HISTORY OF

URBAN
DESIGN

URBAN DESIGN
is the process of designing and shaping cities, towns and villages. It is an interdisciplinary subject that utilizes elements of many built environment
professions, including
landscape architecture,urban planning , architecture, civiland
municipal engineering.
It is common for professionals in all these disciplines
to practice in urban design. In more recent times
different sub-strands of urban design have
URBAN DESIGN
emerged such as strategic urban design,
design deals with the
landscape urbanism, water-sensitive
larger scale of groups of
urban design, andsustainable urbanism.
buildings, streets and
public spaces, whole
neighbourhoods and
districts, and entire cities,
ARCHITECTURE
with the goal of making
the design of
urban areas functional,
individual buildings
attractive, and
sustainable.

Origins and Development

Settlement design has existed since pre
-historical timeswhat has changed is:
Needs of the epoch
Consciousness in approach
Development of settlement design as a professional
discipline with its own tools and concepts
MOHENJO-DARO

ANCIENT UR OF
SUMER IRAQ
WORLDS EARLIEST
CITY

PIRAEUS MAP
1908
HIPPODAMUS
OF
MILETUS

Pre-Industrial v/s Post-Industrial

(Unself-conscious) v/s (self-conscious)
The history of urban design can broadly be
categorized into pre-industrial and post-industrial

Un-self-conscious approach: This is created by people who do

not think of themselves as designers, but who do affect the form of the
urban environment. Such a design is based upon intuitions that are not
clearly stated.

Self-conscious Approach: This is created by people who think of

themselves as designers. Their interest is in using their design skills to
create a pleasing urban setting. A self-conscious approach is usually
based upon a set of clearly stated design ideas or principles.

Pre-Industrial (Unconscious)
(Period prior to the 19th Century)

Cities were structured in a comprehensible

and legible manner.reflecting the
cultures that created them
Layout of cities was mainly based on ritual
and cosmological symbols.. ordered
around ceremonial procession routes, or
military, religious, and civic landmarks.

Public realm included:

Public thoroughfares
Commercial avenues and
market places
Social promenades
Meeting places (ref. agoras)

A traditional Islamic town

Inhabitants adapted to wider social, physical, and

spiritual order
Communication was face-to-face
Public life took place in public places

Pre-Industrial
(Unconscious) contd

Cities as centers
of civilization
were always
complex and
dynamic, of larger
cultural
dimensions and
housing grand
public
ceremonies.
Most towns did
not follow
predetermined
plans but
intuitively
responded to
ecological choice,
land ownership
structures and
evolution of road
and urban
infrastructure.

Articulation of the centre

Design features of different pre-industrial

civilizations
Pre-historical (6000 BC):
The concept of the centre, the cardinal orientation, scale, the axis,
and the wall
Classical (3500 BC):
Scale, Proportion, Lines of movement, Focal points, and Visual
Linkage.
Islamic (400 AD):
Clusters, building heights, visual linkage, privacy, labyrinth street
form (including the cul-de-sac), and focal points (nodes)
Medieval (900 AD):
Hierarchy of buildings, visual link, perimeter wall design

Design features of the

Renaissance

Renaissance Civilization (1500 AD)

The mainstream urban design was born in the
renaissance age
Renaissance urban design was mainly on
aesthetics as perceived by the user of public
places
Cosmic forces were displaced by scientific
theories and observations
Urban design ceased to be a natural
expression of community life and became a
much more conscious artistic self-expression

Ideal cities of Regular geometry

Public places and
primary
streets showing
sequence
and
perspective

regular geometric spaces

(entire cities or parts of)

the primary streets

the public places /

squares/piazzas with
sculptures and fountains

sequence and perspective.

