Contemporary Urban Design

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Faculty of Engineering
Architecture Department
Renaissance planning
Alberti
Curiously enough, the most coherent advocate of medieval irregular
planning was the first great architectural theorist of the Renaissance:
Leone Battista Alberti. In his De Re Aedificatori (1485) he says :
…if the City is noble and powerful, the Streets should be straight and broad, which
carries an Air of Greatness and Majesty.

1. …by appearing so much
the longer, they will add to
the idea of the Greatness of
the Town,
2. and they likewise conduce
very much to Beauty and
Convenience,
3. and be a greater Security
against all Accidents and
Emergencies.
Alberti had several reasons for this:
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But above all they will give the town a
particular kind of beauty, for:
Moreover, this winding of the Streets
will make the Passenger at every Stop
discover a new Structure,
and the Front and Door of every House
will directly face the Middle of the
Street…
it will be both healthy and pleasant, to
have such an open View from every
House by Means of the Turn of the
Street.

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The town should also have its squares as Alberti says:
‘some for the exposing of Merchandises to sale in Time of Peace; others for the Exercises proper for
Youth; and others for laying up Stores in Time of War, of Timber, Forage, and the like Provisions
necessary for the sustaining of a Siege’.
As for the ideal shape
he finds this impossible to specify. As he
says :‘it must be various according to the
Variety of Places’

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One could plan with a
perfectly circular square or
other regular form if one
were building on a level site
but that would be impossible
on a hill.

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So Alberti’s vision of the city is emphatically not what most people have in mind when they
think of the Renaissance city.
Indeed a painting in the Ducal Palace at Urbino, now attributed to Luciano represents for
most of us the ideal of the Renaissance city, centered as it is about a three-storey circular
temple. Yet all is by no means what it seems.
There are wells, mirror-images of each other about the central axis and buildings which, on
the left side at least conform, in strict perspective, to a regular building line.

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But whilst each of these is symmetrical in itself they vary in height from four, rather low
individual storeys, to three rather higher ones.
Those to the right of the axis are even more irregular. A three and a four-storey building match
each other in height but the latter projects well in front of the building line whilst on this same
side, behind the central temple, there is a Basilican church with an axis parallel to, but otherwise
firmly independent of the main one.

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The city was intended for a patron, Count
Sforza, hence the curious name
Sforzinda.
Rosenau describes it in some detail (1959)
and, not surprisingly, it is based on a
Vitruvian circular plan and with a
Vitruvian response to the winds in the
layout of the streets. But the circle seems
to be merely a base or a plinth for an
eight-pointed regular star with defensive
towers at the points and gates at the
internal angles.
Such Renaissance city plans as have survived, however, suggest greater regularities than
these. plan for Sforzinda (c. 1457–64)

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The Vitruvian Man is a world-renowned drawing created by Leonardo da Vinci around the
year 1487.It is accompanied by notes based on the work of the famed architect, Vitruvius
Pollio. The drawing, which is in pen and ink on paper, depicts a male figure in two
superimposed positions with his arms and legs apart and simultaneously inscribed in a circle
and square. The drawing and text are sometimes called the Canon of Proportions or, less
often, Proportions of Man

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Before we consider these, however, we ought to look at
the final flowering of Renaissance planning in Europe,
that is to say the Baroque.
Baroque urban planning was first manifest in spaces
between groups of buildings, such as Michelangelo’s
Piazza del Campidoglio in Rome (started 1536)
Baroque

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As Bacon shows (1967) :
there was already an irregular,
medieval Campidoglio when
Michelangelo started work with a
(castellated) Palazzo del Senatore
forming its eastern side—that is the side
away from Michelangelo’s approach—
and, slanting inwards towards the
Senatore, the Palazzo dei Conservatori
defining the southern side.
Michelangelo started to tidy this up by
defining an east/west axis, centred on the
Palazzo del Senatori. He then gave this
Palazzo a new, symmetrical façade
articulated by massive Corinthian
pilasters supported by a great basement,
and approached by grand flights of stairs.

and the space between the two parallel wings of the Uffizi in Florence which Vasari
built—with advice from Michelangelo—between 1560 and 1574.
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Baroque

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Sixtus certainly did what he could to
unify Rome during his five years.
He was seeking not so much a visual,
architectural unity as an ecclesiastical
coherence for the city.
His aim was to link the seven major
churches and shrines of Rome with
roads by which pilgrims could make
their circuits of them all in a single
day.
Bordino: sketch plan (1588) showing Sixtus’s
connections between the Holy Places of
Rome:

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The most important church of all, Saint
Peter’s, was remote from most of the
others on the far side of the River Tiber
beyond the Castel Sant’Angelo.

