ISSUE 1 • FALL 2023
Unlocking the Complexity of Urban Design:
Decoding the Hidden Language of Human-Centric Urban Environments
Some of the terms used in Urban Design Made by Humans: A Handbook of Design Ideas by LTU professors Anirban Adhya and Philip D. Plowright sound pretty simple. They are not. They actually comprise a very comprehensive and specific vocabulary of urban design and, as such, require precise definitions of many words we might otherwise refer to rather casually.
Take the term “block,” for example, as in “We grew up a couple of blocks from each other.” We get the idea, but what really is a “block?” Consider this: “A block is the smallest unit that expresses the fundamental human experiential qualities of the urban environment. It is within the block that we find the interaction between multiple urban concepts such as boundary, edge, center, perimeter, frontage, use, privacy, rhythm, motion, and character in a legible and coherent way.”
It is a “block” that has come to life.
Or, how about rhythm, since we mentioned it in the previous sentence? “Formal rhythms support event rhythms, which are human activities that occur over and over again. Event rhythms range in type, extent, focus, and frequency. Some events can have a daily rhythm tied to basic human needs, such as everyday patterns of eating, social gathering, or traffic volume changes due to standardized working hours. Others can be sporadic, such as a weekly farmers’ market that provides access to fresh food and reinforces the identity of a district.”
Notice how both definitions emphasize the human element. And there are 54 additional “definitions” throughout the book.
Plowright, whose previous book, Making Architecture Through Being Human: A Handbook of Design Ideas , is the first in a projected series of three books, has a “particular interest in defining foundational knowledge for use in pedagogical environments.”
Plowright is a professor of Architecture (Design, Theory, and History), and Adhya is an associate professor of Architecture (Urban Design).
“My PhD is actually in cognitive linguistics,” said Plowright. “One of the reasons Anirban and I wrote the book was because we were astounded at how little knowledge was documented in the design fields. Things that are very basic, nobody had written them down, which also means there was no agreement on them. We spend an awful lot of time assuming students know things they don’t. You learn them through passive interaction, but you’ve not learned them because you’ve been taught these things.”
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Skyline Plaza.
Adhya brought his extensive knowledge of urban design to the project. His most recent book, Shrinking Cities and First Suburbs: The Case of Detroit and Warren, Michigan , looks at the “evolving dynamics of the Detroit Metropolitan Area.”
“In urban design, there are more different types of relationships, which increases the complexity,” said Adhya. “It goes beyond just those relationships with the objects to the infrastructure, to how it works, and to how people experience their habitat.”
Turino Urban Design.
Or, as Adhya put it, “How people move, how people gather, and how people interact with each other.”
Adhya also points out that, despite the apparent simplicity of the language, the book actually involves rigorous research.
“First of all, I see it as research through dissemination; we put our thoughts out there and they are reviewed and vetted by the publisher and by the students, for example. Second, it is very testable or verifiable. Students can confirm the elements of a block, for example, or find gaps that need to be included. The third, which is more indirect, is that it brings within each entry and the progression from simple to more advanced entry different discourses, or ways people see their priorities and render their complexity in an organized way.”
As Adhya sums it up: “Does it make sense in a humanistic framework?”
By Paul Hall