Article from PIA Magasine mentioning Mecene
“My old mate Steve came to Australia in the 1960s having walked out of Hungary in 1956 ahead of the communists. He was carrying all his possessions in a Gladstone bag and walked across fields and through forests under the cover of darkness. His adventure ended in England where he learned English and studied town planning before sailing to Australia and settling in Adelaide. He was soon on a drawing board designing a new mining town in the South Australian desert, later to be named Leigh Creek.
When making small talk at a party and discussing what people do for a living, Steve is one of the few people I know who can answer that slightly flippant question “Town planner, eh? Planned any good towns lately? Ha Ha.” with an honest “Yes, actually“.
Most towns have been planned (apart from those that weren’t planned . . . . and Coober Pedy springs to mind in that regard.) But by whom?
Two millennia ago it was Roman generals who planned their new towns across the Old World from Egypt to England. These were effectively military encampments laid out on a rigid grid pattern with a little compromise for topography or other local factors. Closer to home, a colonial surveyor laid out Melbourne’s grid and got the town’s outer eastern boundary named after him for his efforts. An American architect drew up the first plans for Canberra, our largest experiment in urban design. Soldiers, surveyors, and architects as town designers!
We frequently turn to the medieval villages of Europe as successful community environments; places with an urban structure around open spaces such as a piazza or a church forecourt, with meandering streets and alleys creating places of enclosure and intrigue, of vistas opening up and of closing off, of small spaces where people engage, of active interfaces between the public realm and the private domain. Who was the genius that designed those engaging, intimate, and successful places? Not a town planner in sight!
Melbourne has an example comparable to those European towns n its network of lanes and arcades of the CBD, which is the happy by-product of the pattern of progressive subdivision and which is one of our city’s greatest drawcards. These arcades and lanes are popular largely because of the success of the interface between the public space and the shop, the cafe, the graffiti wall, the design detailing . . . in other words – the private realm. This charm and intimacy are happenstance, not deliberate design.
Engineers, town planners, architects, urban designers . . . . . just about anyone can knock out a scheme for a few streets, some shops, houses, and a factory or two. We all played Sim City on our computers and it didn’t matter when we made a mess of it and it ‘crashed’. We just started again.
In a recent “Montgolfier” column (August 2013) I discussed the evolving role of the urban designer, arguably the key professional among the kindred disciplines that contribute to the making of our urban environments.
One way of describing urban design is that it is a merging of the disciplines of architecture, planning, and landscape architecture. In a Venn diagram of three overlapping circles, one for each profession, urban design is that triangle where the three circles come together.
Consider two definitions of Urban Design.
DPCD’s Urban Design Charter for Victoria defines urban design as “The practice of shaping the physical features and making high-quality connections between places and buildings for the enjoyable and safe activity of people”.
This useful definition implies two important characteristics of Urban Design. One is that successful spaces are created by the placement, scale, design and style of buildings. That is, the private sector is the primary creator of our urban environment. The second characteristic is the interface of the private buildings with the civic elements of paving, seating, lighting, landscape, and other ‘furniture’ in the outdoor ‘room’ defined by building facades.
In Britain, the Urban Design Alliance (whose members represent many private and government entities involved in urban development) defines urban design as “The collaborative process of shaping the setting for life in cities, towns, and villages”. Note that word ‘collaborative’.
At a recent seminar on the topic of urban design courses at the three tertiary institutions that offer courses in urban design (Melbourne, RMIT, and Deakin universities), Kim Dovey, professor of Architecture and Urban Design at Melbourne University, suggested that urban design is not an accredited profession like Architecture or Planning but an amalgam of many skills. It is multi-scalar and multi-disciplinary, embracing a range from broad principles of metropolitan strategy to the fine-grain design of public/private interfaces. He suggests that while plans can be changed and buildings replaced in relatively short cycles, urban design decisions about spatial structure and density have longer-term consequences.
This multi-scalar aspect of urban design and the longevity of its broad principles are arguably its unique features compared with kindred professions.
At the same seminar, one attendee challenged the three circles of the Venn diagram and suggested that urban design is better envisaged as being at the center of a multi-petalled daisy or as the conductor of an orchestra whose members are the many other professions playing their specialized instruments.
This view acknowledges that the urban designer comes into the design process at the start and stays to the detailed finish. At the start, set rules and guidelines about dimensions, wall heights, setbacks, entry points, movement patterns, gathering spaces, solar access, weather protection, shade, and wind. In other words, setting the scene with rules and guidelines which the private sector applies to create the place.
Then, at the end of the process, when the buildings are in place, the urban designer works on the details of the public realm, the ‘floor’, and here, perhaps, the urban designer is more of a landscape architect.
Melbourne urban design consultant Tatjana Medvedev uses the current European words ‘Urbanism’ and ‘Urbanist’. She contends that urbanism is in fact a legitimate scientific field; one that deals with planning and designing urban settlements and their surrounds for existential, long-term human use and human needs in accordance with global environmental potentials. She sees the professional applying this science as an Urbanist, Urban Researcher, or Urban Strategist.
Moreover, she suggests that the role of Urbanist (or Urban Strategist) is like an umbrella, overarching all other professions that participate in designing places, and is hence at the forefront of all urban planning activities.
Tatjana ventures to place the urbanist above the urban designer, in a position to oversee and coordinate the other professions and disciplines in the achievement of the desired built form outcome.
With this person in place, Tatjana argues, the potential exists for a more efficient and collaborative way to the completion of an urban design project. This is a common practice In Europe as it fosters creative and coordinated thinking, has the greater good in mind and can avoid environmental and other issues being afterthoughts.
Within this context, Tatjana is passionate about raising the profile of the Urbanist within the spectrum of professionals who create urban environments. She sees the first step as the establishment of a loose association of people who describe themselves as Urbanists. To that end, Tatjana welcomes contributions to her blog, which is at www.mecene.com.au and follow the blog http://www.mecene.com.au/blog/
In a world where the boundaries of planning, urban design, and architecture are so blurred, perhaps there is a need to recognize that person who is a generalist, who is the conductor of the orchestra. Is this person the Urbanist?” Written by Jim Holdsworth
PIA Planning Institute of Australia link
Article printed in the PIA magazine titled “Montgolfier”, PLANNING NEWS, DECEMBER 2013