TEACHING URBAN DESIGN has a strong explicitly restorative side and lends itself much more easily to describing existing social values by way of defining spaces than inscribing entirely new ones. For many urban designers in the discipline, arguing urban design still builds on the dichotomy of rejecting modern spaces, advocating the merits of traditional local spaces and morphologies, and fast forwarding those into post-industrial relations. It is often reflective of an awkward discourse that pretends to be free of ideology while being laden with it. It seems almost impossible for anyone in the discipline to easily shake himself or herself free from this conflict. However, under rampant neo-liberal ideological world order, it has also become increasingly discernible that the loci of engagement for substantial urban design has proven to be limited. In other words, during the past quarter century, urban designers have had to understand that they cannot go everywhere.
Axonometric Masterplan. Image credit: Boxymoron, WS 2015/16
146 CITY OBSERVER | June 2016
Personally, we consider that this is due to the same or at least analogous structural reasons, which forced urban planning out of the equation. A less radical and more representational explanation could be that not every street can be transformed into a cozy pedestrian road or a fancy boulevard with BRT lanes and not every new city can be a smart one - despite numeric optimism currently showing good sportsmanship in many countries including India. As a consequence of this development, urban design, like urban planning, has a tendency of also going procedural. So far, we do not really have a theory about procedural urban design except for collective experience which shows that it happens and is a logical consequence of societal and professional developments. It involves stakeholders, participation and co-production.