FOCUS 11

Essays

International Urban Designs:

Brands in Theory and Practice
Jon Lang
Professor (meritus, 8niversity of 1ew 6outh :ales, 6ydney, Australia
Former chair, Urban Design Program, University of Pennsylvania.

A leading author and scholar in urban design, Jon Lang discusses the increasing globalization of
urban design paradigms. As international investments impose branding and the commodification
of design, and professionals firms work in several different countries, he calls for a neo-
functional and ecological urban design that fosters respect for the culture of places.

U rban design has long been considered to mean the self-

conscious design of cities or, much more likely, their
precincts or, even more likely, a large block of a city comprised
Many factors contribute to the increasing globalization of
urban design and architectural practice today. Real estate
capital investment flows are increasingly international. Major
of several buildings and the open spaces among them. A manufacturing companies such as Sony and Daimler Benz and
number of thoughtful scholars have sought to broaden this conventional organizations such as Bangkok Land, Henderson
definition to comprise the ongoing processes that shape Land and New World Development are behind the design
human settlements1 but even they, when it comes to actually and implementation of major development projects in many
taking action, deal with urban design as individual project countries. Hong Kong investors have contributed much to
design. This paper brings attention to and questions the the development of Vancouver. Canadian money flows into
utility of the urban design paradigms being employed in an the United States. Chinese property developers are building
increasingly globalized world. These models incur significant feverishly across Africa and Asia and investing in Australia.
opportunity costs when applied universally. It ultimately Taiwanese financial institutions are funding the building of
argues that we need a new set of generic solutions that are South Saigon. They all possess a modernist attitude towards
climatically and culturally sensitive. urban design while the architecture is post-modernist with
a tendency to use materials that are regarded as prestigious:
The Globalization of Contemporary Urban Design Practice glass, expensive stones, and steel.

We live in a growing international society as the result of the Architectural education and practice are global. A few
many political, economic and cultural changes taking place architectural schools are trend setters and, perhaps, two dozen
in the world. While today’s supra-national economy seems architectural and urban design firms dominate practice in
overwhelming, international trade has had a globalizing impact the world today. The USA, Japan, the UK, Germany, Australia
on the nature of cities since the beginning of recorded history. and Singapore are amongst the countries that are major
What is happening today is, however, on a much greater scale. exporters of design and educational services. Firms in these
This observation is as true of architecture and urban design as it countries have urban design projects in China and now China
is for any other commercial activity.2 is exporting architectural services to countries as diverse as
Sri Lanka and Angola. China not only exports design but also
Notes from the Editor: construction services using its own workers.
* This paper is an updated version of ‘International Urban Design:
Theory and Practice’ published in the Proceedings of the Institution of The urban designing process tends to be one in which generic
Civil Engineers - Urban Design and Planning 162 (March 2009 Issue DPI0): solutions that are developed within specific design paradigms
7-17, for which the author received the Reed and Mallik Medal from the are adapted to the situation at hand. Often, little heed is paid
Institution. We thank the author for gratiously adapting it for FOCUS. to contextual concerns. For instance, although a number
** FOCUS thanks Jaime Jaramillo (Cal Poly MCRP student) for helping of Chinese observers wonder about the quality of work that
with the image procurement for this article. property developers, public and private, and their architects,
1
foreign and local, are producing in places such as Lujiazui
See, for instance, Cuthbert (2006) and Carmona (2014). in Shanghai, Chinese development companies and their
2
See Olds (2001) on the internationalization of design firms and the architects are reproducing the same model around the world.
property market, Olds and Marshall (2003) on the mega Pacific region
The East China Architectural Design Institute based in Shanghai
projects, and Altani et al. (2012) on the impact of the internationaliza­
tion of planning on urban Saudi Arabia. is the designer for the Gujarat International Finance Tech City
18 ■ Essays ■ FOCUS 11

Figures 1a & b: Lujiazui, Pudong, Shanghai (above) and office tower at

Gujarat International Finance Tech City (GIFT ), Ahmedabad (right).
(photos: a) by the author; b) http://modi2014.blogspot.com)

