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Urban Design Reader
Edited by
Matthew Carmona and Steve Tiesdell
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Press
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First edition 2007
Copyright © 2007, Matthew Carmona and Steve Tiesdell.
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Urban design reader
1. City planning
I. Carmona, Matthew II. Tiesdell, Steven
711.4
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ISBN-10: 0-7506-6531-9
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Contents
Introduction 1
Section One Understanding urban design 5
1 ‘Places’ matter most 9
F. Tibbalds
2 Ambiguities of urban design 12
A. Madanipour
3 Urban environments as visual art or as social settings? A review 24
R. K. Jarvis
4 An integrative theory of urban design 33
E. Sternberg
5 Postmodern urban form 43
A. Loukaitou-Sideris and T. Banerjee
6 A procedural explanation for contemporary urban design 52
R. Varkki George
Section Two The morphological dimension 59
7 What is lost space? 63
R. Trancik
8 The grid as generator 70
L. Martin
9 Typology: an architecture of limits 83
D. Kelbaugh
Section Three The perceptual dimension 99
10 On the identity of places 103
E. Relph
11 Reconsidering the image of the city 108
K. Lynch
12 The social production of the built environment: architects,
architecture and the post-Modern city 114
P. L. Knox
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13 Invented places 126
J. Sircus
14 Learning from Disney World 130
S. Zukin
Section Four The social dimension 139
15 Three types of outdoor activities; Outdoor activities
and quality of outdoor space 143
J. Gehl
16 The uses of sidewalks: safety 147
J. Jacobs
17 The future of public space: beyond invented streets and reinvented places 153
T. Banerjee
18 The character of third places 163
R. Oldenburg
19 The rise of the private city 170
P. Goldberger
Section Five The visual dimension 177
20 Townscape: introduction 181
G. Cullen
21 Path-portal-place 185
E. White
22 What makes a good building? 199
S. Cantacuzino/The Royal Fine Art Commission
23 A report from the front 204
P. Buchanan
Section Six The functional dimension 209
24 Functionalism 213
J. Lang
25 The life of plazas 226
W. H. Whyte
26 Needs in public space 230
S. Carr, M. Francis, L. G. Rivlin and A. M. Stone
27 Understanding transactions 241
R. MacCormac
28 Cities as movement economies 245
B. Hillier
Section Seven The temporal dimension 263
29 Images in motion 267
P. Bosselmann
30 The presence of the past 293
K. Lynch
31 Shearing layers 302
S. Brand
vi Contents
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Section Eight Implementing urban design 307
32 The built environment 313
P. Knox and P. Ozolins
33 The politics of urban design 319
S. McGlynn and P. Murrain
34 Heroes and servants, markets and battlefields 323
I. Bentley
35 Private-property decision makers and the quality of urban design 332
A. Rowley
36 The debate on design review 344
B. Case Scheer
37 The inner city 352
A. Duany, E. Plater-Zyberk and J. Speck
Bibliography 361
Index 363
Contents vii
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An activity with ancient roots, but also one that has
been rediscovered and reinvigorated in recent years,
urban design has become a serious and significant
area of academic endeavour, of public policy and of
professional practice. This is reflected by the increas-
ingly widespread recognition of its value across pub-
lic and private sectors around the world. This change
has been matched by increasing demand for urban
design practitioners and, more generally, for urban
design skills throughout the built environment and
land and property professions, and by an increasing
demand for urban design education at universities
and in the workplace.
The new interest in urban design is as a form of –
and contribution to – place-making. Carmona et al.
(2003), for example, defined urban design as the
making of places for people. More precisely and real-
istically, they saw it as the process of making better
places for people than would otherwise be produced.
A definition that asserted the importance of four
themes – that urban design is for and about people;
the significance of ‘place’; that the field of opportu-
nity for urban designers is typically constrained and
bounded by economic (market) and political (regu-
latory) forces; and the importance of design as a
process.
It is useful to acknowledge the difference between
an understanding of urban design for analytical pur-
poses (i.e. what is urban design?), by which all urban
development may be considered to contribute to
urban design, and a more normative understanding
of urban design (i.e. what is ‘good’ urban design?),
by which only some urban development might be
considered to be urban design. Seen analytically,
urban design is the process by which the urban envi-
ronment comes about; seen normatively, it is – or
should be – the process by which better urban envi-
ronments come about. We must also be aware of the
possibility and existence of implementation gaps
between what urban design seeks to do and what it
actually does do.
Urban design also refers to products or out-
comes and to various processes. It is, for example,
variously a product (the design of the created envi-
ronment), interventions into a process (e.g. a land
and property – or real estate – development process)
and a process itself (i.e. the design process).
The notion of urban design as a process is a reoc-
curring theme in this book. Design is a creative,
analytical and problem-solving activity through which
objectives and constraints are weighed and balanced,
the problem and possible solutions explored and
optimal resolutions derived. The process of design
should also add value to the individual component
parts, so that the resulting whole is greater than the
sum of the parts. In the final analysis the quality of
the whole is what matters because it is this that we
experience.
There are (very) few ‘hard-and-fast’ rules or
absolutes in urban design – substantially because the
process of design involves relating general (and gen-
erally desirable) principles to site and programme
requirements, where the context and creative vision
will always vary. Indeed there is a danger of gener-
ally desirable design principles being treated as
inflexible dogma or of design being reduced to the
simplistic application of a formula – practices that
negate the active process of design. Design prin-
ciples must always be used with the flexibility derived
from a deeper understanding and appreciation of
their basis, justifications and interrelations and the
context to which they are to be applied. In any design
process there are no perfect ‘right’ answers – there
are only better and worse answers, the quality of
which may, in turn, only be known over time.
Who then are the urban designers? A good
answer is that urban designers are those who make
decisions that affect the quality of the urban
Introduction
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2 Urban Design Reader
environment – only a (small) proportion of whom
might actively claim to be urban designers. There is
a continuum from ‘knowing’ to ‘unknowing’ urban
designers (see Carmona et al., 2003: 15–16).
‘Knowing’ urban designers are typically the profes-
sionals employed or retained on account of their
urban design expertise (i.e. urban design practition-
ers). At the other end of the continuum are the
‘unknowing’ urban designers: those who make urban
design decisions without appreciating that this is
what they are doing. This is not a distinction that
necessarily reflects on the quality of outcomes (i.e.
the product) – the outcome of each can be ‘good’
or ‘bad’. As Jonathan Barnett (1982: 9) has argued:
Today’s city is not an accident. Its form is usually
unintentional, but it is not accidental. It is the
product of decisions made for single, separate
purposes, whose interrelationships and side
effects have not been fully considered. The
design of cities has been determined by engi-
neers, surveyors, lawyers, and investors, each
making individual, rational decisions for rational
reasons.
But, without conscious recognition of the qualities
and additional value of good urban design, the cre-
ation and production of urban environments often
occurs by omission rather than explicit commission.
Urban design’s current status is based on a large
and growing body of theoretical writings that have
their roots in critiques of post-1945 modernism and
in the urban development of the past fifty years, and,
in particular, in a set of classic texts dating from the
very early 1960s from writers such as Kevin Lynch
(1960), Jane Jacobs (1961) and Gordon Cullen (1961),
and in another larger set dating from the late 1960s
and 1970s including Ed Bacon (1967), Ian McHarg
(1969), Christian Norberg-Schulz (1971), Robert
Venturi et al. (1972), Jan Gehl (1971), Colin Rowe
and Fred Koetter (1978), Christopher Alexander
(Alexander et al., 1977; Alexander, 1979) and William
Whyte (1980). The ideas and observations of these
writers and others have been debated, criticized,
tested, developed and extended by a wide range of
theorists, practitioners and policy makers in the period
up to the current day. The resulting urban design
literature is extensive and growing, and constitutes
the foundation for contemporary urban design pol-
icy and practice.
An attempt to structure the urban design litera-
ture into a number of interrelated dimensions was
made in our book Public Places Urban Spaces: The
dimensions of urban design, co-authored with Tim
Heath and Taner Oc (Carmona et al., 2003). This
book provided an exposition of the different, but inti-
mately related, dimensions of urban design thought
and practice. Synthesising and integrating ideas and
theories from a wide range of sources, it derived from
a comprehensive reading of existing literature and
research. Taking a holistic approach, it neither focused
on a limited checklist of urban design qualities nor –
it was hoped – excluded important areas.
Drawing on the material that inspired the writ-
ing of Public Places Urban Spaces, the current book
presents a selection of key texts in (substantially)
their original form. While including a good range of
contemporary texts/authors/figures in urban design,
together with papers that are simply useful as distil-
lations of key areas of urban design knowledge, the
intention has been to produce a ‘useful’ reader that
includes a good range of ‘classic’ or ‘staple’ texts –
that is, those that are referred to again and again. In
this respect, this reader presents papers from the clas-
sic urban design canon – for example, Kevin Lynch on
legibility, Jane Jacobs on vitality, Gordon Cullen on
townscape, and Edward Relph on meaning and
sense-of-place. The reader does not seek to replace
the ‘classic’ texts. Instead, it seeks to provide an intro-
duction and a taste of them, while placing them in
relation to each other. To see them in their ‘whole’
and in context, readers need to go to the original
sources, something that is essential for an in-depth
understanding. It is also noticeable how many of the
later selections – Jarvis (1980) and Sternberg (2000),
for example – refer back directly to these works.
