It’s quite telling just how many people struggle to define any meaningful remits for the field of “urban design”. It’s taken me the best part of 3 years in practice and post grad education to figure it out.

Personally, I’d stay away from attempting to define environs as either “good” or “bad” examples of urban design; these terms inadvertently imply a sort of “one size fits all” solution for a particular problem. This is why so many planners, Politians and even architects think “active frontage” or a “courtyard block” is a one stop shop for solving any given issue.

UD work encompasses quite a wide variety of project types and is therefore difficult to get your head around (this is perhaps why it can often appear meaningless); masterplanning is probably its most prominent cornerstone. Other types of programs remain purely analytical, and in the broadest sense graphically communicate ideas related to urban planning. Public consultation like charrettes is a tool not exclusively utilized by urban designers and perhaps more a specialization in its own right.

I find the base way to categorize – and subsequently understand - UD projects are either by scale or by lifecycle. Large scale projects are normally undertaken by the public sector as a mechanism for establishing broad design guidance like heights, land uses, and primary access. Typically, smaller parcels of the project are evolved by private developers who are looking to obtain planning permission. In other instances work as an urban designer might involve working at the early stages of a smaller scale schemes – for example residential schemes of less than 100 units. Here one might expect to define layouts, block arrangements, heights, massing and access, before an architect/landscape architect begins detailing. Other examples of projects include city wide strategies, or design guidance – like I said it is really very varied.

The best way to get better acquainted with the types of projects, potential cliental and their role in the development process is to look at examples on consultant’s websites’. The Urban Design Group lists most UD practices operating in the UK and is generally a good source for further information.

link

If you’re interested in working in UD, I’d suggest a post graduate qualification is a minimum requirement. Also bear in mind large scale projects are limited at the moment, and therefore the job market is pretty dire.

MixmasterF - your definition of 'urban design' sounds very much like landscape architecture, esp. with the inclusion of hydrology and ecology. Most urban designers I've worked with have a knack for creating street furnishings and graphics - otherwise, the LA's tend to do a better job with more complex spaces and for integrating ecosystem services into urban places. But there are folks out there that focus on creating great streets and public places in urban settings that don't get easily categorized, except as urban designers.

I was about to say the same thing, barry.

The 'problem' with urban design is the design part. Urban design is many things but it doesn't seem much of any one thing. However-- with many things-- adding design to it is suppose to give something some variety of new found application.

I think the growing responsibility of urban design is being pushed by a variety of other ideologies in order for the basic tenants of urban design to supersede basic legal and fundamental aspects of planning. The most aggressive groups behind urban design seem to be Landscape Urbanism and New Urbanism.

It seems to be taking credit of all of the positives of general urban planning work while avoiding the negatives.

One other problem with network analysis and path finding is that it is more or less complete bunk.



The related mathematical "shortest paths problem" sheds light on this. Often one sees also sorts of pretty and well-thought circulation diagrams analyzing how traffic will move in a particular project.

Often times, clever types like architects, landscape architects and urban designers try to intellectualize the path either through romance or logic.

However, humans are lazy and sometimes highly irrational. But most of the time, lazy. We're pre-programmed to limit caloric expenditures. And it in doing so, people will generally make their own paths and follow the ones made by others.

In this aspect, 'network analysis' would be to specify every entry and exit point, every point of interest and then draw a line connecting every single point. You'll find that your "paths of least resistance" will either resemble something grid-esque or look exceptionally disgusting.

Thanks all for your replies; this is enlightening! A lot of people in other places seem to have been talking about 'urban design' without specifying what they meant, so it's good to know that it, in fact, *does* mean a whole bunch of different things.

As far as disciplines go, I'm currently looking at this from the acoustical side (of all places), and my immediate project may involve a phase where I show how acoustical analysis could interface with (or drive) the design of urban-scaled areas.

