URBAN DESIGN: "Urban design is the generally accepted name for the process of giving physical design direction to urban growth, conservation, and change. It is understood to include landscape as well as buildings - both preservation and new construction, and rural areas as well as cities." Jonathan Barnett "Urban Design draws together the many strands of place making: environmental environmental responsibility, responsib ility, social equity and econom economic ic viability for example - into the creation of places of beauty and distinct identity. Urban Design is derived 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 an d then deplo loy yin ing g the skill lls s and reso sour urc ces to re real aliz ize e th tha at vis isiion. n."" Urban Urban Desig Design n Comp Compen endi dium um,, Engli English sh Partn Partners ership hips s and and the Housi Housing ng Corpo Corporat ration ion,, Llewelyn-Davies, UK, 2000
Concepts about Urban Design: Urban Urban Desig Design n is a disci discipl pline ine and and a body body of pract practice ice.. There There are are many many concepts of what is Urban Design, about what constitutes its object, role and methods. •
Some focus on its role in physical planning or our cities, including street layout layout,, neigh neighbor borho hood od struc structur ture, e, block blocks s and and parce parcels, ls, build building ings s massi massing ng,, distribution and character of the open space:
"Urban Design is defined as the relationship between different buildings; the relationship between buildings and the streets, squares, parks, waterways and other spaces which make up the public domain; the nature and quality of the public domain itself; the relationship of one part of a village, town or city with other oth er pa parts rts;; an and d th the e pa patte tterns rns of mo move veme ment nt an and d ac activ tivity ity wh which ich are the there reby by established; in short, the complex relationships between all the elements of built and unbuilt space. As the appearanc appearance e and treatme treatment nt of the spaces between and around buildings is often of compara comparable ble importance to the design of the buildings themselves, themselv es, landscape design should be consider considered ed as an integral part of urban design. Urban design is not simply concerned with new development but also with wi th the main intten ena anc nce e and enhanc nce ement of exis isti tin ng devel elo opment nt.." Source: The Urban Design Alliance
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Othe Others rs emph emphas asiz ize e the the impo import rtan ance ce of publ public ic spac spaces es in crea creati ting ng and and maintai maintaining ning environ environmen ments ts that nurt nurtur ure e good good soci social al and and comm commun unit ity y relationships: relationships :
"Urban design is the art of making places for people. It includes the way places work and matters such as community safety, as well as how they look. It concerns the connections between people and places, movement and urban form, nature and the built fabric, and the processes for ensuring successful villages, towns and cities. Success, nowadays, rarely happens by chance. It depends on: - A clear framework provided by development plans and supplementary guidance delivered consistently, including through development control; - A sensitive response to the local context; judgments of what is feasible in terms of economic and market conditions; - An imaginative and appropriate design approach by those who design development and the people who manage the planning process" Source: "Planning for Urban Quality - Urban Design for Towns and Cities"- M. Perfect & G. Power
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Another concept distinguishes between urban design and other types of design and focuses on the process rather than on a specific object or methodology:
"Urban design is a second-order design (because urban design is design that is one step removed from the designed object; where the first-order design could be architecture, landscape architecture or interior design). Unlike other design professionals, today's urban designers rarely design built artifacts; rather they design the decision environment within which other designers make decisions to alter or add to the built environment. That is, urban designer is only indirectly responsible for designing built forms and spaces in between them. Contemporary urban design constitutes multiple clients, distributed decision-making, and a number of factors including economic, political, social and legal besides aesthetics, climate, and function." Source: Journal of Urban Design (contributed by Sandeep Kumar)
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Similarly, Jonathan Barnett summarized Urban Design as:
"Urban Design is designing the city without designing the buildings."
The Importance of Urban Design : Many urban design practitioners emphasize the role good design can play in achieving livable, successful communities: •
"Good urban design is essential if we are to produce attractive, high-quality, sustainable places in which people will want to live, work and relax. There is a clamour for better designed places which inspire and can be cherished, places where vibrant communities can grow and prosper. To achieve this we need to effect a culture change. Good design is important everywhere, not least in helping to bring rundown, neglected places back to life while the planning system has a key role to play in delivering better design, the creation of successful places depends on the skills of designers and the vision and commitment of those who employ them. No two places are identical and there is no such thing as a blueprint for good design. Good design always arises from a thorough and caring understanding of place and context."
