
needs of citizens; safety, security and protection; an
environment free of pollution, noise, accidents, and
crime; a conducive social environment ..a sense of
community; an appropriate image and prestige;
creativity and self-expression in neighbourhoods;
aesthetically pleasantness as a place of culture and a
work of art.
 Design can help diminish a city’s disadvantages:
containment of size & population; the obligation to
travel; social stratification
 So…
 Today, many non-local forces are shaping the
city; thus rules and patterns need to be introduced in
the form of development and design frameworks
founded on a city’s particular history, culture, location,
e.t.c so as to safeguard its identity
 Origins of Recent Urban Design Theory
Paul Sprieregaen Urban Design: the Architecture of Towns and Cities was published in
1965 …… The conventions of urban planning at this time favored rigidly-defined,
functionally-zoned urban development.

This was influenced by the International Modern Architectural Congress (CIAM) set up in
1920s in Europe by Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius & others.
Some of their ideas a wholesale renewal of the contemporary city through zoned,
single-use high-rise developments.

At the same time, organic view of urban form, originating in the English Garden City
movement, was being developed in the United States by Olmsted, Mumford, Perry and
others. This suggested a regional model of the city, decentralized, low-density and
more suburban in character, hierarchically organized on the basis of semi-
autonomous community-based neighborhood units or “super-blocks”
 Cont..
In the United States in 1960s, the economist Jane Jacobs
published her powerful critique of modern town planning in
The Death and Life of Great American Cities, bringing
the attention to the complexities of land use arrangements,
and high-density living in traditional city blocks and the
shared activities of the traditional city street in a new
light.
 Cont..
Defectors from CIAM formed Team X in 1953 exploring new
low- and medium rise, high density interwoven urban
structures that would allow opportunities for social exchange
and encounter that the international style excluded. This laid
the theoretical basis for an approach to urban renewal which
emphasized vehicular and pedestrian separation
 Cont..
In the 1950s, Kevin Lynch at MIT began to devise new techniques
for analyzing and representing the perceptual structure of cities
His work, The Image of City, 1964 helped give rise to a new
science of human perception and behavior in the city.
 Later, Scott Brown and Robert Venturi published their book
Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture questioned the
International style and advocated the catholic (conservative)
approach to the use of architectural styles and symbolism
 Cont..
Ideas of a morphological approach to UD was explored by Colin Rowe of
Cornell University and others in Europe. The basic idea was to maintain and
restore the traditional 19th century street pattern and form of urban block,
street square, without constraining the contemporary architectural
expression of new building additions.

Aldo Rossi’s the Architecture of the City, 1989 introduce the notion of the
collective memory of the city with urban form as a repository of culture
from generations past and from generations to come.

Rob Krier in his book Urban Space, 1984 sought to catalogue all possible
forms of urban space generated from the geometric fundamentals of circle,
square, and triangle.
 Criteria/Principles of Urban
spaces/Design
Appeal (…how places look….)
Function …(how places work…);
Quality of urban areas; (ambience)
Community well-being: Vitality; safety

 Environmental stress
 Behavioural support
 Identity
 Diversity
 Legibility
 Meaning/communication
 Development
 Perceptual engagements
 Regeneration
 Constraints
Interface between Design and
Renewal? Link to Conservation?

Urban Regeneration?

Inner City?

Urban Blight?
Changing Practices :The territorial
clustering of specific groups or sub-
groups of people is known as:

1. invasion and succession

2. defensible space
3. congregation
4. segregation
5. gentrification
Take-Away Assignment:

Regulatory Control and its impact

(positive/negative) on Urban Form?