top of page

 

Urban design is the process of designing and shaping cities, towns and villages.

 

Whereas architecture focuses on individual buildings, urban design address the larger scale of groups of buildings, of streets and public spaces, whole neighbourhoods and districts, and entire cities, to make urban areas functional, attractive, and sustainable.

 

Urban design is an inter-disciplinary subject that unites all the built environment professions, including urban planning, landscape architecture, architecture, civil and municipal engineering.  

 

WHAT ARE KEY URBAN ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS

 

While there is now widespread agreement that urban environmental issues are important, there is little coherence in how international agencies and others define the urban environment and identify its critical problems.

 

This is not just a semantic question, as it is intimately related to how and where funds are allocated and to who can expect to benefit from the resulting environmental improvements. Most of the confusion arises from the qualifier ‘environmental’ and what it should mean in an urban context.

 

If urban environmental problems are defined and pursued too broadly, then almost all urban development initiatives can be labelled environmental. For example, Einstein’s oft-cited definition of the environment as ‘everything that is not me’, could be used to designate anything from better shopping facilities to better televisions as urban environmental improvement.

 

But if urban environmental problems are defined too narrowly, many of the generalizations noted in the introductory paragraph cease to be true.

For example, defining urban environmental problems as ‘the degradation of urban water, air and land excludes many of the environmental health problems suffered predominantly by the poor, as well as the extra-urban impacts that threaten regional and global sustainability

 

 

Public space includes the totality of spaces used freely on a day-to-day basis by the general public, such as streets, plazas, parks and public infrastructure. 

 

Some aspects of privately owned spaces, such as building facades or domestic gardens, also contribute to public space and are therefore also considered by urban design theory.

While both very broad and very narrow usage are common in the literature, when people complain of ‘environmental problems’ they are typically referring to damage to the physical environment, mostly caused by other people, and usually with harmful consequences for human welfare, either now or in the future.

 

So common sense suggests that urban environmental problems are threats to present or future human well-being, resulting from human-induced damage to the physical environment, originating in or borne in urban areas.

 

This definition includes:

  • Localized environmental health problems such as inadequate household water and sanitation and indoor air pollution.

  • City-regional environmental problems such as ambient air pollution, inadequate waste management and pollution of rivers, lakes and coastal areas.

  • Extra-urban impacts of urban activities such as ecological disruption and resource depletion in a city’s hinterland, and emissions of acid precursors and greenhouse gases.

  • Regional or global environmental burdens that arise from activities outside a city’s boundaries, but which will affect people living in the city

It does not encompass:

  • Problems in what are sometimes termed the ‘social’, ‘economic’ or ‘cultural’ environment.

  • Natural hazards that are not caused or made worse by urban activity.

  • The environmental impacts of urban activities that are of no concern to humans, either now or in the future.

 

The table presents a wide range of city-related environmental hazards. Despite their diversity, all fall within the definition, provided the phrase ‘resulting from urban activities’ is itself interpreted broadly. Most are the unintended side-effects of human activity in cities.

 

Some might more accurately be ascribed to a lack of preventive measures. In all examples, however, better urban practices and governance could help reduce the burdens, and it is this distinction that is most critical operationally.

 

THE NEXT UPDATE ON URBAN DESIGN WILL BEGIN WITH A SUMMARY OF A RANGE OF CITY RELATED ENVIRONMENTAL HAZARDS BY SCALE, TYPE OF HAZARD AND SOME SPECIFIC EXAMPLES.                             STAY POSTED !

URBAN SPRAWL PHOTOS: COURTESY OF ACCRA[dot]ALT

URBAN DESIGN

bottom of page