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Urban design involves developing a vision for a city or more likely a precinct within it on somebody’s behalf. The vision is represented in a conceptual design that provides an image of the type of end product sought. To obtain something like the imagined design, urban and building guidelines are developed and given authority when accepted by some legislative authority. These guidelines may be prescriptive in terms of geometries, performance in terms of the function of built forms or merely suggestive. Urban designers tend to believe that prescriptive guidelines are required to get the desired results. Architects tend to state that guidelines infringe their creative rights. Property developers worry about decreased profits. How far should we go?
Jon Lang is an emeritus professor at the University of New South Wales where he headed the School of Architecture between 1996 and 2000 and taught in the Masters of Urban Development and Design program from 1995 to 2015. He is director for urban design of ERG/Environmental Research Group Inc. in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Born in India where he received his early education, he has a bachelor’s degree in architecture from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg and a doctorate from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. He was an assistant and then an associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania between 1970 and 1990. He directed the joint MArch/MCP program in urban design there during the 1980s before settling in Australia. He has authored books on urban design, on architectural theory and modern architecture in India. In 2010 he was awarded the Reed and Mallik Medal by the Institution of Civil Engineers in London.