(GIFT ), for Ahmedabad in India. The proposal pays little heed Frank Gehry building. In seeking a design for Main Street in Los
to its context, climatic or cultural; the ‘crystal’ imagery is what is Angeles, municipal authorities and commercial organizations
important. Ahmedabad, somewhat in the economic doldrums know what they are getting in selecting Frank Gehry to produce
since the decline of its cotton based industry, wants to join the a design. There is nothing new in this observation. Jawaharlal
club whose members include La Défense in Paris, Docklands Nehru (1889-1964), independent India’s first prime minister,
in London, Shinjuku in Tokyo and Lujiazui in Pudong. The knew that India would be getting a product that would make
character of the urban design product demonstrates it. people ‘sit up and think’ when Le Corbusier (1887-1965) was
selected to design Chandigarh.
Specific urban design ideas and patterns have become
commodities that can be ‘bought’ in a manner similar to Some cities have a clear and much esteemed identity. The
any other product. The elite who make urban development power elite, and often the general population, in other cities
decisions consist of the municipal authorities, wealthy want their cities to be to be like those that are admired. In the
property developers, politicians and the taste makers among 1950s, Singapore wanted to be like Tripoli in Libya; today Tripoli
the cognoscenti.3 Members of this group, although they would love to be like Singapore. Since the 1950s Singapore’s
themselves may not be fully aware of it, assume the power leaders have transformed a backwater colonial entrepôt into
to run the programs of the major political, financial and one of the world’s major urban brands. Many Asian cities now
communication institutions of a country and possess the want to be a Singapore; others want to be a Dubai, a city that
authority to select and approve designs that have the character has been propelled from being an insignificant desert village
they seek. These designs have a brand image that serves the to a globally recognizable brand.
financial and aesthetic ends of the power elite.
Singapore and Dubai are clear urban brands in people’s
Branding and the Commodification of Urban Design imaginations and the expectations of visitors are largely fulfilled
when they visit. Outsiders have clear expectations of a number
A brand consists of a set of goods that has a name, a specific of major cities. New York is the ‘Big Apple’ with all the brand
identity and is produced by a single manufacturer. Architectural implications associated with the term. Paris, London, Tokyo and
firms produce products that are clearly identified with them. Hong Kong are their own unique and generally positive brand
Property developers recognize the value-added impact of those images. In stark contrast, a number of cities are in economic
products. Zaha Hadid, Norman Foster, and Frank Gehry all have decline. Of these cities Detroit may be the most widely known.
clear brand images. A Frank Gehry building, for instance, is a It has a clear but generally negative identity. Maybe one day
if its economy revives it will be known as the ‘Come-back kid’.
3
The term ‘power elite’ was coined by sociologist C. Wright Mills in
1956. Today it is estimated that of the USA’s 300 million people, 250 The brand of a city depends much on its physical appearance.
men and women are the most influential in the three branches of the As cities compete for a place in the economic sunshine they
federal government and 220 control the nation’s major television chan­ become self-conscious about what they look like. Many
nels and newspapers. municipal governments now pay considerable attention to the
FOCUS 11 ■ Lang: International Urban Designs ■ 19

Figures 2a & b: International rationalism at Zhandong, Zhenghou by architect Kisho Kurokawa and Associates (left). The Dubai
skylight turned into a brand (right). (left: courtesy Kurokawa Associates; right: http://www.wallm.com)

