Designing cities : critical readings in urban design

In an age when urban design is relentlessly promoted as a tool of urban renaissance and economic competition, and when urban design thinking has been reduced to half a dozen principles repeated in government and professional advice, this collection of readings comes as a welcome reminder of the necessity for more critical reflection on the uses and abuses of urban design. Designing Cities provides a welcome corrective to the drift towards narrow orthodoxies, over-simplified techniques and skills that are all divorced from social, economic and political values. It reminds academics of their obligations to civil society rather than to private interests, and of the dangers of professional practices and narrow disciplinary perspectives that do not question the purposes to which urban design is being put. Most of all it reminds us of the importance of understanding and questioning the role of urban design in the production of space within a capitalist society. This collection of 28 essays, extracted from academic journals and books, proceeds from the position that urban design “is a discipline that is theoretically inconsequential in and of itself”, its “power derive[d] from the fact that, irrefutably, it is a deeply embedded social practice that societies have valued from time immemorial” (p. 10). Therefore, “any substantial theory must be about urban design rather than of it” (p. 11). So its editor rejects as potential sources almost all the texts that urban designers might expect to find represented in a critical reader on the subject on the basis that, while they provide profound insights into the qualities of cities that urban design might wish to replicate, “they do not constitute theory in any meaningful sense” (p. 12). So while the editor helpfully provides a list of 30 classic texts that constitute ‘mainstream’ urban design (from Alexander through Jacobs and Lynch to Sitte and Webber), only Norberg Schulz finds a place in his reader. The editor’s selection process is meticulously explained. Both the bibliography to his introduction, and particularly the suggested additional readings for each section of the book, provide definitive lists of other substantive, theoretically informed, contributions to the field. These reveal the 300 alternative sources that were considered for inclusion, and their cross-referencing greatly increases the value of the reader as both an introduction to urban design theory and a comprehensive guide to the best work in the field. The focus is limited to urban design in Western societies, and adopts a spatial political economy perspective reflecting the editor’s “longstanding commitment to historical materialism” (p. 13). It prioritizes ‘core knowledge’ about the practice and products of urban design over ‘core skills’ which the editor considers have no meaning divorced from the socio-geographical environment in which they are practised.