An Introduction to Urban Design
by Ilene Watson
What do you see when you walk down the main street of your city or town? Are the buildings and public spaces interesting to look at? Do you feel comfortable and secure? In this extensively illustrated seven page article, planner and landscape architect Ilene Watson provides an introduction to urban design and how it can be used to create more "people-oriented" places.
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From PCJ #43, Summer 2001
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Unfortunately, there are no hard and fast rules related to urban design. A structural beam in a building must meet certain requirements for that building to stand. A road must be built in a certain way to avoid future potholes.
Urban design, however, is not a series of rules and standards. Rather, it is a group of concepts that, once understood, can lead to a fresh way of perceiving streets, buildings, and spaces -- and insights into why certain places are appealing and others are not. With urban design concepts in mind you should be able to better question architectural presentations and consider the impact of development proposals on your town's character.
Urban design operates on various scales -- from orienting people through the layout and hierarchy of streets and buildings, to valuing an attractive paving detail in front of a store's door. The ideas can be applied to buildings, the street, land uses, urban park development, and anything else that is woven into the fabric of a town. The purpose of this article is to provide you with a basic introduction to urban design, an introduction which hopefully will lead you to further explore this vital topic. ...
Article then covers eight key urban design concepts:
The varied rythmns of storefronts, as above in Brattleboro, Vermont, helps establish a pedestrian oriented scale. Contrast this with the blank walls greeting pedestrians at many newer stores.
Due to the slower pace, people are more aware of their surroundings as pedestrians than when driving a car. As intelligent and curious individuals, we enjoy an environment with variety, detail, and complexity. A sidewalk might have a brick paving edge that changes design at intersections. A building might have a mosaic of tile in front of the door that catches our eye, or a change in appearance around windows.Details, variety, and complexity provide the richness that makes things interesting for us. This is not to say that infinite variety is preferred. Too much variety and our world becomes hard to understand. A building may have a palette of three to five related colors, not twenty unrelated ones. Landscaping may consist of groupings of a selected number of species, not one of everything. Variety is best provided within an overall cohesive framework.
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