quality of their city’s public realm in order to: 1) provide residents and powerful clients alike. The latter has been more concerned
and visitors with a pleasant environment in which to carry out with reproducing what works well in new forms.
day-to-day activities, and 2) create a positive image, or brand,
in the eyes of the world and thus attract capital investments in Rationalist paradigms have a clear internally valid logic based
order to compete effectively with other cities for the creative on efficiency in movement and construction and the symbol­
class of people.4 In doing so they have to choose between ism of being up-to-date. In the 1950s and 1960s, Rationalist
competing design paradigms that reflect competing ideas of models developed into a ‘corporate Modernism’ used univer­
what makes a good place (Figure 2). What then are the brands sally executed by many architectural firms who had adopted
available for them to purchase? its basic formal characteristics as the current design paradigm.
It was characterized by curtain wall buildings of glass and steel
The Design Paradigms of Globalization set as individual elements, ‘objects in space’ rather than space
makers. Late in the twentieth century its qualities gave way
Architecture and urban design play a major role in fulfilling to a more flamboyant architecture and, often, less of a pure
the imagery demanded by aspiring cities. Perhaps the most grid-iron layout in urban design. The essence of this modernist
prominent are the urban design of economic libertarianism paradigm remains the norm across the world.
and that of the neo-traditional. There are, however, other
competing design ideologies – competing brands – that are For mass housing, project after project in Eastern Europe and
seeking attention. The two streams of Modernist thought that the countries of the former Soviet Union, but also the United
we inherited from the beginning of the twentieth century still States and Western Europe, was imbued with the spirit of
provide the intellectual foundations for urban designing. They international rationalism. These schemes consist of slab and/or
are the Rationalist and the Empiricist. The former with its bold tower blocks set in open green space with parking for cars and
new architectural forms captures the imagination of architects children’s playgrounds located in between the buildings. The
model remains the standard for much of East Asia, particularly
Figure 3: The generic mass housing design in China and an
China, today. It is seen as the generic solution for housing
example in Shenzhen (2002). (photo by Kath Kolnick)
many people in limited space, although, as it is often argued
the same density can be achieved with lower buildings and a
more clearly articulated public realm (Figure 3).

From the Empiricist side of twentieth century modernism the

generic subdivision of a new town into districts each with its
center and with districts being subdivided into neighborhoods
each also with its center is still the norm for new developments.
It can be regarded as the ‘new town layout brand.’ We have also

4
Although much disputed the perception is that if cities are to prosper
they require a population of people who are innovators in both the arts
and technology (Florida, 2002).
20 ■ Essays ■ FOCUS 11

inherited the garden city concept and the townscape approach

to urban design from the Empiricitsts. The former is still with us;
the latter, with a little imagination, can be said to have evolved
into a number of Neo-traditional approaches to urban design.

The generic garden city model is still widely applied to new

suburban design around the world. In many cases the principles
behind the creation of the model are neglected; only the
imagery is retained. Although developed for cool temperate
climates, the model has been used as the basis for new town
design in a variety of climatic and cultural contexts, including
arid zones where designs would be better off ‘browned’ rather
than ‘greened’. The greenery and the consumption of space
are, however, seen as prestigious and so meet the aspirational
needs of many of the middle-class particularly in countries
where signficant economic growth is recent. The Shongsang Figure 4: The model of Shongshang Lake, Guangdong, China (2004).
Lake development (2004 and beyond), for instance, is based on (photo by the author)
car-ownership rather than the needs of pedestrians (Figure 4).
Yet Hegemann too sought a universal urbanism that would
The urban design projects being developed around the world benefit humanity (Collins, 2005).
are clearly based on a handful of global brands. Many have
been criticized on a number of grounds but the paradigms In the face of universalizing forces much remains local. In China
continue to be followed. They seem to work well-enough; they the universal housing types end up with common touches.
are, in economic terms, satisficing solutions. Laundry is still hung out on balconies to dry and the people
themselves and their activities locate the developments in the
Does It Matter? country. The built environment is only a backdrop to life. Serious
questions can, nevertheless, be raised about the urban designs of
Globalization has been seen as the solution to many of the the globalized economy. The need to create a more sustainable
world’s ills and the way to eliminate poverty from the world. In world as many non-renewable resources get depleted, the
the late nineteenth century Henry George (1839-1897) believed needs of the poor, the quality of a locale’s natural ecology, and
that the universalization of the world’s economy by free-trading issues of a sense of place remain largely unaddressed and when
among nations was highly desirable. His ideas have been addressed get treated superficially. If this situation prevails what
influential on libertarian thinking to this day and spill over into are the remedies; what are the alternative paradigms? What
urban design. In architecture and urban design globalization has other brands are available for purchase?
been seen as the natural answer to common problems being
faced everywhere. It assumes the universality of a world culture. Urban Designing for a Sense of Locale: Current Paradigms