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Earlier Popes had
connected Saint Peter’s
and the Castel which
was linked across the
Tiber to medieval
Rome by bridge, the
Ponte Sant’Angelo.

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North-east of this they had made
another fan of roads radiating from the
Piazza del Popolo.
Given these developments by his predecessors, Sixtus, as his Architect, Domenico Fontana, put it
(1612):
…wishing to ease the way for those who, prompted by devotion or by vows, are accustomed to
visit frequently the most holy places of the City of Rome, and in particular the seven churches so
celebrated for their great indulgences and relics, opened many most commodious and straight
streets in many places,

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Thus one can by foot, by horse, or in a
carriage, start from whatever place in Rome one
may wish, and continue virtually in a straight
line to the most famous devotions.

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Apart from the buildings which Sixtus’s roads connected their most important destinations were
marked by (Egyptian) Obelisks, in the Piazzas of Saint Peter’s, S.Maria Maggiore, S.Giovanni in
Laterano and the Piazza del Popolo (see Batta, 1986).
Others added further
Obelisks so,
altogether, Rome
now has some 14 in
all which, even
though they confuse
Sixtus’s original
scheme, greatly
enliven the piazzas
in which they were
erected

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"piazza Augusto imperator"
the Porto di Popolo
Campidoglio
Roman Coloseum
San Giovanni In Laterano
Piazza venezia

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Piazza di Spagna

Italy’s thriving urban cities were the center for the renewed trade coming in
from the Middle East that brought in wealth and culture here first before the
rest of Europe.
Thriving cities meant opportunities for education, scientific pursuits, and
even…arts and leisure
Florence, Italy today.
Renaissance begins in Italy...Why?
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Humanists believed mankind’s achievements and successes should be praised –
unlike the old Church teaching that this was vanity or sinful. They encouraged
artists to copy the classical style of the Greeks and Romans who had made great
advances in art, architecture, and the sciences.
“School of Athens” *
~ Raphael
In this wall fresco, Raphael (1483-
1520) pays tribute to mankind’s
achievements - Greek philosophers,
scientists, astronomers, and
mathematicians engage in
philosophic inquiry together in one
place though they lived in different
times.
Wall frescoe, Vatican Museums,
Rome Italy.
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How did ideas about piety and a simple life change?
Although people remained Christians; the everyday society was becoming more secular
(emphasizing non-religious pursuits / concerned with the here and now).
The wealthy, the educated, and even upper-clergy believed they could enjoy life now
without fear of offending God.
In these two works we see mankind
“enjoying life.”
Left: The Peasant Dance
by Pieter Brueghel the Elder.
Right:
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What effects did the emphasis on individuals have on
painters and sculptors?
Artists now painted portraits of
prominent citizens, showed their
distinct characteristics;

St. Peter’s Bascilica, Vatican City, Rome.
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Although contemporary professional use of the term 'urban design' dates from the mid-20th
century, urban design as such has been practiced throughout history.
Ancient examples of carefully planned and designed cities exist in Asia, India, Africa, Europe
and the Americas, and are particularly well-known within Classical Chinese, Roman and
Greek cultures.
European Medieval cities are often regarded as exemplars of undesigned or 'organic' city
development, but there are clear examples of considered urban design in the Middle Ages.
Throughout history, design of streets and deliberate configuration of public spaces with
buildings have reflected contemporaneous social norms or philosophical and religious beliefs

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The beginnings of modern urban design in Europe are indeed associated with the
Renaissance but, especially, with the Age of Enlightenment.
Modern urban design can be considered as part of the wider discipline of urban planning.
Indeed, Urban planning began as a movement primarily occupied with matters of urban
design.

By the early twentieth century
several directions in urban design
had been established. One model,
the Garden City, initiated by
Ebenezer Howard in the late
1890s.
A second approach was that of
formalists such as Camillo Sitte, a
nineteenth century Viennese
architect who admired medieval
urban patterns and treated urban
spaces as aesthetic arrangements
of building masses, facades, and
street spaces
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Such threads of formalist thinking have run through urban design history from ancient times into the
present.
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Another variant of the
formalist tradition,
sometimes termed the
"City Beautiful"
movement, was rooted in
Renaissance and Baroque
urbanism and looked at
the city as a network of
formal streets and spaces,
marked by striking
monuments.

