(Texten finns bara på engelska)
The planning and design of European cities in the forties, fifties and sixties focused on the building of suburbs and transportation corridors leaving cities with deconstructed central areas characterised by large areas for roads and parking, surrounded by retail developments in an incoherent and fragmented landscape. In the seventies, eighties and nineties, the environmental debate has moved from the pollution of heavy industries to the consequences of traffic and movement patterns – congestion, air pollution and environmental quality. These issues have become the point of departure in the search for new forms for the City which are socially, economically and ecologically sustainable and which will assist in the recovery of identity. Urban design and urban management provide the means to realise these aims.
Development over time and the changing logic in urban patterns are challenging and difficult aspects of design in the city. The interaction between cultural life, technology and the built environment is the motor for this change. New social and cultural directions need new expressions of form and pattern. Good urban design is born out of an understanding of the character of the place and the culture of its people - the qualities of the city should be clearly but subtly revealed to contribute to its vitality and coherence. Emphasis is needed on legibility – the extent to which people, residents and visitors alike, can read the city and the ease with which they can orientate themselves and find their way around. The meaning of place – understanding, revealing and interpreting the city physically and culturally – through interventions of high quality, is the overarching principle guiding urban design and urban management. It is necessary to understand the complex relationship between mixed urban character, transportation and the temporal dimension in design.
Impressions of a city are formed by many things: expectation – reading guides, literature, studying maps, the stories of friends; people – taxi drivers, shopkeepers and waiters and whether they are friendly or helpful; and, the quality of accommodation and buildings – hotel room, office, conference hall, museums, restaurants, bars and shops. Many cities underestimate the significance of public space in forming people’s impressions of a city. In a great city, design of public space can make streets, squares and lanes become exciting places. These can be cohesive, pleasant, safe and attractive as opposed to alienating and dirty. Public space has a major influence on people’s perception of a city and their willingness to return for business, pleasure or a combination of both.
Urban design has a particular phrase for public space, its use, activities and management. It is referred to as the public realm, a deliberate juxtaposition of words to emphasise that streets belong to people in the sense of the people. Public space, its use and management is the public kingdom, a democratic concept and an essential starting point for successful design in public space. The public realm requires an appreciation of design from the metropolitan scale to the finest of detail – from the City to the Spoon – the well-used, but concisely expressive phrase attributed to the Italian architect Ernesto Rogers.
Design of the public realm should understand and reveal the character and quality of the city centre in a visible, understandable, clear and coherent manner. A strategy is necessary to provide principles and design guidelines for management & maintenance, street and pavement surfaces, soft landscape, street furniture, signing, lighting and public art and to help control development and built interventions such as public squares and streets.
The importance of communicating an exciting but true impression of an urban design project. Royal Exchange Square, Glasgow. The competition sketch evokes the excitement and quality of the finished scheme (source; Gillespies).
Urban design strategies for the public realm help to establish:
- an understanding of the character of the place to guide future development projects;
- a framework to attract and prioritise investment;
- a visible demonstration of quality on the ground;
- public support for a continued programme rather than ad-hoc projects; and,
- a reduction in the dominance of traffic in city centres.
An understanding of some key factors is essential to this process:
- the inherent character of the urban form and its inherited townscape;
- the way people use, perceive and inhabit the City Centre; and,
- the movement patterns to service business, resident and visitor requirements.
In this way, a hierarchy of streets and spaces can be identified together with design principles to guide high quality projects.
The segregation of the professions of architecture, engineering, town planning and landscape design has been a major impediment to the regeneration of form and the regenesis of urban development in the City. The design of urban environments must become an integrated process where landscape, infrastructure, buildings and economic forces interact in a positive manner. Nowhere is the need for an integrated approach more evident than in the public realm. Design plays a key role in the quality of the public realm through a wide range of disciplines. Architecture, product design, landscape architecture, graphic design and engineering are the principal skills needed to produce spaces, surfaces, furniture, signs, lighting and buildings of quality. These skills combined with sound management and maintenance can lend an air of elegance, modernity and richness to the urban experience. Their absence can result in an air of neglect, in dirty, litter-strewn spaces which are uncomfortable, ugly and alienating.
Working with public space also requires an insight into the public culture of the city, for culture manifests itself subtly but influentially in the understanding and use of public space. Design in the public realm requires a co-ordinated approach to build a visual identity from surfaces, footpaths, sculpture, furniture, public art, lighting and signing. Exciting and successful cities like Barcelona are aware of their identity and take care to ensure that it is reflected in designs for new public space.
Holistic thinking and integrated design is at the forefront in the recovery of design values in civic life. It is essential that this integrated approach is adopted in the teaching of young architects and planners and in this Chalmers plans to be at the forefront of European thinking with international courses in urban management and urban design.
(Texten publicerades 1998 i skriften Ny kunskap:)
In northern Europe and Scandinavia, the use and enjoyment of the street can be extended throughout the day and evening by attractive lighting design. Competition winning design for Buchanan Street Glasgow by Gillespies and MBM of Barcelona (source; Gillespies).