urban design

urban design. The application of certain design principles relating to the form and use of urban settlements: form is dependent upon mass (buildings, their bulk, modelling, and height, and the land they occupy) and space (e.g. streets and open spaces defined by buildings), and use of both buildings and spaces (whether intensive or not) also plays an important role. Several commentators have agreed that there are five categories of relationships in urban built form: routes (e.g. alleys, streets, canals, etc.); boundaries (e.g. natural or built boundaries, such as water-fronts); districts (e.g. clearly defined residential quarters, central areas, etc.); nodes (e.g. junctions of routes, such as squares, etc.); and landmarks (e.g. built fabric, usually monumental, with significant visual, symbolic, or aesthetic identities). Towns and cities existed in Antiquity. At Ur (present-day Iraq), for example, in the fourth millennium bc, there were routes (alleys and streets), with clearly-defined plots for housing, and important monuments. Settlements laid out on grids (a convenient means of defining land for development) existed in China, Ancient Egypt, Mexico, and Ancient Babylon. In the last, a processional route of considerable magnificence was created. When the Greeks created new cities from scratch (e.g. Miletus, by Hippodamus (C5 bc) ), grids, rationality, and geometry were employed, and theories of urban design evolved whereby social order could be expressed. Many public buildings and monuments were erected in Athens, but these were not related to each other in formal geometrical ways: the creation of vistas, and the exploitation of geometry to create splendid effects in cities were evolved in Hellenistic settlements such as Pergamon (C3 bc), although stupendous formal arrangements of processional ways with symmetrically disposed buildings had been created by the Ancient Egyptians in their great temple complexes at Karnak and elsewhere. Geometry was further exploited by the Romans, who developed Hellenistic themes, and who created huge public buildings (e.g. thermae), fora, circuses, arenas, etc., all treated with great architectural splendour. High-density urban living was possible through the creation of blocks of apartments (see insula) bounded by streets, and buildings for large numbers of spectators were erected (e.g., the Colosseum, Rome). By the standards of Antiquity, Rome was a true metropolis, requiring major engineering works to provide it with water and eliminate its wastes. Its defensive walls alone were major undertakings, and its dead were disposed of in linear cemeteries (e.g. Via Appia Antica), in columbaria, or in catacombs. In short, Ancient Rome was a remarkable example of a sophisticated and well-organized city that was a precedent for many of the world-cities of C19. The Romans also created many new towns, based on the standard castrum plan with two main thoroughfares crossing each other at right angles, a forum in the centre, and public buildings (e.g. thermae, temples, etc.) arranged within the logical grid-plan. Constantinople, too, was a world-city, richly embellished with vast churches and public buildings, and with monuments of considerable cultural resonance.

Islamic cities in Central Asia and elsewhere, with their madrasas, mosques, etc., also had sophisticated architectural responses to commerce, religion, and social interaction (e.g., at Isfahan), while huge mosques (e.g., the Mezquita Aljama, Córdoba, Spain) attest to the importance of geometry and formal axes in the creation of urban monuments. In contrast, urban organization in Western Europe declined after the fall of Rome, and it was not until C12 that some kind of recognizable order in urban design was again apparent in the bastide towns and other settlements in France, England, Spain, and Germany (e.g. Villeneuve-sur-Lot, Flint, etc). Generally speaking, however, medieval European towns and cities were densely developed within their walls, with main routes leading from the gates to the centre, where market places (often containing guild or town halls, and surrounded by houses of the more substantial burghers-e.g. Brugge, Antwerp, Brussels) and large churches were built. In Flanders especially, the magnificent Gothic guild and town halls attest to the wealth and power of commerce, and in Northern Italy too, civic aspirations created noble spaces and buildings, as in Siena and Florence.

