What is urban design?
So I came here to be the dean in 1998. Even before I accepted the job, and in my lecture to the faculty, I said, the first thing I’m going to do is start an urban design program. Which we did shortly after I arrived. And why? Because as an architect, who had gotten more and more interested in urbanism as I got older, and did larger scale projects, it became clear that there was this sort of gap between planning and architecture and it wasn’t being filled very well. Planners have gotten more interested in policy. Since I’ve been in architecture school, many have moved from architecture schools to public policy schools, not at our college. So it got more policy-based and architecture training has gotten more focused on individual buildings, which it still is to a large extent. So I saw it as a bridge, filling that gap. And it’s a small program but I think highly successful. I love to see it expand to two studios. I think you have an extreme advantage going out into the professional world because firms also feel this gap. And I think you’re eminently employable with that degree.
As far as a precise definition goes, I would say urban design is the bridge between urban planning and architecture. And it is three dimensional, three dimensional urban planning. Urban planning is typically two dimensional. And architecture is of course three dimensional. So it’s a three dimensional bridge between urban planning and architecture. And I’ve written about this. I’ve written book chapters of all sorts.
What makes your work urban?
Architects, as they get older, they get bigger projects and they’re often multiple buildings in an ensemble and might even get a whole city block or a whole cluster of city blocks to deal with. And then it’s really urban design. Typology, I think, has a big role to play in them, in urban design. Urban planning doesn’t care about building types or architectural types. You know, they don’t care about townhouses versus mid rise versus single family versus walk ups or whatever. They don’t think in those physical terms but urban designers do. And you need that urban design typology, actually architectural types to do urban design. They’re sort of the vocabulary. If the vocabulary for architecture are building materials. You know, brick steel, concrete, whatever. The vocabulary for urban design are architectural types. You know, townhouses; 2, 3, 4 story; (neighborhood eyes); walk-up; buildings without elevators; with elevators; multifamily housing; all that is very much urban design. I mean, those are the types for urban design. The typology. They’re sort of like the cards you get to deal with, the deck of cards.
Who is doing compelling work in urban design right now?
Current? What are current people doing? Well, the new urbanists, a term that’s not so popular in architecture programs. But new urbanism is dealing with urban design in a typological way. So, Peter Calthorpe, Andres Duany, two of the founders who have major international practices dealing in urban design primarily. Europeans have never made this distinction, by the way. They’ve always had three dimensional urban planning. So they don’t really need urban design programs. Even the architecture programs in European schools are much more about urbanism. So they don’t need that bridge. So there are many, many great famous European architects who do urban design, both historically and currently. From Norman Foster and Richard Rodgers and Renzo Piano of the older generation. To Bjark Ingles and Winy Maas and Rem Koolhaas. BIG is, they still are a little too enthralled with single object, trophy buildings but they’re reasonably sensitive. I mean, all Scandinavian architects are sensitive to urbanism, that’s in their blood. Like that’s true of most European architects. They don’t see buildings in isolation. I mean, we don’t either literally but if you look at the buildings on the third floor, in architecture studios, they’re pretty much freestanding “look at me” buildings. It’s getting a little better. It used to be worse, used to be 100% iconic buildings. We need background buildings to set off the trophy buildings, really the foreground buildings. We need background, foreground. We need more background than foreground and urban designers, I think understand that. Leon Krier has done a lot to promote that idea with his wonderful cartoons. So I think that’s the balance that we lost in architecture schools.
What do you try to teach urban design students?
Well, to repeat myself, to be able to think in terms beyond the scale of the individual building or sum ensemble of buildings. to see the bigger, neighborhood community/city so that it all adds up to a whole greater than the sum of the parts. I mean, that’s the whole idea. Great cities far exceed the sum of the parts and to do that, it takes the right physical mix, but you also need the right social mix, the right policies, the right economics, and so on. And planners take those dimensions more into account than urban designers but urban designers also have to be thinking about policy and economics and social equity issues and so on and so forth. So equity is always an issue, always an issue in architecture, always an issue in planning, always an issue in urban design. In a capitalist system, we’ve got to be fighting inequality all the time.
What is a common misconception about urban design?
A misconception of urban design? Hm, don’t seem to encounter that. Maybe they don’t understand it’s truly three dimensional. Maybe they don’t realize it deals with social and political issues. Depending on what field they’re coming from... Nobody in LSA (the liberal arts college at Michigan) gets it very well at all. It’s always a sales job for them, but then they get it. Well, they care about the social, political, economic dimensions, right? More than the physical but they care about physical to some extent, they care about you know, behavior and economic justice and things like that. So they would, they would tend to understand urban planning much more because it’s more policy-based. Architecture has never been a good fit in any university. Art, music, and architecture have never fit well in the american university because they’re creative disciplines and most disciplines, all other disciplines are very different. You know, they have a body of knowledge and it’s agreed what the body of knowledge is and what’s new and what’s old. And so on and so forth. Where architecture, art, and music are much more free floating. So you go to any university campus art, probably has the most trouble fitting in, because it’s even less tethered to reality than architecture. And music is just a whole other dimension. So it’s no accident that art architecture and music were among the first disciplines-- or first schools to go to the north campus. They never fit in very well.
Where do you think urban design is heading?
Well, I think it has a big future. The planet’s 55% urbanized. In 10, 15 years it will be two-thirds urbanized. In your lifetime, it will be three-quarters urbanized. So, particularly Asia, South Asia, East Asia, Southeast Asia are urbanizing very quickly. So is South America. Europe and North America are pretty well already urbanized. But people moving from the countryside in the cities are doing it in droves. In Asia and South America, cities need work. I mean, right now we just put them into these big giant squatter settlements, these favelas, and it’s pretty nasty. It’s physically always difficult but sometimes even dangerous, in terms of crime. So all those rapidly, urgently exploding metro areas from Mexico City to Ho Chi Minh city to Beijing and Shanghai, Delhi and Mumbai, desperately need urban designers. And they need urban planners too and they need architects. But I said particularly urban designers because these favelas are three dimensional communities. They’re not freestanding buildings. So I’m surprised there isn’t more demand, more programs. The biggest and oldest is the one at Harvard. And I don’t know how many urban design programs there are now. My guess is maybe 30. Yeah, it’s a growth industry.
I do want to point out that this place you’re filming this in has a walk score of 99.