Shireen Abdelrahman

Lecture 1

Good urban design is essential if we are to produce attractive, high-quality, sustainable places in which people will want to live, work and relax.

It is fundamental to our objective of an urban renaissanceالنهض#ة الحض#رية . We do not have to put up with shoddyرديئ#ة, unimaginative and second-rate buildings and urban areas. There is a clamorضوض##اء for better designed places which inspire and can be cherished ال#تي يمكن ان تك#ون مص#در places where vibrant communities can grow , اله#امand prosperاألماكن التي يمكن ان تكون مجتمعات حيوية .

To achieve this we need to effect a culture change, and this guide is designed to help this process

Urban design is the art of making places for people. It includes the way places work and mattersحي#اتهم ش#ئون such as community safety, as well as how they look. It concerns the connections between people and places, movement and urban form, nature and the built fabricالنسيج الحضري , and the processes for ensuringضمان successful villages, towns and cities.

Urban design is a key to create sustainable developments and the conditions for a flourishing economic lifeازدهار الحياة االقتصادية, for the prudent useاالستخدام الرشيد of natural resources and for social progress. Good design can help create lively places with distinctive characterطابع مميز; streets and public spaces that are safe, accessible, pleasant to use and human in scale; and places that inspireتلهم because of the imagination and sensitivity of their designers.

There are many benefits to be gained from thinking coherently م#ترابطabout the way places are designed.

Some are the traditional concerns of good planning, others are relatively new. For example, ‘Secured by Design’ promoted by the Association of Chief Police Officers has prompted greater attention to designing out crime and the fear of crime. More recently, the Urban Task Force led by Lord Rogers underlined the importance of good urban design to an urban renaissance. The Task Force’s vision of towns and cities as places of opportunity and sustainable growth is largely founded on design excellence.

Urban design does not just concern one profession or interest group. This was underlined in 1998 when five professional institutes came together with other organizations and set up the Urban Design Allianceتح#الف, finding a common purpose in working across their individual disciplines ال#عث###و#ر على ا#له###دف #المش###تر#ك في# العم###ل ع###بر ,These professions town planners .تخصص###اتهم الفردي###ةlandscape architects, surveyors, architects and civil engineers can all be powerful influences for better urban design.

As the Urban Task Force pointed out, the best way to promote successful and sustainable regeneration, conservation and place-making is to think about urban design from the start of the planning and development process. Leaving urban design until the end can make the planning process slow, frustrating and a source of wasteful conflict, and is unlikely to lead to the best outcome in terms of quality. محبط#ة ومص#درا من مص#ادر# الص#راع.الع#قيم ، ولي#س من ال#مرجح أن #يؤدي إلى# نتائج أ#فض#ل من ح#ي#ث النوعية

Successful urban design requires a full understanding of the conditions under which decisions are made and development is delivered. Many factors determine or influence the outcome of the design process and the sort of places we make. Success, nowadays, rarely happens by chance. It depends on:

• A clear framework provided by development plans and supplementary guidance delivered consistently, including through development control.• A sensitive response to the local context. • Judgments of what is feasible in terms of economic and market conditions.• An imaginative and appropriate design approach by those who design development and the people who manage the planning process. يتس#م بس#عة الخي#الوتص##ميم المنهج المناس##ب من ج##انب أولئ##ك ال##ذين تص##ميم وتط##وير .واألشخاص الذين يديرون عملية التخطيط

It is vital حي333ويto bring these factors together. If policy is not set out clearly for applicants, a proposed development may conflict unwittingly with a local authority’s aspirations for good design. If too little weight is given to feasibility, the development may fail commercially. If too little weight is given to local context, the proposal may be opposed locally. If the design approach is wrong, the site’s opportunities will be missed and poor or mediocre development will result.

Urban design has replaced the "civic design”التص3ميم الم3دني which dealt primarily with city halls يتعام3ل م3ع م3ي3ادين

,museums, streets , ا3لمدي3ن33333333ةboulevardsش3ارع ع3ريض 3ملئ ب3االش3جار, parks and other open spaces since 1960s. However there is not a consensus ال

about the definition and يوج33د اجم33اع علىboundaries of urban design.

Urban Design is, • The process of giving physical design direction to urban

growth, conservation, and change • The design of cities - 'a grand design‘تصميم كبير • The interfaceالعالق#ة between architecture, landscape and

town planning • The complex relationships between all the elements of built

and un built space.• The architecture of public space

Some theoreticians rather not to describe urban design but to explain what it is not:

• It is not land use policy, sign controls, and street lighting districts.

• It is not strictly utopian or procedural ليس بالض#رورة ان تك#ون . مثالية

• It is not necessarily a plan for downtownوس##ط المدين##ة, however architectonic, nor a subdivision regulation الئح##ة .لتفسيم االراضي

Urban design is generally considered neither a professionمهن33ة nor a discipline. There is a trend to formulate urban designهن3اك 3اتجاه3ا ل3وض3خ ا3لتص3ميم الحض3ري as the interface between architecture and town planning, or the gap between them.

For example, when Kevin Lynch saw urban design as a branch of architecture Michael Southworth on the other hand thought urban design as a branch of urban planning.