Around the middle of C15, prompted by the ideas of Vitruvius (who suggested towns should be centrally planned for defence), many theorists (e.g. Alberti and Filarete) proposed formal, geometrical, polygonal town-plans, surrounded by massive fortifications to resist the might of modern artillery. These ‘ideal city’ plans (e.g. by Cataneo, Lorini, Martini, and Scamozzi) were widely published, and had affinities with medieval labyrinths such as those on the floors of Chartres or Rheims Cathedrals. Palma Nova, near Udine, Italy, was one of the most important to be realized (end of C16-though never finished), and Alberti provided theoretical bases for such plans, advocating a central piazza, proportional systems regulating the relationships between spaces and façades, and emphasizing the importance of what we would term townscape. Other examples of Renaissance urban design included the centre of Pienza (late C15) by Rossellino, and, of course, the transformation of Rome under Pope Sixtus V (1585–90), who caused aqueducts to be built, fountains to be erected, ancient obelisks to be set up in significant positions, and new streets to be laid out (e.g. those radiating from the Piazza del Pópolo). Roman precedents stimulated developments in France, where the Place des Vosges was created at the beginning of C17 combining an arcaded surround with buildings over, and Inigo Jones's development at Covent Garden, London, followed, strongly influenced by Italian exemplars. Hardouin-Mansart's handsome Place Vendǒme, Paris (from 1699), prompted the creation of regular Places in numerous French cities, with accompanying tidying-up of adjacent streets. Heré de Corny created (1752–6) the splendid Place Royale, Place de la Carriére, and Hemicycle, Nancy, for Stanisław Leszczyński (1677–1766), exiled King of Poland and Duke of Lorraine and Bar (1736–66), one of the finest examples of Rococo urban design in the world. At Versailles (founded c.1665–71) ) the relationship of town to palace (inspired by the trivium radiating from the Piazza del Pópolo, Rome) emphasized the Absolutism of Louis XIV, and similar radiating avenues centred on the Schloss at Karlsruhe, Baden. C17 Mannheim combined massive fortifications, a citadel (similar in layout to Palma Nova), and a grid-plan. Controls to regulate the style, height, and fenestration of façades were imposed in many cities to ensure homogeneity and harmony, as in such huge developments as St Petersburg, Russia, from the early C18. Handsome, regular façades were created by the Woods at Bath, where streets, a circus, a square, and a crescent provided fine examples of unified urban design. One of the largest developments in Britain where unity of design was achieved was Edinburgh New Town, continuing well into C19. The square, surrounded by brick-fronted terrace houses, with surrounding streets also featuring such dwellings, evolved in C18 London, but when Nash created his superb scenographic scheme for Regent's Park, Langham Place, Regent Street, and Piccadilly Circus, he chose stucco to provide varieties of treatment, and a grander, showier architecture. English terraces and squares, of course, were exported to the North American colonies, e.g. Savannah, GA. At Washington, DC, however, L'Enfant combined the grid-plan with Baroque radiating avenues for the new capital of the USA (from 1789). C19 urban design saw the improvement of many old cities and their embellishment with noble public buildings. Berlin, for example, acquired several fine Neo-Classical buildings and many improvements designed by Schinkel after the defeat of Napoleon (1815), and from the same period Gärtner and von Klenze transformed Munich into the capital city of Bavaria with numerous works of architecture in different styles (Rundbogenstil, Neo-Classical, Renaissance Revival, etc.). Several cities levelled their (by then) obsolete fortifications, and new promenades, avenues, and splendid buildings were laid out on them: the finest example (from 1858) was the Ringstrasse, Vienna, designed by Förster, with buildings by Hansen, Hasenauer, Semper, Siccardsburg, van der Nüll, and others. Paris was also transformed into the elegant city of boulevards, parks, vistas, and fine buildings by Haussmann and others, and Neo-Classical St Petersburg was further embellished on the grandest scale. Following such works of urban transformation, widely admired for their grandeur and elegance, the Classical theory of urban design gained ascendancy, notably at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. This, in turn, greatly influenced planning in the USA, notably at the World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, IL (1893). Burnham applied such a Beaux-Arts approach to his plan (with Edward Bennett (1874–1954) ) for Chicago (1909), and the City Beautiful Movement which was so important in the USA grew from the principles that had arrived in Paris. But it was not just the creation of grand public buildings and impressive streets that made the C19 city: that century saw a huge change in attitudes towards housing, urban hygiene, and public transport. At the beginning of C19 the means of travel had not changed much since the time of Julius Caesar, but by the end of it railways, tramways, and steam-powered ships had transformed travel, while gas-light, the emergence of electric power, the provision of clean water, the construction of vast underground systems to dispose of human wastes, and the laying out of huge cemeteries had brought about a revolution in urban comfort and hygiene. Furthermore, the provision of schools, establishments for higher education, public parks, museums and zoos to extend knowledge, and places of public entertainment all helped to raise tone and civilize the urban masses. Such changes had been prompted by an awareness of the necessity of doing something about those at the bottom of the social heap: industrialists such as Robert Owen (1771–1858) at New Lanark on the Clyde, Scotland (from 1800), and Titus Salt (1803–76) at Saltaire, near Bradford, Yorks. (from 1851), had established model Company towns, and introduced philanthropic ideas to the running of factories, housing the workers, and the education of both adults and children. Such ideas became influential on both sides of the Atlantic, and in England organizations such as the Society for Improving the Condition of the Labouring Classes built exemplary dwellings (designed by Henry Roberts) which were widely copied. As well as those developments the C19 saw the development of housing estates in the suburbs for the middle classes: early examples included Nash's Picturesque Park Villages, Regent's Park (from 1824-completed by Pennethorne), and Decimus Burton's beautiful Calverley Park, Tunbridge Wells, Kent (from 1828). Loudon's publications not only provided many exemplars for middle-class dwellings, but for workers' cottages, and unquestionably had a profound impact. His promotion of public parks and cemeteries, not only as amenities, but as educational aids, influenced many developments, and he was an early advocate of the green belt. Architects such as Davis in the USA owed much to Loudon's ideas and books.

