The Urban Design Process

This useful guide sets out clearly the urban-design process in practice, from initial site analysis through consultation, design development, and design delivery across a range of scales within the built environment. It provides a clear overview of the role that urban design and urban designers play in shaping and creating places today and how designers conceive and deliver contextually responsive, high-quality design solutions. Beginning with a brief history of contemporary urban design, the book tracks urban design’s roots in architecture and planning and identifies how and why it has emerged as a separate discipline. It then sets out the principles and key criteria that underpin urban design and explains how urban designers interpret policy, baseline data, and graphical analysis to present an understanding of place and space. Following the urban design process through concept development/strategic framework provisions to public consultation and final design, the book discusses subjects such as costing, phasing, construction, post-construction monitoring, and maintenance. It describes the complexity of project management in delivering large-scale projects, such as master planning and major public-realm and civic schemes. Illustrated with a series of international case studies, the book concludes by highlighting a number of growing urban challenges facing cities today, discussing how urban design can play a leading role in tackling issues connected with climate change, globalization, and technological advancements, as well as how it can respond positively to the current and future needs of society.