URBAN DESIGN 110 Spring 2009
The main topic of this issue of URBAN DESIGN is urban design education and a variety of authors illustrate how it can reach across disciplines and provide a common understanding of the built environment.
Carlton Roberts-James, Head of Skills at CABE, sets out the challenges for education given the current economic and environmental context. Professor Georgia Butina-Watson describes the Joint Centre for Urban Design’s approach, enabling a wide variety of people to learn about urban design at Oxford Brookes University. Sebastian Loew asks whether the jungle of urban design CPD courses (continuing professional development) are bringing the right people together and whether they are in fact the best methods of increasing urban design skills and knowledge. Esther Kurland reports on the work of Urban Design London, providing educational opportunities for London borough staff.
Doug Brown describes his midlife discovery of urban design and how that has changed his career and perspective; Daniela Lucchese reveals her own unconventional route to urban design, as an education in lateral thinking; and Cindy Carmelia describes her journey from architecture into urban design and what it now adds to her own sense of professional purpose. Joanne Cave offers ideas for those entering urban design consultancy and how to equip graduates of any age with appropriate opportunities to explore and demonstrate their creative potential. Just as the Urban Design Group has launched the Recognised Practitioner affiliation, Micheal Lowndes and Katy Neaves reflect on what it will mean for individuals and employers alike.
There is also a wide selection of challenging viewpoints: Micheal Short, John Pendlebury and Aidan While explore the tensions when World Heritage Sites become a major part of a city, and how that effects future plans for regeneration. Laura Alvarez considers whether recent economic pressures have left humanism in their wake and the need to allow more people to shape their environments. Tim Hagyard sets out an agenda to give development control more power to deliver better places, through universal design guidance requirements, leadership, and greater resources. Alona Martinez looks at what sustainable urbanism means for Scottish policies in practice. John Thompson and Kevin Murray report on the Academy of Urbanism’s progress in ‘learning from place’.
There are also reports of UDG talks and the URBAN DESIGN interview learns more about Marilyn Higgins, Senior Lecturer at the School of the Built Environment, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh. The next two shortlisted Tibbalds' Prize projects are also published – the now completed Regent Quarter in London’s Kings Cross by Urban Initiatives and the proposed eco-village of Dunsfold Park by Pollard Thomas Edwards.
