T6 Urban Design Definitions

To create our own urban design definition, as a group (me, Emma, Nik) we started by highlighting the key words from all three of our initial definitions of Urban Design. From my original:

'Urban Design - Strategically creating a set of rules or ‘framework’ on a wider scale that, through analysis of context, user groups and infrastructure, protects existing attributes and culture, yet allows for the development of new routes, public and private architecture, and the spaces inbetween.'

From this we developed the following definition:

'To look at the city at its varying scales, studying the roles each part plays to protect existing attributes and culture, yet allowing for the development of new routes; public and private, and the spaces in between.'

Realizing that our use of the word 'part' perhaps wasn't elaborate enough, we then used the spider diagram to map what we believed formed the constituent parts of Urban Design.

(insert diagram here)

Further research into the definition of Urban Design, both in critical literature and in practicing 'urban designers' marketing statements led to the following definitions:

‘Public space is the stage upon which the drama of communal life unfolds. The streets, squares, and parks of a city give form to the ebb and flow of human exchange. These dynamic spaces are an essential counterpart to the more settled places and routines of work and home life, providing the channels for movement, the nodes of communication, and the common grounds for play and relaxation.’(1)

'Since real life is never linear, a strong vision and a flexible approach give master plans the resilience they need to guide development over time. Whether they’re for a city or community or an individual developer or property owner, successful master plans are robust enough to overcome the push and pull of the unforeseen, while creating added value at every stage of implementation.

Gensler’s planners work globally on a broad range of projects, from new urban districts and developments to suburban and exurban campuses, centers and communities. Sustainability is an important focus—with equal concern for the socio-economic health of the community and for its environmental quality. As urban designers, we know how to bring forward the experiential attributes that make a place memorable and attractive.'(2)

Smart urbanism is our working methodology for enabling change and delivering complexity in our towns and cities. It is how our ‘thinking’ and ‘tools’ can be applied to fix the ‘broken’. It could be termed ‘emergent’ urbanism or ‘open source’ urbanism or even ‘sustainable’ or ‘collaborative’ urbanism and certainly has the qualities of all.

Smart Urbanism has its roots in the belief that uniqueness of place is reflected against the backdrop of a clearly defined urban order. This order, in turn, provides the necessary framework for urban variety and provides the palette for the “city of a thousand designers”. While the underlying strategy is to extend and elaborate the structure and intensity of the city, there is a recognition of its implicit unpredictability.

Smart Urbanism has seven drivers to foster emergence. All are overlapping and self-reinforcing. All are essential:

• COMPACTNESS: Places that capitalise on the collective and collateral benefits of closeness, contiguity and concentration.
• COMPLEXITY: Places that offer the rich, varied and cumulative benefits of evolved mixed use development.
• CONNECTEDNESS: Places that offer a choice of movement modes that are a consequence of coherent networks.
• COLLABORATIVE: Places that foster civicness, sense of community, cohesiveness and build social capital.
• CO:EFFICIENT: Places that factor in local environmental capital in all aspects of daily life.
• CO-PRODUCTIVE: Places that are open to emergence and change by facilitating individual and collective actions.
• COOLNESS: Places that are comfortable, creative, confident that have a strong sense of identity, ethics and values.

(1) Public Space, Stephen Carr, Mark Francis, Leanne G Rivlin, Andrew M Stone, General Editors: Daniel Stokols, Irwin Altman, Cambridge University Press, 1992

(2) Gensler website

(3) Urban Initiatives http://www.urbaninitiatives.co.uk/init.php?init=1