COURSE TITLE: URBAN PROJECT (URBAN

DESIGN) 1

Course No. URPL 3192

Urban Design and History

Isaiyas Desta
Contents • Definitions of Urban Design
• Aspects of Urban Design
• Principles of Urban Design
• History of Urban Design

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 What is Urban Design?

 Urban Design is about the process of designing and shaping

the physical features of cities, and regional spaces, it is also
about social design and other larger scale issues.
 Linking the fields of architecture as well as planning to better
organize physical space and community environments.

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 Definitions
 Urban Design deals with the larger scale of groups of buildings, infrastructure,
streets, and public spaces, entire neighbourhoods and districts, and entire
cities, with the goal of making urban environments that are equitable,
beautiful, performative, and sustainable.
 Urban Design is an interdisciplinary field that utilizes the procedures and the
elements of architecture and other related professions, including landscape
design, urban planning, civil engineering, and municipal engineering.
 It borrows substantive and procedural knowledge from public administration,
sociology, law, urban geography, urban economics and other related disciplines
from the social and behavioral sciences, as well as from the natural sciences.
 Urban Design involves many different disciplines including planning,
development, architecture, landscape architecture, engineering, economics,
law and finance, among others. 4
 Definition … Con’d

 Urban Design is the design of towns and cities, streets and spaces. It is
the collaborative and multi-disciplinary process of shaping the physical
setting for life – the art of making places.
 Urban Design involves the design of buildings, groups of buildings,
spaces and landscapes, and establishing frameworks and procedures
that will deliver successful development by different people over time.
 Urban Design is about making connections between people and places,
movement and urban form, nature and the built fabric.
 Urban Design draws together the many strands of place-making,
environmental stewardship, social equity and economic viability into the
creation of places with distinct beauty and identity.
 Urban Design is concerned with the arrangement, appearance and function of
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our suburbs, towns and cities.
 Model of Dubai Sports City in
Dubai, United Arab Emirates

METROPOLIS PLANNING
AND DESIGN Cheshunt
Lakeside, Broxbourne,
Station Hub

Monumental Axis, Brasília designed 6

by Oscar Niemeyer and Lúcio Costa

 Who are Urban Designers?

 Urban Designers are typically architects, Urban (town) planners or landscape

architects.
 Their skill is to bring together ideas from developers, local communities,
architects, planners, traffic engineers, landscape architects, transport
planners and many others, to resolve problems and conflicts in order to create
better places for everyone.
 Sometimes this will result in new places being built or a new appreciation of
existing urban areas in cities, towns and villages.
 Urban designers can be employed by developers, local planning authorities or
community groups, including neighbourhood planning groups.

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 Good Urban Design
 Good Urban Design has been found to add economic value by:
• Producing high returns on investments (i.e good rental returns and enhanced capital values)
• Making new places more attractive than the local competition at little cost
• Responding to occupier demand
• Reducing management, maintenance, energy and security costs
• Contributing to more contented and productive workforces
• Supporting dynamic mixed-use elements in developments
• Creating an urban regeneration and place-making market dividend
• Differentiating places and raising their prestige
• Opening up investment opportunities, raising confidence in development
• Providing opportunities for wealth generation by inhabitants
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• Reducing the cost to the public purse of rectifying urban design mistakes.
 The key aspects of Urban Design
 Places for People: For places to be well-used and well-loved, they must be safe,
comfortable, varied and attractive. They also need to be distinctive, and offer
variety, choice and fun. Vibrant places offer opportunities for meeting people,
playing in the street and watching the world go by.
 Enrich the Existing: New development should enrich the qualities of existing urban
places. This means encouraging a distinctive response that arises from and
complements its setting. This applies at every scale – the region, the city, the town,
the neighbourhood, and the street.
 Make Connections: Places need to be easy to get to and be integrated physically
and visually with their surroundings. This requires attention to how to get around by
foot, bicycle, public transport and the car – and in that order.
 Work with the Landscape: Places that strike a balance between the natural and
man-made environment and utilise each site’s intrinsic resources – the climate, 9
landform, landscape and ecology – to maximise energy conservation and amenity.
 The key aspects of Urban Design… cont.
 Mix Uses and Forms: Stimulating, enjoyable and convenient places meet a variety
of demands from the widest possible range of users, amenities and social groups.
They also weave together different building forms, uses, tenures and densities.
 Manage the Investment: For projects to be developable and well cared for they
must be economically viable, well managed and maintained. This means
understanding the market considerations of developers, ensuring long term
commitment from the community and the local authority, defining appropriate
delivery mechanisms and seeing this as part of the design process.
 Design for Change: New development needs to be flexible enough to respond to
future changes in use, lifestyle and demography. This means designing for energy
and resource efficiency; creating flexibility in the use of property, public spaces and
the service infrastructure and introducing new approaches to transportation, traffic
management and parking. 10
 Principles of Urban Design
 Quality of the public realm create an environment where everyone can access and
benefit from the full range of opportunities available to
 Continuity and Enclosure members of society.

be integrated into the existing urban form and the

 Character
natural and built environments.

 Ease of Movement be integrated into the existing urban form and the
natural and built environments.

 Legibility address the connections between people and places by

 Diversity considering the needs of people to access jobs and key services.

create an environment where everyone can access and benefit

 Adaptability from the full range of opportunities available to members of
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society.
Some exemplar projects

URBAN INITIATIVES STUDIO A

Framework for Woolwich Town

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Some exemplar projects…cont.

PLACE-MAKE Houghton Regis

Place Shaping Study

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Some exemplar projects…cont.

BDP Basing View Place-making

Vision

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Some exemplar projects…cont.

DAVID LOCK ASSOCIATES

Milton Keynes 2050

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 Some exemplar projects…cont.

PLANNING AND DESIGN

GROUP Creswell, Derbyshire

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Some exemplar projects…cont.

TERENCE O'ROURKE
Exploration of social living
spaces as part of a Garden
Village masterplan

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Some exemplar projects…cont.

SAVILLS URBAN DESIGN

STUDIO South Maple
Cross centre

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 History
 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.
 Throughout history, the 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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Early Modern Era History…cont.
 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.

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Early Modern Era… History…cont.
 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.

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Modern Urban Design History…cont.
 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.

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Modern Urban Design… History…cont.
 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 garden city movement. 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.

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Modern Urban Design… History…cont.
 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".
Modernism

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Current Trends History…cont.
 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.

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  Group Assignment:
Read more and review Case study regarding on :-
• Urban Design
1. Define briefly
2. Take internationally done case study/project/

Assignment 1 2.1. Name of the project/case study/

2.2. Its location
2.3. Key Problem Areas.
2.4. SWOT Analysis
2.5. Vision, Objective, strategy
2.6. Design Solutions
2.7. Actions and Implementation, financing and responsible bodies
3. The lesson you learnt from the case study/project/
4. Appropriate reference
• Your Assignment should not exceed 15 page (Minimum 10 page) with font size-12, 26
spacing 1.5 and font type “Times New Roman”
Thank You!

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