Renaissance
--the art-historical period (14th to16th century)
of cultural revival and rediscovery of the ideals
of Ancient Greece and Rome
--based on the political development towards
individual freedom and the birth of civil society

The Baroque
Art-historical movement (1575-1770),
dominant during the political periods of
--the Counter-Reformation and
--Absolutism

Absolutism
--form of government defined by an absolute ruler without the
participation of corporative institutions in the 17th and 18th century (the
Age of Absolutism 1646- 1789)
--Absolutism is served artistically by the predominant forms and means
of expression of the Baroque period
--process of nationalisation:
--establishment of regular armies
--incorporation of the church into the political system
--mercantile economic system

The Age of Enlightenment (Zeit der Aufklrung)

Late Absolutism French Revolution 1789

Urban Design (Stadtbaukunst)

The application of artistic rules in the planning of urban
space

Synthesis of the Arts (Gesamtkunstwerk)

An art product synthesising the different art genres which in turn complement each other

Mainstream Culture (Hochkultur)

cultural movement dominating the individual cultural expressions
--mainstream culture tends to absorb individual expressions
--the stronger mainstream cultures develop, the harder it is to maintain
individual positions
--mainstream cultures lead to crises

The change of ideas and the birth of the Renaissance in the 14th
century
man becomes the focus of philosophy
--the world is explained with the means of science and not of religion
--rational patterns start defining life
--social position based on profession and education
--the perspective is introduced
--goal: a fully planned and functional city

The conditions for the development of the Renaissance

independent development influenced by classical antiquity (the rational component)
--contact with the rational achievements of the Arab-Islamic world during the Crusades
--cities have political advantages because of the conflict between the Pope and the
Emperor (Kaiser)
--autonomy of urban families that own large tracts of land

Areas of urban design in the Renaissance

AREAS OF URBAN DESIGN IN THE
period

RENAISSANCE PERIOD
-fortiication systems
-regeneration of parts of cities by the
creation of new public spaces and related
streets
-restructuring of existing cities by the
construction of new main streets which
extended to the citys limits and continued
as regional routes; these new streets
frequently generated further growth
-addition of extensive new districts, usually
for residential purposes
-in some cases, completely new towns
were designed

COMPONENTS OF URBAN DESIGN IN THE

RENAISSANCE PERIOD
-the straight main street
-the grid-iron
district (historys
oldest urban form
regulator)
-enclosed space
(squares)

IDEAL CITIES THE

RENAISSANCE

Vitruvius
Lorini
Cataneo

-Vitruvius
-Alberti
-Filarete Trattato dellArchitettura
-Leonardo
-Cataneo 8 books LArchitettura
-Scamozzi Palma Nuova (Lidea dellArchitettura
Universale)
-Lorini

Scamozzi

ITALIAN RENAISSANCE

F
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R
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N
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A
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In the 16th century Paris is the capital of an effectively

united nation and the location of its splendid royal court
- Place dAuphine and Pont Neuf (1578)
- Place Royale (1605)
- Palais de Tuileries (1563)

Paris in the 16th century:

New Renaissance towns

in France
-Neuf - Brisach
-Nancy medieval nucleus
and Ville-Neuve

Nancy

- Place Royale (1605)

- prototype of a residential square
- bringing the aristocracy under the control of the king
- the construction of the Palais de
Tuileries (1563) and its Italian
Renaissance Garden by Catharina
de Medici (arch. Philippe Delorme)
set the course for a westward
development

The birth of the Baroque

During the Counter-Reformation (15th16th century), Baroque design
was characterized by the central role of the Church, while during the
Age of Absolutism, design was deined by the ruler and his residence

Development tendencies from the Renaissance to the

Baroque
-the bourgeois culture of the Renaissance creates a geometric urban shape
and
expresses the idea of an uniied urban form
-the elements of the urban shape are equal parts of one wholeness (primus
inter pares)
-the autonomy of the Renaissance City declines in the period of the CounterReformation due to the power of the Church
-in the Baroque period the upper classes create urban ensembles to
demonstrate their high-ranking social status and stress their uniqueness
-the Baroque urban design ideas are enforced by the restriction of the
individual artistic freedom
-Baroque urbanism is an expression of spectacle and ceremony (the city as a
synthesis of the arts)

