History of Urban Design

The building of cities is one of man’s greatest achievements. The form of his city always
has been and always will be a pitiless indicator of the state of his civilization. Bacon, E.,
(1974), “design of cities”

The law of human history that mankind first of all must’ eat, drink, have shelter and
clothing, before it can pursue politics, science, art, religion etc’.

The first cities obviously were built when humankind had got beyond the struggle for
mere existence. The earliest known city, Jericho “Ariha” (c. 7000 BC) was an oasis near
the River Jordan whilst Catal Huyuk in Central Anatolia (Asian Turkey c. 6500 BC)
seems to have flourished on trade both depended on sophisticated agriculture, including
the rearing of livestock.

Urban Design:

· Addresses the way people perceive and behave in their surroundings,

· Considers the implications of form-giving actions (including the environmental and
ecological consequences) at a range of scales (sometimes from the individual to the
regional),
 · Pursues multiple objectives for multiple clients (including affected members of the
public), and
· Is conducted through an explicit decision-making process that offers the public the
opportunity to participate in a meaningful way, identifies goals and objectives, analyzes
existing conditions, explores alternate concepts and solutions, evaluates options with
respect to project goals and public values, selects the preferred alternative or combines
preferred elements into a synthesized concept, and includes an implementation strategy.

Urban Design in general:

· It carries a set of implicit values that all applicable urban design activities should pursue.
· It provides a useful checklist for designers, planners, engineers, and other practitioners to
use such that they are addressing urban design’s inherent values (as noted above).
· It describes a rational participatory process and provides a clear methodology for
applying urban design concepts.

Principles of Urban Design

1. Centers And Nodes Set Up The Pattern For The City.

2. Creating A Strong Sense Of Place Is Key To A Successful Neighborhood.

3. "Theme And Variation" Is Among The Key Urban Design Principles.

4. Decide Where To Make A Design Statement, Make It, But Don't Make It Everywhere.

5. Urban Design Should Promote and Facilitate Social Interaction.

6. The Social System Should Be More Important Than Vehicular Systems.

7. De-Emphasize Utilitarian, But Gray Portions Of The Public Realm.

8. Functional Methods Of Transporting People Of All Abilities, Goods, And Utilities Are
Essential.

9. Land Use Is Usually Secondary To Building Scale, Mass, And Setbacks.

10. Civic And Public Gathering Space Should Be Generous.

11. Urban Design Is Valuable But Complexity Should Be Proportionate To the Population.
1. Centers And Nodes Set Up The Pattern For The City.

A village, town, or city needs one or more focal points, depending on size. Traditionally
these were the downtowns. Now most regions are multi-centric (sometimes called
polycentric). It's actually fine to have more than one center in a large city, but sound
urban design principles would describe a hierarchy of centers. The downtown should the
king of the hill.

Node is simply a term more likely to be used by professionals for the idea of an activity
center or an area where traffic, money, information, or other flows come together.

You might have employment centers, shopping centers, entertainment centers, or multi-
function activity centers.

Each center or node should exude a strong sense of place. If you were a tyrant and you
could make the perfect hierarchical set of nodes within a major city, you also should
make each center or node have some distinctive elements.

So cultivating a dynamic and exciting community center or hierarchy of centers, that

most people can "read" intuitively, is perhaps the most important of the urban design
principles. When applied to a city or town, "legible" means that people from the same
culture have an intuitive sense of what is coming next and how to navigate; thus we say
that they can read their surroundings.

2. Creating A Strong Sense Of Place Is Key To A Successful Neighborhood.

If you hang around the architecture or planning communities, you'll hear this term
bandied about as if it were something you learned in kindergarten. I didn't learn it until
much later, so let's talk.

Certainly distinguishing this place from other places on the basis of history, culture, well-
preserved natural systems, and distinctive human inventiveness and ornamentation
somehow stimulates the brain in a pleasant way.

If you flatten off the mountaintop, which I still see occasionally, haven't you given up a
very distinguishing feature? I'd love to see a mountain outside my window now instead of
asphalt, concrete, Bradford pear trees, a distant awning, and a non-descript building.

Recognizing history, including human history, natural history, and cultural history,
contributes greatly to the collective memory that helps form a great community.

A district needs to feel like a district, that is, a relatively cohesive place with
boundaries. In the influential 1961 book The Image of the City, Kevin Lynch called these
boundaries "edges," and they should be discernible.
If you work at the neighborhood scale, it's important to define your neighborhood
boundaries. The edges enhance sense of place also, because they reinforce the notion that
we are leaving one place and entering another. For more on this topic, see our answer to a
site visitor's question about the significance of community edges.

3. "Theme And Variation" Is Among The Key Urban Design Principles.

