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Definitions of urban design: The nature and concerns of urban design

Alan Rowleya
a
Department of Land Management, University of Reading, Reading

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 Planning Practice and Research, Vol. 9, No. 3, 1994

ARTICLES

Definitions of Urban Design: the

nature and concerns of urban design
ALAN ROWLEY

Introduction
The architect and educationalist Patrick Nuttgens once wrote, 'until you have a
name for a thing you have very little knowledge of it' (1973, p. 161). As a
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corollary, he should have added that having a name for something does not
necessarily mean that we understand what it is! Urban design is, surely, a case
in point. Some definitions of urban design are frankly outdated and others are
certainly over simplistic. But the difficulties over definition are compounded by
the fact that the constituent words urban and design are themselves so slippery
and problematic.
Christopher Jones prefaced his book on design methods with no fewer than
eleven competing definitions and descriptions of designing, and commented that
'only about a tenth of the important words are used more than once'. He then
proposed his own definition of designing which was 'to initiate change in
man-made things' (1980, p. 4). In a general educational text on design, Ken
Baynes wrote:
How you define design depends on what you are trying to do. A
definition of design that would be useful to the designer might not help
an historian and could possibly outrage a philosopher. . . . As a human
expression, design defies brief description. Words cannot easily hold it;
they can easily distort it. Although some. . . suggestions are full of
insight and . . . are effective in making us look again at our own
attitudes and preconceptions, each, in turn, is inadequate by itself. It is
inevitable that there is no single definition . . . that truly satisfies our
sense of the reality of design as a quality or activity existing in the real
world. (1976, pp. 23-31)
Urban, one might feel, should be an altogether less problematic word. Appar-
ently not since, for example, some urban design practitioners now explicitly
include rural sites and rural settings amongst their concerns or principles (DoE,
1994).
This article is another attempt to define urban design in terms relevant to
contemporary conditions. It is based on a review of a range of academic and
professional writings about urban design. After a brief outline of the origins and

Alan Rowley, Department of Land Management, University of Reading, PO Box 219, Reading RG6
2AW. Tel: 0734 318171; Fax: 0734 318172.

179
 Alan Rowley

evolution of urban design, characterised by uncertainty about its scope and

relevance, four aspects are examined. These are:
• the substance of urban design,
• the goals and motives of urban design,
• ways of working in urban design, and
• the role of urban design.
Recent research, on the design policies in British local plans (DoE, 1994) for
example, and the growing concern for sustainable development, highlight the
need for a fresh debate in response to current conditions. Hopefully, this article
will illuminate a few of the key issues and enrich the discussion about the nature,
concerns and methods of urban design.
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The Origins and Evolution of Urban Design

The term urban design was apparently coined in North America in the late
1950s. In 1957, the American Institute of Architecture established a Committee
on Urban Design and the first university course in the subject was established at
Harvard in 1960. The Institute's Committee commissioned Paul Spreiregen to
write a series of articles about urban design for the AIA Journal and these were
the basis of his book (Spreiregen, 1965). Spreiregen's vision of the scope of
urban design was ambitious and comprehensive. It extended from the regional/
national scale to the design of street furniture; from urban renewal to historic
preservation; and from comprehensive development to aesthetic control.
Others writers were more perceptive and either more reflective or more
critical! Kevin Lynch and Jane Jacobs come immediately to mind and, in the
long run, their thoughts about urban design have had by far the greater influence.
Although Lynch later came to make a distinction between urban and city design,
in Image of the City (1960) he used the two terms relatively interchangeably.
Jacobs warned of the dangers of 'big architecture' asserting that:
To approach the city . . . or neighbourhood as if it were a larger
architectural problem... is to substitute art for life. (1964, p. 386)
The concept of urban design crossed the Atlantic and was married to the
pre-existing British townscape and town design traditions, espoused by Cullen
(1961), Gibberd, Holford and Sharpe (MoHLG 1953) and others, and with its
system of town and country planning. The late 1960s and early 1970s was not
a good period for any of the environmental professions. They were, in turn, both
humiliated and humbled largely as a result of public disaffection with the
environments they had collectively produced. Town or urban design was not
excepted. Edgar Rose wrote of the 'legacy of urban design' with its reliance on
'outdated rules of architectural design of a purely formal kind' and its 'failure
to recognise the complexity of the design process itself or the object of that
process'. (1974, p. 121)
If the 1970s was a bad decade for urban design practice, it was a good one
for design thinking and theorising. Many of the ideas that underpin current
conceptions of urban design stem from this period. Contributions from, for
180
 Definitions of Urban Design

