Module 5 Urban Design an Urban Development

To better understand urban development is was helpful for me to look at the role of urban design in process of urban change through the effects brought on by regulators, producers, and users. Urban design and the dynamics of urban change occur through the flow of investment spurred by actors, builders, and facilitators. The urban process of creating place happens through human intervention and it is our duty as designers to implement rules of spatial organization to create a regulatory framework for a better developed place.

This set of lectures covered some important information on the regulations and code of urban design and how they influence how cities take shape and form. Regulating urban form requires many components to function properly such as through the implementation of zoning restrictions, guidelines, code ordinances, form-based codes and building codes. Code is a set of rules of spatial organization which helps us to better understand how things relate to one another as in through their context and surroundings. Modern code and regulations have added on a notion of segregated, zoned spaces in a clinical, technical, compartmental manner. Urban design codes in particular are regulatory frameworks of place making which emphasize physical planning and predictable urban form giving a “sense of place”. For example, the American urban landscape, also known as “generic America”, as an urban development process, was set up to solve problems such as sprawl, car dependency, and big box developments. Development and growth boundaries were established to help contain this as well. 

The reading, Production of the Build Environment, highlights urban development as a process to create and transform the city’s socio-spatial fabric. The understanding of this helps with shaping/ designing the built environment. From a broader look at the macro-scale, social and economic processes shape cities. The best way to understand urban process is to concentrate on development agencies and the structures they interact with and the special context within which they operate. The image below, from this reading excerpt, illustrates how the combination of the physical and social environment work together to collaborate resources and rules and ideas to form new urban development. From my own experience as a designer, I know that many aspects of design come from various different sources such as past successful designs and even code book specifications which aim to frame the public realm.

From the lecture on code, form based codes were discusses as an American product to put an emphasis on building relationships and fitting the building to its use and surroundings. This type of urban code calls attention to/ focuses on streets and neighborhoods, mixed use, building to boundary lines, diversity in neighborhoods and the ability to transform and preserve as opposed to what traditional zoning does.  The hybrid code approach combines form based codes with traditional zoning which allows communities to adjust code to fit design goals and resources. With varying objectives in this hybridized code there are degrees of flexibility that can benefit urban development. Code can be a pain to work with sometimes, but having this option of flexibility has allowed for some well-crafted spaces such as Portland’ s Pearl District which was primarily crafted through Piece-by-piece urban design. This typology of urban design consists primarily of incremental district development. General policies and procedures are applied to a district of a city to steer development in specific directions while still giving developers the freedom of choice.

Political Economy Models are the driving forces of the urban development process, which act as its structural imperatives. Capital-labor models the way markets are structured such as the roles of capitol, labor and land. Structure-agency models the state at a central/local level, the financial industry, construction industry, planning regulations, taxes, and public policies which help to govern the development process of urban design. These models set guidelines and the basis of code for which designers can develop urban space. They can be a bit restrictive sometimes, as I known well, but in the end they are for the best and keep the political and economic world in check.

As a design student, I am already seeing the importance of understanding code, and regulatory frameworks in the creation of the physical realm in relation to developing a well-functioning space in which people will want to accommodate. I believe that code from an urban design standpoint can also be about accessibility and safety of the space even through it was not really brought up in this module. Based on what I have learned, political economies are strong influencers in the development of urban space, but there is still some flexibility of code which help designers to develop a responsive environment to its surroundings.