I suppose my interest stems from the terminal project for my other degree, where I developed a transit-centered evolutionary formal framework for how cities could develop, applied the framework all over a fairly suburban city, and then explored some of the architectural implications. While there was some density and form study, I don't know if I'd consider it a full 'urban design' project because it lacks, say, rigorous analysis of the transit system or flows of natural and human resources across the city that would suggest that it 'works' from anything other than some existing urban-design literature and density studies. If I were to really do such a thing well, I'd think that the results should be based on something more than a literature review and a few simple calculations. (A good bibliography or even textbook list would be helpful, also, if anyone has one ;-) )

For the purposes of design, I get the feeling that 'ecosystem' doesn't necessarily have to equal 'natural world', and 'network analysis' doesn't necessarily have to equal 'paths you put on the ground'; you could take an ecosystemic approach of resource flows and webs to manmade things as well. For example, where do the different categories of people from your site come from, where and how are they expected to interact, and what do they produce/consume? How does this interface with the surrounding transportation networks, or with existing natural systems you might (re)create on the site? How do the spaces and buildings 'grow' from these conditions? It shouldn't be a completely deterministic analysis, but it should be able to help you understand the general idea of what things are doing on the site.

I'd be interested to see if such process work comes out of existing firms that market themselves as 'urban designers', as I'd think that this would be a very helpful aspect of providing meaningful design. (I'm not actually sure how this is really different from a lot of process work already being done in other fields, except maybe just a bit more detailed.) It'd certainly be interesting to see as a counterpoint to the finished product, which sometimes feels like they just made something up from a purely 'design' standpoint.

UrbanLab seems to be a pretty good place to start looking, for example, but I can't recall seeing this kind of base-level research coming out of, say, DPZ (unless you're talking about their books, and in that case it seems these kind of analyses more implied than directly stated). I guess different urban designers do different things, though, and so there may actually be many different paths of design than the way I described above.

(Caveat: for modeling systems, you must walk the dog and not the other way around. Network analysis, etc. can help you understand your own implications better, but shouldn't replace your thinking ;-) )

(Other caveat: what I've described above is probably actually the work of a whole series of differently-categorized professionals, so it's not like you'd need to learn this all yourself. However, it's helpful to know what is going on out there, and where you'd fit!)

MMf - check out Dan Hill's blog, city of sound for all things acoustic and urban. Arup acoustics also is doing some interesting work (in collaboration with Mr. Hill).

I take issue with architects and 'designers' using 'ecosystem' to describe anything other then the biosphere. NO, NO, NO, there is not an 'ecosystem of furniture' or kitchen appliances or design practices (I still like Lisa Tilder and Beth Blostein despite this).

network analysis isn't networked urbanism, which has many interesting implications for landscapes and cities beyond ubiquity that has nothing to do with desire paths or mathematical calculations of the shortest route between points. But that would be a separate thread.

*ROFL* at 'ecosystem of furniture'. Architects are pretty famous for appropriating highly technical terms used to describe concepts that are maybe not so technically rigorous in practice (urban morphologists sometimes complain about this also). Is there a preferred term for describing an analysis of flows of resources and networked interactions between discrete elements that form a system together that is not natural? 'Afranibdetfast(tinn)' is sort of an awkward acronym.

From the other side of the 'technical spectrum', I guess the root of my question is: are there mathematical or scientific principles that could be / are effectively appropriated to the purposes of urban design? Afranibdetfast(tinn) seems to be one possible way for the urban designer to effectively gauge the success of a design, but as far as its technical rigor, I don't know if I'd apply bird population models to retail job population models. (Or would I? It's an area I'd like to find out more about ;-) )

City of Sound looks pretty spectacular; I'll make a point to peruse this resource more thoroughly, because the few articles I've read are definitely directly in my path of interest.

...retail space provision models, maybe, instead of job population. Job population seems more in the realm of the economist. It seems like this is also hugely scale-dependent as well.

I'm sure it was mentioned above but one of the reasons ud is so hard to define is because projects can operate at a variety of scales, scopes and often cut across disciplines. It's also extremely contextual which is why it's so hard to quantify a project's success. It may be successful to one group of people but not to another for example. Anyway if you can get your hands on the following books check them out for a good overview of project "types" and examples.

Cities: X Lines: Approaches to City and Open Territory Design - Busquets & Correa
Urban Design - Alex Krieger, ed. Especially Krieger's essay "Where and how does urban design happen?"

Also, since your interested in an alternative approach to urbanism (acoustics right?) check out Sense of the City - Mirko Zardini, ed.