Walter Burley Griffin (1876-1937), is amongst those architects In the urban design field, both in theory and practice there
who assumed that there is ‘no longer any difference between has been a strong reaction to the universalizing tendencies
races, and there should be no artificial barrier erected between of the urban designs of globalization. While seen as a recent
them’ (Griffin, 1946). In his design for Canberra he merged phenomenon this reaction goes back, at least, to colonial
two designs paradigms – the City Beautiful and the Garden architects of the British and French attempting to localize their
City – that were developed in Europe and America during work by incorporating elements of the aesthetic traditions of
the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The most specific colonies. In the nineteenth century there were the
celebrated statement on the universalism of the problems Indo-Saracenic buildings in India and in the twentieth century
facing architects was that by Le Corbusier (1923): ‘I propose a the work of French architects in North Africa and Vietnam.5
single building for all nations and all climates.’
Current efforts to create a paradigm for localizing new urban
The globalization of urban design might seem to be inevitable in designs vary from those designers resurrecting vernacular
an age of patronage and the power of international corporations. processes to those proposing neo-traditional designs and
Perhaps the observation of Werner Hegemann (1881-1936) on to those advocating a critical regionalism. Of these the Neo­
the imagery of Le Corbusier’s urban design proposals sums the traditional in the guise of the New Urbanism has attracted
situation up. They, he thought, would be sought after: the most attention. Before it, postmodernists captured the
“. . . not because they are desirable, healthy, reasonable imagination of a minority of architects and clients by rejecting
. . . but because they are theatrical . . . unreasonable and
generally harmful and . . . part of the money making activity 5
See Lang, Desai and Desai (1997: 99-106) for an overview of the Indo-
of the metropolis.” (Hegemann cited in Oeschlin 1993, 287) Saracenic architecture of British Colonial architects.
FOCUS 11 ■ Lang: International Urban Designs ■ 21

the blandness of modernist urban designs. They sought to inject Neo-traditional Urban Design
a greater liveliness and a sense of locality into their designs.
They, however, attempted to meet this end by incorporating The university town of Louvain-la-Neuve (1970s+) was designed
traditional elements in an abstract rather than a literal form. The to stand in strong contrast to the somewhat soul-less modern­
associations were not recognizable to lay people (Groat and ist universities built in Belgium during the 1960s (Figure 6). The
Canter, 1979). The abstractions had to be explained. A strong architecture is Neo-modernist, that is, it is clearly of its time but
reaction to both modernism and post-modernism can also be richer in detail and general character than modernist forms but
traced back to the mid-twentieth century when a number of its urban design harkened back to the past. In this case the me­
architects were attracted by vernacular architectures that had dieval city and the embedding of a university in a town rather
evolved over time to meet the climatic characteristics and than being isolated from it in a separate campus was the model.
cultural traditions of specific locales.
There are many other examples of neo-traditional urban
The book by Bernard Rudofsky (1905-1988) and the exhibi­ designs. Seaside, Florida (1979+) with its houses based on the
tion at the Museum of Modern Art in New York on Architecture regional patterns was an early example of the work of Andrés
without Architects made the intelligentsia look again at settle­ Duany and Elizabeth Platter-Zyberk. It has a clear brand image
ment patterns and buildings created with limited resources and been a precedent for much that has followed. It placed
(Rudofsky, 1964). In creating neo-vernacular designs architects the requirements of pedestrians to the forefront and through
failed, however, to consider the aspirations of the inhabitants of strong design guidelines created a uniformity in appearance
those locales. The best known example of such an experience that relates Seaside to the architecture of north-west Florida.
is that of the design of New Gournia near Luxor in Egypt. Has­
san Fathy (1900-1989) largely replicated the design of Gournia, Poundbury in England (1993+) and the Income Tax Colony
a village due to be flooded by the Aswan Dam on the Nile. Fathy (1997) in India are other examples created by prominent
certainly demonstrated the utility of indigenous materials such architects (Figure 7). Their quality ultimately depends on the
as mud-brick for the modern world but his design, both in its appropriateness of the precedent on which they are based.
symbolic and utilitarian qualities, represented a world the vil­ Jaisalmer in the Thar Desert is a very different world to the
lagers were trying to escape. The new village was never fully in­ monsoon climate of Navi Mumbai. The precedents for the
habited. The neo-vernacular continues to attract the attention buildings in Poundbury are a very mixed and hardly local set.
of designers both in holistic form or in bits and pieces (Figure 5). Much Neo-traditional design, nevertheless, works well multi-
dimensionally today because we exaggerate the changes in
The Neo-traditionalists have been more successful by relying the ways of life of the middle-class since the world was turned
on the principles rather than simply the forms of traditional upside down, technologically, socially, and politically during
architectures in their new designs. They have, however, also the first half of the twentieth century.
fallen into the trap of copying past forms and of assuming past
ways of life would endure. The design products are valid only to In an urban context the core of Battery Park City (1979-2010),
the extent that their assumptions are accurate. The question is: the World Finance Center, is international in character and
On what traditions does one draw? a precent for the core of the Docklands in London and the
Abandoibarra precinct of Bilbao in Spain. They were, after
Figure 5: The Neo-Vernacular Shri Ramiaiah Institute

