Addressing the Challenges of Urban Landscapes: Normative Goals for Urban Design

Abstract

Despite the flourishing of the urban design field over the last quarter of a century, many of the issues and problems haunting urban environments have not been resolved. Forces such as globalization, immigration, the explosion of digital technologies, and the rise of a service economy centred on consumption have important spatial and design implications, while how we design our cities may have repercussions on a variety of concerns ranging from climate change to the epidemic of obesity. The paper traces some of the spatial implications of socio-economic shifts during the last decades, and explores the role and responsibility of urban design in addressing the outlined challenges.

Notes

1. Lyle (1994, p. 10) defines a ‘regenerative system’ as providing for “continuous replacement, through its own functional processes, of the energy and materials used in its operation”.

2. Beatley (2011, p. 45) defines ‘biophilic city’ as “a city that puts nature first in its design, planning, and management; it recognizes the essential need for daily human contact with nature as well as the many environmental and economic values provided by nature and natural systems”.

3. These include the Ahwanee Principles composed in 1991 by Peter Calthorpe, Judy Corbett, Michael Corbett, Andres Duany, Peter Katz, Elizabeth Moule, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, Stefanos Polyzoides and Steve Weissman. They were later expanded in the Charter of New Urbanism in 1996. In addition, The Hannover Principles, composed by architect William McDonough and chemist Michael Braungart in 1992, “aiming to provide a platform upon which designers can consider how to adapt their work toward sustainable ends” (McDonough and Partners, 1992, p. 3).

4. An anonymous reviewer is credited for this quote.

5. Historically, some of the most successful manifestos were backed by larger social, political or cultural movements and were not simply products of one individual's mind.

6. The spreading urban pattern in the US was first observed by French geographer Jean Gottman (1961), who coined the urban conurbation extending from Boston to Washington DC, a ‘megalopolis’.