Responses to Stephen Marshall's 'The kind of art urban design is'

摘要

Stephen has done a heroic service for urban design by placing it in the panoply of creative acts, and in the process has produced a guide to the literature that any student of the field ought to read and contemplate. A few thoughts have been stimulated by his article. The article correctly notes that urban design is a collective art, seldom with a single author. He notes the traditions of participatory and performance art as proximate arts. An example not included is the Fluxus art movement that began in the 1950s in New Yorkand continues to this day, focused on the art of street and other public performances. They regarded not only the event of immediate experience as art, but also the outcome or traces that remained when it was over. Viewed that way, the results of urban design processes are a collective art, to be understood by how they came into being.