1.1.

Scope of Urban Design

Urban design has replaced the "civic design" which dealt primarily with city halls, museums, streets,
boulevards, parks and other open spaces since 1960s. However there is not a consensus about the
definition and boundaries of urban design.

URBAN DESIGN concerns the arrangement, appearance and functionality of towns and cities, and in
particular the shaping and uses of urban public space. It has traditionally been regarded as a disciplinary
subset of urban planning, landscape architecture, or architecture and in more recent times has been
linked to emergent disciplines such as landscape urbanism. However, with its increasing prominence in
the activities of these disciplines, it is better conceptualized as a design practice that operates at the
intersection of all three, and requires a good understanding of a range of others besides, such as real
estate development, urban economics, political economy and social theory.

Urban Design is,

• The process of giving physical design direction to urban growth, conservation, and change
• The design of cities - 'a grand design'
• The interface between architecture, landscape and town planning
• The complex relationships between all the elements of built and unbuilt space (DoE, 1996)
• The architecture of public space

Some theoreticians rather not to describe urban design but to explain what it is not:
• It is not land use policy, sign controls, and street lighting districts.
• It is not strictly utopian or procedural.
• It is not necessarily a plan for downtown, however architectonic, nor a subdivision regulation.

Descriptions explained above suggest that there is no easy, single, agreed definition of urban
design. However we can determine the general framework of urban design.

Definitions
 Urban design, or the art of building cities, is the method by which man creates a built environment
that fulfils his aspirations and represents his values.

 Urban design can be described as a people’s use of an accumulated technological knowledge to

control and adapt the environment in sustainable ways for social, economic, political and spiritual
requirements

 Sustainable urban design- development which is nondamaging to the physical environment and
which contributes to the city’s ability to sustain its social and economic structures, is one important
aspect of ‘commoditie’.

 Urban design is the process of designing and shaping cities, towns and villages. Whereas
architecture focuses on individual buildings, urban design address the larger scale of groups of
buildings, of streets and public spaces, whole neighborhoods and districts, and entire cities, to
make urban areas functional, attractive, and sustainable

 Urban design is an inter-disciplinary subject that unites all the built environment professions,
including urban planning, landscape architecture, architecture, civil and municipal engineering.
  Urban design involves the arrangement and design of buildings, public spaces, transport systems,
services, and amenities.

 Urban design blends architecture, landscaping, and city planning together to make urban areas
functional and attractive

 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

 the art of creating and shaping cities and towns

 Urban design involves the arrangement and design of buildings, public spaces, transport systems,
services, and amenities. Urban design is the process of giving form, shape, and character to
groups of buildings, to whole neighborhoods, and the city.

 It is a framework that orders the elements into a network of streets, squares, and blocks. Urban
design blends architecture, landscape architecture, and city planning together to make urban
areas functional and attractive.

 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 is derived from but transcends planning and transportation policy, architectural
design, development economics, engineering and landscape. It 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.

"The building of cities is one of man's greatest achievements." -Edmund Bacon

 Urban design involves place-making - the creation of a setting that imparts a sense of place to an
area.

 This process is achieved by establishing identifiable neighborhoods, unique architecture,

aesthetically pleasing public places and vistas, identifiable landmarks and focal points, and a
human element established by compatible scales of development and ongoing public
stewardship.

 Other key elements of placemaking include: lively commercial centers, mixed-use development
with ground-floor retail uses, human-scale and context-sensitive design; safe and attractive public
areas; image-making; and decorative elements in the public realm.

 Urban design practice areas range in scale from small public spaces or streets to neighborhoods,
city-wide systems, or whole regions. "Urban design and city building are surely among the most
auspicious endeavors of this or any age, giving rise to a vision of life, art, artifact and culture that
outlives its authors. It is the gift of its designers and makers to the future. Urban design is
essentially an ethical endeavor, inspired by the vision of public art and architecture and
reified by the science of construction." -Donald Watson
Components of Urban Space and their Interdependencies
Buildings: Are the most pronounced elements of urban design - they shape and articulate space forming
the street walls of the city.
Public Space: Is the place where people come together to enjoy the city and each other. Great
public spaces are the living room of the city.
Streets: Are the connections between spaces and places, as well as being spaces themselves.
Transport: Transport systems connect the parts of cities and help shape them, and enable
movement throughout the city.
Landscape: Is the green part of the city that weaves throughout. It appears in form of urban
parks, street trees, plants, flowers, and water in many forms.

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 creative articulation of space

Is the most prominent aspect of urban design. The following artistic principles are an integral part of
creating form and spatial definition:
•Unity
•Balance
•Proportion
•Scale
•Hierarchy
•Symmetry
•Rhythm
•Contrast
•Context
•Detail
•Texture
•Harmony
•Beauty
•Order
COMMUNITY ARCHITECTURE

COMMUNITY PLANNING is a forward planning process, which identifies human and material
resources and puts in place potential response system. It involves active participation from the people
residing in that locality in making decision about the implementation of processes, programmed and
projects, which affect them.