By this means, we bring together key texts that
provide foundations for the place-making view of
urban design. This urban design canon has been fol-
lowed by others who, for example, have argued that
urban design is an important and necessary consider-
ation in the land and property development process,
either directly or indirectly – Tibbalds (1992), Rowley
(1998) and Duany et al. (2000) – and those who have
advocated urban design as a response to what are
seen as the failings of contemporary development
practice (e.g. Trancik, 1986; Loukaitou-Sideris, 1998).
A selection of these texts has also been included.
Public Places Urban Spaces utilised a simple three-
part structure:
• The Context for Urban Design consisting of three
chapters – urban design today, urban change, the
contexts for urban design.
• The Dimensions of Urban Design consisting of six
chapters, each focusing on a particular dimen-
sion of urban design.
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• Implementing Urban Design consisting of four
chapters – the development process, the control
process, the communication process and holistic
urban design.
To allow easy cross-referencing between the two
volumes, a simplified version of the same structure
has been adopted here. This allows those readers of
Public Places Urban Spaces seeking additional in-
depth source material on a particular writer to find
that material here. Similarly, readers of the present
volume wishing to examine the broader context
within which the ideas of a particular writer fit can
turn to Public Places Urban Spaces.
This reader might also be viewed as a compan-
ion volume to Alexander Cuthbert’s Designing Cities,
Critical Reading in Urban Design (2003, Blackwell
Publishing, Oxford). One of the first urban design
readers, the selection of papers contained in
Designing Cities was chosen to emphasise a particular
paradigm – namely that urban design is best viewed
as a branch of spatial political economy – and pur-
posefully omitted many of the ‘classic’ urban design
contributions that many scholars might expect to
see. Designing Cities instead chose papers that are
largely from outside the traditional urban design
canon – Cuthbert’s intention being to select articles
that would help create a ‘theory-of’ urban design. By
contrast, the present volume focuses on ‘theory-in’
urban design and, although emanating from the
‘Making Places’ tradition, is largely ‘paradigm neutral’.
As well as being a companion volume to Public
Places Urban Spaces, Urban Design Reader is a self-
contained text in its own right, with its own internal
logic and coherence. The main part of the book
comprises original papers organised into eight sec-
tions. Each of the six ‘dimensions’ chapters from
Urban Spaces Public Places is the subject of a section.
These follow an initial group of papers dealing with
definitions and understandings of urban design, and
are followed by a final section dealing with imple-
menting urban design. Each section begins with a
brief introduction to the dimension and the contri-
butions that the constituent papers make to it. The
introduction contextualises the material and estab-
lishes links between constituent papers in each selec-
tion and between selections.
The papers are necessarily abridged. Shortening
a paper or book chapter conceived as a whole
inevitably involves tough choices. The approach taken
has been to preserve the essence of the articles –
that is, the substantive contribution they make to the
field of knowledge. Inevitably the papers chosen
attempt to contextualise their argument against other
work in the same publication or elsewhere, or alter-
natively elucidate the argument through illustration
and/or the use of case studies and examples. Where
this is not key to the understanding of the central
arguments in the papers, it has been omitted.
The individual papers must also be seen as contri-
butions to a new whole – that is, to produce a coher-
ent and reasonably comprehensive coverage of the
field of urban design. It is, nonetheless, inevitable
that when removed from their context the papers
lose some of their meaning. It has also been neces-
sary to select a balanced range of papers. Given the
breadth of the urban design field, however, there are
inevitably omissions and areas that we can only
cover in passing. These include such areas as sus-
tainability, telecommunications and other techno-
logical developments, the cultural dimensions of
urbanism, gender dimensions of urban design, spa-
tial and social segregation, and many others.
Indeed, these areas could be the focus of readers in
their own right. Equally others may select an entirely
different group of papers to represent the place-
making canon in urban design. In the final analysis,
this is a personal selection and we make no claims
for it beyond the fact that these are the papers
which we have found most useful and stimulating in
our own work. We can only hope that others will
agree.
Introduction 3
Note:
References and Notes at chapter ends have been reproduced from the original sources. Some reference lists therefore
include publications not cited in the present text and some reproduce discrepancies in publication dates that were evi-
dent in the original sources.
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Section One
Understanding urban
design
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Understanding urban design 7
The term ‘urban design’ came into currency in North
America in the late 1950s, replacing and supersed-
ing the more traditional, narrower and somewhat
outmoded term ‘civic design’. Typified by the City
Beautiful Movement, the latter was associated with
a highly artistic and physical (visual and spatial)
approach to urban design, focusing on the siting
and design of major civic buildings – city halls, opera
houses, and museums – and their relationship to
open spaces. Contemporary urban design is more
expansive than this. It is primarily concerned with
the quality of the public realm – both physical and
socio-cultural – and the making (and managing) of
meaningful ‘places’ for people to enjoy and use.
More recently the quest for more sustainable urban
form has become a more explicit component.
This section presents a set of six chapters explor-
ing understandings of urban design and discussing
its precise nature and purpose. Chapter 1 is Francis
Tibbalds’ ‘Places matter most’, from his 1992 book
Making People-Friendly Towns: Improving the public
environment in towns and cities (Longman, Harlow –
now published by Spon Press). A founder of the UK-
based Urban Design Group in 1978, Tibbalds’ ideas
and activism in the cause of urban design had been
evolving throughout the 1980s. Their moment came
when Tibbalds’ term as president of the Royal Town
Planning Institute (RTPI) in 1988–89 coincided with
His Royal Highness Prince Charles publicly express-
ing his views about contemporary architectural –
but, more implicitly, urban – design in the second
half of the 1980s. The Prince subsequently offered a
framework for what he saw as architectural design
(although much of his framework was well within the
remit of urban design). Firmly within the visual-artistic
tradition, the Prince’s ideas sparked an important
debate. In response, Tibbalds offered a more sophisti-
cated (and empathetically) urban design framework,
comprising the following ten principles: places mat-
ter most; learn the lessons of the past; encourage the
mixing of uses and activities; design on a human
scale; encourage pedestrian freedom; provide access
for all; build legible environments; build lasting envi-
ronments; control change; and contribute to the
greater whole. Each of these principles was the focus
of a specific chapter in Tibbalds’ book. The chapter
selected here sets out what might be considered
Tibbalds’ ‘golden rule’ of urban design – ‘places
matter most’ (i.e. that the creation of places through
good design is more important than the design of the
individual buildings of which they are composed).
Defining precisely what is meant by urban
design is challenging (see Cowan, 2004) and many
definitions based on spatial scales or disciplines are
unduly limiting. In practice, little value arises from
putting boundaries around urban design; it is more
enriching and positive to identify, clarify and debate
central beliefs and activities. This is the approach
taken in Chapter 2 – Ali Madanipour’s ‘Ambiguities
of urban design’, originally published in the Town
Planning Review in 1997 and subsequently a chapter
in his book Urban Design – A Socio-Spatial Enquiry
(John Wiley, London). Its principal value is its com-
prehensive discussion of ways of defining urban
design by confronting the ambiguities about possi-
ble meanings. Madanipour identifies seven sources
of ambiguity: the first three are concerned with the
‘product’ of urban design (i.e. urban space or the
urban environment), the last three concern urban
design as a ‘process’ and the product–process
dilemma is the subject of the fourth ambiguity.
Although his ambiguities are deliberately presented
as oppositional and mutually exclusive, for most
it is a case of ‘and/both’ rather than ‘either/or’.
Madanipour concludes that because urban design
is a process through which we ‘consciously shape
and manage our built environments’, urban designers
are interested in, and engaged with, both the process
and its product. In common with many commenta-
tors, Madanipour also sees contemporary urban
design as a multidisciplinary field of activity rather
than a discrete discipline or profession.
Chapter 3 is Bob Jarvis’s ‘Urban environments as
visual art or as social settings?’, originally published
in the Town Planning Review in 1980. In this chapter,
Jarvis argues that two broad traditions of urban
design thought stem from different ways of appreci-
ating design and the products of the design process –
as aesthetic objects or ‘displays’ (i.e. for ‘looking at’)
and as environments (i.e. for ‘living in’ or ‘using’). This
distinction is discussed in terms of a ‘visual-artistic’
tradition, emphasising visual form, and a ‘social
usage’ tradition, primarily concerned with the pub-
lic use and experience of urban environments. In
doing so, Jarvis focuses on the ‘classic’ urban design
canon and adds value to it by organising it into two
traditions. While the social-usage understanding of
urban space has continued to develop rapidly since
Jarvis’s article, the visual-aesthetic understanding
has not. Thus, while the social-usage tradition is
represented across the range of contributions in the
social, perceptual, temporal, functional and morphol-
ogy dimensions covered in this book, the visual-
aesthetic tradition has developed little beyond Cullen
and the townscape school of the 1960s (see Section
Five). The exception to this is the environmental
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aesthetics literature and also in architectural circles,
where aesthetics and expression continue to dom-
inate much of the discourse.
Chapter 4 is Ernest Sternberg’s ‘An integrative
theory of urban design’, originally published in the
Journal of the American Planning Association in 2000.
