Urban design and planning: challenges and opportunities

摘要

With a small group of like-minded developers and architects, the author recently visited Amsterdam's eastern harbour. The visit included the new suburb of Ijburg, where a plot-based development was underway. The internal street blocks were relatively standard-volume house-builder units, but, in the ribbon of terraced housing around the edge, a single contractor appeared to be building a different design on each plot. This provoked discussion within the group. A plot-based development on Borneo Island had been visited earlier in the trip, but Ijburg was different. How could this scale, variety and complexity be managed economically? Where were the necessary economies of scale? What elements were similar and which were different? One possibility considered was that there was a limited number of concrete frames and each designer selected a particular framework configuration - but this was only conjecture.rnThe ensuing discussion epitomised a key challenge for urban design practitioners and students and place-makers generally. Rather than just looking at aspects such as architectural design and execution, the design of the public realm and the quality of spaces between buildings, the processes by which such places are delivered also need to be studied.