Over and over in these pages, we are reminded that urban design principles are similar to
the key concept behind music, which is establishing a theme or two, and then proceeding
to endless but delightful variations and complexities rendered on the themes.

This is especially true when we consider architecture. Buildings on a street may be

generally two-story brick, but we might want to see different colors of brick, slightly
varying building heights, slightly varying window and door patterns, inventive use of
accent color, and even the occasional three-story brick or stucco building that is in
sympathy with other building patterns on the face of the block. Maybe the cornice type
and height varies along the block face.

So theme and variation is among the key urban design principles. In a town, you want
some slight degree of predictability about buildings, in a neighborhood a little more
predictability, and on a block, still more predictability.

Yet in all cases, we still want to be surprised. We humans need variety and delight in the
creativity of others. Don't take that away if you want a successful town or city.

But if you shock us on every block with a radically different look and feel, it's going to
read like a museum of architecture and not a very homey one at that.

4. Decide Where To Make A Design Statement, Make It, But Don't Make It Everywhere.

Attention to quality, detail, and workmanship count in the public realm.

You would like each design element to look as though someone thought about it, at least
a little, and fit the form to the function.

In other words, I want the door of the art museum to be a more interesting and unique
door than the door to the paper cup factory. The occasional handmade and artful detail is
essential to the perception that someone cares about this place.

You don't have to be clever about traffic lights; predictability is more important than a
design statement there. However, when you have a bench along the sidewalk, it shouldn't
look as though it came from the discount store. Nor should I have to hang my feet out
into the street to use it.
The benches, planters, street trees with tree grates, litter cans, and such that you see along
many commercial streets collectively are called a streetscape, by the way. Often it's best
not to spend money on streetscape unless you can do it well.

So decide where urban design principles need to be subtle and functional, versus
conscious and even decorative. Architects would remind us that this means that there
should be some thoughtful "articulation" (doors, windows, details, and "relief" in the
form of different vertical planes on the front wall) on walls facing the public realm, rather
than simply blank walls.

But if you carry out an elaborate cornice system on the rear of the building where no one
can see it, maybe you're just being impractical.

Landmarks are important in making people feel comfortable in a place, but each building
can't be a landmark. That would defeat the purpose.

In the public space, your backflow preventer cover doesn't need to be lavender, but
maybe the flowers in your planters should be lavender with some yellow and white
thrown in for contrast.

Usually your street furniture (benches and such) is important, but perhaps an exquisite
uplight for your street tree less so. That's a judgment call, and one that requires a well-
trained eye.

5. Urban Design Should Promote And Facilitate Social Interaction.

Just walk across the plaza and meet me. Don't call me on your cell phone from the
driveway.

Seriously, social interaction is important because this is how we develop empathy and
form new acquaintances and friendships, based on accidental association among classes
and people with diverse outlooks.

In the professional community, you will hear about related urban design principles of
"human scale" and "pedestrian scale." Designing for the human scale implies everything
from keeping street lighting at a height that lights the way for pedestrians, rather than
only for cars, to designing some places that are appropriate for intimate and semi-private
conversations in the public realm.

When you build a great cathedral (who's done that lately?), you want it to be awe-
inspiring and to point to something far greater than human scale. But for most everyday
interactions, including commerce, people unconsciously respond very well to keeping
street level features at the human scale.
6. The Social System Should Be More Important Than Vehicular Systems.

People are more important than machines. OK, you all say you agree.

But some of you really don't, because I see you build highways that bisect
neighborhoods, parishes, and extended families. When there is only one path, and that
path accommodates only machines, which could describe how the interstate highways
function in some parts of cities, we're all in trouble. For one thing, wide highways can be
used as blunt instruments enforcing racial, ethnic, and economic inequalities.

And when accommodating all the automobiles at the regional shopping mall du jour for
the Saturday before Christmas means that we should asphalt acres and acres, we're
forgetting that people are more important than our machines.

7. De-Emphasize Utilitarian, But Gray Portions Of The Public Realm.

We mean those gray, brown, or rusty streets, roads, stormwater inlets, manholes, utility
boxes, ugly bridges, and so forth. With determined effort, you can design an attractive
and brightly colored street and you certainly can build a good-looking bridge. By all
means, paint some of this gray stuff a vibrant color with a great design.

However, making every road an art statement isn’t the answer. The answer is skinnier
roads and more options for walking, cycling, and transit. Look into a complete
streets policy and see if you don't like it.

Land use patterns and the amount of private land that each residence is allowed to absorb
are major determinants of how much of a metropolitan or micropolitan area must be
devoted to roads and other gray infrastructure.

So your urban design principles should emphasize compact development patterns and the
most narrow and unobtrusive infrastructure that will accomplish the goal of a well-
functioning flow of people and goods.