In other words, a community plan is a list of activities a neighborhood, community or a group of people
agree to follow to prevent loss of life, livelihoods and property in case of warning or a disaster. The Plan
identifies in advance action to be taken by individuals, in the community so that each one knows what to
do when a warning is received or when a disaster strikes. The major thrust is to address
possible scenario of an event and focus on the impact the humanitarian operations

To make it clearer of what Community Architecture really is, in the following table, taken from the
book Community Architecture: How People are Creating Their Own Environment by Knevitt and Wates,
the diffrences between Conventional architecture and Community architecture are presented.

Conventional architecture Community architecture

Status of user Users are passive recipients Users are – or are treated as – the
of an environment conceived, clients. They are offered (or take)
executed, managed and control of commissioning,
evaluated by others: designing, developing, managing,
corporate, public or private and evaluating their environment,
sector landowners and and may sometimes be physically
developers with professional involved in construction.
experts.
User/expert relationship Remote, arm’s length. Little if Creative alliance and working
any direct contact. Experts – partnership. Experts are
commissioned by landowners commissioned by, and are
and developers – occasionally accountable to users, or behave
make superficial attempts to as if they are.
define and consult end-users,
but their attitudes are mostly
paternalistic and patronizing
Expert’s role Provider, neutral bureaucrat, Enabler, facilitator, and ‘social
elitist, ‘one of them’, entrepreneur’, educator, ‘one of
manipulator of people to fit the us’, manipulator of the system to fit
system, a professional in the the people and challenger of the
institutional sense. Remote status quo; a professional as a
and inaccessible. competent and efficient adviser.
Locally based and accessible.
Scale of project Generally large and often Generally small, responsive and
cumbersome. Determined by determined by the nature of the
pattern of land ownership and project, the local building industry
the need for efficient mass and the participants. Large sites
production and simple generally broken down into
management. manageable packages.
 Location of project Fashionable and wealthy Anywhere, but most likely to be
existing residential, urban, or periphery of urban areas;
commercial and industrial area of single or multiple
areas preferred. Otherwise a deprivation; derelict or decaying
greenfield site with environment.
infrastructure (roads, power,
water supply, and drainage,
etc.): i. e. no constraints.
Use of project Likely to be a single function Likely to be muti-functional
or two or three complimentary
activities (e.g. commercial,
housing or industrial)
Design style Self-conscious about style; Unselfconscious about style. Any
most likely ‘international’ or style may be adopted as
‘modern movement’. appropriate. Most likely to be
Increasingly one of the other ‘contextual’, ‘regional’ (place-
fashionable and identifiable specific) with concern for identity.
styles: post-modern, hi-tech, Loose and sometimes exuberant;
neo-vernacular or classical often highly decorative, using local
revival. Restrained and artists.
sometimes frigid; utilitarian.
Technology/resources Tendency towards: mass Tendency toward: small-scale
production, prefabrication, production, on-site construction,
repetition, global supply of individuality, local supply of
materials, machine-friendly materials, user-friendly (convivial)
technology, ‘clean sweep’ and technology, re-use, recycling and
new build, machine intensive, conservation, labour and time
capital intensive. intensive.
End product Static, slowly deteriorates, Flexible, slowly improving, easy to
hard to manage and maintain, manage and maintain, low energy
high energy consumption. consumption.

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
1.2. Role of Urban Design
Urban design is generally considered neither a profession nor a discipline. There is a trend to
formulate urban design as the interface between architecture and town planning, or the gap between
them.

• For example, when Kevin Lynch saw urban design as a branch of architecture Michael Southworth
on the other hand thought urban design as a branch of urban planning.

"It is easier to talk about urban design than to write about it… In between (planning and architecture),
but belonging neither to one nor the other, lies the magic world of urban design. We can recognize it
by its absence. It is inferred, suggested, felt."

• Another commentator Jonathan Barnett also recognizes the crucial role of urban design between the
urban planning and architecture:

"What is the difference between an urban designer and urban planner, or between an urban
designer and an architect?
An urban planner was some one who was primarily concerned with the allocation of resources
according to projections of future need. Planners tend to regard land use as a distribution of
resources problem, parcelling out land, for zoning purposes, without much knowledge of its three-
dimensional characteristics, or the nature of the building that may be placed on it in the future.
The result is that most zoning ordinances and official land use plans produce stereotyped and
unimaginative buildings.

Architect, on the other hand, designs buildings. A good architect will do all he can to relate the
building he is designing to its surroundings, but he has no control over what happens off the
property he has been hired to considered.

There is a substantial middle ground between these professions, and each has some claim to it,
but neither fills it very well. Land use planning would clearly be improved if it involved someone
who understands three-dimensional design. On the other hand, some one is needed to design
the city, not just the buildings. Therefore, there was a need for someone who could be
called an urban designer."