Through a complex and sophisticated argument,
Sternberg also provides an extremely valuable
commentary on the classic urban design canon. By
synthesising and extending the key content of
those works, he argues that the ideas informing
urban design usually coalesce around contending
approaches, each associated with one or two lead-
ing writers. These principles include ‘urban form’
(Camillo Sitte), ‘legibility’ (Kevin Lynch), ‘vitality’ (Jane
Jacobs) and ‘meaning’ (Christian Norberg-Schulz).
Sternberg argues that, by implicitly acknowledging
the ‘non-commodifiability’ of the human experi-
ence across property boundaries, the approaches
share an intellectual foundation: ‘…the view that
good design seeks to reintegrate the human experi-
ence of urban form in the face of real estate markets
that would treat land and buildings as discrete com-
modities.’ He then proposes that urban design’s pri-
mary role is to reassert the ‘cohesiveness of the
urban experience’ and identifies integrative prin-
ciples by which urban environments can transcend
commodification. This is a view of urban design as a
process of joining-up – joining up a fragmented set
of built environment professions and professionals;
joining up a fragmented set of development
processes; and joining up (or healing) fragmented
environments (see Loukaitou-Sideris, 1996; Carmona,
et al., 2003: 14–15). Sternberg concludes by arguing
that, without conscious concern for urban design as
a process of restoring or giving qualities of coherence
and continuity to individual, often inward-focused
developments (i.e. ensuring that the whole is greater
than the sum of the parts), the issue of overall qual-
ity will inevitably be neglected.
Chapter 5 is Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris and
Tridib Banerjee’s ‘Postmodern urban form’, origin-
ally published in their 1998 book Urban Design
Downtown: Poetics and Politics of Form (University of
California Press, Berkeley). Complementing Jarvis’s
paper, Loukaitou-Sideris’s paper highlights the
changing nature of urban design practice – and,
indeed, urban design generally – over the past
30–35 years through examples of plans in San
Francisco and Los Angeles. This chapter reminds us
that, in addition to traditions of thought and prin-
ciples that spring from them, urban design involves
a set of processes constituting a practice of urban
design. It therefore provides a useful complement
to Sternberg’s contribution, reminding us that despite
the ‘integrative’ aspirations of many theorists, the the-
ory and practice of urban design and urban devel-
opment generally in the contemporary age is often
characterised by fraction, fragmentation, segrega-
tion and division.
The sixth and final chapter is R. Varkki George’s
‘A procedural explanation for contemporary urban
design’, originally published in the Journal of Urban
Design in 1997. Its chief value lies in shaping (and
developing) our understanding of the activity of
urban designers. The chapter presents, in simple
terms, a convincing argument that urban design is
essentially a ‘second-order’ design activity (i.e. urban
designers ‘design’ the decision-making environment
of other development actors). The chapter first
reviews what have been regarded in the literature
and in practice as the ‘tactics’ used by contem-
porary urban designers. A case is then made for why
the term second-order design is a good explanation
for these tactics. The essence of the argument is
that urban design articulates the way that the com-
ponents of the urban environment are to be put
together, but without itself designing those compon-
ents in detail. Detailed design is the task of archi-
tects, highways engineers, landscape architects, etc.
Rather than imbuing the creative task of designing
urban places in the hands of a single ‘all-knowing’
designer, the argument assumes that it is shared
among a range of actors. It also recognises that
urban designers typically work within a context of
multiple clients often with conflicting interests and
objectives, developing as a consequence multiple
solutions to a problem, rather than a single solution
(see also discussions of the role of the urban designer
within the development team in Section Eight).
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Places matter much more than either individual build-
ings or vehicular traffic. Yet, all over the world, our
planning endeavours seem to concentrate almost
exclusively on the latter considerations. We seem to
be losing the ability to stand back and look at what
we are producing as a whole. Most of us can think
of collections of roads and buildings that simply do
not add up to anything at all. We need to stop worry-
ing quite so much about individual buildings and
other individual physical artifacts and think instead
about places in their entirety. We need to forget the
spaced-out buildings of the past few decades, sepa-
rated from each other by highways and left-over
tracts of land. These unthinking, tired solutions to
development have not served us well. We must con-
centrate on attractive, intricate places related to the
scale of people walking, not driving. We must exploit
individuality, uniqueness and the differences between
places. An attractive public realm is very important
to a feeling of well-being or comfort. Traditionally,
building craftsmanship was not just about buildings,
but also spaces. This should still be the case. Collab-
oration between all the environmental professions
will be essential to achieve this.
The inescapable reality for all of us is that people
judge the activities of architects and planners,
landscape architects, highway engineers and civil
engineers by the quality – principally the physical
quality – of what they see and experience around
them. And rightly so. Because, at the end of the day,
it is the product rather than the process that matters
most to the users. For all manner of reasons and quite
understandably, the judgement that they make is
rarely a complimentary or favourable one – largely
due to the legacy of several decades of Modernist
planning.
There are signs of a new approach to architecture
and planning – a fundamental change in approach
from the days of ruthless Modernism. British architect
Terry Farrell succinctly describes how in the Modernist
approach the primary object was a building or some
other physical artifact. It was often separated from
its neighbours by large tracts of land and/or high-
ways – the left-over public realm. Designs were open
and non-urban in character. The modernists obses-
sively and rigorously applied concepts of the grid,
simplistic hierarchies, tidiness, low densities, zoned
separation, the international style, large-scale engin-
eering, a severance with history and tradition, high
technology construction and mechanization. They
thought at the scale of a moving vehicle. Growth
and comprehensive redevelopment were the norm.
Unconstrained, green field or war-damaged sites
were the ideal canvas.
The devastation that this approach has produced
on the public realm can now be seen in virtually every
town and city in the United Kingdom and in many
other countries too. A strong rejection of this philoso-
phy is now emerging. We are witnessing a return to
the spirit of urbanism that characterized well-loved
traditional towns and cities. The concern is once again
for the scale of people walking, for attractive, intricate
places and for complexity of uses and activities. The
object has now become the public realm – the space
between buildings – rather than the buildings them-
selves. The aim is to create urban areas with their own
identities, rooted in a regional and/or historic context.
The physical design of the public domain as an
organic, colourful, human-scale, attractive environ-
ment is the overriding task of the urban designer.
On urban sites, then – both in town and city cen-
ters and in inner city and suburban areas – we need
1
‘Places’ matter most
Francis Tibbalds
[1992]
TEAM LinG

a proper urban solution, with an urban scale. We need
a clear appreciation of the urban grain and built
form – what is sometimes called the morphological
context. We also need to understand fully the local
architectural typology – related to the uses and func-
tions of the particular buildings. New proposals –
whether for a large piece of urban design or an
individual building – must have a positive relationship
to the existing morphology – by harmonizing with
it, by adapting to it or, where there are clear reasons
so to do, by contrasting with it. The important thing
is to take a positive design stance not just an arbi-
trary one.
During the 1950s and 1960s many towns and
cities around the world underwent change on an
unprecedented scale in terms of built development
and in terms of massive highway construction. This
undoubtedly resulted in considerable commercial
vitality and unique levels of accessibility for motor
vehicles, but it is now fairly widely recognized that
it also produced physical environments that fall a
long way short of current public aspirations.
Much of the problem derives from the loss of
urban scale or grain. Traditionally cities were com-
posed of blocks of buildings with streets around
them. The so-called comprehensive redevelopment
schemes of the past twenty or thirty years have
tended to destroy this familiar and successful urban
form and the results have been largely unsatisfac-
tory. They have rarely produced places which are
now widely recognized as being attractive.
It is a useful exercise to compare the plan forms of
towns over time. Most traditional towns and cities
are compact and tightly organized with a simple
block layout punctuated by hard and soft open
spaces. In many places this clear structure was lost,
or significantly eroded, during the middle part of
the twentieth century. A combination of war dam-
age and the desire for new roads, new shopping
centres and various forms of mass housing has, in
many instances, led to the loss of original street
patterns.
We don’t have to let this happen. As vacant sites
are brought into use and obsolescent buildings are
redeveloped, the opportunity must be seized to use
the new buildings to create proper urban streets
again, with proper frontages – to make a tight-knit
urban fabric where public spaces and landscape are
intended, rather than just being the left-over bits
that were of no use to the architect or developer.
Spaces left over after planning and development
has taken place are not only visually unattractive
and functionally useless: they are also awkward and
expensive to maintain, with the all too frequent
result that they become neglected and unkempt.
There are thus functional and environmental advan-
tages to the restoration of the street.
Of course, it is not only streets that are important.
The places that make up the public realm come in
many shapes, sizes and uses. They include streets,
squares, public footpaths, parks and open spaces and
extend, also, to riversides and seafronts. These places
all belong to the wider community. It is important
never to forget that they are there for their use, bene-
fit and enjoyment. In designing and developing
buildings and environments which interrelate with
the public realm, it is therefore essential to ensure
that this tremendous value of the public realm to
the wider community is acknowledged, respected
and enhanced.
One of the joys of towns and cities is their vari-
ety. Different areas have different characteristics – of
activities, scale, uses and function. Some places are
lively and busy. Others are quiet and secluded. There
will be intricate, dense areas; open, monumental
areas; soft areas; hard areas; old areas; new areas;
areas of high building; areas of low building; shop-
ping areas; commercial areas; entertainment areas;
recreation areas; and so on and so on. We need to
recognize this variety – to define areas of cohesive
character. Often such areas will have blurred edges.