example, Alexander, Barnett, Canter, the Kriers, Norberg-Schulz, Relph and

Venturi, together with those from the ever perceptive Kevin Lynch, spring to
mind. By 1980, an optimist might well have said 'Urban design is dead: Long
live urban design!' Bentley wrote of urban design as ' . . . clearly in its prehis-
toric stage'. He saw it as
. . . emerging as part of a critique of the contemporary urban situation:
a critique of the urban environmental product, a critique of the process
of development by which it is bought about, and a critique of the
professional roles involved in controlling it. (1976, p. 35)
In practice the term urban design is is now used extremely loosely to encompass
anything from the design of a facade of a building or modest environmental
improvements, perhaps to a single street, to proposals for an entire new
settlement; or the exercise of aesthetic control or design review by a public
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authority, on the one hand, and the physical outcome, intentional or otherwise,
of the market led development process on the other.
In short, whilst there is general agreement that urban design exists, there is
considerably less agreement as to what it is. One problem is the breadth of work
that is commonly undertaken under the guise of urban design. Another is that
inevitably definitions vary depending on an individual's or interest group's
perspective: on the role of the designer in the development and urban design
processes. As Ruth Knack has argued:
Trying to define urban design is like playing a frustrating version of
the old parlour game, Twenty Questions, in which the answer to every
question (Is it animal? vegetable? on mineral?) is no. Most people find
it easier to say what urban design is not (architecture, engineering,
landscape architecture, city planning) than what it is. The term is as
much a presumption as it is a description. (1984, p. 4)
Does this vagueness and uncertainty matter? Donald Appleyard rightly com-
mented that boundary definition
. . . is a negative activity. It is more enriching to identify, clarify and
debate the central beliefs and activities of a field than to hide behind
a simplistic mask. (1982, p. 126)
However, when questions arise concerning the legitimate scope of public control
and intervention, for example, then some agreement about objectives and
parameters is needed.

The Substance of Urban Design

In this section, the substance of urban design is discussed principally in terms of
urban design considerations, drawing on the precedent of planning consider-
ations used particularly in development control. Some of the recent attempts to
establish urban design principles are outlined. Finally, two subsidiary facets of
the substance of urban design are discussed: its spatial scale and time dimension.
181
 Alan Rowley

Shirvani (1985) writes about the domain of urban design which he identifies
mainly through the elements of the physical environment. Cook (1980) and
Lynch (1981) are concerned with the qualities urban design as a process seeks
to achieve. Alexander (1979) writes of the quality without a name which he
defines in terms of the recurring and interlocking patterns of events in buildings
and towns. Many others speak of the urban design product. In their different
ways, all are responding to the need to identify urban design's special concerns,
or its substance, as a basis for understanding what urban design is.
Two contrasting definitions of the purpose of urban design highlight how
notions of the subject have developed since the 1950s.
The purpose of town design is to see that (the urban) composition not
only functions properly, but it is pleasing in appearance. (Gibberd,
1953, p. 10)
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Urban design is essentially about place making, where places are not
just a specific space, but all the activities and events that make it
possible. (Buchanan, 1988, p. 33)
Gibberd's definition emphasises the visual quality of spaces (in practice the
prosaic matters of function were usually predetermined by engineers, land use
planners and others) and this perspective has roots at least as far back as Camillo
Sitte, writing in 1889. Buchanan's view reflects the renewed interest in the
ancient idea of a 'sense of place' shown by contemporary theoreticians and
writers like Alexander and Norberg-Schulz, and some practitioners.
Gibberd's view of urban design's purpose is a restricted and somewhat
discredited one: but at least, however imperfectly, it was realisable. Buchanan's
conception, on the other hand, must be seen as an aspiration. It reflects the
horizons of urban design and defines a territory where much more thought is
required before theory is matched by practice and achievement. Bob Jarvis'
seminal article 'Urban environments as visual art or as social setting' explored
the contradictions and tensions between these two perspectives (1981), whilst
Jonathan Sime (1986) considered some of the implications for design of
adopting a focus on 'places' and 'place-making'.
The models developed by Relph (1976), Canter (1977) and others, and
recently reinterpreted by Punter (1991) (Figure 1) show the components of a
'sense of place'. Such models of the potential scope of urban design need to be
expressed in more concrete terms to be of everyday utility in the real world.

