Abstract
In 1961, in The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs stated 'A city can not be a work of art'. 40 years later this message has not yet reached most urban designers. Influenced by the discipline of architecture the achievement of experiential value, particularly in cultural and aesthetic respects, guided by personal form concepts, is the central issue. The focus is on final processes with a relatively large temporal grain: the transformation of urban area (counted in years or decades). (http://www.bk.tudelft.nl/onderzoek/portfolio/ (Research Theme Urbanisme 02-2004). The New Charter of Athens (The European Council of Town Planners, 2003) underlines this. The 'construction' of urban areas involves more though than just the experiential value: use value and future value are design issues as well (for instance Broadbent 1990: 37). Use value implies that urban areas should be functionally organised to accommodate daily - but also weekly and seasonally - cyclic societal processes (and, by the way, ecological ones). Future value implies that urban dynamics should be taken into account when making designs. Cyclic societal processes though, especially when the temporal grain is relatively small, get very little attention in urban design. An important reason is undoubtedly that design ideas and proposals are communicated by means of spatial models. Also the fact that the term 'design', both in English and as a loan word in other languages, has an 'aesthetical flavour' (Gasparski 1993: 168), will be a contributing factor to the emphasis on experiential value. Spatial models have a lot of limitations, though urban designers seem often not aware of this. An important one is that processes can only be shown indirectly. This leads to an approach to urban design that concentrates on visual aspects as far as experiential value is concerned, to a lack of attention for creating possibilities for efficient temporospatial activity patterns, to inflexible and poorly adaptable 'blueprint' proposals, and to an irresponsible use of reference images. Study of examples of (implemented) urban designs both in Amsterdam and elsewhere substantiate this statement.
Citation
Klaasen, I. (2004) Urban Design: Not Just 'Delight', but 'Commodity' and 'Firmness' as Well., in Redmond, J., Durling, D. and de Bono, A (eds.), Futureground - DRS International Conference 2004, 17-21 November, Melbourne, Australia. https://dl.designresearchsociety.org/drs-conference-papers/drs2004/researchpapers/18
Urban Design: Not Just 'Delight', but 'Commodity' and 'Firmness' as Well.
In 1961, in The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs stated 'A city can not be a work of art'. 40 years later this message has not yet reached most urban designers. Influenced by the discipline of architecture the achievement of experiential value, particularly in cultural and aesthetic respects, guided by personal form concepts, is the central issue. The focus is on final processes with a relatively large temporal grain: the transformation of urban area (counted in years or decades). (http://www.bk.tudelft.nl/onderzoek/portfolio/ (Research Theme Urbanisme 02-2004). The New Charter of Athens (The European Council of Town Planners, 2003) underlines this. The 'construction' of urban areas involves more though than just the experiential value: use value and future value are design issues as well (for instance Broadbent 1990: 37). Use value implies that urban areas should be functionally organised to accommodate daily - but also weekly and seasonally - cyclic societal processes (and, by the way, ecological ones). Future value implies that urban dynamics should be taken into account when making designs. Cyclic societal processes though, especially when the temporal grain is relatively small, get very little attention in urban design. An important reason is undoubtedly that design ideas and proposals are communicated by means of spatial models. Also the fact that the term 'design', both in English and as a loan word in other languages, has an 'aesthetical flavour' (Gasparski 1993: 168), will be a contributing factor to the emphasis on experiential value. Spatial models have a lot of limitations, though urban designers seem often not aware of this. An important one is that processes can only be shown indirectly. This leads to an approach to urban design that concentrates on visual aspects as far as experiential value is concerned, to a lack of attention for creating possibilities for efficient temporospatial activity patterns, to inflexible and poorly adaptable 'blueprint' proposals, and to an irresponsible use of reference images. Study of examples of (implemented) urban designs both in Amsterdam and elsewhere substantiate this statement.