They will overlap. This simply adds to the richness
of the environmental character. But, great care is
also required. As places, precincts or areas of special
character are recognized, defined, created or devel-
oped, it is important to ensure that they are real and
not contrived. It will not be an asset to the town or
city if they take on a fake-believe or stage-set qual-
ity. Nor should such areas be allowed to develop
simply as single-use enclaves.
All too often towns and cities simply continually
re-adapt to accommodating more and more traffic
and bigger and bigger buildings. What is desper-
ately needed is a new approach to producing and
looking after good urban spaces. We have actually
got to address the re-structuring of our urban areas,
over possibly quite long time scales, to reflect a new
set of priorities in which the needs of people – as
pedestrians, cyclists, the young, the old and the
infirm, as well as the able-bodied – take precedence
over the voracious demands of traffic and develop-
ers. The current fragmentation of urban areas in many
ways mirrors the fragmentation and separation of
the professions who are supposed to be looking after
them – urban planners, traffic engineers, landscape
architects, land surveyors and architects in particular.
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Greater multi-professional collaboration would, I am
convinced, produce better, more coherent places,
because no one profession has all the answers to the
complex task of designing livable cities.
Public places within a town belong to the people
of that town – they do not belong to developers or
investors, the police or traffic wardens. Their nature
will be influenced by their scale, shape and size; the
ways in which they are related one to another;
the uses and activities which they contain, and the
way in which traffic of all kinds is handled. The proper
civilized use of places – streets, squares, alleys, prom-
enades and so on – can be achieved visually, func-
tionally and psychologically, through sensitive and
imaginative design. If, for example, motorists feel
like guests in a predominantly pedestrian area,
hopefully they will behave like guests. Is this not infi-
nitely to be preferred to a plethora of street signs
and prohibitions backed up by tedious byelaws and
penalties?
The same is true of buildings. New buildings are
also guests in the existing urban environment and
need to show due deference to their host and their
companions. This is not to invite false modesty; nor
is it to say that that there shouldn’t be room for the
occasional live wire or prima donna. What archi-
tects and clients need to accept, however, is that
the greatest contribution that they can make to the
built environment of the town or city is to construct
good, backcloth buildings.
The challenge is clearly very great – finding ways
of promoting the renaissance of the public realm
in our towns and cities. But it is a potentially very
rewarding and enjoyable one. It demands a new set
of priorities in which, basically, places take prece-
dence over buildings and traffic. This will be hard
for the individual players to accept – be they archi-
tects, engineers or developers – if they maintain their
professional separations. The more they learn to
collaborate – to try to meet agreed, common object-
ives for the urban environment – the easier and more
productive the process will become.
In the hope that it will be useful to readers, this
chapter concludes with a short list of recommenda-
tions, related to the theme of the chapter, which can
be used as a checklist by practitioners.
Recommendations/action checklist
1. The first priority is to agree what sort of public
realm is appropriate in any particular area and
then to agree the buildings, development and
circulation system which are appropriate to it.
Usually this is done the other way round, with
devastating results for the urban fabric.
2. Places need to offer variety to their users. They
need to be unique and different from one
another – each rooted in their own particular his-
torical, geographical, physical or cultural context.
3. In most instances, individual buildings will be
subservient to the needs and the character of the
place as a whole. If every building screams for
individual attention, the result is likely to be dis-
cordant chaos. A few buildings can, quite legiti-
mately, be soloists, but the majority need simply
to be sound, reliable members of the chorus.
4. Many town centres are small enough to be con-
sidered as single places. In the larger towns and
the central areas of cities, over time, areas of dif-
ferent character are probably discernible. These
should be defined and developed, providing
they are for real, rather than artificial bits of
make-believe or urban theatre that will, in the
long run, devalue reality.
5. Try not to view the organization or reorganiza-
tion of towns and cities purely from the rather
exclusive points of view of the motorist or the
developer. It is of greater importance to consider
the needs and aspirations of people as a whole –
with priority being given to pedestrians, children
and old people. This simple change or widening
of priorities could, by itself, transform our urban
environment and lifestyle.
Source and copyright
This chapter was published in its original form as:
Tibbalds, F. (1992), ‘Places Matter Most’, in Tibbalds, F.
(1992), Making People-Friendly Towns: Improving the public
environment in towns and cities, Longman, Harlow, 1–17.
Published by Taylor and Francis Group, an Academic
Division of TF Informa plc.
‘Places’ matter most 11
TEAM LinG

Despite its frequent appearance in educational and
professional literature, urban design is still an ambigu-
ous term, used differently by different groups in dif-
ferent circumstances. Yet the growing attention to the
subject and the rising number of academics and
professionals who are engaged in urban design have
brought to the surface a pressing need for a clearer
definition. In this paper I will start by analysing those
aspects of urban design which have caused such
ambiguity and then look for a definition that addresses
these uncertainties.
Urban design is a far from clear area of activity.
Signs of the need for a clear definition of urban design
can be seen in a variety of sources. The adequacy of
the existing definitions is still in doubt, as evident in a
recent conference on research and teaching in urban
design (Billingham, 1995). This indicates why the
search to find a satisfactory definition of urban design
continues (Kindsvatter and von Grossmann, 1994;
Rowley, 1994; Department of the Environment,
1995). A brief look at this search, however, shows
how it is still at an early stage. An example is a
recent attempt which, after reviewing a number of
definitions of urban design, concludes that finding
‘a short, clear definition . . . simply is not possible’
(Rowley, 1994, 195). Instead, it was suggested we
should focus on the substance, motives, methods
and roles of urban design.
Do we need a short, clear definition for urban
design? There are many ambiguities about some dis-
ciplines and professions as they inevitably overlap with
each other. Controversy and never-ending discussions
about what constitutes architecture, as distinct from
buildings, can be taken as one example. It might be
said that ambiguity offers a wider scope for innov-
ation and development; once we have clearly defined
a subject we have denied it some flexibility. But how
can we claim to be seriously engaged in urban design
if we are not even able to define it? What we need is
to remember to separate complexity from ambiguity.
In our search for the meaning of urban design, we
should be able to address complexity, but we should
also do our best to clarify ambiguities.
We can see these ambiguities in a number of pre-
vious attempts to find a definition for urban design.
For example, we can examine the list of definitions
collected by the late Francis Tibbalds, a past president
of the Royal Town Planning Institute and a passionate
supporter of urban design (Tibbalds, 1988). These
show a puzzling variety of views on urban design,
including ‘lots of architecture’; ‘spaces between build-
ings’; ‘a thoughtful municipal policy’; ‘everything that
you can see out of the window’; or ‘the coming
together of business, government, planning, and
design’ (Tibbalds, 1988, 12). The more plausible
definitions include ‘the interface between architec-
ture, town planning, and related professions’; ‘the
three dimensional design of places for people . . . and
their subsequent care and management’; ‘a vital
bridge, giving structure and reality to two dimensional
master plans and abstract planning briefs, before
detailed architectural or engineering design can take
place’; ‘the design of the built-up area at the local
scale, including the grouping of buildings for different
use, the movement systems and services associated
with them, and the spaces and urban landscape
between them’; and ‘the creative activity by which the
form and character of the urban environment at
the local scale may be devised’ (Tibbalds, 1988, 12).
Here, as in other attempts to define urban design
(Shirvani, 1985), we see a variety of foci: some are
dealing with the domains of urban design, especially
2
Ambiguities of urban design
Ali Madanipour
[1997]
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Ambiguities of urban design 13
with its involvement with the physical fabric of the
city; others have focused on its scale, its points of
departure from, or congruence with, planning and
architecture, its political and management aspects, or
its place in the planning process.
To arrive at a definition for urban design, we will
need to take into account these various attempts and
to identify the elements which create confusion and
ambiguity. We could be then on our way to a clearer
conception of what urban design is about. In its search
for a definition of urban design, this paper relies on
three sources of information. First, the practitioners’
approach to urban design: I have collected informa-
tion from the British firms specialising in urban design,
asking them to send examples of their work and to
explain their approach to urban design. Second, the
educators’ approach: I have collected the brochures
and documents from British and American universities
in which urban design is taught as a postgraduate
degree programme. Third, the published discussions
on urban design, which have been produced by both
professionals and academics. An analysis of these sets
of information shows the extent of ambiguity in the
usage of the term urban design and its application, as
well as showing ways of overcoming these ambigu-
ities. By reviewing these documents, I have come to
identify seven areas of confusion and ambiguity:
1. the scale of urban fabric which urban design
addresses;
2. the visual or the spatial emphases of urban design;
3. the spatial or the social emphases of urban design;
4. the relationship between process and product
in the city design;
5. the relationship between different professionals
and their activities;
6. the public or the private sector affiliation of urban
design; and
7. the design as an objective-rational or an expressive-
subjective process.
An examination of these arenas, I argue, will illu-
minate the range of issues and tensions within urban
design and will show how a way can be sought to
clarify the definition of urban design and its roles and
areas of involvement. As with any such attempts, the
aim here is to find some patterns in a complex reality.
As my intention is to confront areas of ambiguity, I
have presented my argument along a list of dualities.