Planning Considerations
British town planning law and practice has long grappled with the problem of
defining its subject matter with reasonable clarity and certainty, whilst also
retaining an essential measure of flexibility and robustness so as to accommodate
new concerns and changing priorities. The device it uses is the notion of
planning considerations, at the same time making an important distinction
between 'relevant' and 'material' considerations. 'Relevant' considerations
define the range and variety of matters which may lawfully be taken into account
182
 Definitions of Urban Design

Townscape Adjacent land uses

Built form Pedestrian flow
Permeability Behaviour patterns
Microclimate Vehicle flow
Roorscape Physical traces -
Landscape wear and tear
Furniture Noise
Smell

Public perceptions
Qualitative assessments
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Perceived functions / attractions

Cultural associations
Legibility

FIGURE 1. Design considerations/components of a 'sense of place' (from Punter, 1991).

in development control in a generic sense, independent of a particular proposal,

of local circumstances and of the policy stance of a particular local authority.
'Material' considerations are those 'relevant' considerations that are pertinent to
a particular application. Planning considerations, of themselves, do not specify
how they should be taken into account. That is a matter for policy.
Research into planning practice (Davies et al., 1986) developed a checklist of
87 planning considerations grouped under 14 'second tier' headings which, in
turn, were grouped under six broadly based 'first tier' considerations (Figure 2).
These are amenity, arrangement, efficiency, co-ordination, quantity & distri-
bution, and an 'other' category including, importantly, emergent considerations
seen as representing the 'frontiers' of planning. However, such a checklist says
nothing about the relative weight to be attached to individual considerations
when determining a planning application.

Urban Design Considerations

Denning the scope of urban design's concerns can be approached in a similar
way. For example, Cook (1980) has written about the four qualities that urban
design, as a process, seeks to achieve—visual, functional, environmental and the
urban experience.

Visual considerations. Visual considerations have been the traditional preoccu-

pation of urban design. Once viewed largely as a matter of aesthetics,
and now capable of being informed by an understanding of environmental
psychology and perception, they encompass such issues as form, spatial
definition and composition; serial vision; colour, texture and decoration; and
landscaping. Visual considerations range from the design and siting of a single
object in a space, or a concern for buildings seen in their immediate context, to
183
 Alan Rowley

Arrangement
Amenity Efficiency
I

The Practical Considerations

Form and
Quality of Development

THE CONCERNS
OF CONTROL

Location and
Quantity of Development
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The Strategic Considerations

I I
Volume Co-ordination

Location Other Emergent

FIGURE 2. Planning considerations in development control (from Davies et al., 1986).

a city wide concern for skylines and the siting of high buildings or other
landmarks.

Functional considerations. Functional considerations are another traditional

area of concern and include matters such as road layout and capacity; car parking
provision; and refuse collection facilities. But, like visual considerations, in-
creased understanding of how environments are used as well as the diversity of
users and their differing needs, can and should be incorporated. Spaces need to
be arranged and furnished to support the most likely or desirable activities.
Pedestrian routes should be convenient, comfortable and safe. The design of
spaces should respond to patterns of use and movement. Sometimes vehicular
movement must be given priority but often not. Other functional issues could
include a concern for compactness and an appropriate intensity of activities and
uses; and for privacy, protection and security in the face of rising levels of crime.
Clare Cooper-Marcus' work (1986, 1990) highlights the potential breadth and
importance of such seemingly mundane concerns in urban design.

Environmental considerations. Cook's use of the word 'environmental' in a

quite restricted sense may create confusion in many minds, but this is a rather
neglected and thinly developed area of concern in urban design. Some qualities
and concerns can be expressed in both positive and negative terms. Spaces need
adequate natural light, sun and shade. Too much noise, glare, air pollution, wind
all need to be avoided. Elizabeth Beazley (1990/91) reminds designers of
184
 Definitions of Urban Design

'. . .the forgotten art of planning with the micro climate in mind'. So this
heading encompasses both long-standing as well as emerging concerns and
priorities: for example, energy efficiency; wildlife support and nature conser-
vation; pollution and waste control; and sustainability generally. All design
involves making choices and compromises. Urban design has a considerable
ecological impact and giving greater emphasis to 'green' considerations will
pose a severe challenge to many well established habits, values and forms of
development (Bentley, 1990; Breheny & Rookwood, 1993).

