The Urban Design Process

This useful guide sets out clearly a bespoke urban design process for practice, developed by the authors. The process works through urban analysis; policy and people; strategic framework; concepts and options; design layering and technical detail; to delivery of place. It considers design across multiple scales within the built environment and describes the complexity of project management in delivering large-scale projects, such as master-planning and major public-realm and civic schemes. It achieves this through the use of a 'live' case study to graphically illustrate the process in action supported with international examples.


It provides the reader with a clear overview of the role which urban design and urban designers play in shaping and creating places today and how designers conceive and deliver contextually responsive, high-quality design solutions.


Beginning with a brief history of contemporary urban design, the book tracks urban design's roots in architecture and planning and identifies how and why it has emerged as a separate discipline. It then sets out the principles and key criteria that underpin urban design and explains how urban designers interpret policy, baseline data, and graphical analysis to present an understanding of place and space.

The book concludes by highlighting a number of growing urban challenges facing cities today, discussing how urban design can play a leading role in tackling issues connected with climate change, globalisation, and technological advancements, and positively respond to the current and future needs of society.