Source: "By Design - Urban Design in the planning system: towards better practice" Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment, Department for Environment, Transport and Regions, UK •
"Many benefits can flow from urban design. Good design can help promote sustainable development; improve the quality of the existing environment; attract business and investment; reinforce civic pride and a sense of place; underpin the role of towns and cities as centres of culture and social activity; and relieve pressure for developments in out of town locations and on greenfield sites. Through its emphasis on quality in development it can also help to secure continued public acceptance of necessary new development."
Source: The Urban Design Alliance •
"Urban design is a key to creating sustainable developments and the conditions for a flourishing economic life, for the prudent use of natural resources and for social progress. Good design can help create lively places with distinctive character; streets and public spaces that are safe, accessible, pleasant to use and human in scale; and places that inspire because of the imagination and sensitivity of their designers."
Source: "Planning for Urban Quality - Urban Design for Towns and Cities"- M. Perfect & G. Power
RISE OF URBAN DESIGN: Urban design initially evolved at the end of 1960s as a critique of the built environment produced by modernist architects, urban planners, landscape architects and the other related professionals involved in the making of public realm. The majority of writings on urban design, therefore, are the product of postmodern thinking.
Why Urban Design is Important? The importance of urban design cn be grouped under three main headings: 1. Ecological Significance: Urban design involves modifying the natural environment. It follows, therefore, that the quality of the built environment will have important implications for the natural environment. Urban design largely deals with the quality of the built environment that are vital for preserving the natural environment. 2. Economic Significance: There is a cruel competition between the countries that are seeking to get a larger piece from the global economy. Therefore the quality of the built environment is the key factor that significantly affects local, regional and international image of countries and sets the stage for all economic activity. As Harvey points out that there is strong relationship between technological changes in the economic production and structural changes in the quality and production of urban spaces. In this context, urban design is an effective tool that advances the quality of the urban environment. 3. Social and Cultural Significance: An important factor determining why people choose to visit, invest in or relocate to a particular place is the "atmosphere" or the "cultural identity". Tourists now look for the "local culture" of places rather than a visit a particular art gallery, monument or place of natural beauty alone. Also a desirable location, good educational facilities, a friendly, caring community, a healthy and safe environment, good quality housing, and a competitive, stimulating local atmosphere are essential for business development. Therefore the "image of the local community" is becoming more significant to attract investors and tourist to that area. "Stress on personal identity", "the love of difference", "respect to otherness" are all coming from the spirit of postmodernism. These are the positive ones. Contradictory to this one can easily suggests that emphasizing the local colors is just a "commercial trap" for investors and tourists. Modernist motto of "form follows function" is modified by postmodernists’ "form follows finance." But from another point of view this trend also gives opportunity to enhance the physical quality of built environment and promotes the role of urban design.
Sources of Urban Design: •
One of the earliest writings in the field of urban design is Camillo Sitte’s "City Planning According to Artistic Principles" of 1889. Sitte was the admirer of Medieval and Renaissance forms. He suggested that the remedy could be found in a return to
methods of the medieval town a way humanizing the contemporary city. His emphasis on aesthetic quality of city’s public realms gave him a significant place in the timeline of urban design. American City Beautiful Movement in early 20th century and Charles Mulford Robinson's "The Improvement of Cities and Towns" of 1901 and "Modern civic Art" of 1903 are the another early efforts in this field. •
But the first usage of the term "urban design" was in 1956 in Urban Design Conferences at Harvard. These conferences encouraged for Harvard's launching an "Urban Design program" in 1959-60. In this decade Jane Jacobs’s, Kevin Lynch’s, Gordon Cullen’s, Christopher Alexander’s milestone works constituted the real body of urban design.
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Many current initiatives in urban regeneration and urban design take their inspiration from Jacobs' work "The Death and Life of Great American Cities: The Failure of Town Planning" published in 1961. In this book Jacobs attacked on CIAM’s Modernism and advocated that the publicly unowned spaces created by "city in the park" notion of Modernists are the main generators of the crime. Instead she proposed "eyes on the street" which means the resurrection of main public space precedents, streets and squares, in the design of cities.
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Furthermore Kevin Lynch published "The Image of the City" of 1961 which resulted the evolution of the concept of legibility based on five basic elements (paths, districts, edges, nodes, landmarks) His usage of mental maps in understanding of the city liberated urban designers from the previous two-dimensional physical master plans.
