The evolution of American Urban design: a chronological anthology - US Urban Maelstrom - Book Review

Architectural Review, The, June, 2003 by Dean Hawkes

By David Gosling. Chichester: John Wiley. 2002. [pounds sterling]34.95

'Urban design is (or should be) an integral part of the process of city and regional planning. It is primarily and essentially three-dimensional, but must also deal with non-visual aspects of the environment such as noise, water, air pollution and traffic safety, which contribute significantly to the character of an area. Its major characteristic is the arrangement of the physical objects and human activities that make up the environment; this space and the relationship of elements within it is essentially external, as distinct from internal design, and embraces the discipline of landscape architecture. Urban design includes concern for the relationship between new development and existing city form (context), as much as the social, political and economic demands and available resources. It is equally concerned with the relationship of different forms of movement within urban development.'

This is how David Gosling sets out the territory of this book, published posthumously after his premature death last year. After a career in urban practice and teaching in both Britain and the US, he would seem well qualified to undertake a review of this important subject. But the difficulty of the task is laid bare in the heterogeneity and complexity of this definition.

In five chapters, the events of the last decades of the twentieth century are presented through a parade of leading figures and events in the world of urban design in America. In the 195 Os we encounter, among others, Mumford, Gropius, Mies and Wright and Louis Kahn with his plan for Philadelphia. The next decade saw the emergence of academic study and the contributions of authors such as Kevin Lynch and The Image of the City', Christopher Tunnard, Donald Appleyard, Christopher Alexander, with and without Serge Chermayeff, Venturi and Scott Brown, and the influential social commentary of JaneJacobs. This decade also produced significant design projects like the new town of Reston, Virginia, and Charles Moore and colleagues' much-admired Sea Ranch project on the Californian coast. The 1970s begin with 'The Social City', as represented by the writings of Richard Sennett and Oscar Newman, marking the emergence of environmentalism. Towards the end of that decade we see Rowe and Koetter's influential argnments in 'Collage City' sitting alongside pragmatic proposals for rapid transit systems, and the growing influence of CharlesJeneks' propaganda on behalf of post-modernism. In the '80s citizen participation and advocacy planning were juxtaposed with the so-called 'new-urbanism' and the corporate urban imagery of Disney's EPCOT project in Florida, leading at the decade's end to the promotion of pluralism as a desirable condition. The last years of the century saw pluralism assume an ever wider definition, as deconstruction became a powerful force in American schools of architecture and as the digital future proposed in William Mitchell's 'City of Bits' acquired a following.

All of this, and more, is described in the extensively documented text, but there is little attempt to develop a cogent critical position from which to offer an interpretation of this vast body of facts.

The book is further compromised by the shortcomings of the illustrations. These are too few and poor in quality. As a general primer and sourcebook this will prove useful, but the evolution of American urban design and its consequences demand more insight than is to be found here.