What is urban design?
Oh my god. (laughs) I knew it! Yeah, when I was a student of Harvard, you had that question as one of the critical questions in one of the core seminars, and you would get to the end of the semester basically not really having an answer. It reminds me a little bit of that, how elusive the term is. Ok. So what is urban design for me? It’s a set of practices and, you know, opportunities to bring the culture of design to the way in which we are approaching urban issues. And this is very important: we are in a school that college that actually has two programs with very different traditions, very different ways of interrogating what is going on, in not only the city, but more broadly, when we are looking at urbanization. And the way in which we work, the way in which we set up questions and how we prepare for, you know, potential answers, I would argue is really different between planning and design. So, I guess that’s one of the reasons why the term urban design remains, you know, productive. Because, we know that there are a series of ways of doing things and how we are situated in experimentation at the center of how we frame some of those questions and some of our observations.
But then I also have a lot of issues with the very definition of urban design. I come from a European context, where we like to talk about urbanism, more than urban design or urban planning, as just as a way of, I think entertaining a larger set of issues that we consider when we are situating ourselves in the urban condition and those have to do with a wider understanding of, you know, other sets of practices and disciplines and cultures.
What makes your work urban?
I guess what makes my work urban is the continuous questioning on how my work may actually be contributing to larger systems that are in place. And by systems. I mean, you know, larger collectives, when we are thinking, questioning ourselves how we deal with issues around urban citizenship, but also environmental systems. So, one of the reasons why I think my work is urban is because one obsession has always been how to better negotiate nature and culture, and how, through urban design I’ve able to entertain that conversation.
And I think it’s, I mean, it’s at the heart of what we’re doing when we are asking questions about, you know, climate change, and how we want to position ourselves reimagining alternative futures. But I think that no matter what the scale I’m working, if it’s in the center of the city or if it’s in a regional context, I’m always trying to connect that to that to larger systems and find overlaps and ways of understanding how that work can be signified and be appropriated and understood by others.
So, I guess, yeah, that’s how I would say my work is urban, regardless of, you know, the scale and the medium. I’m always trying to deal with questions that I find relevant to the urban condition for me.
Who is doing compelling work in urban design right now?
I mean, there are many and a very, very long list and I always feel like there is so much more that I need to know. So, one of the reasons why I was asking “is the conversation with Maria as an urban designer, academic, educator, you name it; or is Maria as the director of the degree?” is because one of the main responsibilities that I think I have as a director is to, in a way, have the opportunity to curate larger conversations beyond my own personal interests or even disciplinary interests. And I take that very seriously. I think one of the main challenges we have in urban design is not only decolonizing, you know, what are the sorts of things that we are working on, but actually, how we are finding our allies in the communities that we want to intervene in. And, you know, as of now, I have very immediate heroes and people that inspire me, and they are not necessarily designers. They’re housing activists or they’re environmental groups that are trying to figure out how to mediate larger agendas with very urgent crises, and this is true for the work that I’m doing in Brazil. But it’s also true for the work that I’ve been doing in Detroit or even the very preliminary understanding that I have from the urban condition in India. They continue to be incredible partners that I feel are keeping us honest and on target. Because in many cases what we are getting from many of these partners on the ground are very precise questions about “how is your work going to be relevant for the various constituencies that you are aiming to represent and support?” And I think this is really, really important.
What do you try to teach urban design students?
