Contents

We are all urban designers now

The multi-professional nature of urban design is reflected in the Urban Design Alliance (UDAL). This brings together most of the built environment professional bodies and some associated organisations. They recognise that all their members are, to some extent at least, urban designers, as their work shapes the built environment. UDAL sees its role as being to encourage closer collaboration between professions in their working lives and between their professional institutes.

Designing for an unpredictable future

Towns and cities are constantly changing, and in ways that are unpredictable. How will we be living, working, shopping or enjoying ourselves in 10, 20 or 30 years time? We don’t know. That does not mean that we can not plan and design. What it does mean is that we need to plan and design flexible frameworks that can accommodate change.

In thinking about the future, we need to understand the past and the present. We need to know about the physical characteristics of the places we are planning, including their landscape, waterways and ecologies. We need to understand local economic and market conditions. And we need to know about the people who live there – how they live, how they work, how they move about the area and what they hope for the place’s future.

A nose for politics

Whose interests do urban designers serve? It’s a tricky question. Any urban development is likely to affect different people in different ways. The developer has certain interests; the people who will occupy the buildings have others; people who pass by the buildings and use adjoining spaces will have interests of their own. On top of that there is what is called ‘the public interest’, which is hard to define.

The public interest is not just of the people in the locality, but perhaps also of those in other parts of the world who may bear the consequences of our use of resources. And the public interest concerns not just people today and in the immediate future, but future generations that will face the consequences of our decisions. Reconciling these potentially conflicting interests will appeal to someone who likes a challenge. In a democracy that reconciliation happens through the political process, which is why many of the best urban designers have an acute political nose.

« Back | Next »