Urban design

Urban design is a way of managing the complexity of places, and of creating frameworks for change. Its focus is usually on how places change through time. It is a way of approaching architecture, though not the type of architecture whose job is done once the project has been photographed for the professional journals. It involves planning, but not the sort that considers the process complete when the plan has been approved. It is concerned with highway engineering, but the type that responds to the particular possibilities of the place, rather than being enslaved by regulations and conventional practice.

Specialised urban design skills may not fit into neat professional categories. The range of skills is wider than any single individual is likely to possess, and an appropriate combinations of skills will be required for each project. Making successful places depends on different professional disciplines working together, as well as collaborating with the non-professionals whose opinions and decisions matter. These are skills we must develop.