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My interest in the urban soundscape dates from 1966 to 1967 when I wrote my Master of City Planning thesis at MIT on ‘The Sonic Environment of Cities’. I wanted to go beyond the visual image of the...

I began research on the morphology of the urban edge in the late 1980s to help counter urban design’s almost exclusive focus at that time on the urban centre, when the form of the vast metropolitan...

Urban designers have the unique background to deal with the experiential qualities of cities. Worldwide unprecedented urban growth strains the quality of life on many levels ‒ walkability of street...

Urban design as taught and practised today derives largely from the post-war era of urban renewal. As such, the emphasis has been on making aesthetic arrangements of buildings and functional patter...

This issue of the Journal of Urban Design focuses on research related to social issues in urban design.2 Concern with social issues in urban design and planning arose in the 1960s in response to mo...

With federal policy beginning to shift from auto-centric planning, provision for pedestrian and bicycle access is now mandated in federally supported projects. However, the field of transportation planning has little in the way of theory and methods to guide design and planning for walkable cities. Walkability is increasingly valued for a variety of reasons. Not only does pedestrian transportation reduce congestion and have low environmental impact, it has social and recreational value. Recent research suggests that walking also promotes mental and physical health. The quality of the pedestrian environment is key to encouraging people to choose walking over driving. Six criteria are presented for design of a successful pedestrian network: (1) connectivity; (2) linkage with other modes; (3) fine grained land use patterns; (4) safety; (5) quality of path; and (6) path context. To achieve walkable cities in the United States it will be necessary to assess current walkability conditions, revise standards and regulations, research walking behavior in varied settings, promote public education and participation in pedestrian planning, and encourage collaboration and interdisciplinary education between transportation engineers and the design professions.

The design of public space in US cities has experienced a major transformation over the past five decades. As traditional urban centres have declined as foci for civic and economic activity, new centres—usually shopping malls—have emerged on the urban fringe. As old malls age and decline in market appeal, new forms are appearing that mimic many aspects of the abandoned town centre, although in private rather than public contexts. Emerging forms of suburban public space are examined by means of case studies of several US shopping centres including reinvented old malls (‘mall-overs’), new main street malls (townscape malls), malled main streets and hybrid forms that combine aspects of main street and mall. The analysis focuses on spatial form, symbolism and imagery, pedestrian friendliness, connections with the larger context, public uses and limitations on use. Urban designers, landscape architects and planners can learn much from malls in making old main streets work. They can also learn from successful m...

With the instigation of new technologies, of many of the sensory qualities in the urban environment that directly affect quality of life have become measurable. It is argued that a more sophisticated approach to measuring these 'liveable' qualities of the environment will in turn lead to more balanced and nuanced decision-making, but that first a considerable investment and political will is required. Concern with the quality of the large-scale built environment emerged in the 1950s and 1960s as American cities were being rebuilt with the stimulus of large-scale federal urban renewal and highway construction programmes. The field of urban design as a distinct specialty developed in response to these activities. Many cities prepared plans that attempted to go beyond traditional planning foci, such as land use and trans portation, to deal with the character and quality of the city as a whole: streets, public spaces, the urban landscape, historic districts, waterfronts, and possibilities for enhancing or preserving the special qualities of the city. Some cities have a long tradition of dealing with quality in the built environment, such as Boston and San Francisco, while others have been more market-driven, such as Atlanta, Phoenix, Los Angeles, and Houston (which has never even allowed zoning), facilitating development in certain areas while ignoring the state of much of the city San Francisco was one of the pioneers of the citywide approach to assessing and managing urban environmental quality. Its 1970 urban design plan is notable for its systematic analysis of several environmental qualities across the city: views, maintenance, visual interest of street facades, block varia tion, presence of nature, distance to open space, microclimate, compatibility of traffic, and clarity of local image. The process was tedious, requiring a team of surveyors to study and evaluate each of the 1500 blocks of the city firsthand, either on foot for complex areas, or by automobile in less complex ones. The relative quality of different parts of the city was assessed for each of the dimensions, block by block, on a 5-point scale. Deficient areas became the focus for improvements (figure 1). This was an attempt to deal with quality in an equitable manner for the city as a whole regardless of a property's tax value or social status. Unfortunately, this attitude is quite rare in American planning, for precedence is most often given to districts with the most power while the needs of the less fortunate neighbourhoods are ignored.

Over the past century pedestrian access has declined steadily in most cities. With some exceptions, such as underground metro systems, each advance in transportation technology—from horse-drawn str...