"It is easier to talk about urban design than to write about it… In between (planning and architecture), but belonging neither to one nor the other, lies the magic world of urban design. We can recognize it by its absence. It is inferredاالس333تدالل, suggestedاالق333تراح, feltالشعور ."

Another commentator Jonathan Barnett also recognizes the crucial roleال33دور 3الحاس33م of urban design between the urban planning and architecture:

An urban planner was some one who was primarily concerned with the allocation of resources according to projections of future needتخص#يص الم#وارد تبع#ا لل#حاج#ة ف#ي المس#تق#بل. Planners tend to regard land use as a distribution of resources problem, parceling out landتقطي#ع االرض, for zoning purposes, without much knowledge of its three-dimensional characteristics, or the nature of the building that may be placed on it in the future. The result is that most zoning ordinances and official land use plans produce stereotyped and unimaginative buildings.

Architect, on the other hand, designs buildings. A good architect will do all he can to relate the building he is designing to its surroundings, but he has no control over what happens off the property he has been hired to considered.

There is a substantial middle ground between these professions, and each has some claim to it, but neither fills it very well. Land use planning would clearly be improved if it involved someone who understands three-dimensional design. On the other hand, some one is needed to design the city, not just the buildings. Therefore, there was a need for someone who could be called an urban designer."

Undoubtedly urban design cannot stand alone between these three main professions. Urban design is an interdisciplinary concept and should be considered with the other disciplines and professions such as Real Estate Development, Economics, Civil Engineering, Law, Social Sciences and Natural Sciences.

A wide variety of people call themselves urban designers. In one sense anyone who is involved in making places is active in urban design: hence the Urban Design Alliance (UDAL) brings together many of the built environment professions. Even if you do a university course in ‘urban design’, exactly what you learn will depend on which university you choose, as on other courses. The various urban design courses have different emphases.

It is important to understand that urban design is not an accredited profession. There is no professional body that decides what should be on the curriculum of an urban design course, or what expertise and knowledge you need to be able to practise as an urban designer.

An urban designer needs a broad understanding of cities, towns and villages, and ways of making them work better. This involves understanding how the planning system operates, how developers make their sums add up, how to assess what makes a particular place special, how to make places easy to move around by foot and vehicle, how to bring life to places that have become run down, how to conserve historic buildings, how to make the most of the landscape, how to think about the future of small and large development sites, how to involve local people, how to make sure that projects actually happen, how to communicate effectively, how to negotiate, and how to write design policy and guidance.

That sounds like a lot of subjects! But they are all related, and each explains a bit more about how urban places work. The urban designer is not expected to be an expert on all of them, but it is essential to be able to see the whole picture.

The planning system provides the means to encourage good design, not just in conservation areas and other attractive places, but everywhere. Securing good design is central to good planning. The appearance of proposed development and its relationship to its surroundings are relevant to the consideration of a planning application and PPG1 makes it clear that local planning authorities should reject poor designs. This guide looks at the ‘tools’ local authorities have available within the planning system to help deliver better design. The most important is the local authority’s development plan. This should set out the design policies against which development proposals will be assessed. This guide considers both what could be included in the plan and how further explanation might be provided in supplementary guidance.

The development control process is vital. The way it is used determines whether and how the design policies in development plans and supplementary guidance are reflected and applied. The most thoroughly developed design policies will achieve little if they are ignored in the development control process. As stated in PPG1, “applicants for planning permission should be able to demonstrate how they have taken account of the need for good design in their development proposals and that they have had regard to relevant development plan policies and supplementary design guidance”.

Good urban design is rarely brought about by a local authority prescribing physical solutions, or by setting rigid or empirical design standards but by approaches which emphasise design objectives or principles.

The objectives are general and should be tailored to the locality. This process can be helped by the series of prompts to thinking about urban design set out in the next section of this guide. The prompts are unfolded under each of the urban design objectives but they are closely related and are not unique to the objective under which they appear. Most importantly, they are prompts not rules.

They are not rigid formulae to be followed slavishly. In any real situation, some of these prompts will conflict and some will benefit some people more than others. Good design results from consideration being given to a wide range of concerns and the creative resolution of potential conflicts.

For example, the height of a building might need to respond to a general pattern of buildings of no more than three stories, to the potential of high density development for making the most of public transport and creating vitality, to the value of creating a landmark to enhance views, to the need for a sense of enclosure, to the opportunity to enhance safety by natural surveillance, and to the need to avoid overshadowing.

Each of these might indicate a different height for the building if they were to be considered separately. In the real world, the planning and design process must lead to a solution that takes all concerns into account.

This depends on, first, a judgment of how important each is in the circumstances and, second, design skills capable of rising imaginatively to the demands of a difficult brief. The prompts are followed by pointers to good design.

Some prompts can be explained more simply than others, but this does not necessarily mean they are less important. Nor is the list exhaustive: evolving practice and special local conditions will always give rise to new ways of achieving better urban design.

Successful streets, spaces, villages, towns and cities tend to have characteristics in common. These factors have been analyzed to produce principles or objectives of good urban design.

They help to remind us what should be sought to create a successful place الس3عي .اليجاد مكان ناجح

There is considerable overlap between the objectives and they are mutually reinforcing3و يعزز بعضها بعضا