The urban experience. For Cook, the final major area of concern in urban
design is to enhance the urban experience which
. . . is produced by the diversity of uses, the diversity of architecture
and other visual stimuli, the amenities, the open spaces for active and
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passive recreation, and the interaction of diverse people with each

other in these complex surroundings. Complexity, surprise, diversity,
and activity are the essence of cities. (1980, p. 13)
This is the heading which embraces the attributes of place rather than physical
space. It includes public perceptions, associations and meanings, and the history
and genius loci of settlements.
One difficulty with Cook's four categories is the extent to which his qualities
overlap and intermingle. However, these four broad categories of urban design
considerations form a basic framework which collectively encompass most of
the factors which urban designers should take into account, with scope for new
concerns to be added. Just as planners must decide which considerations are
'material' to a particular situation, so designers must appraise the appropriate-
ness, balance and impact of urban design considerations. This judgmental
process is part of the art of urban design. Historically, urban design has
depended on too narrow a set of considerations and a 'back to basics' approach
is certainly not the right route for urban design in the 1990s.

Urban Design Principles

The 1980s witnessed several efforts to develop a more prescriptive set of
principles or 'commandments' as a basis for urban design but essentially
reflecting this basic range of considerations. These attempts include Kevin
Lynch's five performance dimensions—vitality (subsequently renamed habit-
ability), sense, fit, access and control and two meta-criteria, efficiency and justice
(1981); Bentley et al.'s seven qualities—permeability, variety, legibility, robust-
ness, visual appropriateness, richness and personalisation (1985); and the Prince
of Wales' ten principles—the place, hierarchy, scale, harmony, enclosure,
materials, decoration, art, signs and lights and community (1989). Some lists
relate to specific types of development (Cooper-Marcus et ah, 1986, 1990) and
others are location specific (Paumier et ah, 1988). Bentley (1990) has built on
earlier work to produce a tentative set of principles for designing sustainable and
responsive places.

185
 Alan Rowley

So far, nobody has seriously attempted to resolve these sets of principles.

Most are exclusively preoccupied with the product of urban design and they say
very little about the process.
Apart from this major topic of urban design considerations, there are two
subsidiary aspects of the substance of urban design. The first concerns the spatial
scales at which these considerations may be an issue, and the second is the time
dimension.

Spatial Scale
Rayner Banham, commenting like many others on the growing interdisciplinary
gap between architecture and planning in the 1960s, defined urban design's field
of concern as 'urban situations about half a mile square' (1976, p. 130). In
contrast, Lynch advocated a breadth of concern and, by implication, spatial
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scales.
City design may be engaged in preparing . . . a comprehensive regional
access study, . . . a new town,... or a regional park system. . . . It may
seek to protect neighbourhood streets, revitalise a public square,... set
regulations for conservation or development, build a participatory
process, write an interpretive guide or plan a city celebration. (1981,
p. 291)

Urban design considerations arise over a spectrum of spatial scales extending

from the very local to the metropolitan scale of urban form and city image. But
focusing on places and place-making suggests that urban design will mainly
operate in a middle ground and at an intermediate spatial scale.
Urban design is primarily concerned with the 'no man's land' which
is, in reality every man's land. . . . This is the scale of environment in
which people find their daily activities and their strongest emotions
with regard to change. It is the scale for urban design activity.
(Goodey, 1978, p. 66)

The Time Dimension

This second subsidiary aspect of the substance of urban design is commonly
interpreted purely in terms of the time scale for action and change. The time
span for urban design tends to be over a longer range than is generally the case
in architecture, but shorter than many key aspects of planning. Of all the
environmental professions, perhaps landscape architecture comes closest to an
affinity with this aspect of urban design. This is due to landscape architecture's
proper concern for the consequences of seasonal change and the effects of
growth and maturity over many decades, even centuries. Urban design is
involved with environmental change in a similar way: with both the initial
patterns of form and use, and with the future use and re-use of the urban fabric.
Additionally, urban design should reflect a sense of history.
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 Definitions of Urban Design

The 'sense of place' must be recognised and articulated. In terms of

future change, the urban designer must be aware of a phased series
of opportunities and constraints and relate a generation-long span of
change to the existing lives of residents, users and visitors. (Goodey,
1978, p. 66)
So continuity is an important aspect of urban design and, as a consequence, the
time dimension is not simply a facet of process: it is also an essential ingredient
of the urban experience and is, therefore, a part of the substance of urban design.
Kevin Lynch addressed this neglected aspect of urban design in his book What
Time is this Place?