This, however, should not be taken as an attempt to
simplify the complexities of urban design. I have used
dualities merely for analytical clarity in the context of
ambiguity. The duality often represents the two ends
of a spectrum, with the actual circumstances located
somewhere in between.
The paper starts by addressing the ambiguities
about the product of urban design, urban space, dis-
cussing the question of scale, visual, spatial, and social
concerns. This leads to an analysis of the relationship
between process and product, which is a central,
overarching area of ambiguity. This will be a point
of connection to the discussions of urban design as a
process, which includes the professional activities of
urban designers and their affiliations. A wider debate
about the nature and scope of the urban design
process will take us to the paper’s conclusion, which
offers a definition of urban design.
Macro- or micro-scale urban design?
A main area of confusion is in the scale of urban fabric
in which urban design is engaged. Definitions of urban
design refer both to the design of cities and settle-
ments as a whole and to the design of some parts of
urban areas. The range of issues and considerations
addressed at these two macro- and micro-scales of
urban design, however, are very different from each
other. Whereas the design of cities and settlements
has focused on the broad issues of organisation of
space and functions, micro-urban design has con-
centrated on the public face of architecture, on public
space in parts of the cities, and more detailed consid-
erations of design at that scale. When observed simul-
taneously, as happens in the definitions of urban
design, they could create a large degree of ambiguity.
Such ambiguity can be seen in a comparison
between two sets of definitions. Francis Tibbalds’s pre-
ferred definition is the one which describes urban
design as ‘the physical design of public realm’
(Tibbalds, 1988, 12). The term public realm often
refers to the space in the city which is not private, the
space outside the private realm of buildings, the space
between the buildings. But does this lead to a lack of
attention to the private space which makes up the
bulk of every city’s space? If ‘urban’ is merely the
public parts of the city, what should we call the total-
ity of urban space with its both public and private
dimensions? How do we compare this micro-scale
urban design with Kevin Lynch’s broader definitions?
In one attempt he defined urban design as dealing
with ‘the form of possible urban environments’
(Lynch, 1984). He offered an even broader definition
elsewhere (Lynch, 1981, 290), as ‘the art of creating
possibilities for the use, management, and form of
settlements or their significant parts’.
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The latter is a definition of urban design which is
very close to city planning, albeit with a particular
interest in the physical fabric and its form. If we com-
pare this with the Royal Town Planning Institute’s
definition of planning as being involved in the ‘man-
agement of change in the built and natural environ-
ments’ (Royal Town Planning Institute, 1991, 1), the
similarity becomes evident. On the other side of the
spectrum, however, where urban design is seen as
designing small urban places, it becomes close to the
aesthetic and spatial concerns of art and architecture.
The large and small scales of engagement are
rooted in much deeper debates about the nature and
concept of space. It was partly reflected in the
modernist–postmodernist confrontations. The mod-
ernists concentrated on the design of an abstract but
integrated space. The postmodern reaction to such
abstraction was an attention to smaller scale urban
places and their meaning. This shift of attention is
reflecting a broad range of shifts and transformations
in political, economic, and cultural circumstances of
the time. Economically, there has been a reduction in
the resources which could be spent on cities as a
whole, leading to policies and projects which con-
centrate on some parts of the city. Culturally, there
have been strong reactions to the blanket treatment
which the comprehensive planning and large-scale
urban development have imposed on individual and
group differences. It is in relation to these funda-
mental changes that macro-urban design has been
largely abandoned in areas confronting economic
decline. Yet at the same time, where growth pressure
has been on the rise, such as in the sunbelt cities of the
United States and in the fast developing economies
and their rapidly expanding cities, macro-urban
design has remained a pressing need.
One solution is to acknowledge this divide and to
maintain that there are two different types of urban
design: a macro-urban design and a micro-urban
design, with different concerns and foci. This division
could offer an opportunity to develop specialisms in
dealing with urban fabric and would lead to a deeper
understanding of the processes and products involved
at each level. Yet the two levels have so much in com-
mon and are so interrelated that we may see them
as belonging to the same process of designing the
urban space.
The degree of overlap and commonality between
the two scales of urban design, could be convincingly
treated within the same definition, to see urban
design as ‘an interdisciplinary approach to designing
our built environment’ (Vernez-Moudon, 1992,
331). By adopting a broad definition, we will have
acknowledged the similarities and differences between
the shaping of urban space and urban place making
as two parts of the same process.
As urban design deals with all scales of urban
space, it has caused ambiguity about its role and areas
of involvement. Nevertheless, what links these differ-
ent scales of involvement is the central feature that
they all collectively make up the urban space and
urban design is the activity which shapes the urban
space. In this sense, it might be broken into different
arenas in which different designers could concentrate.
The timescale and issues involved in master planning
for new settlements are inevitably different from those
involved in details of street design.
It should be argued that an integrated concept of
space is needed, one in which an open interpretation
of place is adopted. Following this line of argument,
we should stress that, although a degree of specialisa-
tion through the separation in scale of engagement
can be useful, the nature of both processes should be
seen as closely interrelated. Only in this way can we
avoid a further divide in the scope of those dealing
with urban space. To confront the ambiguity about
scale, therefore, we must conclude that urban design
deals with urban space at all its scales.
Urban design as visual or as
spatial management?
Another source of ambiguity is the perception of
urban design as dealing with visual qualities of the
urban environment, which contradicts a broader view
of urban design as addressing the organisation of
urban space. This may be the main source of confu-
sion about, and the main area of criticism against,
urban design by its opponents, at least in Britain. To
confront this confusion, we need to address two
tendencies: one which sees urban design as an exer-
cise in producing ‘nice’ images, and the other which
sees urban design as only attending the aesthetics of
the urban environment.
Urban design as nice images
At a recent conference on town centre management,
Peter Hall asked for the traditional idea of urban
design to be abandoned, ‘The concept of urban
design should not be taken in its old-fashioned
sense—producing nice drawings to pin on the wall’
(Hirst, 1995, 6). But why, we may wonder, should
urban design be associated only with drawings and
not with realities?
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Attention to the social and economic problems of
cities has often sidelined design activities as irrelevant,
or at best as unaffordable luxuries. In the middle of
economic decline, it was argued there was no need
for design, as associated with new developments, at a
time when no development was in sight.
For a project to be implemented, there may be sev-
eral designs and designers involved, each producing
drawings to communicate their ideas. These ideas,
however, may never be implemented, as the money
may run out or the decisions be changed. As they are
about cities, and cities take a long time to evolve and
change, these designs may be implemented but in a
very long period of time, with inevitable changes and
adjustments to take account of a changing political
and economic context. But the abundance of beauti-
ful images, which are produced without taking into
account the mechanisms of implementation and/or
which may lead to nowhere, especially at the time of
economic difficulty, has a powerful impact on non-
designers, who see design as merely images rather
than ideas for spatial transformation. Even if they see
these as ideas, the element of innovation and ‘futur-
ism’ inherent in design may convince the viewers of
the design’s irrelevance to reality and its constraints.
This view of design, as an elitist, artistic enterprise
which has no relationship to the real, daily problems
of large sections of urban societies, has led to the
reduction of urban design to a visual activity. This
confusion has been especially strengthened by the
way design communicates through visual, rather than
verbal, means. Furthermore, designers’ understanding
of the social and economic issues of cities has not
always been their major strong point.
The way out of this confusion is to realise that
design is an activity proposing ideas for spatial trans-
formation. If it communicates more through visual
rather than verbal means, its content should not be
equated with its means. In design, as in other forms of
communication, form and content are very closely
interrelated. But confusing the form and means of
communication with the content of communication
is an avoidable mistake. For example, can we mistake
urban policy for just nice words?
Urban design as aesthetics of
urban environment
This is a more profound problem. To see urban design
as dealing with the visual rather than spatial aspects of
the environment is a widespread tendency. This can
be an understandable mistake, as when we want to
understand space our first, and the most important,
encounter is a visual experience. We first see the
objects in front of us and then begin to understand
how they relate to each other. It is true that vision is
the major channel through which we experience
space. It is also true, as Porteous (1996, 33) stresses,
that other senses make a major contribution to our
spatial understanding. If our understanding is limited
to a visual understanding, we only concentrate on
shapes. If, however, we go beyond appearances, we
start a spatial understanding, a three-dimensional
experience. We can enter this space, rather than just
seeing it. The same applies to the design of spaces.
We do not create mere appearances but spaces which
we can use for different purposes.
An example of treating urban design as a visual
concern is Edward Relph who, following Barnett
(1982), sees urban design as attending to the visual
qualities of urban environments. For him, urban
design focuses on ‘the coherence of townscape,
including heritage districts, the relationship between
buildings both old and new, the forms of spaces,
and small-scale improvements to streets’ (Relph,
1987, 229). Another example is the policy guidance
given to the planners on design in the planning
process (Department of the Environment, 1992),
which appears to treat design as mainly dealing with
the appearance of the built environment.
The longstanding tradition of ‘picturesque’ in
Britain, which pays special attention to the visual qual-
ities of the environment, may be seen as a fundamen-
tal drive in this case. Even at the height of modernism,
which promoted a more utilitarian aesthetics, pictur-
esque tradition was strong in Britain, as exemplified
by the postwar resentment against modernism and
the name it was given in Britain, ‘brutalism’.
