New Practice in Urban Design

Half a century of modernist planning activity has transformed the built environment, but has failed to capture the publics sympathies. The disillusionment with these new town proposals has been particularly evident in the last two decades. Projects once hailed as manifestations of a brave new global vision have shown themselves to be inadequate as long-term settlements. Most conspicuous in the new developments has been the absence of a sense of place. By zoning towns into distinct and unrelated sectors, modernist planning divided and polarized community life. The growing public disillusionment with post-war town proposals has helped to bring about alternative views in the architectural and planning professions, views which embrace traditional towns as models for new developments. These older models have been carefully studied by a new generation of professionals who introduce into urban design the idea of neighbourhoods with a diversity of communal, commercial and residential functions.
The use of traditional urban models has resuscitated age-old questions about continuity and change in the relationship between architecture and the city, the setting of new towns and villages in the natural landscape, and the dialogue between built form and communal open spaces. Despite the growing public support that traditional urban town have enjoyed, some critics have claimed that these models cannot work today, as they fail to address contemporary social and technological issues. The Symposium debate, presided by Brian Hanson, brings together some of the world's leading theorists and practioners. Four major new projects are used for the focus of the discussion, namely the new town of Windsor at Vero beach, Florida, by Anders Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk; the masterplan for Potsdamer and Leipziger Platz in Berlin by Christoph Sattler; the Belvedere Village in Ascot by Demetri Porphyrios; and the new town of Poundbury in Dorchester by Leon Krier and the Duchy of Cornwall.