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Gordon Cullen's "The Concise Townscape", first published in 1961, has probably had the greatest influence on a many urban designers. Cullen examined the traditional artistic approach to city design found in the ideas of Camillo Sitte or Barry Parker and Raymond Unwin. He created the concept of "serial vision" which define the urban landscape as a series of related spaces. (Fig.1) His aesthetic approach in the designing of the picturesque urban quarters enriched the vocabulary of urban designers. Jacobs’s, Lynch’s and Cullen’s works originated from the view of the city dwellers. Other books, Rossi’s "Architecture of the City" (1965), Venturi’s "Learning from Las Vegas" (1972), Colin Rowe’s "Collage City" (1984), and Peter Calthorpe’s "The Next American Metropolis" (1993), were mostly based on theoretical and philosophical context. While Rossi bringing "historicism" and "collective memory" concept Rowe and Cotter proposed a "collage metaphor" that means the collage of new and older forms within the same urban space. On the other hand Calthorpe developed a manifesto for sustainable urban living at medium densities and a design manual for building new settlements with his concept of Transit Oriented Development (TOD). These works gave urban designers a postmodern idea of urban space and design. Also they provided the reviving interests on the terms "historicism", "sustainability", "livability", "aesthetic", "high quality of urban components" and so on.
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As we look at closer to these well-known works we see that the sources of urban design is mostly maintained by the postmodernists’ ideas. Therefore urban design can be seen as the by-product of postmodernism.
Figure 1. Gordon Cullen’s Concise Landscape: a city of serial visions
Scope of Urban Design: •
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Urban design has replaced the "civic design" which dealt primarily with city halls, museums, streets, boulevards, parks and other open spaces since 1960s. "Urban design is the generally accepted name for the process of giving physical design direction to urban growth, conservation, and change. It is understood to include landscape as well as buildings, both preservation and new construction, and rural areas as well as cities."
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"Simply defined, urban design is the composition of architectural form and open space in a community context. The elements of a city’s architecture are its buildings, urban landscape, and service infrastructure just as form, structure, and internal space are elements of a building. Whether public or private in actual ownership, urban design comprises the architecture of an entire community that all citizens can enjoy and identify their own. Like architecture, urban design reflects considerations of function, economics, and efficiency as well as aesthetic and cultural qualities."
The basis for a framework defining urban design can be grouped under six main headings according to The Institute for Urban Design (IUD)’s criteria: 1. Historic preservation and urban conservation 2. Design for pedestrians 3. Vitality and variety of use 4. The cultural environment 5. Environmental context 6. Architectural values
The jargon-free qualities, goals and principles describing urban design can be grouped under eight major headings: · · · · · · · ·
Place, Density, Mixed and compatible uses, Pedestrianization and human scale, Human culture, Public realm, Built environment Natural environment
Undoubtedly these classifications should be extended in a very widely range of topics. However in all these definitions we see that there is a strong emphasis on livability, historic preservation, environmental quality associated with aesthetic values, and positive urban space correspondence to basic human needs which are also the major themes of postmodern urbanism.
Urban Design in the Postmodern Urbanism: Themes of Postmodern Urbanism: Postmodernist idea of the city emerged as reaction against modernism. In "The Condition of Postmodernity" David Harvey defines the postmodern city with the rise of:
· historical eclecticism , (as inventing tradition by imitating the older forms) · multiculturalism , (reference with the locality and ethnicity) · and spectacle . (a theater scene, commercialization of built environment)
Debate between Urban Design and Urban Planning:
Urban planning emerged as the practical solution of the haphazard physical environment of the 19th century industrial city but later on developed as a discipline beyond the compressed framework of physical design. Because planners focused primarily on social, political and managerial aspects of the built environment they ignored the physical qualities of public realm. After 1960s architecture, planning, landscape architecture and other professionals blamed each other for declining urban quality. Urban design therefore initially developed as an attempt to build bridges between different design and planning professions and focused on the quality of the public realm. Although urban planning recognized the importance of urban design there is a debate between urban planning and urban design into two broad areas: emphasis on design, and scale. •
Role of Design: Spatial or Social?
One of the important critics of urban design is that the high priority given to aesthetics over ethics and other social issues. For example the physical design of a new quarter can be more important than the gentrification impacts within that area. Aesthetic over ethic or design over social management is one of the conflict points between urban design and urban planning. Urban design is not only dealing with visual and aesthetic qualities of urban • environment. in any case urban design should be formulated as balancing act bringing the urban planning spatial as well as social concerns. •
Urban Design Scale: •
Another debate between urban design and urban planning is around urban scale. Is macro or micro scale urban design possible? Urban design deals with urban space at all its scales. Threshold of urban design scale involves implications from individual land parcel to neighborhood, an entire city to the region in which a city lies. (Fig.6) In broader sense, urban design can be seen as "the art of creating possibilities for the use, management, and form of settlements or their significant parts" In micro scale, urban design is conceived as the design of small urban places which carries aesthetic and spatial concerns of arts and architecture.
