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, Africa, Europe, and the Americas, and are particularly well known within Classical Chinese, Roman, and Greek cultures. Specifically,
Hippodamus of Miletus was a famous
ancient Greek architect and
urban planner, and all around academic that is often considered to be a "father of European
urban planning", and the namesake of the "Hippodamian plan", also known as the
grid plan of a city layout. European Medieval cities are often, and often erroneously, regarded as exemplars of undesigned or 'organic' city development. There are many examples of considered urban design in the Middle Ages. In England, many of the towns listed in the 9th-century
Burghal Hidage were designed on a grid, examples including
Southampton,
Wareham, Dorset and
Wallingford, Oxfordshire, having been rapidly created to provide a defensive network against Danish invaders. 12th century western Europe brought renewed focus on urbanisation as a means of stimulating economic growth and generating revenue. The
burgage system dating from that time and its associated burgage plots brought a form of self-organising design to medieval towns. Throughout history, the
design of
streets and deliberate configuration of
public spaces with
buildings have reflected contemporaneous social norms or philosophical and religious beliefs. Yet the link between designed urban space and the human mind appears to be
bidirectional. Indeed, the reverse impact of
urban structure upon human behaviour and upon thought is evidenced by both
observational study and historical records. There are clear indications of impact through
Renaissance urban design on the thought of
Johannes Kepler and
Galileo Galilei. Already
René Descartes in his
Discourse on the Method had attested to the impact Renaissance planned new towns had upon his own thought, and much evidence exists that the Renaissance streetscape was also the perceptual stimulus that had led to the development of coordinate geometry.
Early modern era File:Blv-haussmann-lafayette.jpg|
Boulevard Haussmann, Paris (
Georges-Eugène Haussmann) File:Wien 01 Burgring b.jpg|
Vienna Ring Road, Vienna, (
Georges-Eugène Haussmann) File:The Circus Bath 20040731.jpg|
Circus, Bath completed in 1768 The beginnings of modern urban design in Europe are associated with the
Renaissance but, especially, with the
Age of Enlightenment. Spanish colonial cities were often planned, as were some towns settled by other imperial cultures. These sometimes embodied utopian ambitions as well as aims for functionality and good governance, as with
James Oglethorpe's plan for
Savannah, Georgia. In the
Baroque period the design approaches developed in French formal gardens such as
Versailles were extended into urban development and redevelopment. In this period, when modern professional specializations did not exist, urban design was undertaken by people with skills in areas as diverse as
sculpture,
architecture,
garden design,
surveying,
astronomy, and
military engineering. In the 18th and 19th centuries, urban design was perhaps most closely linked with surveyors engineers and architects. The increase in urban populations brought with it problems of epidemic disease, the response to which was a focus on public health, the rise in the UK of
municipal engineering and the inclusion in British legislation of provisions such as minimum widths of street in relation to heights of buildings in order to ensure adequate light and
ventilation. Much of
Frederick Law Olmsted's work was concerned with urban design, and the newly formed profession of
landscape architecture also began to play a significant role in the late 19th century.