Renaissance
versus Baroque

- The principals of
Renaissance urban
planning, architectural
design and aesthetic
theory are directed by
identical ideas:
- discipline and
order, in contrast
to the relative
irregularity of
medieval space
- compositional
balance
- emphasis was
placed on the
horizontal instead
of the vertical
- permanence
- Baroque urban design
is the result of the
centralised church
and autocratic power
- hierarchy of
meanings
- deinite sense of
spatial direction

Baroque in Rome
-Piazza del Popolo (1589)
-Scala di Spagna/Piazza di Spagna
(1721-1725), Sixtus V, Fontana
-The Capitol Piazza, Michelangelo (1537)
-Piazza Navonna

-Piazza del Popolo (1589)

-Scala di Spagna/Piazza di Spagna
(1721-1725), Sixtus V, Fontana
-The Capitol Piazza,
Michelangelo (1537)
-Piazza Navonna

Colonial cities in
America

Since the 16th century colonial cities in

America were based on the Leyes de las
Indias of the Spanish king Philipp II
Grid-cities according to the uniied patterns of
the Renaissance:
- the planning instrument is an orthogonal
network of streets with relatively square
housing blocks; public spaces are formed
by reducing or leaving out blocks
- the grid can be extended unlimitedly; the
transition from city to nature is not
expressed as clearly as in Europe
- the grid makes it impossible to adapt the
citys shape to the landscape; therefore
the citys shape lacks character in
comparison with European cities

Colonial cities in
America

Chicago
Philadelphia

NEW YORK

Late Renaissance - Amsterdam

Late Renaissance - Lisbon

Industrial-Modern (Conscious) Age

(1900 AD)

Industrial Age was characterized by capitalism and rapid urbanization that broke down preindustrial order

With introduction of machinery and factory system, the great mass of workforce was separated
from the land, nature, and social life

As a living environment, the 19th century city was conspicuous in its omissions:

Thus, it has been argued that urban design was murdered in the industrial age.

Minimal standards of all kinds (roads, housing, gardens, building heights, etc) were slowly evolved
leading to improved living standards.

Mainstream Urban design originated in the late 19th century at the heart of city planning, as civic or
town design in a social context

These were attempts (of planners and engineers, architects, and social reformers) to come to grips
with the problems created by rapid industrialization and urbanization of the late 19th century

when planning first became institutionalized in the west in the early 20th century, Urban design was
largely seen as part of a wider structure of comprehensive planning

Its existence became more relevant in the 1960s to fill the gap between town planning and
architecture.

Since the 1950s, planning has significantly broadened its scope to include many socio-economic
facets of the city, Consequently, transforming (sometimes shrinking) the portfolio of urban design in
the urban planning activities, many of which are no longer exclusively concerned with the physical
environment.

Design features of the

Industrial Age

Howards garden City

Above: concepts
Left: Model town of
Welwyn

Some of the concepts tested included:

Suburban decentralization (William Morris);
Garden city (Ebenezer Howard),
Neighbourhood (Henrietta Barnett & Raymond
Unwin),
Conservation & the park movement

(Fredrick Law
Olmsted),
Artistic City Planning (Camillo sitte)
Linear city (Soria Y Matta),
Ideal industrial city (Tony Garnier)

Floating City (K. Kikutake)

Industrial City
(T.Garnier)

Linear city
The linear city was an urban plan for an elongated urban formation. The city would
consist of a series of functionally specialized parallel sectors. Generally, the city would
run parallel to a river and be built so that the dominant wind would blow from the
residential areas to the industrial strip.
The linear city design was first
developed by Arturo Soria y Mata in Madrid, Spain during the19th centuryz
The sectors of a linear city would be: a purely segregated zone for railway lines,
a zone of production and communal enterprises, with related scientific, technical and
educational institutions,
a green belt or buffer zone with major highway,
a residential zone, including a band of social institutions, a band of residential
buildings and a "children's band",
a park zone, and
an agricultural zone with gardens and state-run farms
As the city expanded, additional sectors would be added to the end of each band, so
that the city would become ever longer, without growing wider.

