Urban Design: Practices, Pedagogies, Premises

Urban Design: Practices, Pedagogies, Premises www.shahrsazionline.com Urban Design: Practices, Pedagogies, Premises A series of Panel Discussions between Urban Design Educators, Practitioners, Public Policy Experts, and Academics from Urban and Design fields April 5-6, 2002 Avery Hall, Columbia University and Lighthouse International New York City Sponsored by: Columbia University Master of Architecture and Urban Design Program, Harvard University Graduate School of Design, and Van Alen Institute: Projects in Public Architecture Co-organizers: Andrea Kahn, Columbia University Margaret Crawford, Harvard University The conference and related publications have received funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, The Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts and The Musser Fund 1 Urban Design: Practices, Pedagogies, Premises © 2002 Andrea Kahn Rights revert to the authors upon publication. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the authors. Editor: Andrea Kahn Editorial and design staff: Dorith Geva, Eugenia Vidal, Kimberlae Saul, Marcus Woollen Urban Design Program Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation Columbia University 1172 Amsterdam Avenue New York, New York 10027 Harvard Graduate School of Design Harvard University 48 Quincy Street Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138 Van Alen Institute: Projects in Public Architecture 30 West 22nd Street New York, New York 10010 Cover: Kelly Hutzell, Columbia Urban Design Studio Summer 2001 2 www.shahrsazionline.com Table of Contents Table of Contents Foreword Andrea Kahn # Introduction Urban Design Pedagogy: Testing Premises for Practice Andrea Kahn # Urban Design and Change Raymond Gastil # Conference Proceedings Panel 1: Shaping Civic and Public Realms: What is the Role of Urban Design? # Panel 2: Urban Design Practices: Panel Discussion # Public Discussion # Panel 3: Urban Design Pedagogies: Panel Discussion # Public Discussion # Panel 4: Urban Design Premises: Panel Discussion # Participating Panelists # Appendices Program Documentation Package # Briefing Materials # 3 Urban Design: Practices, Pedagogies, Premises 4 Foreword Foreword The Urban Design: Practices, Pedagogies, Premises conference was modeled on the notion of conversation, which to paraphrase theologian David Tracy, demands a willingness to risk one's own position in the face of another. To elicit the exchange of ideas and evince divergent points of view, four invited panels were augmented by two hour-long moderated discussions with the audience. Although there are now nearly forty North American universities offering courses in Urban Design (seventeen at the graduate level) participation was limited to schools with master degree-granting programs, based on the belief that they represent a highly distilled version of the same challenges that all forms of urban design education face. The directors of these programs are joined by public sector planners, academics from architecture, landscape architecture, urban history, urban policy, regional planning, and law, as well as a group of practitioners selected to represent a broad spectrum of urban design experience (in variously sized private firms, community organizations, city governments, as well as real estate development). The net was cast wide here, but purposefully so, to include groups who describe their urban design activities in strikingly different terms, and who operate using often conflicting definitions of the field. The Panels Each of the four panels had a specific charge. The opening session, "Shaping Civic and Public Realms," took on the perceived and potential roles that urban design can play in American cities today. The panel introduced a number of themes that resonated throughout the event - the most prominent being the relationship of urban design to power and the importance of locating and fostering civic-minded urban design clients. To examine the relationship between professional practice and urban design education, the "Urban Design Practices" panel considered the relevance of academic studio work to the challenges faced by practitioners working today. Venturing into territory mired with assumptions about the relative merits of theory to practice and the hard demands of the “real” world versus the supposed soft speculative terrain of the academy, this panel revealed that entrenched differences of opinion about the role of graduate design education generally (should it be a "professional training" or should it take on broader pedagogical agendas?) are not easily dismissed. The "Urban Design Pedagogies" panel considered the philosophical claim (made by all the participating programs) that they bridged different disciplines concerned with the physical form of the city. Driving the discussion was a simple question: In programs of study lasting only one to two years, does this bridging lead to “abridging” - to a superficial and truncated understanding of urban design's myriad dimensions and concerns? The legacy of urban design's origins was a recurrent theme in the panelists' effort to situate the place, purpose, and direction of urban design education today. The importance of fostering research, capturing resources, and expanding the role of urban design in policy-making reinforced a general call for greater focus on those aspects of urban design practice not immediately associated with physical form-making. The conference's concluding session, a roundtable of Urban Design Program Directors, fostered a dialogue between urban design educators themselves. Unlike their colleagues in urban planning or architecture departments, urban design faculty in North American schools do not have the benefit of annual academic conferences dedicated to their field. Rather than focusing on strictly pedagogical questions, however, the final discussion centered almost entirely on urban design as a civic and public endeavor, and the social responsibilities of urban designers. 5 Urban Design: Practices, Pedagogies, Premises The Briefing Materials Three documents were produced to expressly focus the proceedings. A few weeks prior to the event, The Van Alen Institute published a special report, entitled "Urban Design Now," with a lengthy public platform section devoted to the questions, What is Urban Design? Who Practices Urban Design? and What Does Urban Design Contribute to the City? It also included articles on urban design programs in Berlin and Bangkok, and an editorial putting the conference in broad historical perspective. This pamphlet had wide public circulation, and was made available to audience members both days. More central to the proceedings were two Briefing Books circulated in advance to the participants (included here as Appendices). The first provided general background material for all the invited panelists: specially commissioned historical essays on post World War II urban design in Europe and the United States (by David Smiley and Eric Mumford), position papers by the eight program directors, and responses to an urban design practice questionnaire. The second booklet -- documentation on the history, philosophy, curricula and studio work of the eight participating Master-degree granting urban design programs -- had a more directed purpose. Comments on the sample studio work by urban design practitioners initiates discussion in the "Urban Design Practices" panel, and a review of the textual curricular materials is the springboard for the "Urban Design Pedagogies" panel. The Transcripts What follows is a complete transcription of the two day proceedings, “lightly” edited to retain the tone of the live conversations. The decision to forgo formal paper presentations makes reading this record a bit like visiting a new city without a fixed itinerary. One's sense of orientation increases in direct proportion to time spent in the place. Patterns become evident, slowly, as one becomes familiar with the territory. Not surprisingly, given the breadth of urban design's concerns, these conversations touch on many topics - urban history, aesthetics, urban policy, suburban expansion, decaying urban cores, changing patterns of urban life, demographics, sustainability, politics, economics, density, infrastructure, landscape, and more. Nevertheless, recurrent themes do surface. Many are echoed in written reactions solicited from the audience directly following the event, which address both specific points made by individual panelists as well as the overall thrust of the conversations. (Interspersed throughout the proceedings, the responses are marked with an asterisk and located as parallel text on the bottom of the page). In addition to this transcription of the panel discussions, a second publication based on the conference is currently underway. To be published next year, the book will contain expanded versions of selected position papers from the original briefing materials, as well as newly commissioned articles on twentieth century urban design and contemporary professional practice. Acknowledgements Special thanks are due to Dorith Geva, for her editorial work on the conference text; Eugenia Vidal and Kimberlae Saul, for graphic layout; and all the panelists and respondents who generously contributed to the editorial process. This publication is funded by the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts. The conference received seed funding from

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