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Urban
Design, edited by Alex Krieger & William
S. Saunders
University of Minnesota Press, 2009
Paperback, 320 pages
In 1956 Harvard University held its
first Urban Design Conference, organized by José
Luis Sert and featuring prominent architects, planners,
historians, and critics. The proceedings were published
in Progressive Architecture that year, but a reconsideration
of the conference, the ones that followed, and the field
they spurred took fifty years. Harvard
Design Magazine devoted two issues (numbers 24 and 25)
to the origins, the evolution and the current state of urban
design. This book collects the essays and discussions from
those two issues, following on the heels of previous
readers from Harvard GSD's magazine.
Being a Harvard publication on a
Harvard conference, the content is, not surprisingly, self-referential
and from a number of Harvard GSD professors, among others
outside the school. Nevertheless many of the essays are
highly critical, taking aim at the co-option of the field
of urban design by architects, for example, at the expense
of contributions by planners and landscape architects. Essays
like Michael Sorkin's "The End(s) or Urban Design"
and Richard Marshall's "The Elusiveness of Urban Design"
paint a less-than-flattering portrait of a field that has
a hard time defining itself, much less being understood
by those not practicing it. This skepticism permeates, often
referring back to the first conference and similar attitudes
being raised at the time. One wonders if the most important
act for urban designers is to come to a consensus on the
roles and directions of the field, to give it credence like
the Congress
for New Urbanism, a movement whose presence permeates
the collection like a clumsy step-sibling nobody wants to
take seriously. Emulating New Urbanism, in terms of solidarity
and organization, should be worth considering for academics
and practitioners eager to implement designs more environmentally
sensitive, diverse, creative, and attuned to contemporary
conditions than the popular movement.
For those who own issues 24 and 25
of Harvard Design Magazine, this collection does not offer
anything new. It actually omits many illustrations from
the magazine, most likely to save space and make the volume's
bulk less intimidating. For those without the magazines
this collection is a great resource for negotiating the
realm of urban design. It is part history, criticism, and
speculation, featuring today's
prominent architects, planners, historians, and critics.
Readers interested in seeing urban design projects though
must look elsewhere. But readers looking for a solid theoretical
backbone for understanding the field of urban design can't
do much better than start their journey here.
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