The tendency to equate urban design with town-
scape management, however, also draws upon
another major trend in the past two decades, what
Boyer (1990) calls the return of aesthetics to city plan-
ning. This process, she argues, is part of the com-
modification of culture, through which ‘eventually
even city space and architectural forms become con-
sumer items or packaged environments that support
and promote the circulation of goods’ (Boyer, 1990,
101). The return of capital to the city centres as the
real estate investment is what lies behind the creation
of specially designed environments and spectacles,
leading to aestheticisation of everyday life.
Visual improvement of the cities has been used to
market cities as a whole, as increasingly cities have
to compete in the global markets to attract invest-
ment. The investment may be made by companies
searching for better returns on their investment and
TEAM LinG

a better quality of life for their employees. Investment
may also be made by the employees and by middle
classes returning to the cities looking for new lifestyles.
As urban design emerged in the 1980s along these
trends of urban marketing and middle class colon-
isation of parts of the cities, it has generated a critical
reaction, reducing it to a merely aesthetic enterprise.
Commentators have seen it as a type of new packaging
for urban environment, hence its visual emphasis.
There are two mistakes that can be corrected. The
first is that urban design is not merely dealing with
visual qualities of the urban environment. The way
out of this confusion is to realise that visual qualities
are but one element among the spatial qualities of the
built environment. To separate and emphasise the
visual qualities of urban space is to ignore the major
role of design as the generator of ideas for spatial
change. The second correction is that urban design as
spatial management is a tool. If it has been used to
maximise investment return and exchange value, it
is not the tool that should be blamed. This tool can be
equally used to maximise use value, to be at the ser-
vice of all citizens rather than only some sections of
the urban society. In this case, I would suggest, the
terms innovative, rather than fashionable, and spatial,
rather than visual, can be used to define urban design.
Whatever the role of urban designers in this
process, the aesthetic, visual qualities of the urban
environment and the organisation of urban space are
both qualities which are addressed by urban design,
both dimensions of urban space and reflecting the
circumstances of the people who produce and use it.
As Harvey (1989, 66–67) puts it, ‘How a city looks
and how its spaces are organised forms a material
base upon which a range of possible sensations and
social practices can be thought about, evaluated, and
achieved’. It will be a limited view to see urban design
as dealing only with one of these aspects, as has been
predominant in the 1980s, or to see it outside the
social practices of which it is a part.
Urban design as social or as
spatial management?
We argued that urban design deals with spatial, rather
than merely visual aspects of the urban environment.
But do we mean by this that there is no social dimen-
sion involved? Do we mean that urban design is all
about transforming spatial arrangements and not
dealing with aspects of use and management of those
environments? Are there not more deeply seated
social and cultural relations between society and space
that urban design addresses? Social and spatial are
intertwined in our understanding of urban space
(Madanipour, 1996a). The same applies to the trans-
formation of urban space. When we are engaged in
shaping the urban space, we are inevitably dealing
with its social content.
The modernist design had the ambition of chan-
ging societies through space. This was a mechanistic
view of how society and space are interrelated, which
became known as environmental determinism and
social engineering. This view is now widely discarded.
But what is increasingly finding acceptance by social
sciences as well as spatial arts and sciences, is that
there is a strong interaction between space and the
social processes.
There are, however, commentators who see urban
design as merely spatial involvement without a social
dimension. This is particularly the case when the visual
element of urban design work is emphasised. What
needs to be argued here is that spatial transformation
will be both caused by and causing social change.
This may happen at a variety of scales and degrees of
impact. The correlation, however, is inevitable. This is
especially felt when aspects of urban design such as
the management of urban environments or change
in land use are dealt with. More broadly, the social
and psychological significance of the built environ-
ment is where the connection between the two can
be observed.
The way society and space are interrelated is a
main concern of urban design education. Policy mak-
ers have also shown interest in broadening the scope
of urban design. After stating that a ‘single common
definition of urban design’ is not available, the
Department of the Environment’s (1995) urban
design campaign offers a definition which addresses
several relationships
[B]etween buildings and the streets, squares,
parks and other open spaces which make up the
public domain; the relationship of one part of a
village, town or city with other parts; and the
interplay between our evolving environment of
buildings and the values, expectations and
resources of people: in short, the complex inter-
relationship between all the various elements of
built and unbuilt space, and those responsible for
them. (Department of the Environment, 1995, 2)
Urban design therefore can be seen as the socio-
spatial management of the urban environment using
both visual and verbal means of communication and
engaging in a variety of scales of urban socio-spatial
phenomena. One aspect of the relationship between
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social and spatial dimensions of urban design has
been formulated as the relationship between process
and product.
Process or product?
The sources of ambiguity between the macro- or
micro-scale of urban design and between urban
design as visual or spatial management refer to urban
design as dealing with its product, the urban space.
This leads us to a fundamental source of potential
confusion in defining urban design: whether the term
refers to a process or a product. Architects have his-
torically been interested in the product of their design
and not in the administrative and urban development
processes through which designs are implemented.
On the other hand, planners have shifted from an
interest in the physical fabric of the city to the pol-
icies and procedures of change in the environment
(Dagenhart and Sawicki, 1992). As urban design
stands between architecture and planning, it relates
to the paradigms of both, which can create overlaps
and reduce clarity of scope. Depending on the com-
mentators’ standpoint, they might have a tendency
to one or the other of these paradigms, preferring to
see urban design as only a product or a process. Yet
urban design, as many urban designers have stressed,
refers to both a process and a product ‘it is defined
by what urban designers do as much as it is by what
they produce’ (Kindsvatter and von Grossmann,
1994, 9).
But how can we say that urban design is both a
process and a product? Surely, urban design is not a
product, if by product we mean parts of urban space,
as this statement appears to mean. Urban design is a
process, whose product at the first instance is a set of
ideas, policies, and images. Once implemented, they
form a new or an altered part of urban space. Urban
design, therefore, is a process that is interested in its
product, the built environment. A more precise way
of putting it may be: urban design is a process which
deals with shaping urban space, and as such it is
interested in both the process of this shaping and the
spaces it helps shape.
In a sense this two-sided nature is reflected in the
two component parts of the term, ‘urban’ and
‘design’, the former referring to the product and the
latter to the process. The ambiguity of the scales of
urban design refers to a more fundamental question:
what is urban? What parts of the ever-increasing
urban areas are addressed by urban design? The
dominant trend in Britain seems to address the city
centres as the main urban space (Worpole, 1992),
leaving the rest of the cities as mere peripheries where
the lower densities of population and activities appear
to make them less interesting.
In Britain, there has been a decline in large-scale
urban redevelopment or development of new settle-
ments. This explains, to a large degree, why urban
design is generally concentrated on the micro-scale of
urban space, preoccupied with place making. Large-
scale urban development, however, is a major trend
in many cities of the developing world, where popu-
lation growth and higher densities encourage the
rise of land prices and press for radical change
(Madanipour, 1997, forthcoming). In the United
States, where some areas have experienced phenom-
enal growth pressures, large-scale urban develop-
ment, as reflected in the ‘New Urbanism’ movement,
has also been a main feature. Parallel with the pre-
dominance of retailing in the city centres in Britain
and in the national economy as a whole, urban design
becomes pressed to concentrate on creating and
supporting environments in which shopping, or con-
sumption in general, is the main attraction to pull the
crowds, leaving aside other uses and places as of sec-
ondary importance. The drive for regeneration of
decayed inner-areas of the cities has also led to such
concentration on the city centres, taking the attention
away from the urban region as an integrated space.
The urban space, however, is more than the city
centre. It includes the suburbs, where large numbers
of the urban population live. As these suburbs have
matured and new nuclei of services and employment
have developed on the outskirts of the cities, any
engagement with the city which disregards the sub-
urbs is turning a blind eye to a substantial portion of
urban space (Gottdiener, 1986). In the case of the
larger cities in Britain, multinucleated urban regions
have evolved either through development of new
shopping and office centres in the suburbs, or have
grown by engulfing the older, smaller settlements
into the urban whole. The urban space with which
design is engaged is therefore the space of an urban
region, including the centre and its peripheries.
Restricting urban design to the city centres would
deprive urban design of a broader perspective, and
the urban space from a potentially powerful tool for
its transformation.
As for the definition of design, we come across a
fairly wide range of meanings. For example, the dic-
tionary definitions of the word refer separately to a
sequence of distinguishable moments in a process:
from when there is only an intention, to when the
ideas are conceived in mind, to when preliminary
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sketches are prepared, to when they are formulated
as a set of instructions for making something which
leaves the details to be worked out, and to making
plans and drawings necessary for the construction
of a building which the workers have to follow (Oxford
English Dictionary; Longmans English Larousse). Each
of these definitions is given as an independent def-
inition for design. And yet if we put them all together,
they still mean design, or rather the design process.
Nevertheless, these definitions fail to inform us
of all the moments in the sequence of the design
process or of the process as a whole. On the other
hand, the attempts which have been made to provide
a more comprehensive definition of design have
found an entirely different focus. For example, in his
entry for the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Kevin Lynch
(1984) offered a definition of design as ‘the imagina-
tive creation of possible form intended to achieve
some human purpose: social, economic, aesthetic, or
technical’. Elsewhere, he elaborates this definition of
design as ‘the playful creation and strict evaluation of
the possible forms of something, including how it is
to be made’ (Lynch, 1981, 290). Here the focus is on
an action, the creation of possible form, which is not
mentioned in our dictionary definitions, with a refer-
ence to its mode, mechanisms, and areas of concern.