The Goals and Motives of Urban Design

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Why does any person or organisation, private or public, engage in urban design?
Most definitions either take such goal oriented questions for granted or, alterna-
tively, any discussion about motives is embedded, almost to the point of
obscurity, in a more general debate about product and process. The most
common presumption is that urban design is an activity of government, usually
local, and is undertaken 'in the public interest'. But such a view is both too
general and restrictive and it is also very naive!
Beckley (1979) identified two types of urban design, self-conscious and
un-self-conscious. Self-conscious urban design is what people who see them-
selves as designers create and do, be they architects, landscape architects,
planners or other supporters of the Urban Design Group. Unselfconscious urban
design is the result of the decisions and actions of people who most certainly do
not see themselves as designers: property owners and most developers and their
advisers in both the private and public sector. This is despite the fact that, in the
final analysis, they are the patrons of at least one branch of self-conscious
designers: 'he who pays the piper, calls the tune'!
In A Theory of Good City Form, Lynch's five performance dimensions are
prefaced by a discussion of the values he believed affected urban form. There are
strong values including meeting the demand for accommodation or preserving
the character of a place. Then there are wishful and weak values, such as
increasing amenities and reducing crime (but note the recent change of emphasis
here!). Hidden values include maintaining political control (aspects of Westmin-
ster City Council's recent housing policies?) or prestige as well as profit. Finally,
there are neglected values, including the symbolic expression and experience of
the city, and user control.
Stephen Carr and others focus the discussion more closely. They identify five
common motivations for 'making or remaking public spaces' (Carr et al., 1992).
These are public welfare, visual enhancement, environmental enhancement,
economic development (including profit), and image enhancement. The last of
these is usually unstated. However, this is not an exhaustive list and other
motives that can be identified in practice include community development and
empowerment, conservation of environmental quality and character, and sustain-
ability. To understand the nature of urban design, the part played in the processes
187
 Alan Rowley

of development and design, of values and motives, must be appreciated. As

Jonathan Barnett has observed:
The design of cities has been determined by engineers, surveyors,
lawyers and investors, each making individual rational decisions, but
leaving the design of the city to be taken care of later, if at a l l . . . . The
day to day decisions about the allocation of government money
according to conflicting needs and different political interests, or the
economics of real estate investment, are in fact the medium of city
design, as essential to the art as paint is to the painter. (1982, pp. 9-12)
The motives for urban design affect the shape of towns and the quality of the
environment, whether a piece of townscape, a composition of spaces or the
character of places. The motives determine the selection and priority of the
considerations and components. In one situation the emphasis may be on image
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and appearance at the expense of utility. In another, the aim may be to maximise
pedestrian flow or 'footfall' and townscape quality or recreational opportunity
may be sacrificed. Whether the results are 'good places' is, of course, the critical
question.

Ways of Working in Urban Design

In this section, the prominent place given to process in many definitions of urban
design, is discussed. Then the various modes of action found in urban design
practice, are reviewed.
The discussion of motives inevitably introduced the issue of the process of
urban design. The urban design process can be seen as the ongoing process of
urban development and change and of inadvertent urban design. Or it can be
seen as the process by which the visual, functional and experiential qualities of
buildings, spaces and the public realm are intentionally shaped and controlled.
Many designers and design practices put process at the centre of their
conception of urban design:
• Urban design is the process of giving physical design direction to
urban growth, conservation and change, (after Arup Associates,
1991, p. 12)
• The process by which the public spaces of a town come into being,
are modified and maintained. (Parnaby, 1993, p. 40)
• Urban design is the process of understanding people and place in an
urban context, leading to a strategy for the improvement of urban
life and the evolution of the built environment in three dimensions.
(BDP, 1991, p. 14)
Christopher Alexander has gone so far as to argue that:
The task of creating wholeness in the city can only be dealt with as a
process. It cannot be solved by design alone, but only when the
process by which the city gets its form is fundamentally changed.
(1987, p. 3)
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 Definitions of Urban Design

Marxists and political economy influenced designers also take this view. How-
ever, most urban designers adopt a more pragmatic stance than this. They
respond to opportunities and pressures to alter the public realm as these present
themselves, even if this means that some objectives have to be compromised in
order to secure a more immediate, overall improvement in environmental
quality.
Since the 1950s, urban design's aspirations have encompassed the extremes
from, for example, Ed Bacon's Baroque-like notions of city-wide shafts of space
to aesthetic control exercised on a piecemeal, building by building, basis. Many
of the grander ideas failed as urban designers found that they simply could not
get control of today's pluralistic 'city of a thousand designers'. How urban
designers work is largely a reflection of their particular position within the larger
process of urban change. They act within the prevailing financial, legal, political
and institutional context. They also respond to their clients' requirements and
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motives. Finally, they should respond to the 'place' itself. There is no one,
identifiable process of urban design. Rather there are choices in terms of
methods and procedures, instruments, resources and participants.
Process and product interact in urban design, perhaps more than in any other
branch of design. Philip Langdon (1990) stresses the part design, development
and management processes may play in terms of the perceived quality of the
final outcome. But Lynch has warned of the dangers of an excessive preoccu-
pation with process at the expense of form:

The human consequences of any environment are the measure of its

quality, and not the form itself. But not the process itself either. . . .
A local playground, produced by a genuine participatory process,
but muddy and shabby in its final form, is a failure just as much as
a handsome design imposed on the community—and it might be a
greater failure. In particular situations, sometimes form and sometimes
process can be the dominant consideration, but usually they work
together. (1981, p. 280)

Modes of Action in Urban Design

In Managing the Sense of Region, Lynch (1976) provided a framework of ways
of working with his four modes of action: diagnosis, policy, regulation and
design. Others that can be added include education and participation, and
management.

Diagnosis. Lynch argued that urban designers should suffer constant anxiety
about the 'spirit of place' ' (1984, p. 5). Since localities are continually being
changed by the actions of others, often only partially under public control, better
information about such places, their ingredients and how they are used and work,
can influence and hopefully improve what happens. All too often, only a
selection of the physical attributes of a place are recorded, patterns of use are
virtually ignored and interpretations and meanings are unrecognised. Site and
189
 Alan Rowley

user analysis should be a cornerstone of how all urban designers work including
as the basis for public policy making.

Policy. Public policies dealing with the substance of urban design are com-
monplace but these should embrace the breadth of urban design considerations,
over the full range of spatial scales relevant to urban design. This includes lay
perceptions and interpretations of environments and should not be restricted to
a narrow selection of traditional 'safe' criteria. Policies can also encompass
aspects of process and methods as well as management and the allocation of
resources.

Regulation. Policies are implemented through processes of control which range

from the inflexible to the discretionary and also through negotiation and
persuasion. Most urban designers are well versed in the application of some
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regulatory procedures such as aesthetic control under the planning system. But
other types of regulation impinge on the design of the public realm. Highway
standards are an obvious example but there are a great many more. Very often
such codes and standards are administered by members of that group of
unselfconscious urban designers with scant or no regard for their impact on
environmental quality.

Design. Lynch defined design as:

The playful creation and strict evaluation of the possible form of
something, including how it is to be made. That something need not
be a physical object nor is design expressed only in drawings. (1981,
p. 290)
Despite its obvious failures, it may be argued that urban design has been most
successful in project design, that is the design of a defined geographical area,
however large, in which there is a definite client or clients, a concrete pro-
gramme, a foreseeable time for completion and effective control over significant
aspects of form. At what point project urban design becomes simply 'big
architecture', using the term with its usual pejorative overtones, depends on an
assessment of the quality of the resultant development. Different types of design,
described by Lynch (1968) and others, include framework design and master
planning; system design; activity design; and exploratory design.

Education and participation. Programmes of environmental education are an

opportunity both to 'spread the word' and to encourage the wider and more
active involvement of an informed public in the urban design process. Some, like
Henry Sanoff (1978), have developed ways of working which enable design
professionals to transfer some of their own knowledge to lay people, so that
those affected by design decisions can begin to diagnose problems for them-
selves and come to appreciate the complexity of the issues and choices, as well
as the compromises that all design involves. Urban design is usually carried out
in a way which either excludes the potential users completely, or involves them
so late in the process that confrontation is inevitable. Community involvement
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 Definitions of Urban Design

and participation is a facet of urban design which deserves more attention

(Punter, 1991; Carr et al., 1992).

Management. Finally there is the ongoing management and maintenance of the

urban fabric. All too often this has been left to others with little or no
understanding of the vital constituents of a 'good place'. Equally, too many
project designers have paid too little regard to the problems of after use and
management including the resource implications. In Managing Downtown Public
Spaces, Project for Public Spaces Inc. acknowledged the changes in their own
thinking and approach after 10 years of experience.
Design is important, but in many cases management is more important
and can accomplish more, and more quickly, than any urban design
scheme. (1984, p. vii)
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This list of ways of working is by no means complete but it typifies the array
of activities urban design can and should involve. Which ones, how far, and to
what effect, is the product of influences including conceptions of the substance
of urban design, motives and the real or perceived client (Figure 3).

The Role of Urban Design

Such a multi-dimensional picture of the nature of urban design is the product
of different peoples' ideas about the nature of urban design. Practitioners,
researchers and teachers all write from the perspective of their own experience.

