Urban Design as a Discipline & Profession

"Urban Design as a Discipline and as a Profession" by Jon Lang

Jon Lang's article about the discipline and profession of urban design is ultimately progressive arguing that the function and obligation of the urban designer is multi-faceted, holistic, collaborative, and ultimately inalienable from the political world in which it operates. He argues that it is also more than that. Urban designers have an obligation to the future and to openly communicate to all parties the positive and negative aspects of current designs and future proposed designs. The urban designer is a designer of possible physical futures who functions within a social agenda (set by government) on a backdrop of a capitalist society. Lang is correct when he asserts that in the diffused democracy of the United States it is often the market that is left to resolve the conflicts and set many of the goals with which urban planners operate. To the more progressive amongst us this may be disconcerting as it means that even the designer with rationalist empirical knowledge will not often be able to change the infrastructure and land use decisions of a particular city or region. On the other hand, I think it is safe to say that the most successful urban design paradigm in this country is descriptive rather than prescriptive. The best urban designers write codes which build the superstructure but leave the imagination up to others to fill-in. In the United States property rights are sacred and, especially in the preceding few years, we have seen the positive and negative results, depending on which side you are on, of the dance between regulation and personal property rights.

While Lang argues that urban design needs to be a collaborative 'glass box' (if I was his editor I would have chosen the word transparency but that's another issue) he never states whether designers should be up-front with their stated goals. I believe that, as Lang does argue, one could find empirical evidence to support the basic elements of good urbanism designers need to be transparent with their collaborators about what these building blocks are. Emily Talen's argument that diversity, equity, connectivity, and public space are the building blocks of urbanism - and that when these pieces come together in the right way can make good and even great urbanism - I think fits nicely as an extension of Lang's discussion about the professionalization of the discipline. Urban designers should delve deeply into these pieces, and into the interaction of these pieces in order to provide empirical evidence about what does make great urban design. In my experience as a developer - all a developer wants to hear is that certain elements will make their building more attractive to users and the public and they will be on board. If the extra costs can be amortized on the back end by higher usage and returns any developer worth her/his underwriting will incorporate it into a development.


I think the following quote summarizes Lang's definition of the role of an urban designer most succinctly:

"The function, and obligation, of the urban designer is to bring to public attention the physical design consequences of adopting one social design over another, the design possibilities for the future that might otherwise be missed, and particularly the state of the public realm for different groups of people in order to improve it or maintain its good qualities. The concern is with the future, both short term and long term."