Modern urban design 's influential 1902 diagram, illustrating urban growth through
garden city "off-shoots" In the 19th century, cities were industrializing and expanding at a tremendous rate. Private businesses largely dictated the pace and style of this development. The expansion created many hardships for the
working poor and concern for public health increased. However, the
laissez-faire style of government, in fashion for most of the
Victorian era, was starting to give way to a
New Liberalism. This gave more power to the public. The public wanted the government to provide citizens, especially factory workers, with healthier environments. Around 1900, modern urban design emerged from developing theories on how to mitigate the consequences of the
industrial age. The first modern
urban planning theorist was Sir
Ebenezer Howard. His ideas, although utopian, were adopted around the world because they were highly practical. He initiated the
garden city movement. in 1898. His garden cities were intended to be planned, self-contained communities surrounded by parks. Howard wanted the cities to be proportional with separate areas of residences, industry, and agriculture. Inspired by the
Utopian novel
Looking Backward and
Henry George's work
Progress and Poverty, Howard published his book
Garden Cities of To-morrow in 1898. His work is an important reference in the history of
urban planning. He envisioned the self-sufficient garden city to house 32,000 people on a site of . He planned on a
concentric pattern with open spaces, public parks, and six radial
boulevards, wide, extending from the center. When it reached full population, Howard wanted another garden city to be developed nearby. He envisaged a cluster of several garden cities as
satellites of a central city of 50,000 people, linked by road and rail. His model for a garden city was first created at
Letchworth and
Welwyn Garden City in
Hertfordshire. Howard's movement was extended by
Sir Frederic Osborn to regional planning. Urban planning was first officially embodied in the
Housing, Town Planning, &c. Act 1909 Howard's 'garden city' compelled local authorities to introduce a system where all housing construction conformed to specific building standards. In the United Kingdom following this act,
surveyor,
civil engineers,
architects, and
lawyers began working together within
local authorities. In 1910,
Thomas Adams became the first Town Planning Inspector at the
Local Government Board and began meeting with practitioners. In 1914, The
Town Planning Institute was established. The first
urban planning course in America was not established until 1924 at
Harvard University. Professionals developed schemes for the development of land, transforming town planning into a new area of expertise. In the 20th century, urban planning was changed by the
automobile industry. Car-oriented design impacted the rise of 'urban design'. City layouts now revolved around roadways and traffic patterns. In June 1928,
the International Congresses of Modern Architecture (CIAM) was founded at the Chateau de
la Sarraz in Switzerland, by a group of 28 European architects organized by
Le Corbusier,
Hélène de Mandrot, and
Sigfried Giedion. The CIAM was one of many 20th century
manifestos meant to advance the cause of "architecture as a social art". File:Rodoviária do Plano Piloto.jpg|
Brasília (
Oscar Niemeyer,
Lúcio Costa) File:Palace of Assembly Chandigarh 2006.jpg|
Palace of Assembly (Chandigarh) (1952–1961) (
Le Corbusier) File:United Nations HQ - New York City.jpg|
Headquarters of the United Nations File:FDR Drive approaching Brooklyn Bridge.jpg|
FDR Drive designed by
Robert Moses Postwar Team X was a group of architects and other invited participants who assembled starting in July 1953 at the 9th Congress of the
International Congresses of Modern Architecture (CIAM) and created a schism within CIAM by challenging its doctrinaire approach to
urbanism. In 1956, the term "Urban design" was first used at a series of conferences hosted by Harvard University. The event provided a platform for Harvard's Urban Design program. The program also utilized the writings of famous
urban planning thinkers:
Gordon Cullen,
Jane Jacobs,
Kevin Lynch, and
Christopher Alexander. In 1961,
Gordon Cullen published
The Concise Townscape. He examined the traditional artistic approach to city design of theorists including Camillo Sitte, Barry Parker, and
Raymond Unwin. Cullen also created the concept of 'serial vision'. It defined the urban landscape as a series of related spaces. , urban design activist and author of
The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Also in 1961,
Jane Jacobs published
The Death and Life of Great American Cities. She critiqued the
modernism of
CIAM (International Congresses of Modern Architecture). Jacobs also claimed
crime rates in publicly owned spaces were rising because of the Modernist approach of 'city in the park'. She argued instead for an 'eyes on the street' approach to town planning through the resurrection of main public space precedents (e.g. streets, squares). In the same year,
Kevin Lynch published
The Image of the City. He was seminal to urban design, particularly with regards to the concept of legibility. He reduced urban design theory to five basic elements: paths, districts, edges, nodes, landmarks. He also made the use of mental maps to understand the city popular, rather than the two-dimensional physical master plans of the previous 50 years. Other notable works: • •
Learning from Las Vegas by
Robert Venturi and
Denise Scott Brown (1972) •
Collage City by
Colin Rowe (1978) •
The Next American Metropolis by
Peter Calthorpe (1993) •
The Social Logic of Space by Bill Hillier and Julienne Hanson (1984) The popularity of these works resulted in terms that become everyday language in the field of
urban planning. Aldo Rossi introduced 'historicism' and 'collective memory' to urban design. Rossi also proposed a 'collage metaphor' to understand the collection of new and old forms within the same urban space. Peter Calthorpe developed a manifesto for sustainable urban living via medium-density living. He also designed a manual for building new settlements in his concept of
Transit Oriented Development (TOD). Bill Hillier and Julienne Hanson introduced
Space Syntax to predict how movement patterns in cities would contribute to urban vitality, anti-social behaviour, and economic success. 'Sustainability', 'livability', and 'high quality of urban components' also became commonplace in the field.
