Definition of Urban Design

Urban design is not just benches, banners and bollards – it is a comprehensive, integrated approach to the design and development of the public realm and its relationship to private development. As a discipline it bridges architecture, landscape architecture, public art and physical planning.

Urban design is a process as well as a product. The process involves bringing citizens together to define the assets of a place, identify the latent or obvious civic connections at a variety of scales, and use a myriad of design tools to create a vision and implementation scheme for a functional, engaging, sustainable and beautiful public realm that supports a healthy private realm.

Using transportation as an example of how urban design works at a variety of scales:

Large Scale Connections: Large-scale transportation systems such as LRT provide wonderful opportunities to connect existing civic amenities as well as future development opportunities. Where these systems intersect creates an opportunity to make a grand civic gesture in the form of a transit station. The combination of creating logical transit systems that connect to current and future amenities and development, and transit hubs that are comfortable and engaging, contributes to an enhanced civic identity, improved quality of life for residents and visitors alike as well as economic vitality and a level of civic sustainability.

Medium Scale Connections: Transit hubs needn’t just connect single forms of transportation, but instead it can be the convergence of multiple modes, such as LRT, bus and bicycle. Bicycle trails can also be designed to connect transit to civic amenities, providing a totally different experience to other forms of transit. Rather than just creating a trail connecting one spot to another, the opportunity exists to make the trail an experience in itself, if what is located along it is considered. It doesn’t just have to be green, but instead could have uses along it such as shops, townhouses or public spaces oriented to the trail. Through integrated and thoughtful urban design, the trails can become safe, functional and exciting alternate transportation experiences within the urban fabric.

Small Scale Connections: A safe comfortable pedestrian environment will only enhance the urban experience and support economic development. Smaller, often left over spaces, such as alleys, can be transformed into mid-block pedestrian thoroughfares with restaurants and coffee shops with seating overflowing into the alley in summer and become brightly lit, shop lined protected walk ways that are more cozy during the winter months.

As the above examples hint, Urban Design is also about relationships between various physical features and how these relationships are articulated using tools like: building mass, orientation and materials, relationship of interior uses to the sidewalk, street type, climate, transportation and adjacent uses. The trick is in creating the vision early, with committed public and private support, and incorporating the ideas into all capital improvement and development projects so urban design doesn’t become an after thought but instead a cultural amenity.