One way to minimize utilitarian elements of the public realm is to combine them on a
single pole or in an unobtrusive area on top of a building. For example, consider how
your small cell technology for broadband, satellite dishes, sensors for traffic control and
many other purposes, surveillance cameras, and lighting can be combined in the least
visually distracting manner possible.

8. Functional Methods Of Transporting People Of All Abilities, Goods, And Utilities Are
Essential.

Here's where many American cities and towns are failing.

Is it really functional to have every desirable destination lined up along a single roadway,
which then becomes ridiculously congested along about 5:00 p.m. every Friday? Surely it
is not.

Is it useful for people to have to commute to work for 30 miles? Maybe that is somewhat
useful, but not economically efficient or friendly to the environment.

In most contemporary American cities, the pedestrian, the cyclist, the scooter user, the
baby carriage, and the skateboarder are all but forgotten. Making it safe and easy for
these people to move over the land is an essential part of a functional transportation
system.

The flows of people, electricity, water, freight, and so forth literally comprise the urban
structure. So the distribution of people, goods, and energy should be redundant,
intelligible, and efficient..

For example, when a freeway is being rebuilt, we need an alternate street system. This is
why it's a mistake to destroy a historic street grid, which allows for abundant detours that
are only slightly less efficient than the route of choice. Incidentally, it is very wise to
question why the freeway needs to be rebuilt at all; maybe tearing it down will breathe
new life into an area.

A system of cul-de-sacs may provide a comforting sense of familiarity, and thus meet the
intelligibility factor for those who live there. However, visitors from outside the
neighborhood won't find it so easy to navigate because it isn't redundant. And systems
that don't have ready substitutes are unforgiving of small mistakes, or of people who don't
drive.

Kids, the frail elderly, and the temporarily or permanently disabled actually comprise a
substantial portion of the population, so we need to accommodate their movement.

Your community also needs to start responding to and planning for transportation trends,
including the rapid rise of ride hailing services and the coming era of autonomous
vehicles. Both of these imply a reduced need for on-street parking, but an increased need
for drop-off and pick-up zones where a few minutes of parking is allowed.

9. Land Use Is Usually Secondary To Building Scale, Mass, And Setbacks.

Elsewhere we describe how segregating land uses through zoning was the norm in urban
planning until a paradigm shift that began in the 1980s. And we're pretty consistent
proponents of mixed-use development. But that doesn't mean a complete hodge-podge.

Imagine trying to walk down a sidewalk by a street, and in this order you pass:

· A dry cleaner with a small amount of suburban type parking in front of it

 · A typical big box discount store
· An apartment complex with three or four driveways onto the public street and two
rows of parking in front of the first buildings
· A large old single-family house
· A four-story brick office building of vaguely Colonial architecture

This is disorienting, isn't it?

So not every mix of uses is a good one. Complete lack of consistency in building setback
and height, as well as a disparate set of uses, isn't comfortable. So the soundest of urban
design principles is that the land and building uses need to be compatible with their
neighbors, particularly if you can see from one to another.

Is a concrete plant likely to need to be close to a Five-Star restaurant? I think not. But
would a loft condominium development marketing to young people need to be near a
moderately priced, loud, and popular restaurant? Yes, that would be a selling point.

10. Civic And Public Gathering Space Should Be Generous.

Probably civic space is simply another twist on the idea of a sense of place, but let's
emphasize that there should be a physical place where people can have chance encounters
and also purposeful gatherings.

Every culture needs to demonstrate its pride in some heritage or accomplishment, and
every democratic country needs places where those who are unhappy can assemble.

But what makes a good civic space is appropriate scale, visibility from one end to the
other, a sense of spaciousness adequate for the likely number of participants, the look and
feel of being "on purpose" without being overly formal, and the capability for random
patterns of movement.

And pay attention to the new urbanist idea of giving civic buildings and spaces a
prominent place within the community. Don't put them down by the railroad track where
no one else wants to be; make them the end point of a great long view.

11. Urban Design Is Valuable But Complexity Should Be Proportionate To The

Population.

The larger the city, the more complexity it can bear in design elements, and indeed some
cityscapes thrive on nearly complete chaos.

Yet that can only be a pleasant experience when the human flow and other flows within
the city are already large, random, and slightly chaotic. So complexity or simplicity
needs to be compatible with the number of inhabitants, whether permanent or on a
seasonal or daytime basis.

In a small town, you can still manage layers of complexity, and the best small towns do,
as we discuss on the small town character page. But the scale is drastically reduced. By
this I mean that you might have a complex rose garden 20 feet across, rather than the
cacophony of businesses, street vendors, street performers, entrances, signs, art, whimsy,
and honking taxis that are part of the fun in a New York City block.