Module 2 - "Contemporary Urban Design Theories"

Module 2 – “Contemporary Urban Design Theories”

Much of what I have gleaned from the reading required for the second module of this course’s workload carefully confronts the challenge of essentially defining the otherwise undefinable. By applying theories and intellectual consideration to aspects of human existence the authors we have read for this exercise attempt to quantify concepts that are difficult in nature to describe.  Despite the many ideologies regarding a city’s sense of place, it seems to me that it remains an almost impossible feat to put in to words how the physical world that surrounds you influences your interest and emotion.

After having read the material for this course module the contemporary urban design theories that resonate with me the most have been centered around the concept that to achieve a functional urban design the built environment that surrounds us must exist in conjunction with the open space that has been left behind both intentionally, as well as by accident after a project’s construction. In a sense, our community’s positive and negative spaces have to be in harmony in order to achieve the social balance of activity and calm we seek to achieve in urban design. Seamon and Sowers confront this notion in their critique of Edward Relph’s work Place and Placelessness by describing it as “the relationship of space to a more experientially-based understanding of place, space too must be explored in terms of how people experience it.” To me, this means that we as designers are only truly accomplishing our design intentions if we hold to the same consideration the informal and undefined spaces created by community design as we do those formal and more strictly planned places. The theory of urban phenomenology requests that we acknowledge equally the intangible as we do the intangible.

These sentiments are reiterated in The City as Text: Architecture and Urban Design, defined in the section of the reading Architecture and “Mere Building”. In this section the author outlines the difference in priority that separate building from architecture. Building, as I have interpreted in from this reading, considers primarily the economic function of a structure and its surroundings, whereas architecture must further recognize the social and psychological impacts that a building, and its adjacent landscape has on both its admirers, as well as its users.

While I feel as though many of the positions outlined in this module’s reading have been well thought out, and are applicable in certain urban design scenarios, I am left wondering if such design theories can be used as absolute when creating a new urban experience or if they are more valuable as case studies whose qualities can be drawn from piece by piece rather than as a whole. From the limited education I have in the field of urban design it strikes me that every project carries unique circumstances that should have some influence on the resulting design, and that in many cases those circumstances might require an individual approach appearing more like an amalgamation of contemporary theories instead of something more cut and dry like the theories presented in our readings. Maybe human society and urban life is less predictable than we have given it credit for?