Urban Designers are essential to a resilient society — so where are they?

By studying the history of urban design education, from the founding of the Delft Academy in 1843 to the present day, I hope to uncover explanations for the erosion of urban design as a discipline, the shifts it has undergone, and its changing position within the wider design field. I also hope to find inspiration. This history runs parallel to social and political upheavals that have also shaped our building culture.

I try to imagine how it all unfolded. The conversations in 1897 between artist Jan Toorop and Marinus Grandpré Molière, then an aspiring architecture student, about the student magazine In den Nevel (In the Mist). The issue featured a beautiful fresco by Toorop on its cover. To me, the somewhat intoxicating drawing evokes, on the one hand, the injustices shrouded in mist within Dutch factories and industry, which were the subject of parliamentary inquiries in 1890 and 1894. On the other hand, it suggests a mist lifting, revealing the potential for something beautiful to emerge.

Students at Delft Polytechnic united under the name De Roode Delft (Red Delft). Through various publications and protests, they emphasised the importance of clean, safe, healthy and accessible cities. They regularly called on Delft professors and the government to give the discipline of urban development greater attention and a place within Delft’s architectural education. The urban design discipline originated in a cry for help from society, one that was heard by a new generation.

The position of the urban designer

Today, society’s cry for help is louder than ever. Society is becoming increasingly individualised and polarised. At the same time, the major challenges of climate, ecology and economic transition are largely concentrated in urban areas. Yet the urban design discipline is struggling to deepen its approach and continue innovating in the integration of these themes into inclusive design principles that help bind the city together.

As urban designers, we design across scales, working towards an engaged and resilient society. If the social purpose of our profession cannot be embedded in a period of major transitions, market interests will take the lead. The economic positioning of places and people will become the driving force, potentially reinforcing segregation.

This is why our time needs urban designers. Yet our position is increasingly being undermined. Worse still, we sometimes undermine ourselves. We fail to make our voices heard in society, accept the role of plan assessor as a matter of course, and see urban design education broadening towards spatial planning and strategy — even though these are distinct disciplines. As a result, our profession is becoming increasingly diffuse and broadly defined, preventing the essential nature of urban design as a discipline that shapes how society is organised from being fully realised.

“Urban design education is broadening towards spatial planning and strategy, even though these are distinct disciplines.”

By using urban design decisively as a qualitative instrument for guiding development, we can create urban areas that are financially accessible to everyone. Urban design is a programmatic and democratic instrument that fosters social cohesion and quality within the urban context. It creates places where people can support and inspire one another, and where looking out for each other becomes part of everyday life.

Landscape architects are claiming the urban public realm

I increasingly see the Netherlands being shaped through tenders for individual neighbourhoods and districts. These commissions call for teams combining architects and landscape architects, while urban design expertise is often not even a requirement. The result is an approach to urban development driven primarily by building configurations, aesthetics and efficiency.

The design of urban outdoor space is increasingly being claimed by landscape architects. At times, this translates into overdesign and radical greening treated as an end in itself.

These small-scale, isolated plans may be spectacular in their own right, but they are not always sufficiently anchored in a broader social context or in sustainable urban systems. Urban designers are involved in these projects, but increasingly on the commissioning side, as part of teams comprising lawyers, spatial planners, urban economists and policy advisers.

In this role, we create the best possible conditions within urban frameworks that are too broad and generic. The individual plans can then be integrated into these frameworks with the necessary supervision. In doing so, we have shifted increasingly towards strategic thinking about urban development and spatial planning.

The domain of the urban designer

I believe that the essence of living and living together unfolds in the spaces between the buildings of a city. This is, above all, the domain of the urban designer. Cities, towns, villages and hamlets are environments and communities created by people. They are where our shared culture is most visibly expressed, and where the relationships between people, their surroundings and nature become most tangible.

It is wonderful to realise that this urban fabric has evolved through successive layers of time, and that certain design principles have endured precisely because they have proved the most resilient. The city must be understood through the connective and open fabric of its spaces — through street life.

“I believe that the essence of living and living together unfolds in the spaces between the buildings of a city. This is, above all, the domain of the urban designer.”

In my view, urban designers must take a stronger stand for the public, semi-public and collective use of both indoor and outdoor spaces. We need to champion the design of flexible, multifunctional outdoor spaces that people can appropriate and make their own. We must also pay more careful attention to the transitions between indoor and outdoor spaces, as well as to the social programming of buildings and public spaces.

In an ideal situation, urban designers develop the narrative for a neighbourhood, a part of a city or an urban structure. They then establish the inclusive design principles through which this narrative can connect with the wider urban landscape.

These principles help safeguard the socioeconomic ecosystem that encourages and creates space for encounters, community associations, a collective sense of security and belonging, urban experimentation, healthy physical activity, entrepreneurship and neighbourhood engagement.

Good urban design is not an exercise in simply filling in what already exists. It is a foundation for the future of society and for how we live together.