Throughout C19 theoretical writings on the design of cities were published. Cerdá's work at Barcelona and his Teoria general de la urbanización (1867) influenced men such as Soria y Mata, and he was among the first to attempt to apply scientific principles to urban and rural planning. Soria y Mata's ‘linear city’ based on a ‘spine’ of railways, roads, with water-, gas-, and electric-supplies, the sewer system, and possible canals, was conceived as a 510-metre-wide (557 yards) strip linking existing towns, urbanizing the countryside, and ruralizing the towns: conceived on a grand scale, Soria's city might link Cadiz to St Petersburg, and his vision certainly makes economic and aesthetic sense when compared with the uncontrolled explosion of suburbanization that has occurred through almost universal car-ownership. Unfortunately his ideas were never really realized, although a poor relation was created (from 1929) at Magnitogorsk in the former Soviet Union to designs by Nikolai Aleksandrovich Miliutin (1889–1942). Soria envisaged linear cities where everyone was within an easy walk of the country, and could quickly reach the linear transport system near by to get to work. However, the centralized ideal type of city reappeared in Theodor Fritsch's Die Stadt der Zukunft (The Town of the Future- 1896) which seems to have influenced E. Howard's Tomorrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform (1898), although Fritsch's ideas were more developed than Howard's. Howard got the first Garden City started at Letchworth, Herts. (from 1903). Baumeister, in 1876, published a text on the expansion of cities from technical and economic points of view that was for many years a standard work on the social implications of architectural intervention. Joseph Stübben (1845–1936) carried out many urban design schemes, and published an important work on the subject in 1890 with subsequent revisions. Some commentators were appalled by the scientific and empirical approach, arguing that the all-important unmeasurable aspects of symbolism, historical and cultural resonances, and continuity were being ignored: among the most important publications in this respect with those of Sitte, who promoted an understanding and appreciation of the irregularities of medieval town planning, and whose works influenced Geddes and Karl Gruber (1885–1966-whose Die Gestalt der Deutschen Stadt (The Form of the German Town) must be one of the most sensitive studies ever undertaken). Other theoretical works of urban design included Tony Garnier's Cité Industrielle (1904), Hilbersheimer's Hochhausstadt (High House Town of 1924-the inevitable International Modernist solution of high-rise glass-clad apartment-blocks along wide streets and linked by bridges), and F. Lloyd Wright's Broadacre City (1931–5-a mostly low-density development of his ‘Usonian’ houses set in their own grounds to provide produce). However, the Athens Charter of CIAM (1933), prompted mostly by Le Corbusier, insisted on rigid zoning, high-rise apartment-blocks set in parkland, roads for fast-moving motor vehicles, and the abolition of the traditional street: this dogma was accepted (though not by the general public) on a global scale in C20, with less than happy results, leading to considerations of what might be defensible space in increasingly violent cities. The Kriers and others attempted to recover the street and something of the cultural resonances of traditional European urbanism (3), and commentators such as Jane Jacobs mounted devastating attacks on the Corbusier-inspired orthodoxies still being force-fed to students by those who believed in them as though they were Holy Writ. British post-1939–45 war New Towns (with their low-density housing and uncertain centres) were not the earthly paradises their protagonists had claimed: on the other hand, theme-parks such as Disneyland (with their traditional buildings in different styles and humane streets) showed that agreeable environments could be created. Architect-writers such as Venturi began to promote complexity, contradiction, diversity, and even the heretical notion that somewhere as noisily populist as Las Vegas might have something from which to learn. Rossi promoted the architecture of the city, Léon Krier proposed nothing less than the reconstruction of the European city after its destruction (more by Corbusier's disciples than by war), Rob Krier set out theoretical bases for urban design, and Colin Rowe and Fred Koetter (1938– ) discussed the city as a kind of collage (an approach that clearly influenced Stirling in some of his architecture). However, despite these, and a growing interest in the possibilities of the language of Classicism to reinvigorate urban design (e.g. by L. Krier, Porphyrios, Simpson, and others), technology-centred schemes were still actively promoted in the architectural press and schools and by certain architects. Archigram, for instance, promoted so-called High-Tech buildings owing something to the imagery of Science Fiction comic-books (e.g. ‘Plug-In City’); the Japanese Metabolists exploited prefabrication and the idea of capsules fixed to service-towers and circulation-areas; and designers such as Tange proposed vast new developments such as that to extend Tokyo into the sea (1959–60). Megastructures made their appearance in British second-generation new towns (e.g. at Cumbernauld, where the linear town centre was designed by Geoffrey Copcutt). Aware of the problems of pollution and the necessity to control the environment, theorists such as Fuller and Soleri attempted solutions, but these have not been widely adopted. The New Urbanism began to emerge with opposition to planning orthodoxy. Holding that congested, fragmented, dreary suburbs and disintegrating urban centres were not accidents, but the direct result of zoning and the legacy of CIAM, architects such as Duany & Plater-Zyberk proposed a return to traditional neighbourhoods with facilities for daily living within walking distances from houses, the provision of a full range of housing types and commercial opportunities, and the taming of the motor vehicle. Their Seaside, Miami, FL (1987), is an example of what can be done.

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