Recent Trends and Facts affecting the Structure of Urban Design: The recent trends influencing the role of urban design can be collected at three major points: 1. Changes in Planning Profession: A recent trend in the planning profession has been away from the social issues and policy paths towards an urban design centered profession. If this trend continues, as some commentators suggest, by the year 2010 the planner will have to develop a broad design knowledge in order to effectively communicate with the designers of the urban environment or to actually design that environment. 2. Public Realm Design: Spaces between building are as important as the buildings
themselves. Urban design addresses the public realm, dealing with the structure of development, and the space between buildings. It is mainly about the physical design of the public domain. Public spaces are related to social behavior, transactions, culture, safety, commercial success, etc. that refers to gathering of people. Therefore public realm can be seen as a major factor in the urban design thinking. 3.Environmental Changes: Environmental change is more incremental and subject to increasing public review. For the future, the conventional development plan might become an instrument which will form part of a wider environmental policy formulated primarily within a science based environmentalism. Therefore, we should promote the development of environmental improvements combining with the urban design principles.
Figure 2:
Transformation of public realm as privatized, monitored indoor malls
Strictly speaking, urban design does not merely concerns with "design". Its scope is wider than producing nice images. It seriously deals with environmental, historic, public realm issues as both process and product. Urban design is still an emerging field but in the near future will face three important issues: · global competition which requires good urban design solutions to enhance the built environment; · sustainability which addresses environmental improvement and conservation; · decline in public realm which urban design chiefly concerns and need to be reconsidered. We should, therefore, think of urban design in a holistic approach that gives way a wider look in the solution of these issues.
Kevin A. Lynch:
Kevin Andrew Lynch (1918 Chicago, Illinois Massachusetts), American urban planner and author.
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1984
Martha's
Vineyard,
Lynch studied at Yale University, Taliesin (studio) under Frank Lloyd Wright, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and received a Bachelor's degree in city planning from MIT in 1947. He began lecturing at MIT the following year, became an assistant professor in 1949, was tenured as an associate professor in 1955, and became a full professor in 1963. •
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Lynch provided seminal contributions to the field of city planning through empirical research on how individuals perceive and navigate the urban landscape. His books explore the presence of time and history in the urban environment, how urban environments affect children, and how to harness human perception of the physical form of cities and regions as the conceptual basis for good urban design. Lynch's most famous work, "The Image of the City" published in 1960, is the result of a five-year study on how users perceive and organize spatial information as they navigate through cities. Using three disparate cities as examples (Boston, Jersey City, and Los Angeles), Lynch reported that users understood their surroundings in consistent and predictable ways, forming mental maps with five elements: •
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paths, the streets, sidewalks, trails, and other channels in which people travel; edges, perceived boundaries such as walls, buildings, and shorelines; districts, relatively large sections of the city distinguished by some identity or character; nodes, focal points, intersections or loci; and landmarks , readily identifiable objects which serve as reference points
In the same book Lynch also coined the words "imageability" and "wayfinding" . "Image of the City" has had important and durable influence in the fields of urban planning and environmental psychology.
The Urban Design Process:
We can try to summarize that Urban Design is about: Analyzing the Existing Context The analysis of the existing context could include studies of urban form, of space and building typologies, of local character. The study of urban morphology in its historical evolution analyzes the street layout, the size and shapes of city blocks, lots, the location and character of public spaces - streets, squares, plazas, courts, the massing, orientation and character of buildings seen as typologies. These studies are needed in order to understand the character of the exiting areas and the valuable lessons that can be learned for new developments or the rehabilitation of existing areas
Establishing a Vision The visioning process can be based on the continuation of existing traditions and local character or the introduction of new forms. The process is a participatory one, including a variety of professionals, local public, politicians, governmental and nongovernmental agencies. Creating a vision for a place is a balancing act between the talent and experience of the designers and the interest and participation of the community and can include public meetings and presentations, design workshops and charrettes in a complex visioning process.
Implementing the Vision
In order to implement the vision a variety of tools are needed: master plans or concept plans, massing studies, urban design guidelines, character studies, as well as making sure that the planning policies are fully supportive for the implementing the vision. Sound economic foundations are needed, favourable development practices and a consistent, flexible framework that can be sustained and adjusted in the long time needed in the complex process of place-making.
