One of the reasons that I decided to take this urban planning course was to be able to understand the process of decision making that urban planners went through when designing large cities and urban centers. I often walk down the streets of New York City thinking about all of the decisions that need to be made when it comes to the size of roads, where to put parks and public areas, and how to provide adequate public transportation to all of the city’s residents. Through this week’s readings, I was able to find out more about Urban Design and how it is essential to the building of cities that we know today. 

Urban design is a field that focuses on the organization and massing of buildings and spaces between them. The process is broken into four main phases: analysis, synthesis, evaluation, and implementation. There are generally accepted criteria for evaluating urban design, including unity and coherence, minimum conflict between pedestrians and vehicles, protection from the elements, easy orientation, compatibility of land uses, availability of places to rest and meet, and creation of a sense of security and pleasantness. The urban designer must also consider financial, political, psychological, and sociological factors. The chapter discusses neo-traditional design, edge cities, and visions of the future of the city by Le Corbusier, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Paolo Soleri.

At the end of this week’s readings, it is mentioned that the biggest challenge to contemporary urban design is the reconciling of the automobile with urban spaces. This is something that I often think about given the cities that I have traveled to and the amount of time that I spend in New York City. In my opinion, there is a huge difference between the design of older European cities and newer American cities which can be boiled down to the invention of the automobile. Because of America’s relative youth on the global scale, most of its cities were built alongside the advent of cars, leading to a design that not only accommodates vehicles, but almost seems to put them over people. This can be seen in New York’s wide avenues and Los Angeles’ extensive network of highways. Although a car centric design can lead to better transportation for those who do  not reside within the city, for residents, this design makes living in a city unbearable. In contrast, European cities that had structures built centuries before the invention of the automobile are geared towards the communities of people living within them. There are large open areas which allow for citizens to roam, hold markets, or just admire the city. The tight streets that make it hard for large vehicles to enter also make it easy to form bonds with the people living there. Although it may not be feasible to change the entire layout of a city such as NEw York, there are things that can be done to minimize the impact that a car centric design may have on the urban environment. New York’s summer streets program, which closes off vehicular access to certain streets over the summer, is a step that allows for dining to sprawl out onto the streets and allows the community to engage with their environment.