Urban
design is a part of the overall framework of planning. It seeks to develop the
policy framework within which physical designs can be created for a
certain urban area. Urban design is an activity that deals
with the relationships between the major elements
of the urban fabric.
Urban
design is a very important facet of planning because as
planning must exhaustively consider the economic social and
environmental aspects of development, it likewise has to always heed the
physical aspects. Development will always have a physical
dimension because afterall, both the built and natural environments are
physical.
Hedman
and Jaszewski (1984) mentioned that:
"there was a time when
architecture take care of the urban design requirements without the need of an urban
design overview. There was a
built-in sensibility that ensured
a reasonable degree of
order and harmony within
the built environment. But that
state of affairs has
changed that architecture now often (though not all the time) contributes to the disorder and disharmony".
The
above implies that urban design has really become
a significant discipline as its task includes overseeing the
general consistency and coherence of the built environment.
The
importance of urban design was further reiterated by
Smith (1974) who stated that:
In
addition to the above, Alexander (1987) also highlighted the role
of urban design in achieving a sense of wholeness in urban areas. He
described old beautiful towns and cities as somehow
"organic", and the idea of "organicness" is not an
analogy but a precise vision of a specific quality of an urban area.
According to Alexander (1987):
"Towns and cities can grow as a
whole, under its own laws of wholeness... and we can feel this wholeness not only at
the largest scale but in every detail, in restaurants, in
the sidewalks, in the
houses, shops, markets, roads, parks, gardens and walls. Even in the balconies and
ornaments".
Alexander
(1987) further noted that this quality no longer exist in towns and
cities built and being built at present, because neither
architecture, nor urban design, nor city planning take the
creation of such a quality of wholeness as part of their task:
"City planning is too preoccupied with the implementation of ordinances, architecture is too much pre-occupied with the problems of individual buildings and urban design has a sense of dilettantism: as if the problem could be solved on a visual level, as an aesthetic matter".
After
bludgeoning the discipline of urban design with his criticisms,
Alexander (1987) changed tone by emphasizing that
among all existing disciplines related to urban planning, urban
design is the one which comes closest to accepting the responsibility of
creating the city's wholeness.
Alongside
the concept of "wholeness" is
what was described by Hedman and Jazewski (1984) as
"coherence". According to them:
"While individual structure may be attractive and visually appealing in themselves (thanks to the skills of architects), the cumulative effect be otherwise".
In
other words, no coherence and satisfying pattern
of development is achieved. There is no synergy as the
whole does come out as greater than the summed-up
attractiveness of its parts. In short, no sense of place is attained.
Urban design could make the difference in this aspect because it is
the discipline which has the capability to see things in a wider
perspective.
It is in regard of the above points that the role of an urban design planner in the process of urban planning is deemed genuinely prominent.
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