Creating the Framework Some general premises are needed for promoting good urban design: •
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A good regulatory framework that includes adequate tools and is supportive of good design; A pool of well educated professionals in municipal and private practice that are capable to create the vision and implement it; A large number of professionals - planners, architects, landscape architects, engineers, an educated public and educated politicians that understand the importance of urban design and are willing to promote its goals; and Good communication, good will and work for achieving consensus among all the participants in the city building process.
Urban Spatial Form: Urban spatial form or simply urban form has always been used to depict the character of the physical component of the urban environment. Within the framework of this interpretation, several aspects of urban form have emerged which could be grouped into three main types: density, grain and spatial pattern . Size, texture, scale, and shape which are sometimes considered as aspects of urban spatial form by some urban designers, are strictly speaking descriptive elements of the three mentioned aspects of urban spatial forms.
DENSITY: Density is associated with significant effects on the built environment. It basically concerns space requirements or allocations to different uses, and is usually measured in terms of land use ratios and number of persons/households per unit ground area. When measured in these ways, density is referred to as physical density and population density respectively. On the one hand, physical density is concerned with land use ratios of which the most commonly used are plot ratio and plot coverage. While plot coverage is the gross ground floor area of all buildings to their plot area, plot ratio is the ratio of all floors of all buildings to their plot area. The two ratios can also be expressed as percentages. On the other hand, population density is usually measured as numbers of persons per unit ground area of a development. It can also be expressed in terms of units of ground area per certain number of people. Where the family unit is stable, number of households may be used instead of number of persons.
GRAIN: The second aspect, grain, is related to the manners in which various physical elements of an urban area, e.g. buildings, land uses, etc. are mixed. According to Lynch (1981), grain of an urban area is fine when like elements or small groups of like elements are widely dispersed among unlike elements. The grain is coarse when large portions of the urban area comprising one type of elements are separated from other large portions of the area consisting of a different type of elements. In terms of land use for example, urban areas with mixed land uses have fine grain while those with segregated land uses have coarse grain. Grain of an urban area therefore defines the degree of intimacy with which its different physical elements are related.
SPATIAL PATTERN: Finally, spatial pattern concerns the geometrical dispositioning of the physical elements of an urban area. In this context, the concept of urban spatial pattern has so far been described in two closely related ways. By the first description, spatial patterns are seen as street layouts. Street layouts are traffic circulation systems or networks of movement channels. The second description conceives spatial patterns as relationships of urban solids and voids. Urban solids may be individual buildings, groups of buildings or urban blocks whereas urban voids are different types of urban spaces. The second description therefore gives the concept a comprehensive perspective which allows spatial patterns to be examined in terms of not only street layouts but locational arrangement of different types of urban solids and nature of urban space treatment as well.
Lynch (1981) in propagating his normative theory of good urban form, presents six broad categories of qualities or what he calls performance dimensions which he contends that people/observers use as basis for making judgements about goodness of urban spatial forms. He presents the six dimensions as: vitality, sense, fit, access, control, efficiency, and justice.
SPATIAL DEFINITION:
Spatial definition is a conscious process of form-giving to an otherwise amorphous, formless space. This includes the provision of edges, giving dimensions (i.e., width, length and height), as well as ensuring scale, proportions and other spatial design qualities.
Figure:
Six Typological Patterns of Solids & Voids
The solid-void relationship formed by the shape and location of buildings, the design of site-elements (plantings, walls) and the channeling of movement result in six typological patterns: grid, angular, curvilinear/concentric, axial and organic.
Figure: Diagram of the Types of Urban Solids & Voids In the traditional city three principal types of urban solids have evolved: public monuments & institutions (A), the predominant field of urban blocks (B); and edgedefining buildings (C) . There are five main types of urban voids that perform various functions in the exterior space of the city: entry foyers (D) act as passageways between private and public space, inner block voids (E) are semi-private transition zones, the network of streets & squares (F) corresponds to the predominant field of blocks and contain the active public life of the city, parks & gardens (G) are nodes that contrast with architectural urban forms, while linear open space systems (H) , usually associated with natural features such as river-ways, water-fronts and wetlands, cut through urban districts to establish edges and create larger scale con nections.
Figure:
Typical Entry Foyer and Inner-block Courtyard, Copenhagen, Denmark
The entry foyer establishes the important transition, or passage, between personal domain and public territory. It is intimate in scale, visible to a small group, and provides a vital buffer of security between private and communal zone. The inner-block void is also an important transition zone between semi-private and fully public space for leisure or utility or as a mid-block oasis or urban-park.
Fig: Plan-Diagram of Streets & Squares
Fig:
The Park in the City-grid
