Designing Cities with Democracy

The above is a title of an article written by Richard MacCormac published in the AJ in 1990.

"Urban design is an elaboration of the planning process, extending its quantitive definitions - density building height and use - into three-dimensional visual considerations directly affecting our experience."

The article distinguishes three levels of decision-making in urban design:

1. those which are the province of the local planning process

2. those which are taken on in the private sector in large scale development with the constraints established

by the local plan.

3. the response which individual architects make to an urban design framework

The image below was drawn in an attempt to illustrate the levels discussed above diagrammatically and to relate these levels to a city block and its surrounding context.

The article goes on to look at several urban design schemes, including the Spitalfields proposal and the competition entry for the Paternoster site. The article outlines the written planning 'agreements' which were submitted as part of the competition entry.

MacCormac notes that, "Different situations probably need rules appropriate to to them, and in each case urban design should be set up as a kind of constitution. This will consist of a series of agreements, ranging from mandatory requirements (given force by the planning authority or by the developer) to less prescriptive ideas of what should be done, which might be shared by different architects."