Current trends File:Celebration fl.JPG|Market Street,
Celebration, Florida File:Sankt Eriksområdet 2014, 1.JPG|New urbanist Sankt Eriksområdet quarter in Stockholm, Sweden, built in the 1990s File:Queen Mother SQUARE, Poundbury, Dorset.jpg|
Poundbury, Dorset , in Sweden, started in the late 1990s as a
new urbanist eco-friendly
new town near
Malmö Today, urban design seeks to create
sustainable urban environments with long-lasting structures, buildings, and overall livability.
Walkable urbanism is another approach to practice that is defined within the
Charter of New Urbanism. It aims to reduce environmental impacts by altering the built environment to create smart cities that support
sustainable transport. Compact urban neighborhoods encourage residents to drive less. These neighborhoods have significantly lower environmental impacts when compared to
sprawling suburbs. To prevent urban sprawl,
Circular flow land use management was introduced in Europe to promote sustainable land use patterns. As a result of the recent
New Classical architecture movement,
sustainable construction aims to develop
smart growth, walkability,
architectural tradition, and
classical design. It contrasts with
modernist and
globally uniform architecture. In the 1980s, urban design began to oppose the increasing solitary
housing estates and
suburban sprawl. Managed Urbanisation with the view to making the urbanising process completely culturally and economically, and environmentally sustainable, and as a possible solution to the
urban sprawl, Frank Reale has submitted an interesting concept of Expanding Nodular Development (E.N.D.) that integrates many urban designs and ecological principles, to design and build smaller rural hubs with high-grade connecting freeways, rather than adding more expensive infrastructure to existing big cities and the resulting congestion.
Paradigm shifts Throughout the young existence of the urban design discipline, many paradigm shifts have occurred that have affected the trajectory of the field regarding theory and practice. These paradigm shifts cover multiple subject areas outside of the traditional design disciplines. • Team 10 - The first major paradigm shift was the formation of Team 10 out of CIAM, or the
Congres Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne. They believed that Urban Design should introduce ideas of 'Human Association', which pivots the design focus from the individual patron to concentrating on the collective urban population. • The Brundtland Report and Silent Spring - Another paradigm shift was the publication of the
Brundtland Report and the book
Silent Spring by Rachel Carson. These writings introduced the idea that human settlements could have detrimental impacts on ecological processes, as well as human health, which spurred a new era of environmental awareness in the field. • The Planner's Triangle - The Planner's Triangle, created by Scott Cambell, emphasized three main conflicts in the planning process. This diagram exposed the complex relationships between Economic Development, Environmental Protection, and Equity and Social Justice. For the first time, the concept of Equity and Social Justice was considered as equally important as Economic Development and Environmental Protection within the design process. • Death of Modernism (Demolition of Pruitt Igoe) - Pruitt Igoe was a spatial symbol and representation of Modernist theory regarding social housing. In its failure and demolition, these theories were put into question and many within the design field considered the era of Modernism to be dead. • Neoliberalism & the election of Reagan - The election of President Reagan and the rise of
Neoliberalism affected the Urban Design discipline because it shifted the planning process to emphasize capitalistic gains and spatial privatization. Inspired by the trickle-down approach of Reaganomics, it was believed that the benefits of a capitalist emphasis within design would positively impact everyone. Conversely, this led to exclusionary design practices and to what many consider as "the death of public space". • Right to the City - The spatial and political battle over our citizens' rights to the city has been an ongoing one. David Harvey, along with Dan Mitchell and Edward Soja, discussed rights to the city as a matter of shifting the historical thinking of how spatial matter was determined in a critical form. This change of thinking occurred in three forms: ontologically, sociologically, and the combination of this socio-spatial dialect. Together the aim shifted to be able to measure what matters in a socio-spatial context. • Black Lives Matter (Ferguson) - The
Black Lives Matter movement challenged design thinking because it emphasized the injustices and inequities suffered by people of color in urban space, as well as emphasized their right to public space without discrimination and brutality. It claims that minority groups lack certain spatial privileges and that this deficiency can result in matters of life and death. In order to reach an equitable state of urbanism, there needs to be equal identification of socio-economic lives within our urbanscapes. == New approaches ==