Setting urban design as a specialised, evidence-led, coordinated education and profession

摘要

Urban environments are complex, impacting on climate change, social justice and health globally and locally. Theirspatial, social, economic, environmental dimensions are interlinked and must be studied from a complexityviewpoint. Yet, while complexity has successfully entered urban scholarship and practice in many fields, urban form,a key component of urban environments, is not yet studied in these terms and consequently they are not yetdesigned as complex. This paper argues that the discipline of urban design should be (re)defined as theunderstanding and design of urban environments as places of organised complexity. It can become the disciplinebest placed to manage a useful global overview of sustainable placemaking. It does so by tracing urban design’shistorical relationships and attitudes towards the evolution of the city, contrasting definitions of complexity inscience, with the deterministic way in which the early urban design practitioners viewed design. It then looks aturban design’s relationship with other design professions in the UK and suggests its lack of clarity and efficiency isan enduring consequence of this historic trajectory. Finally, it proposes urban design as the discipline concerned withthe understanding and design of complex-adaptive urban environments and advocate its establishment as anindependent profession.