Urban design

Important writers on urban design theory include Christopher Alexander, Peter Calthorpe, Gordon Cullen, Andrés Duany, Jane Jacobs, Jan Gehl, Allan B. Jacobs, Kevin Lynch, Aldo Rossi, Colin Rowe, Robert Venturi, William H. Whyte, Camillo Sitte, Bill Hillier (space syntax), and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk.

Ancient examples of carefully planned and designed cities exist in Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas, and are particularly well known within Classical Chinese, Roman, and Greek cultures.

[9] In England, many of the towns listed in the 9th-century Burghal Hidage were designed on a grid, examples including Southampton, Wareham, Dorset and Wallingford, Oxfordshire, having been rapidly created to provide a defensive network against Danish invaders.

[12] Throughout history, the design of streets and deliberate configuration of public spaces with buildings have reflected contemporaneous social norms or philosophical and religious beliefs.

The increase in urban populations brought with it problems of epidemic disease, the response to which was a focus on public health, the rise in the UK of municipal engineering and the inclusion in British legislation of provisions such as minimum widths of street in relation to heights of buildings in order to ensure adequate light and ventilation.

[citation needed] Much of Frederick Law Olmsted's work was concerned with urban design, and the newly formed profession of landscape architecture also began to play a significant role in the late 19th century.

Inspired by the Utopian novel Looking Backward and Henry George's work Progress and Poverty, Howard published his book Garden Cities of To-morrow in 1898.

He planned on a concentric pattern with open spaces, public parks, and six radial boulevards, 120 ft (37 m) wide, extending from the center.

With input from utopian visionaries, civil engineers, and local councilors, new approaches to city design were developed for consideration by decision-makers such as elected officials.

The program also utilized the writings of famous urban planning thinkers: Gordon Cullen, Jane Jacobs, Kevin Lynch, and Christopher Alexander.

He examined the traditional artistic approach to city design of theorists including Camillo Sitte, Barry Parker, and Raymond Unwin.

Bill Hillier and Julienne Hanson introduced Space Syntax to predict how movement patterns in cities would contribute to urban vitality, anti-social behaviour, and economic success.

It aims to reduce environmental impacts by altering the built environment to create smart cities that support sustainable transport.

Throughout the young existence of the Urban Design discipline, many paradigm shifts have occurred that have affected the trajectory of the field regarding theory and practice.

New urbanism and the developments that it has created are sources of debates within the discipline, primarily with the landscape urbanist approach but also due to its reproduction of idyllic architectural tropes that do not respond to the context.

Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, Peter Calthorpe, and Jeff Speck are all strongly associated with New Urbanism and its evolution over the years.

Landscape Urbanism is a theory that first surfaced in the 1990s, arguing that the city is constructed of interconnected and ecologically rich horizontal field conditions, rather than the arrangement of objects and buildings.

Instead of the systems being solely about efficiency in both cost and production, infrastructural urbanism strives to utilize these investments to be more equitable for social and environmental issues as well.

Linda Samuels is a designer investigating how to accomplish this change in infrastructure in what she calls "next-generation infrastructure" which is "multifunctional; public; visible; socially productive; locally specific, flexible, and adaptable; sensitive to the eco-economy; composed of design prototypes or demonstration projects; symbiotic; technologically smart; and developed collaboratively across disciplines and agencies".

Feminist Urbanism is the study and critique of how the built environment affects genders differently because of patriarchal social and political structures in society.

The pedagogically innovative combination of interdisciplinary studios, lecture courses, seminars, and independent study creates an intimate and engaging educational atmosphere in which students thrive and learn.

Cities today must be designed to minimize resource consumption, waste generation, and pollution while also withstanding the unprecedented impacts of climate change.

However, this is not the case, many women have made proactive contributions to the field, including the work of Mary Kingsbury Simkhovitch, Florence Kelley, and Lillian Wald, to name a few of whom were prominent leaders in the City Social movement.

This includes ensuring reasonable access to basic services, transportation, and fighting against gentrification and the commodification of space for economic gain.

At that time, disabled people began to form movements demanding recognition of their potential contribution if social obstacles were removed.

'Access Groups' were established composed of people with disabilities who audited their local areas, checked planning applications, and made representations for improvements.

The issue of walkability has gained prominence in recent years, not only with the concerns of the aforementioned climate change, but also the health outcomes of residents.

With proximity to internal combustion engines, residents tend to suffer from dangerous levels of air pollution which lead to cardiovascular complications ranging from the acute, in hypertension and alterations in heart rate, and the chronic, the outright development of atherosclerosis.

This issue has been used to fuel movements for alternative forms of long to mid range transportation such as trains and bicycles, with walking as the primary means of short-range travel.

Physical activity levels from walking are closely related to the abundance of open public spaces, commercial shops, greenery, among others.