I take really seriously that our design is a post-professional degree, which means that students that are coming to us are already coming to us with professional degrees and in some cases with years of professional practice. So I think the most important, I don’t know if I call it a goal for me, is to be able to facilitate the construction of your own voices and agendas and interest. So I strive to present a wide range of possibilities. And then, you know, after responding, help you find your own interest, and this has nothing to do with my own interests. This is quite literally ways of, you know, curating education, your educational experiences in a way that is meaningful to you. And I think this is something that is not only an opportunity in urban design degrees, it’s actually almost like a requirement, we need to make sure that the experiences that we’re providing are very different than the ones you are getting not only in your undergrad education, but your first degree. And for sure, we need to provide the right accommodations for you to ask the questions, take the risk, experiment in ways in which you will not do in practice. That is, you know, something radically important because that’s what academia is supposed to be enabling, right? So, what I would say is, you know, what I am a little bit obsessive about is making sure that you have the tools and you have the skills to develop your own voice. And I guess I’m lucky enough to be able to teach courses in which I have a lot of time to be able to work with the students more in a one-to-one or small groups or even small classes setting so that I can actually cultivate that kind of approach. So that is, yeah, it’s not that much about what I want to teach it’s about how can I facilitate what you want to learn. After having an understanding of, you know, “what is the baseline?”, “what do you need to know?”, so that now you can start formulating your own set of interests and shaping your voice. Am I getting to that or not? That’s a question for you guys. I think, you know, for some students is easier than others. I think some of you are asking, you know, more specific questions and challenging specific aspects. And I think some other students are more interested in getting, you know, comfortable in that baseline of how to be flexible so that, you know, they can operate in the different kinds of projects, but still be more neutral in terms of how to get position. And I value those approaches equally.
What is a common misconception about urban design?
I think I shared your diagnosis at the beginning that urban design is something that is not even on the radar of many people. And I’m not talking about my mother or, you know, my friends outside academia. (party banter) (laughs) No, but I think it’s very true and I think you see it inside the college. I think you may have similar issues, you know, to have to explain what urban designers are doing in the college to urban and regional planning colleagues and to architecture colleagues, because I don’t necessarily think it’s so clear, what it is that we’re doing. I think it’s even more broader than that. You know, I was in the planning annual conference this weekend. There is always someone that reminds us that, you know, normally you discover what architecture is earlier, even maybe high school or something, but urban planning is really not something that comes until later. And I would argue, I don’t know landscape has a similar but at the same time, different set of issues, right? I think urban design, sure it’s the same set of issues, I think even you know, it’s totally unclear if urban design is something that is being offered as a concentration in architecture, as a concentration in planning, or as a concentration in landscape architecture degrees, or as a, you know, degree in itself. There is all kinds of menu possibilities. And that I think speaks a little bit on the malleability of the term? But also maybe they lack a very clear, you know, core. I mean, it’s a conversation about if urban design a discipline or is just a field of practice? How do we want to situate ourselves? You know, what is urban design and who participates in making urban designs possible? So I think that is something that we all share. I don’t see myself I don’t see myself correcting people, I feel like, you know, I would like to even better imagine, you know, what other kind of term we could put out there. But urban planning and urban design could be more integrated, maybe, but still maintain their autonomy. But yeah, I think you need to be flexible and no, I don’t get irritated when people don’t know what urban design is. I just try to explain what I do and in a way, build up a little bit, the conversation.
Where do you think urban design is heading?
I’m very optimistic. I don’t know where urban design is going, what I can tell you is that the students that we have in the classroom today are smart, are inquisitive, and are full of energy. And I’m sure whatever they end up practicing or teaching, they are gonna contribute to, you know, advance the conversation and have even better questions than the ones we are forcing upon you now. And you know, they didn’t waste working, literally in the radical belief that we can contribute to make a better place for people.
I hope at least, we can continue to create more and more opportunities for exchange so that we keep learning more and better about what urban design is in other places or what kind of urban practices we can learn from. And I think this is true for this degree, I think we have we have a very international student body and I don’t think that we are necessarily reflecting that in the content of what you learn in international composition, and I hope we can get better in that.
And then in terms of urban design, you know, deployed in cities I hope we can continue to invest in, you know, how to participate in the design of cities, in partnership with the right collaborators, and making collectives visible in a different way than we have seen before, which probably means having the intelligence to know where to get resources from, and how to participate in the right causes. And I think that that’s a personal interest. I think it’s also great if you can, you know, work in the best corporations and have the most amazing, you know, public/private, or completely privately-driven projects, that is also great. My personal interest is that we can create more opportunities for future urban designers to leverage also what is happening on the other side.