Urban Design Series

March, 2020

Modern societies, you and I, are fast approaching the end of one period and the beginning of another. An argument could certainly be made to say we have already crossed the threshold between then and what will be. The threshold is not so exact however, as the transition period will be a time for determining new directions and it could be tumultuous. Our past habits, our ways of doing and our values and attitudes will continue to linger at centre stage for some time only slowly being displaced and moved to the wings. It will happen, it is already happening, but there is no clear path to follow because we have not done this or been there before. We will have to find our way and that will happen with trial and error. The transition will involve every aspect of our societies, but in this series of essays I will be concentrating on what I have some knowledge about, urban settlement patterns and specifically urban design.

Urban design has been around for a long time, indeed from when humanity began to build settlements thousands of years ago. They had reasons for the arrangements preferred and built and those early settlements represent the first patterns organized around urban design principles. Fast forward through periods when patterns were influenced by agriculture, religion, security, military, commerce exchange, walking, building materials, water, climate and basic energy sources to today when high energy fuels and the machine dominate every aspect of our lives. Still, most of those early considerations continue to influence, but their importance has been altered and displaced by machines powered by fuels and generated sources of immense power. While the high energy driven machine is not going to go away any time soon, out of necessity due to climate change and for other reasons (I will get to some of them below.), a transformation of our urban spaces and places will occur over the coming decades. 

After the idea of writing about urban design popped into my head, I had to sit back and ask, ‘why and why now’. Apart from the fact we are exposed to and influenced by urban designed spaces and for that reason alone writing about it seems valuable, as I noted above much change will be occurring and our designs need to be prescient. Following then is an account of expected changes with comments about how urban design will be involved. Future essays will consider in more detail aspects of urban design related back to the expected changes introduced below.

Expected Changes

1. With significant change comes unsettled times of not knowing. By way of helping to get through the changes, weathering the storm in effect, urban design decisions will need to ensure our urban arrangements are efficient, affordable, workable, livable, safe and attractive. Just as in previous eras of urban design decision-making, we will need to ensure clarity of issues and purpose.

2. Values, attitudes and beliefs (VABs) drive our societies’ decision-making across the board. In effect they function as directional influences, but also open doors into a host of related sub-drivers including economic, social, political, technological and environmental concerns. For various reasons concerns arising in those sectors do and increasing will test our resolve in maintaining VABs. More and more we will find ourselves facing dilemmas about societal choices when confronted with buckets of existential and projected problems.

3. Urban populations will continue to rise. For various reasons (see below) urban densities will also climb as our priorities and decisions curtail further boundary expansion. Accommodating more people in acceptable arrangements will not be an easy task and as we attempt to do so infrastructure and services will need to be adjusted at great cost. We need to get it right. Laying a pavement only to dig it up to do work that should have been done previous to paving will not be financially or disruptively acceptable. With increasing densities, inevitably choices about what goes and what stays will be common. Also, with increasing density we can expect more congestion as rising numbers of people move about on our roads and in our neighbourhoods. If boundary expansion is unacceptable, ways and means of finding space to accommodate greater numbers will be a high priority

4. If we cannot expand outward, then we will have to expand upward, right? Is it a given that will be our only choice? I think there is much to be considered here with hi-rise energy efficiency just one of many concerns. Alternatively, can we accommodate enough people in novel arrangements of low-rise? Those and many other issues will need to be debated.

5. Mobility (transportation) reserves a lot of space in North American urban areas. “In North American cities, roads and parking lots account for between 30 and 60% of the total surface.” (Dr. Jean-Paul Rodrigue, The Geography of Transport Systems, chapt. 8, 2020, 5th Edition.) Obviously the percent varies from city to city, but in total represents a very significant portion of an urban area and I might add a significant infrastructure cost. Is this space and money well spent? Can and should we do better? Given all the issues associated with urban transportation and with the issues that will force change in the decades to come, I believe the answer to the latter question is an unqualified “yes”. Given the huge presence of the transportation network, it is inevitable revised urban design principles and practices will play a big role in re-shaping our urban areas in accommodating mobility requirements.

6. Food security at first look would not seem to be an urban design issue. However, as families and communities struggle to ensure a reliable supply of food in a world with population rising and climate shifting, more and more the responsibility for ensuring food security will become a local matter. Certainly this will be a regional concern, but it may filter down to the neighbourhood level and in either situation urban settlement will be affected and urban design considerations will surface. Urban agriculture may be expected to make more of a contribution and new food distribution systems will be part of the new normal. How and where they will be set up undoubtedly will be an urban design concern. 