The relationship between process and product
goes beyond this formal analysis, as they are closely
interwined. To understand urban space, it should be
argued, following Henri Lefebvre (1991), that we will
need to look at the processes which produce the
space. Urban design is a major component part of
these processes and it is concerned with cities and
with how to shape and manage them. However, there
are many professionals who are involved in this
process of shaping. Where do urban designers stand?
Professional divide
A major area of ambiguity seems to be where we
expect a practical clarity to reign. Where should we
look for definitions of urban design and find out what
urban designers do?
The Urban Design Group is the main forum dealing
with the subject in Britain, largely bringing together
urban design professionals. To produce a manifesto
for urban design, initiated in 1986, the Group pro-
posed a seven-point agenda which was aimed at
‘making explicit what urban designers do, or should
do’ (Billingham, 1994, 38). Urban design, as outlined
in this agenda, is an interdisciplinary activity, occu-
pying ‘the central ground between the recognised
environmental professionals’. It is ‘concerned with
the careful stewardship of the resources of the built
environment’ and with ‘helping the users and not only
the producers of the urban environment’. Therefore
they ‘must understand and interpret community
needs and aspirations’, as well as ‘understanding and
using political and financial processes’. In short, urban
designers operate ‘within the procedures of urban
development to achieve community objectives’.
Following this principle, ‘Urban design education
and research must be concerned with the dynamics
of change in the urban environment and how it can
be adapted to be responsive to the ways in which
people’s lives are lived’ (Billingham, 1994, 34). A list
of ‘an irreducible minimum’ of the criteria for the
form of the ‘good city’ concludes the agenda
(Billingham, 1994, 35). These criteria, derived from a
variety of sources, include attention to variety, access,
security and comfort, opportunity for personalisa-
tion, and clarity.
But are these concerns exclusive to urban design-
ers? Can other environmental disciplines and pro-
fessions not claim to have similar concerns? The first
point in the Urban Design Group’s agenda, however,
explains more:
Urban design has emerged as a discipline, pri-
marily because it is able to consider the relation-
ships between the physical form and function of
adjacent sites, unlike the Architect who is con-
strained by site boundaries and client intentions
and the Planner who has been reluctant to
address issues appertaining to the physical design
agenda. (Billingham, 1994, 34)
Does this principle imply that urban design is phys-
ical design for more than a site, for a group of adja-
cent sites? After all, interest in physical design was
the first principal objective of the Urban Design Group
as published in its first issue of Urban Design Group
News in July 1979. The Group was being established,
‘To provide a forum for those who believe that plan-
ning should be more concerned with improvement
of the design of the physical environment and the
quality of places and to encourage all the profes-
sions to combine to this end’ (Linden and Billingham,
1994, 30).
A decade later in February 1995, the agenda was
updated by the Group in a one-day conference. The
new text is a marked improvement on the previous
agenda. It has remained, however, ‘an amalgam of the
views expressed at the day’s discussion’ (Billingham,
1996, 38). It is rather loosely organised under the
headings Objectives, Guiding Principles, Approaches,
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and Processes, the contents of which at times
overlap. The strength of the agenda lies in its concern
for the quality of places, as well as promoting creative
thinking in dealing with cities. The Group shows con-
tinuity in its postmodernist concern for context, as it
identifies itself as demonstrating ‘practical alternatives
to the type of design that pays no regard to context,
and decision making which is driven by bureaucracy’
(Billingham, 1996, 38). This critical edge, however, is
not directed towards the economics of the urban
development process, in which the emphasis on
‘investment return’ threatens the quality of environ-
ment. The agenda rightly stresses the need for
accessibility, sustainability, and empowerment. As
may be expected from a brief compilation, it falls
short of spelling out how these ideas can be opera-
tionalised in the context of powerful processes which
work against them. As such the agenda offers some
ideals, which can influence and inspire practice.
What needs to be done, however, is to work out the
institutional processes which would enable the real-
isation of these ideals.
One of the components of such institutional
processes, which the Urban Design Group also points
out, is promoting a collaboration between various
disciplines involved in shaping places. It is clear after
all that urban design is an interdisciplinary activity. If
professionals from different disciplines of the built,
natural, and social environments work together in
teams, they create an urban design process. Similarly,
if urban space is to be shaped and managed by any
professional, there will be a need for multi-disciplinary
concerns and awareness. The key is to go beyond
the narrow boundaries of professions and disciplines
and approach urban space from an interdisciplinary,
socio-spatial perspective.
A public or private sector activity?
Another area of confusion, which on the surface is in
close connection with professional divides, is about
the affiliation of urban design with the public or pri-
vate sector. The question is: Which camp does it
belong to? Who performs it? Who does it serve? Is it
mainly performed by, or serving, the private devel-
oper or the city council? The confusion can therefore
extend to urban design’s political role, which poten-
tially could be a conflicting duality.
If urban design is seen as visual management of the
city centres only to maximise returns on private sec-
tor investment, then it is intended to serve a minority
interest. Some criticisms of urban regeneration
undertakings in Britain have taken this view and have
therefore associated urban design with the interests
of private companies. As visual management is then
seen as a luxury when more basic needs of health,
education, and housing are at stake, urban design has
been seen as reactionary or at best irrelevant. If, how-
ever, urban design is practised by the public sector,
it is held to be at the service of the public at large,
contributing to the improvement of the quality of
the urban environment. The question is which side do
we identify urban design with?
We may confront this ambiguity by stating that
as a technical, social, and aesthetic process, urban
design can be practised by any agency large enough
to initiate or deal with urban development projects.
Furthermore, with the increasing role of public–
private partnerships in urban development and
regeneration, it may be difficult to locate the camp to
which urban design belongs. This can be illuminated
in a discussion of the relationship between use value
and exchange value in urban space production, lead-
ing to the notion that urban design is not necessarily
bound to the public or private sectors. Each of these
sectors may be engaged in urban design and, depend-
ing on who performs it, it may have different roles and
serve different interests. Performed by whichever
camp, urban design is the process which shapes and
manages the urban space. Such urban space will
inevitably reflect the values and aspirations of those
who produced it.
Objective-rational or
subjective-irrational?
We have looked at ambiguities about the aspects of
the product with which urban design deals. We have
come across ambiguities about its role as a profes-
sional activity and its association with different sectors
of the political economy. We also need to be aware of
ambiguities about the nature of the process. We need
to know what kind of process urban design is. Is urban
design objective and rational, or subjective and even
irrational? This is partly referring to the confusions
about how we understand space; between visual,
spatial or social emphases. For those who see urban
design as merely the visual management of the city, it
can become mainly an aesthetic-expressive and,
therefore, subjective process. On the other hand, for
those who see urban design as dealing with spatial
transformation and its social significance, urban
design finds a more objective emphasis. There are
obvious limits to each of these views, as we have
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witnessed in the process of urban change. To find a
way out of this ambiguity, we need to see whether
design is a rational process and if so, how? It is a broad
understanding of rationality that will show us a way
out of such narrow dualism.
René Descartes, who was ‘the greatest rationalist
ever’ (Gellner, 1992, 1), had a firm belief in design as
a rational endeavour. He mistrusted ‘custom and
example’, and hence he saw the gradual growth of
cities as a representation of the irrational custom and
example. His rationalist principle was that, ‘we ought
never to allow ourselves to be persuaded of the truth
of anything unless on the evidence of our reason’
(Gellner, 1992, 1). For him, the best buildings, legal
systems and opinions were those designed by a single
author. On this basis, he held that, ‘ancient cities . . .
are usually but ill laid out compared with the regularly
constructed towns which a professional architect has
freely planned on an open plain’ (quoted in Gellner,
1992, 4). This view of design as a rational undertaking
was based on a classicist, individualist, and bourgeois
notion of reason and rationality, which came under
attack by later generations of empiricists and idealists.
This rationalist view of design came to dominate the
modernist thinking. Modernists promoted design as a
rational process based on functionalism. However,
this narrow definition of rationality has been criticised,
as it was not paying enough attention to other
dimensions of design and its impact on everyday lives.
In Henri Lefebvre’s (1991) terms, it was promoting an
‘abstract space’, and what was needed was a ‘differ-
ential space’ which accounts for diversity and every-
day experiences.
A contemporary and more complex notion of
rationality is offered by Jurgen Habermas’s (1984)
models of action and rationality. In his communica-
tive action theory, Habermas attempts to broaden the
scope of rationality by addressing, simultaneously,
all three objective, social, and subjective dimensions
of the social action. Rather than interpreting ration-
ality as merely instrumental rationality, the social
and psychological concerns of social actors are also
brought into a definition of rational action. Despite the
rigidities and limitations of this approach (Honneth,
1991), we may use these three moments of ration-
ality to analyse design. The notions of action and
rationality provide us with a tool to have insight into
the dynamics of each action in the series of actions
which constitute the urban design process. They
focus on how individuals relate to their objective, sub-
jective, and social contexts. Drawing upon the com-
municative action theory, we can analyse the urban
design process as a combination of three distinctive
and yet interwoven threads: the stage when design-
ers are interacting with the objective world through
the application of science and technology; the
stage when designers are involved with other indi-
viduals and institutions constituting their social set-
ting which is somehow involved in the process; and
the stage when designers are interacting with their
own subjective world of ideas and images. Depending
on the circumstances, however, these analytically dis-
tinctive stages are usually closely interlinked to con-
stitute a single, complex process.