Considerations

Visual

Functional

Environmental
The Urban Experience

Management ^ L |[%H ^ K J I ^\f I L ^ fJL^II J Some Motives

Participation ^ L H%J I > k j \ A C \L ^ [ 1 \ ^ Conservation
Design \ l I j K J I ^ j ^ J \^A [ J ^Visual En
Modes Of Action Regulation ^ I 1N ^ J L ^ j [ J ^Sustainability
Policy ^ L J^ Economic Development
Diagnosis ^ 1 1 ^ Image Enhancement

FIGURE 3. The interaction of urban design considerations, motives and modes of actions.

191
 Alan Rowley

There is no easy way to describe the practice of urban design. . . and

only by doing can you know what practising urban design is like.
(Weiming Lu, p. 127)
Mainstream practice traditionally affords urban designers two basic roles. One is
as architect/urban designer, directly involved in some capacity, with the creative
commissioning and design of development. The alternative is as planner/urban
designer, guiding and controlling the activities of others. Such control is usually
exercised over private property and initiatives where the public interest is
deemed to justify protection from an urban design standpoint. Dovell used the
analogy of the contrasting roles of mother and midwife (1982, p. 9). Urban
design should not be defined exclusively in terms of one or other of these two
main roles; nor should these roles be simplistically equated with public versus
private sector employment. These roles, and there are others, offer different
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perspectives on the practice of urban design and usually demand different ways
of working.
Appleyard (1982) believed it was possible to get a better understanding of the
nature of urban design if the existence of different kinds of urban design practice
was recognised (Figure 4). For him, there never could, nor should be, a single
definition of urban design.
The urban design profession today roughly embraces three different
groups who see themselves as playing quite different roles in urbanisa-
tion, who have quite different ethical positions and different political
orientations. I will call these three roles the development, community
and conservation styles of urban design. Each has its own preferred
kind of project or plan, each emphasises certain arrays of skills and
views them differently, each has its own criteria for success. (1982,
p. 123)

Development Conservation Community

Economic Growth or desire to grow Overgrowth Stagnation

Context Prosperity Decline

Clients Developers Conservationists Neighbourhoods

Cities Cities Low / middle income

Motives Economic development Conservation Job Creation

Attracting market profit Environmental Community Development
quality Livability
Revitalisation

Activities Market analysis Environmental Citizen participation

Development packaging surveys Piecemeal projects
Regulations Low cost improvement
Guidelines Social environmental
surveys

FIGURE 4. Three kinds of urban design practice (from Appleyard, 1982).

192
 Definitions of Urban Design

Urban development design. This is the traditional, historic role of urban

design. The work of Terry Farrell at Charing Cross and of Arup Associates at
Broadgate typify its achievements at their best. This type of urban design entails
the design and development of large pieces of towns, from building complexes
to, potentially, new towns. It is an extension of architecture and landscape
architecture and is usually rooted in the development process. It may also occur
as a result of the initiatives of public sector development agencies. The profit
motive is usually paramount although other goals can include image enhance-
ment and a wider concern for economic development in an area as well as an
urbanistic concern for 'place-making'. Many would cite London Docklands as
indicative of all that can go wrong with this approach although how far this is
an example of unselfconsciousness urban design and 'big architecture' rather
than self-conscious design, is debatable.
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Urban conservation design. Also called environmental quality design, this

style of practice is primarily a response to the negative consequences of urban
change. It usually operates from outside the development process, fighting it. But
it cannot avoid being involved with that process not least because its biggest
challenges commonly occur where development pressures are strongest. The
range of considerations it seeks to take into account is sometimes wider, and not
simply different from, the concerns of urban development design. It usually
places a higher value on existing environments than urban development design.
Certainly the techniques and the instruments it uses are different.

Community urban design. Appleyard describes this style of practice as emerg-

ing in residential neighbourhoods in the US during the 1960s. It emphasises
public participation as an important, if not its primary technique. Projects are
usually modest in scope and local in focus. Community development is a prime
motive. There are clear parallels with, for example, the West Silvertown
Planning Weekend in 1993, organised by Hunt Thompson Associates for the
Urban Villages Forum, although here the overall vision and objective is on a
relatively grand scale.
Barnett's notion of 'designing cities without designing buildings' (1982),
recently discussed by Peterson (1990), could potentially include aspects of all
three types of practice, and in some situations such a synthesis may be
appropriate and possible. But this is likely to be the exception rather than the
rule. For the most part, the idea of different styles of practice gives a truer
picture of the diverse nature and concerns of urban design. It also accommodates
the possibility of further styles emerging as our understanding of and approach
to urban design evolves.