Linear City
(Soria Y Mata)

Garden city
A Garden City is a Town designed for healthy living and industry; of a size
that makes possible a full measure of social life, but not larger; surrounded
by a rural belt; the whole of the land being in public ownership or held in
trust for the community.
Each a self-sufficient entitynot a dormitory suburbof 30,000 population
Each ringed by an agricultural belt
Sir Ebenzer Howard (founder of the English garden-city movement,
which influenced city planning throughout the world.)
Howard wrote(1880 ) Tomorrow: A Peaceful Path to Social Reform. Not
published until 1898
This work was reissued in 1902 as Garden Cites of Tomorrow. Howard
learned shorthand and held various jobs as a private secretary and
stenographer before becoming a shorthand reporter in the London law
courts.
He was a liberal social reformer who was decisively influenced by
Edward Bellamy's utopian novel Looking Backward (1889).

Modern Age Urban Design

Modernist (second generation) ideals began to take shape in the 1950s after the
World War II.

These built on the pre-war experiments such as Howards Garden City.

They expressed a romantic fusion of machine-age modernism with the picturesque

aesthetics of traditional, high-density pre-industrial towns.

As being part of the wider structure of comprehensive planning, urban design

alluded to the process of Survey-Analysis-Plan which was the forerunner to the
rational decision model articulated by the founding fathers such as Patrick Geddes
(1914, 1949)

Designs were to be served by a sophisticated public transport system

Urban renewal, slum clearance, and new housing took centre stage

Modern designers attempted to assimilate the massive technological and societal

changes that so affected life at that time

Thus, it can be said that mainstream urban design was resurrected in the
modern age

Modern Age Urban Design

Some of the prominent works included:

The city beautiful movement (Camillo Sitte)

New Communities Movement

(Clarence stein, Lewis
Mumford)

City of 3 million and plan voisin for rebuilding Paris

(Le Corbusier)

Broad acre city (frank Lloyd Wright)

Circulation models
(Louis Khans Philadelphia & Kenzo Tanges Tokyo).

Clockwise: MARS plan of London (1938);

Radburn (cul-de-sac); Chandigarh; City of 3
million people (central portion)

Broad Acre City

Llyod Wright

Mile-high skyscraper
Llyod Wright

Plan of Tokyo
- Kenzo Tange

Post-Modernism/Neomodernism

Neomodernists propounded an influential view of the late-twentieth century

city as requiring a response that recognises both its dynamic and
indeterminate character in the face of global market forces and the continuing
need to impose minimum ordering principles.

It makes use of a series of unconventional formal techniques to create urban

interventions that express the essential fragmentation or spatial and temporal
complexity of our age

A common theme in Neo modernist work is the attempt to deconstruct

modernist architectural forms

Postmodernism departs from modernism in its emphasis on complex,

ambiguous and discordant urban forms as well as dynamic and anti-functional
approaches to design

The neo-modernist themes of technology, flexibility, and indeterminacy derive

from the urban concepts of a previous generation of architectural visionaries.

Thus, it can be said that urban design is being questioned/interrogated in

the postmodern period

Examples of
Neo modernist
work

Tschumis Neomodernist work

Parc de la Villette (Bernard Tschumi)

Cardiff opera house (Zaha Hadid)
Office for Metropolitan Architecture (Rem
Koolhaas)
Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao (Frank Gherry)

Above: Lausanne
business park
Right: Parc de la
Villette

New Urbanism
(21st Century???)

Ushered in the 21st century; emphasizes urbanism by

its diversity, pedestrian scale, public space, and
structure.

This is a re-interpretation of traditional thinking

into new solutions while trying to embrace the
opportunities offered by new technology.

Alludes to land-efficient planning methods and

sustainable neighborhoods: adequate size; compact
form; appropriate urban density; varied mix of
uses and tenure; a range of employment, leisure
and community facilities; ready access to public
transport; and a pedestrian-friendly environment.