Urban design as a technical process
We can look at urban design as a purely technical
process, in which specific skills from town planning,
architecture, and engineering, among others, are
employed to utilise resources in the production and
management of space. Designers often need to
ensure an effective use of the rules and resources in
the preparation and implementation of the design. In
doing so, a high level of technical competence is
required: from understanding of the rules and regu-
lations with which the design process deals, to
analysing the circumstantial conditions, to developing
alternative approaches, and to formulating a final
solution for a specific task.
In the majority of design and development pro-
jects, the technical approach has been dominant.
Entirely new settlements would be built as physical
objects which are the product of a technical process.
Especially in the periods of rapid economic expansion,
the technical approach tends to predominate. The
whole project of the modern movement in architec-
ture was based on technological necessity, as the
built environment was required to be made fit for
the machine age.
The main concern in urban design has often been
the transformation of physical space. In this technical
process, an instrumental rationality is used to evalu-
ate each segment of the action against its aims and
context. Any action which is not corresponding to
functional expectation, technological capability, or
financial capacity has been regarded as irrational.
Designers rely on knowledge and skills of their own
and of other related professionals dealing with the
built environment to utilise the available resources.
But there are limits to the rationality that can be
employed. Any change in one of the structures, which
may be largely out of the agency’s influence, would
turn the rationality of a decision into an irrationality.
The introduction of a new technology, for example,
would make a solution obsolete and in need of
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revision, whereas at the time of decision making, it
would have been thoroughly rational. Other examples
include changes in administrative organisations, a
change in interest rate or a crisis of over-production
can all render what looked rational into irrational.
Urban design as a social process
We can also look at the urban design process as a
social process due to the involvement of a large num-
ber of actors with various roles and interests who
interact in different stages of the process. Design is
often prepared by a group of designers interacting
with other professionals: the agencies who control
resources and rules such as landowners, financiers,
planning authorities and politicians. The interaction
continues with the parties involved in the implemen-
tation phase, with the users of the space, and with
those who would be affected by it.
According to instrumental rationality, the process
would only be rational if it ends in the purpose that
was expected from it. As distinct from that, the form
of rationality used here is one which aims at consen-
sus between the players involved, and is in general
making reference to norms and values shared by
them as a point of departure. However, the patterns
of rationality in the process and its outcome are open
to distortion due to the power relations involved. Any
disruption in this dialogue would either end in the
break up of the process or to a new level of practical
discourse where consensus is sought. If, however, all
levels of interaction are not open to rational discourse,
then the distortions might put any potential consen-
sus at risk.
An example of the absence of consensus between
the players which has led to disastrous results is the
postwar planning policy and implementation of slum
clearance without consulting the communities. The
modernist rejection of context can be seen as the
manifestation of instrumental action, which has been
a major feature of the scientific and technological age.
On the other hand, its opponent, contextualism, can
be seen as focusing on the social interaction, which
employs norm-based rationality.
It can be argued that arriving at a consensus
would not necessarily guarantee the rationality of the
action. It seems that consensus in technical-rational
action is more readily available since the point of
departure in any discourse will be existing technol-
ogy and scientific knowledge, even though scientific
knowledge might be contestable or alternative tech-
nologies, at comparable costs, be available for any
specific task.
Since the product of urban design is the mani-
festation of a set of policies or interests as solidified
in physical space or its management, it becomes
evident how the role of urban designers can be
important. They would act as intermediary players
in a complex interactive process. Their ability to con-
vince others through all forms of presentation will
have strong impacts on the process as a whole.
Urban design as an aesthetic-
expressive process
There is also a third angle: to look at urban design
as an aesthetic-expressive process, what Lynch
(1981; 1984) called a playful and imaginative creation
of possible form. In this process, designers are interact-
ing with their own subjective world and, by employ-
ing their aesthetic understanding and graphic skills,
express their spatial concepts in the form of an
appropriate scheme.
Here, among the identifiable structures, with
which the agency interacts, are the subjectivity of the
designer and the medium of expression. The subjec-
tivity of the designer has been developed through
contacts with the outside world. It includes a ‘library’
of images and arrangements in the real world, which
the designer sees as appropriate and beautiful.
Designers often work by making frequent references
to this library in the design process. Through a process
of adaptation and adjustment, trial and error, design-
ers set the stored images, or new combinations of
them, against a concrete context and arrive at the
required form.
Interacting with the medium of expression can
have different layers. On the one hand, according to
the requirements of the task at hand, appropriate
forms of expression and presentation are chosen.
Graphic and verbal techniques of communication are
employed to convince the other agencies, and first of
all the client, of the worth of the design. On the other
hand, traditions in a design profession have their own
normative powers as to what is acceptable. At this
level, there is always an ongoing discourse between
the members of a design profession, which not only
involves the present members of the profession, but
also embraces historical periods and their representa-
tives. Through these interactions, conventions are
developed, which become a source of influence on,
and if needed suppression of, lay judgements.
Through a Habermasian viewpoint, the form of
rationality here is the authenticity with which the
ideas are being expressed. In the subjective realm, the
authenticity of expression might produce a moment
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of truthfulness, but it would hardly account for the
plurality of such moments as produced by plurality
of personalities and interests. It can be seen how
expressive rationality can have an adverse effect on
rational consensus. Any attempt to reach a consen-
sus in expression might be threatened by attempting
to standardise the richness of expression and expe-
rience that a combination and variety of individuals
and periods can offer. Of course, this point can not be
overstressed since there is an optimum level of vari-
ety that people can accept, beyond which there is a
tendency to simplicity and homogeneity rather
than plurality.
Many have tended to look at urban design from
only one of these three angles that we analysed.
Some tend to see it as only a technical process and
therefore equated with ‘big’ architecture or ‘big’
engineering. Some see it as only a social interaction to
reach new institutional arrangements, and so tend to
focus on its management capacities rather than on
production of space. Yet others tend to see it as an
artistic activity which should be taken up only by
talented designers. Such uni-dimensional foci would
naturally lead to narrow definitions and viewpoints
at the cost of undermining the reality of the process
and its plurality of aspects.
It is quite obvious from this analysis that each
segment in the urban design process can have at the
same time an involvement of three forms of action
and rationality, each having a direct impact on the
other forms. Despite the limitations of such an
attempt towards making a multi-directional approach
to the analysis of the urban design process, it can
provide a powerful analytical and normative tool in
complex situations. It can contribute to gaining an
insight into the urban design process and its com-
ponent parts (Madanipour, 1996b). It can also be
useful in the practical design processes by urging
the designers to be constantly aware of the multi-
plicity of the dimensions of the process in which they
play a significant part.
Conclusion
Urban design, as we have seen, still suffers from a lack
of clarity in its definition, partly due to its coverage of
a wide range of activities. We have also seen that a
broad definition is what we need to deal with these
ambiguities. Rather than being confined in the dif-
ferences and minutiae of these activities, it is still
possible to see it as a process through which we
consciously shape and manage our built environment.
Urban designers are interested and engaged in this
process and its product. By using this broad defini-
tion, we can avoid seeing urban design as merely
engaged in the visual qualities of small urban places,
or, on the other side of the spectrum, in the trans-
formation of an abstract urban space. It is only
through broad definitions that we can encompass the
range of interests and involvements of urban design,
in all its macro- and micro-scale, process and product,
and visual and spatial aspects.
Urban design therefore can be defined as the
multi-disciplinary activity of shaping and managing
urban environments, interested in both the process of
this shaping and the spaces it helps shape. Combining
technical, social, and expressive concerns, urban
designers use both visual and verbal means of com-
munication, and engage in all scales of the urban
socio-spatial continuum.
We have seen an emergence of interest in urban
design. Its concern for making places and improving
the quality of the urban environment has attracted
support from unexpected quarters (Cuthbert, 1996).
In a social world in which ‘expert-systems’ have found
crucial importance (Beck, Giddens and Lash, 1994),
urban design has emerged as a critique of those
expert-systems involved in shaping urban environ-
ments. Even if this does not lead to the rise of a new
discipline, a clearer understanding of urban design
will help the development of the established discip-
lines of town planning and architecture, by singling
out the directions to which they have not paid
enough attention. As such its impact on these expert-
systems will be ‘reflexivity’, offering a new dynamism
and the possibility for change and improvement. In
this context, helping to clarify the nature and scope
of urban design becomes a pressing need. For those
who are engaged in urban design, a clearer under-
standing will be beneficial in showing the directions
in which both research and practice could develop.
Self-awareness and confidence by those who are
involved in shaping places will inevitably improve
their capacity to make better places.
References
Barnett, J. (1982), An Introduction to Urban Design, New
York, Harper and Row.
Beck, U., Giddens, A. and Lash, S. (1994), Reflexive
Modernisation: Politics, Traditions and Aesthetics in the
Modern Social Order, Cambridge, Polity Press.
Billingham, J. (ed.) (1994), Urban Design Source Book 1994,
London, Urban Design Group.
Billingham, J. (1995), ‘Urban designers facing research
identity crisis’, Planning, 19 May, 20–21.
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