Some Conclusions
Like planning, urban design practice is, of necessity, always in a state of flux,
responding to different circumstances; changing social attitudes and expecta-
tions; new or emerging insights and ideas; the institutional and legislative
frameworks; and, not least, the legacy of its own history. Perhaps, again like
193
 Alan Rowley

planning, the absence of a clear-cut definition of what it is and of its specific role
in the processes of development and of managing change, can be seen as a
strength. Some 20 years have passed since Bentley wrote of urban design as
'emerging from the urban fog'. Since then, some things have been clarified but
the act of clarification should have made urban designers more aware of their
limitations. If the ambitions and horizons of urban design are very broad, its
achievements are altogether more modest. Urban designers would do well to
remember Asa Briggs' cautionary remark, quoted by Lord Esher:

No self-contained discipline can cope with the city or with cities.

Nor, moreover, are all the disciplines taken together quite enough.
(1984, p. 515)

Although it is important to be conscious of the possible limits of urban design,

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it is also helpful to focus on the essential characteristics of its core. In his preface
to Education for Urban Design, Michael Pittas listed his impressions of what
urban design might be and probably was not:

• Urban design has a civic dimension. Whether practised in the public

arena, or in private development, its principal focus appears to be
the public environment.
• Urban design's time frame for action tends to longer-range, with
often indefinite products compared to architecture/landscape archi-
tecture's more finite view of the world.
• Urban design seems to focus on enabling environmental change,
rather than authoring the bricks and mortar of change.
• The practice of urban design often requires practitioners to take on
the mantle of anonymity, versus the notoriety often associated with
architectural practice.
• Urban design appears to value process as much as product.
• Urban design's concerns are more often with the ensemble of
buildings in the urban fabric and their relation to public space than
with the building of a particular artefact.
• Urban design recognises the pluralistic client.
• The results of urban design tend to be more relativistic and less
deterministic than architecture, but more definite than planner's
prescriptions.
• Historically great urban design products are not necessarily the
products of great urban designers.
• Urban design education demands literacy in the social sciences, law,
economics, public policy and business administration. It requires
proficiency in the manipulation of form and three-dimensional
relationships. It also requires collaboration and the ability to work
within institutional frameworks. (1982, p. 12).

In the end, it may be helpful to view urban design as a way of designing: as an

approach to how the public realm is designed and managed which is rooted in
194
 Definitions of Urban Design

some commonly shared ideas about its value and important attributes and where
the 'public realm' is defined as
. . . the public face of buildings, the spaces between the frontages,
streets, pathways, parks, gardens and so forth. To this can be added the
activities taking place within and between these spaces and the
servicing and managing of these activities. In turn, of course, all of this
will be affected by the activities and uses occurring within the
buildings themselves; that is the private realm. (Gleave, 1990, p. 64)
However, public need not necessarily denote ownership but rather use; some
privately owned spaces and places are more accessible to the public than
publicly owned ones!
Urban design then is a complex phenomenon, difficult to define and grasp but
of undoubted importance. It is an interdisciplinary activity and is commonly seen
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as occupying the middle ground between architecture and town planning. Urban
design is concerned with the extension of architecture beyond the design and
construction of individual buildings and with the attainment of environmental
quality, broadly defined, within the planning process. It gives particular empha-
sis to practical conception, where strategic planning issues have been largely
clarified, and the reality or imminence of area or site development is of
paramount concern. Urban design is of interest not only to architects, landscape
architects and town planners but also involves developers, property owners and
their advisers, in both the public and private sector since, in the final analysis,
they are the patrons of 'self-conscious' designers and their products.
Urban design is both an approach and a response to the processes of urban
change and development. It is a set of considerations and evolving principles
concerned with satisfying social and emotional needs as well as the more prosaic
requirements of a convenient, safe, healthy and efficient public realm. Thus, it
is concerned with people's use, perception and experience of places over time,
as well as how they work in a practical sense. In short, urban design is about the
design, creation and management of 'good' urban spaces and places.
Many urban designers reflect a deep seated anxiety when challenged to define
urban design. They long for a short, clear definition but in reality this simply is
not possible. No one or two sentence definition is really adequate, nor is it likely
to prove of lasting value. So it is pointless to search for a single, succinct, unified
and lasting definition of the nature and concerns of urban design. It is much
better to follow a number of signposts about, for example, the substance,
motives, methods and roles of urban design.

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