Setting urban design as a specialised, evidence-led, coordinated education and profession

Romice, Ombretta and Rudlin, David and AlWaer, Husam and Greaves, Mark and Thwaites, Kevin and Porta, Sergio (2022) Setting urban design as a specialised, evidence-led, coordinated education and profession. Proceedings of the ICE - Urban Design and Planning. ISSN 1755-0793 (https://doi.org/10.1680/jurdp.22.00023)

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Abstract

Urban environments are complex, impacting on climate change, social justice and health globally and locally. Their spatial, social, economic, environmental dimensions are interlinked and must be studied from a complexity viewpoint. Yet, whilst complexity has successfully entered urban scholarship and practice in many fields, urban form, a key component of urban environments, is not yet studied in these terms and consequently they are not yet designed as complex. We argue that the discipline of urban design should be (re)defined as the understanding and design of urban environments as places of organised complexity. It can become the discipline best placed to manage a useful global overview of sustainable placemaking. We do so by tracing urban design's historical relationships and attitudes towards the evolution of the city, contrasting definitions of complexity in science, with the deterministic way in which the early urban design practitioners viewed design. We then look at urban design's relationship with other design professions in the UK and suggest its lack of clarity and efficiency is an enduring consequence of this historic trajectory. Finally, we propose urban design as the discipline concerned with the understanding and design of complex-adaptive urban environments and advocate its establishment as an independent profession.

  • Item type:Article
    ID code:81259
    Dates:
    Date
    Event
    4 October 2022
    Published
    15 July 2022
    Published Online
    15 June 2022
    Accepted
    Notes:Paper awarded the Reed and Mallick Medal in the 2023 ICE Publishing Awards by the Institution of Civil Engineers
    Subjects:Fine Arts > Architecture
    Department:Faculty of Engineering > Architecture
    Depositing user: Pure Administrator
    Date deposited:23 Jun 2022 13:57
    Last modified:23 Apr 2024 00:20
    Related URLs:
    URI:https://strathprints.strath.ac.uk/id/eprint/81259
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