7. Urban villages within larger towns and cities exist already, but I suggest we will begin to see a significant jump in their numbers as people choose shorter travel distances and less congestion. Our responses to new circumstances is a complicated matter and this prediction goes against a trend for more centralized and larger corporate entities supplying our needs and wants. However, I do not believe this is just about a product at the cheapest possible price. More and more people with people will take hold and our urban design decisions will respond by accommodating the trend choice in organizing village centres in cities.

8. For a variety of reasons a suburban revolution is imminent. If not already, soon we are going to realize suburban configurations are unaffordable and inefficient as they currently exist. Bulldozing to start over will not be the answer. Rather, urban design decisions accommodating infill, smaller housing, shared housing, urban agriculture, energy production and so on in higher density configurations will gradually occur.

9. Climate change and global warming is occurring in response to our use of fossil fuel energy over the past two hundred plus years. A single marker indicates the seriousness of the changes we are now experiencing. Climate change related insurance claims are becoming more frequent and costly for the insurance industry, billions of dollars more costly. Accordingly, in part driven by the insurance industry and of course for other reasons, urban design decisions will be reflecting the urgency for prevention and response to changed circumstances involving floods, wildfires, water vulnerability, the risk of property damage and so on.

10. Will we continue to design and build large bland urban scale? Yes, largely because urban development is well and truly industrialized. However, alongside the trend for bigger, more interest in trade skills employing natural materials will resurge in areas of development with expectations of human scale and creative  detail. Environmental design quality at a human scale as a preferred end result is going to be re-visited with past and current urban design rules and regulations, of necessity, being revised. 

11. One of our design and development mistakes has been the creation of, it seems, an ever expanding network of major highways filled with almost empty metal boxes on wheels and behemoths moving stuff. Manufacturing, fuel suppliers, wholesalers and retailers and a mislead public have lobbied planners and their political bosses for an inefficient, ever expanding and more costly system contributing on a daily basis to accidents, injuries, deaths and the CO2 elephant in the room. Inevitably and of necessity, those networks will be transformed and I can think of no better result than making them into energy producing and transit corridors.

12. Quite simply our urban roads are highly congested and overly dangerous. Streets have become parking lots and traffic, when it moves, crawls. Drivers become frustrated and preventable accidents happen. As originally conceived, the links and nodes networks of yesterday are inadequate for the demands put on them today. The system of mixed modes of mobility needs to be fully assessed and adjustments made now in response to current issues and in anticipation of future requirements. 

13. Our urban configurations have been imposed upon landscapes rendering the landscapes compromised. Our conviction has been we can engineer designs to overcome the inconveniences of the wild. Over the past decades we have learned or should have learned an engineered solution of rigid infrastructure is not necessarily the best approach. Wild fingers, urban forestry, wetland retention is important not only for rainfall management, but also for peace of mind with natural connections.

14. Here we are in 2020 facing numerous serious issues driven by our values, attitudes and beliefs manifest, in part at least, by the urban legacy handed down. Going forward we will need to make changes involving insightful development of opportunities to encourage and realize habit shifts to move away from the degrading practices leading us to where we find ourselves, on a cliff edge over-looking much uncertainty and many unknowns.

Over the coming months I intend to revisit the outlined issues with more detailed discussions. I do not pretend to have all the solutions. My intention is to generate thought and discussion concerning emerging issues and leading to better alternatives in urban design than currently practiced. I will not be engaging in mathematical modelling. My suggestions will be put forward from observational assessment and from reference to previous works by authors about urban design issues and practices. 

There are few universal design elements other than recognizing a building has walls and a roof. Otherwise, design solutions around the world are as varied as landscapes, societal values, attitudes and beliefs, available and preferred building materials, industrial and trade skills, mobility requirements, economic and financial systems and supports and emerging settlement patterns. No single design fits all circumstances as complexity prevails and the variables are too numerous. No two places are the same.

Obviously this will be a work in progress. Accordingly, I invite you to return periodically to read my latest contributions to the world of urban design. In the meantime I implore you to view your community with a critical eye to determine if and where improvements can be achieved.