A third major direction, the "Parks Movement",
pioneered by Frederick Law Olmsted, Calvert Vaux, and
George Kessler, focused on ways of introducing and
integrating natural systems into the city. Many American
cities today enjoy the legacy of this movement.
A fourth model, introduced by Tony Garnier and further
developed by Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius, and others
in the first half of the twentieth century, looked at the
city in terms of efficiency and function and tried to
provide access to light, air, and space using new
techniques of construction and transportation.
In each of these models there was a strong belief that
good city form contributed to the health and well-
being of people, and that cities should be designed,
yet each model hypothesized a different relation
between people and spaces.
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'Urban design'
was first used as a distinctive term when Harvard University hosted a
series of Urban Design Conferences from 1956 .
These conferences provided a platform for the launching of Harvard's
Urban Design program in 1959-60.
The writings of Jane Jacobs, Kevin Lynch, Gordon Cullen and
Christopher Alexander became authoritative works for the school of
Urban Design.

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Gordon Cullen's The Concise
Townscape, first published in
1961, also had a great influence
on many urban designers.
Cullen examined the traditional
artistic approach to city design of
theorists such as Camillo Sitte,
Barry Parker and Raymond
Unwin.
He created the concept of 'serial
vision', defining the urban
landscape as a series of related
spaces.

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Jane Jacobs' The Death and Life of
Great American Cities, published in
1961, was also a catalyst for interest in
ideas of urban design.
She critiqued the Modernism, and
asserted that the publicly unowned
spaces created by the city in the park
notion of Modernists was one of the
main reasons for the rising crime rate.
She argued instead for an 'eyes on the
street' approach to town planning, and
the resurrection of main public space
precedents, such as streets and squares,
in the design of cities.

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Kevin Lynch's The Image of the City of 1961 was also seminal to the movement, particularly with
regards to the concept of legibility, and the reduction of urban design theory to five basic elements -
paths, districts, edges, nodes, landmarks. He also made popular the use of mental maps to
understanding the city, rather than the two-dimensional physical master plans of the previous 50
years.

Christopher Alexander's A City is Not a Tree is
an essay that was first published in 1965
Alexander's main contention is that the 'natural
city' (as opposed to the ' artificial' city of the
urban planner) is a place of organized
complexity.
In Alexander's view, :
planners and designers invariably think of urban
structure in terms of simple tree-like hierarchies.
In reality, cities consist of shared spaces of
complex overlapping social networks organised
as 'semi- lattices'. The impact of this essay owes
much to Alexander's use of simple graphs and
Venn diagrams to illustrate the basic concept of
organised complexity.
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This is what Alexander means when he says "If
we make cities which are trees, they will cut our
life within to pieces"

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Overlap serves as a mechanism for tying the city
together into a cohesive whole. It's easy for
information to flow from one group to another.

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Other notable works include:
1. Rossi's Architecture of the City (1966),
2. Venturi’s Learning from Las Vegas (1972),
3. Colin Rowe's Collage City (1978),
4. and Peter Calthorpe's The Next American Metropolis (1993).
Rossi introduced the concepts of 'historicism' and 'collective memory' to urban design, and
proposed a 'collage metaphor' to understand the collage of new and older forms within the same
urban space.
Calthorpe, on the other hand, developed a manifesto for sustainable urban living via medium
density living, as well as a design manual for building new settlements in accordance with his
concept of Transit Oriented Development (TOD).
Bill Hillier and Julienne Hanson in "The Social Logic of Space" (1984) introduced the concept of
space syntax to predict how movement patterns in cities would contribute to urban vitality, anti-
social behaviour and economic success.
The popularity of these works resulted in terms such as 'historicism', 'sustainability',
'livability', 'high quality of urban components', etc. become everyday language in the
field of urban planning.

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Today the field is being shaped in new ways by an increasingly pluralist society.
The public realm is in the process of being redefined and reinvented.
Environmental change is more incremental and subject to increasing public review.
At the same time, many cities are expanding at their edges at an unprecedented rate, while
central cities are losing residents, jobs, and public support.
A renewed focus on creative urban design is needed now more than ever.

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Perceptual
Visual
Functional
Temporal
Morphological
Social

Contemporary Urban Design

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