Dumbing down Design

From some points of view urban design is (almost) the new rock n' roll. There is already an alphabet from A (for Alliance) through M (for Masterplans) at least as for as W (for Ministerial Working Party on Urban Design Education) for the new age of "civilised places". But in the rush to join the party is there a risk that "urban design" will be lost, become either reviled like the CDA's of the 1960's or forgotten like the Action Area Plans that never quite made it into the practice of the new planning system. Will Urban Design courses become the Media Studies of the future: very much a la mode, lots of unreadable academic journals and graduates that have no practical skills in the subject they've "studied". There are a few hints already that this may be the case.

At the Examiners Meeting

Some of the Course Team were worried that though their urban design graduates had all kinds of skills in computer graphics and ecological audits they weren't always too sure about what to do at the point their projects touched the ground, literally and metaphorically. Maybe they could address the problem with some electives from Landscape Architecture ?

At the Panel

At the Panel Meeting someone says how a broad definition of urban design is needed these days, how it has to encompass the idea of urban design as a process with many different actors operating though many different means and using different skills. But maybe, another asks, there is none the less a core of urban design that must not be lost - the shaping of places in space and time around their uses and users? The matter is not discussed further.

Ministerial Signatures

'By Design' is the first substantial official advice on urban design since 'Design in Town and Village' (1953). But the document to which Harold Macmillan added a cautious Foreword is very different from the one which Nick Raynsford and Stuart Lipton add their effusive one.

In the former Thomas Sharp book, Frederick Gibberd and WG Holford provide precise guidance on how to extend villages, shape the street pattern and picture and organise metropolitan spaces. Their schemes may look old fashioned these days but they are full of (Imperial) scaled plans and drawings. There is no doubt about how to lay out spaces, how to design. 'By Design' offers plenty of guidance on the process and the objectives of urban design, on pro-active management and collaboration, right the way through to quality audits, but there are only four illustrations with a scale or dimensions even shown (on pp.22,50,56 and 60).

"Good urban design" - Raynsford's and Lipton's very first words, is not just process and worthy objectives; it depends on fundamental understanding of the sizes and shapes of things and the spaces needed for everyday usages. The town planners who brief and guide and discuss and modify and approve the fabric of our towns are educated under a regime whose new Benchmarks and established professional Guidelines are weak in the extreme with regard to urban design skills , and whose courses contain only about 6% urban design. Unless this changes, all the fine words and imposing phrases will not prevent the dumbing down of urban design.