Urban Design

2008

Alex Krieger and William S. Saunders, editors

Highlights key issues in contemporary urban design through a discussion of its origins, current state, and future

Highlights key issues in contemporary urban design through a discussion of its origins, current state, and future.

Contributors: Jonathan Barnett, Denise Scott Brown, Joan Busquets, Kenneth Greenberg, John Kaliski, Timothy Love, Fumihiko Maki, Richard Marshall, Eric Mumford, Michelle Provoost, Peter G. Rowe, Edward W. Soja, Richard M. Sommer, Michael Sorkin, Emily Talen, Marilyn Jordan Taylor, Wouter Vanstiphout, Charles Waldheim.

This collection is a great resource for negotiating the realm of urban design. It is part history, criticism, and speculation, featuring today’s prominent architects, planners, historians, and critics.

Archidose

Fifty years ago a landmark conference at Harvard University established urban design as a distinct architectural and planning practice. Today, with the world’s urban population surpassing three billion people, urban design has become more crucial than ever. Indeed, the concerns that initially brought leading architects and city planners together—including concerns over sprawl, pollution, and aging infrastructure—have only intensified over the past half century.

In Urban Design, Alex Krieger and William S. Saunders have assembled prominent figures in architecture, planning, and landscape design to look back on the evolution of the discipline of urban design; assess the current state of the field; and anticipate the challenges posed by the unprecedented rate of urbanization, particularly in the developing world, and how the profession will need to adapt in order to confront them. The volume opens with excerpts from transcripts of the 1956 Harvard conference followed by essays that contextualize and critique its assumptions and ambitions. Subsequent essays address such topics as the social conscience of urban design and stake out the competing sensibilities in the field, from New Urbanism to avant-garde.

As humanity becomes an urban species to a degree that was unimaginable fifty years ago, this comprehensive volume seeks to encourage today’s designers to draw on the energy and messy vitality of cities in shaping tomorrow’s urban environments.

Contributors: Jonathan Barnett, Denise Scott Brown, Joan Busquets, Kenneth Greenberg, John Kaliski, Timothy Love, Fumihiko Maki, Richard Marshall, Eric Mumford, Michelle Provoost, Peter G. Rowe, Edward W. Soja, Richard M. Sommer, Michael Sorkin, Emily Talen, Marilyn Jordan Taylor, Wouter Vanstiphout, Charles Waldheim.

Alex Krieger is professor of urban design and past chair of the Department of Urban Planning and Design at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. He is principal of Chan Krieger Sieniewicz, an architecture and urban design firm based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

William S. Saunders is editor of Harvard Design Magazine and assistant dean for external relations at Harvard University. He is the author of Modern Architecture: Photographs by Ezra Stoller and editor of the Harvard Design Magazine Readers, published by Minnesota.

This collection is a great resource for negotiating the realm of urban design. It is part history, criticism, and speculation, featuring today’s prominent architects, planners, historians, and critics.

Archidose

Co-editor Krieger . . . defines urban design more as a frame of mind than a discipline, and these essays probe its strengths and limitations at a time when more than half of the world's population lives in cities.

Choice

Urban Design is an excellent guide to both the history of urban design as a field and today’s conflicts both within and without.

Huffington Post

Contents

Introduction: An Urban Frame of Mind Alex Krieger

Origins of an Urban Design Sensibility
The First Urban Design Conference: Extracts
The Emergence of Urban Design in the Breakup of CIAM Eric Mumford
The Elusiveness of Urban Design: The Perpetual Problem of Defi nition and Role Richard Marshall Perspectives on a Half- Century of Urban Design Practice
Urban Design at Fifty: A Personal View Denise Scott Brown
Fragmentation and Friction as Urban Threats: The Post- 1956 City Fumihiko Maki
The Way We Were, the Way We Are: The Theory and Practice of Designing Cities since 1956 Jonathan Barnett Territories of Urban Design Practice
Where and How Does Urban Design Happen? Alex Krieger
Defining the Urbanistic Project: Ten Contemporary Approaches Joan Busquets
Beyond Centers, Fabrics, and Cultures of Congestion: Urban Design as a Metropolitan
Enterprise Richard Sommer Debates about Mandates and Purpose
The End(s) of Urban Design Michael Sorkin
Bad Parenting Emily Talen
Facts on the Ground: Urbanism from Midroad to Ditch Michelle Provoost and Wouter Vanstiphout Expanding Roles and Disciplinary Boundaries
A Third Way for Urban Design Kenneth Greenberg
Urban Design after Battery Park City: Opportunities for Variety and Vitality Timothy Love
The Other ’56 Charles Waldheim
Democracy Takes Command: New Community Planning and the Challenge to Urban Design John Kaliski
Challenges for the Unprecedented Phenomena of Our New Century
Designing the Postmetropolis Edward W. Soja
Unforeseen Urban Worlds: Post- 1956 Phenomena Peter G. Rowe
Urban Design Looking Forward Marilyn Jordan Taylor
Urban Design Now: A Discussion

Contributors

Index