URBAN DESIGN

MembersMichelle SalasJorge Ricaute Melanie García

Urban Design The art of creating and shaping cities and towns

• Urban design is the process of giving form, shape, and character to groups of buildings, to whole neighborhoods, and the city.

• Urban design blends 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 operates at 3 scales:

The region: city and town

The neighborhood: district

The block: street and building

Urban design includes infrastructure, architecture, public spaces.

Urban design practice areas range in scale from small public spaces or streets to neighborhoods, city-wide systems, or whole

regions.

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,identifiable landmarks and focal points, and a human element established. 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.

The design, construction and management of public spaces therefore typically demands consultation and negotiation across a variety of spheres, like public agencies, authorities, nearby property owners or competing users.Urban designers rarely have the degree of artistic liberty or control and also require input from multiple fields including engineering, ecology, local history and transportation planning.

Principles

The scale and degree of detail considered varies depending on context and needs.Urban design may encompass the preparation of design guidelines and regulatory frameworks, or even legislation to control development, advertising, etc. and in this sense overlaps with urban planning

Principles

PrinciplesMuch urban design work is undertaken by urban planners, landscape architects and architects but there are professionals who identify themselves specifically as urban designers.

Every day there is an increasing number university programs that offer degrees in urban design, usually at the graduate level.

PrinciplesURBAN DESIGN CONSIDERS:

-Urban structure -Order and incident-Urban typology -Continuity and change-Accessibility

-Civil society-Legibility and wayfinding-Animation-Function and fit-Complementary mixed uses-Character and meaning

History

• The term 'urban design' dates from the mid-20th century.• Throughout history, design of streets and configuration of

public spaces with buildings have reflected contemporaneous social norms or philosophical and religious beliefs (see, e.g., Erwin Panofsky, Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism, Meridian Books, 1957).

• Modern urban design Renaissance The Age of Enlightenment.• Baroque period the design approaches developed in French

formal gardens such as Versailles were extended into urban development and redevelopment.

Modern professional specialisations did not exist, urban design was undertaken by people with skills in other areas.

History

• 'Urban design' was first used as a distinctive term when Harvard University hosted a series of Urban Design Conferences from 1956 . The writings of Jane Jacobs, Kevin Lynch, Gordon Cullen and Christopher Alexander became authoritative works for the school of Urban Design.

History She critiqued the Modernism of CIAM, and asserted that the publicly unowned spaces created by the 'city in the park' notion of Modernists was one of the main reasons for the rising crime rate. She argued instead for an 'eyes on the street' approach to town planning, and the resurrection of main public space precedents, such as streets and squares, in the design of cities.

Jane Jacobs(1916-2006)

The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961)

Was also seminal to the movement, particularly with regards to the concept of legibility, and the reduction of urban design theory to five basic elements - paths, districts, edges, nodes, landmarks. He also made popular the use of mental maps to understanding the city, rather than the two-dimensional physical master plans of the previous 50 years.

Kevin Lynch's The Image of the City

(1961)

The popularity of these works resulted in terms such as 'historicism', 'sustainability', 'livability', 'high quality of urban components' and ‘legibility’

History