While the first part of this two‐part essay portrayed the bleakness of the suburban public realm in the USA, the debate over how physical planning can contribute to making it more vibrant is the subject of this second part. Eurourbanism, or the practice of looking to European cities for a design paradigm, has been criticized on the grounds that the USA has its own distinct public realm which is either non‐spatial in character or is located in ‘non‐traditional’ public spaces, such as shopping malls, in contrast with the more ‘traditional’ European sites such as streets and squares. But there are questions about whether the distinctive ‘American public realm’ is as democratic, or can offer the diversity of experience of the ‘traditional’ public realm. A more recent addition to the debate has been ‘new urbanism’ or ‘neotraditionalism’, whose proponents have put forth a set of planning guidelines for suburbia by drawing on design principles embodied in the traditional American small town. The essay c...

This two‐part essay analyses the changing nature of the public realm in the evolving edge of the American metropolis and the implications for urban design and planning. Many forces are changing the form and use of public space in cities—concerns for safety and liveability, increasing dependence on telecommunications, decline in public revenues, the privatization of many amenities, and an increasingly pluralist society. The essay specifically focuses on the historical influence of planning and design practices on suburban form: density levels, land use and zoning patterns, suburban layouts and streetscapes. Field surveys and morphological analyses of urban edge patterns from the San Francisco Bay area document the current state of the suburban public realm. The second part of the essay will examine how physical planning can contribute to restoring a more vibrant public realm amidst raging debates over its changing nature and relevance.

The current surge of interest in reassessing the physical form of the American suburb is heightening awareness of the physical and social impacts of local street design. Yet one hundred and fifty years of ideology are so thoroughly embedded in the making of suburban streets that challenges to traditional street layouts and design usually meet with outright rejection. How did the design process and built environment become so dependent on certain regulations and criteria? The historical evolution of suburban residential street standards is traced here through a review of professional and technical publications, as well as historical precedents. Urban designers, planners, and engineers should work together to develop street designs that are more responsive to the diverse users of streets and to varied social and geographic settings.

This paper examines the form of the evolving metropolitan fringe by means of comparative case studies of fringe development in the San Francisco Bay area at three scales —the community, the neighborhood, and the street and house lot. The study identifies underlying organizing principles and spatial typologies and analyzes patterns of growth, land use, and street layouts for several periods of suburban development beginning early in the twentieth century and continuing into the 1990s. As the scale of development has grown, there has been a parallel growth of self-contained, single-use developments and an erosion of the public street framework. This shift has serious implications for the character, convenience, and adaptability of new urban environments.

Indications for colonoscopy in the intensive care unit include acute lower intestinal bleeding, sigmoid volvulus, pseudo-obstruction of the colon, and suspicion of pseudomembranous colitis. Although the incidence of cardiorespiratory complications may be higher in these critically ill patients, the procedure can be done safely with proper attention to detail. Because of colonic dilatation, endoscopy can often be done without bowel preparation.

One of the few alternatives to the suburban sprawl approach to development in recent years has been the “neotraditional” community, characterized by somewhat higher densities, a greater mix of uses, provision of public transit, accommodation of the pedestrian and the bicyclist, and an interconnected pattern of streets. How well has the neotraditional model performed? Two recent prototype neotraditional communities—Kentlands and Laguna West—are analyzed and compared with a traditional turn-of-the-century streetcar suburb—Elmwood—and with conventional late-twentieth-century suburbs, in terms of patterns of built form, land use, public open space, street design and circulation, and pedestrian access. Also considered are issues of transit access; relation to existing metropolitan development; livability for children, teens, and elderly; and market success.

What impact has Kevin Lynch's imageability concept had on planning and urban design, and most important, on the form of cities? Urban designers, planners, and architects play a crucial role in managing and creating the city image. Techniques are available to the designer for manipulating place images — from changes in physical form or symbolic communications to work on the mental conception. Imageability research has proved to be a rewarding area for investigation and has made substantial contributions to techniques for environmental analysis and citizen involvement in the planning process Ways of connecting the theory and techniques to actual design are now needed. One problem is how to create meaningful environments in a pluralistic, highly mobile society. Another promising area of application is in predicting the image impact of proposed developments

Most people are familiar with their own neighborhood and with the customary paths they travel, but the rest of the city is strange and sometimes even dangerous turf. To be sure, with limited time and energy, we can never profit from more than a very small chunk of the world in which we live. Nonetheless, we know far less about that world than we could, and we explore and enjoy it less than we might.