Undoubtedly urban design cannot stand alone between these three main professions. Urban
design is an interdisciplinary concept and should be considered with the other disciplines and
professions such as Real Estate Development, Economics, Civil Engineering, Law, Social
Sciences and Natural Sciences.
1.3. Urban Design Process
Four basic phases of urban design:

1. Analysis

a. Gathering of Basic Information

It includes understanding the structure, organization, and pattern of urban areas. Basic information is
gathered on such items as land use, population, transportation, natural systems, and topography.
Designers also examine the varied character of the site and the structure of neighborhoods and business
areas. Problems and design goals are identified.

b. Visual Survey
The visual survey is a standard part of any urban design study. It is an examination of the form,
appearance, and composition of a city or neighborhood. To conduct a visual survey, one must have a
basic idea of the elements of urban form. (The most prominent is the study of Kevin Lynch: Paths, Nodes,
Edges, Districts and Landmarks as five basic skeletal elements of a city form) Next, one must examine
the city and describe it in terms of this vocabulary.

c. Identification of hard and soft areas

The definition of hard (e.g. public parks) and soft areas (e.g. business district) helps to designer to know
what parts of the city can accommodate growth and change and what parts are essentially fixed because
they may be occupied, for example, by a historic landmark. Such information is of considerable value in
the latter stages of the urban design process when proposed plans must be evaluated for feasibility of
implementation.

d. Functional Analysis
The functional analysis examines the relationship of activities among the various land uses and the way
that relate to circulation systems. This study builds on the work of the land-use planners. However, the
urban designer carries the study into three dimensions. (e.g. changing of building heights to street width
ratio over time.)

2. Synthesis
In this phase, the data gathered and the analysis of the problem must be translated into proposal for
action. The first component of synthesis phase is the evolution of concepts that address the problem.
Concepts are followed by the development of schematic design proposals. These proposals are more
specific in nature. Schematics are followed by preliminary plans.

3. Evaluation
Evaluation occurs at many levels, ranging from meeting technical demands to the ability to gain public
acceptance. After the design proposals are complete, it is essential that they be evaluated in the light of
the original problem or issue they were intended to address. One of the more complicated tasks
associated with evaluation is determining what criteria should be employed. There are two basic
categories:

(1) how well the solutions fit the problem and

(2) how readily the proposals can be implemented.

4. Implementation
During the implementation, the strategy for actual financing and construction is formulated. Detailed
phasing studies and tools are considered to realize the project.

2. Urban Design Theory

2.1. Urban Spatial Design Theories (R.Trancik, Finding Lost Space, 1988)
1. Figure-Ground Theory
The figure-ground theory is founded on the study of the relative land coverage of

Solid masses 􀃆 (“figure”) (buildings)

Open voids􀃆 (”ground”) (parks, streets, squares)

A predominant “field” of solids and voids creates the urban fabric.

[Remember the first lecture: Elements of Built Environment: masses (m) / spaces (s) / paths (p)]
The figure-ground approach to spatial design is an attempt to manipulate the solid-void relationships by
adding to, subtracting from, or changing the physical geometry of the pattern.

The figure-ground drawing is a graphic tool for illustrating mass-void relationships; a two-dimensional
abstraction in plan view that clarifies the structure and order of urban spaces.

Urban Solids:
[m] Public Monuments or institutions (Ziggurat, Pyramid, Gothic or Baroque Churches etc.)

[m] Urban Blocks (Krier’s mission is to reconstruct the traditional urban block as the definer of
streets and square)

[m] Edge-defining Buildings -establish an edge of the district- (Berlage’s Housing district in
Amsterdam, 1915)

Urban Voids:

[s] Entry foyer space –establishes the important transition from personal domain to common
territory- (fore court, mews, niche, lobby, front yard)

[s] Inner block void –a semi private residential space for leisure or utility- (courtyard and covered
passage)

[p] Network of streets and squares –places to spend time in and corridors through which to move-

[s] Public parks and gardens –nodes for the preservation of nature in the city, places for
recreation-

[p] Linear open-space system commonly related to major water features such as rivers,
waterfronts, and wetland zones.

2. Linkage Theory
Linkage theory is derived from “lines” connecting one element to another. These lines are formed
by streets, pedestrian ways, linear open spaces, or other linking elements that psychically connect
the parts of a city. ‘

The designer applying the linkage theory tries to organize a system of connections, or a network,
that establishes a structure for ordering spaces. Emphasis is placed on circulation diagram rather
than the spatial diagram of the figure-ground theory. Movement systems and the efficiency of
infrastructure take precedence over patterns of defined outdoor space.
3. Place Theory
The place theory adds the components of human needs and cultural, historical, and natural
contexts. Advocates of the place theory give physical space additional richness by incorporating
unique forms and details indigenous to its setting. In place theory social and cultural values, visual
perceptions, of users and an individual’s control over public environment are as important as
principles of enclosure and linkage.
2.2. Urban Design Paradigms
1. Urban Design Theory on the European Continent
Neo-Rationalism

Neo-Classicism

2. Urban Design Theory: The Anglo-American Axis

The Townscape Movement

Venturi and Contextualism

Historical Eclecticism

Neo-traditional Urbanism

Additional Sources on Urban Design

1. P. D. Spreiregen, The Architecture of Towns and Cities
2. G. Broadbent, Emerging Concepts in Urban Design
3. Kevin Lynch, Good City Form
4. N. Ellin, Postmodern Urbanism
5. A. Madanipour, Design of Urban Space