Urban design

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Urban design concerns the arrangement, appearance and functionality of towns and cities.

Its focus is particularly on public space (a.k.a. the ‘public environment’, ‘public realm’ or ‘public domain’) including the totality of spaces that are used freely on a day-to-day basis by the general public. This encompasses streets and parks together with public infrastructure and privately owned places. It is concerned with the way these places are experienced and used, and so facades of buildings and other elements that contribute to the quality of public space are considered although the emphasis is on spaces between buildings rather than on the buildings themselves. Important writers on – and advocates for – the use of public space in this sense include Jane Jacobs, William H. Whyte and Jan Gehl. After World War II, Gordon Cullen, assistant editor of the Architectural Review, was widely influential for his series of artciles in that journal about "townscape," (cityscape) as well as several books on urban design.

Urban design considers:

  • Structure – How a place is put together and how its parts relate to each other
  • Accessibility – Providing for ease, safety and choice when moving to and through places
  • Legibility – Helping people to find their way around and understand how a place works
  • Animation – Designing places to stimulate public activity
  • Function and fit – Shaping places to support their varied intended uses
  • Complementary mixed uses – Locating activities to allow constructive interaction between them
  • Character and meaning – Recognizing and valuing the differences between one place and another
  • Order and incident – Balancing consistency and variety in the urban environment in the interests of appreciating both
  • Continuity and change – Locating people in time and place, including respect for heritage and support for contemporary culture
  • Civil society – Making places where people are free to encounter each other as civic equals

Public spaces are frequently subject to overlapping management responsibilities of multiple public agencies or authorities and the interests of nearby property owners, as well as the requirements of multiple and sometimes competing users. The design, construction and management of public spaces therefore typically demands consultation and negotiation at a variety of levels, and urban designers rarely have the degree of artistic liberty or control sometimes offered in design professions such as architecture. It also typically requires interdisciplinary input with balanced representation of multiple fields including engineering, ecology, local history, and transport planning.

The scale and degree of detail considered varies depending on context and needs. It ranges from the layout of entire cities, as with l’Enfant’s plan for Washington DC and Griffin and Mahony’s plan for Canberra (although such opportunities are obviously rare), through ‘managing the sense of a region’ as described by Kevin Lynch, to the design of street furniture.

Urban design may encompass the preparation of design guidelines or even legislation to control development, advertising, etc. and in this sense overlaps with urban planning. It may encompass the design of particular spaces and structures and in this sense overlaps with architecture, landscape architecture and industrial design. It may also deal with ‘place management’ to guide and assist the use and maintenance of urban areas.

Much urban design work is undertaken by urban planners, landscape architects and architects but there are professionals who identify themselves specifically as urban designers and some university programs that offer degrees in urban design.

[edit] Equalities Issues in Urban Design

Disability

Until the 1970s urban designers had taken very little account of the needs of people with disabilities. At that time disabled people themselves began to form movements to demand recognition of their potential contribution if social obstacles were removed. Disabled people challenged the “medical model” of disability which saw physical and mental problems as an individual “tragedy” and people with disabilities as “brave” for enduring them. They proposed instead a “social model” which said that the barriers to disabled people were due to the design of the built environment and the attitudes of able-bodied people. “Access Groups” were established composed of people with disabilities who audited their local areas, checked planning applications and made representations for improvements. The new profession of “access officer” was established around that time to produce guidelines based on the recommendations of access groups and to oversee adaptations to existing buildings as well as to check on the accessibility of new proposals. Many local authorities now employ access officers who are regulated by the Access Association. A new chapter of the Building Regulations (Part M) was introduced in 1992. Although it was beneficial to have legislation on this issue the requirements were fairly minimal but continue to be improved with ongoing amendments. The Disability Discrimination Act 1995 continues to raise awareness and enforce action on disability issues in the urban environment.

Gender

Little consideration was given to the issues of gender in the urban environment until the establishment of Women's Design Servicein 1987. A group of women architects and planners expressed concern that women’s issues were being largely ignored by planners, architects and urban designers. They explored a problem with the personal nature of design: the designer tends to see themselves at the end of the pencil or mouse, and imagines themselves in the space they are designing. When the vast majority of clients, planners, architects, engineers and construction personnel are white, able-bodied men this tends to create an urban environment that reflects the needs and experiences of those people. Illustrating this is Le Corbusier’s famous call for buildings and urban environments to be designed to a human scale: the scale that he developed in the Modulor was based on a six foot tall man.

Gender-aware urban design aims to raise awareness of this problem and cater to a human model that reflects both genders. Statistically women are smaller, have a shorter reach and are less physically strong than most men. The heights of stairs, handrails, door handles, chairs and many other designed elements tend to be appropriate to male ergonomics. The design of items such as door closers match an able-bodied man’s strength. Women have different physical functions which means they require different toilet provision, areas for breast-feeding, accommodations for pregnancy, all of which have until recently been largely ignored by designers. Women’s social position also has implications for urban design. Women still bear the major responsibility for caring for children and elderly relatives. They are still more likely to organise domestic responsibilities such as shopping and housework. Women have less access to use of a private car and are the greater users of buses. However the routes and timetables for public transport have been designed around the needs of commuters going into the centre at peak times and not around the needs of women delivering children to childcare, then visiting a relative, then going to work, then shopping, then collecting children again. Gender aware urban design seeks to acknowledge these issues in the way that our towns, cities, buildings, transport and open spaces are planned, designed and managed.

Ethnicity

Different cultures have different ideas about public space. For example, in Islam, a private space can be turned into a public space by the presence of a person of the opposite sex that could theoretically be a marriage partner.

[edit] External links

[edit] See also

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