campus, Bengaluru,1990s . (photo by the author)

Figure 6. The new university town of Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium,

central axis, Michel Woitrin and Raymond Lemaire, urban designers,
1970. (photo by Katsura; http://europhilomem.hypotheses.org/702
22 ■ Essays ■ FOCUS 11

Figure 7: The Income Tax Colony,

Navi Mumbai: the precedent
Jaisalmer, Rajasthan (left) and the
design (right), Raj Rawal, architect,
1996+. (photos by the author)

all, designed by the same architect: César Pelli. The block broadly functional in a manner sought by more renowned
design and the appearance of the residential buildings was, architects such as Alvar Aalto and Jørn Utzon. Alvaro Siza
in contrast, based on the neighborhoods of New York that is a current architect who applies the concept of critical
New Yorkers like –Gramercy Park and Morningside Heights in regionalism to urban design as in Quinta da Malagueria in
particular. The same design attitude prevailed in the design Portugal (Figure 9). While of much interest to the cognoscenti
of Paternoster Square in London (2003). Critics are dismissive and apparently meeting the needs of local people, it is not the
of its architecture and the square being only quasi-public type of urban environment that has attracted the widespread
property, but the square functions well on many dimensions; attention of contemporary politicians.
it has the qualities that result in lively urban spaces (Figure 8).
Designs through the Sustainable cities Paradigm
Much Neo-traditionalist urban design is seen by locals as being
part of their heritage. It is often disparaged as being out of Recent efforts to develop generic models of sustainable urban
date and not creative. The cognoscenti of the art academy take environments include explorations for the generic form of
a more radical view of how the future, present and the past cities given their climate and basic cultural ethos and the
should go together in urban design and architecture. Critical somewhat fragmented ideas of the Landscape Urbanists. These
regionalism is one such approach. explorations are exemplified by the similar designs for cities
in the United Arab Emirates by the Office for Metropolitan
Critical Regionalism architecture (OMA) under the leadership of Rem Koolhaas
and the Foster Partnership (Figure 10). The former’s design
A number of architects reject the banality of modernist
for Masadar City and the latter’s design for Ras El Khaimah
urban designs, the individualist abstract expressions of post-
have many of the same urban design characteristics. That is
modernist designs and the universalism of the urban designs
not surprising as they are responding to essentially the same
of commercial globalization. They seek to be both modern and
environmental conditions.
local in their designs. While critical regionalism is, like neo­
traditional architecture, seen to be a brand of design developed Figure 8: Neo-traditionalism at Paternoster

Square, London. (photo by Vicente del Rio)

in the late twentieth century its roots go much further back.

Florestano Di Fausto is an example of a pre-World War Two ar­

chitect seeking to be both modernist and local.6 In his designs in
Italian controlled Libya, Di Fausto incorporated indigenous pat­
terns that responded to climatic, cultural necessities, and local
motifs in an otherwise Italian Rationalist architecture and urban
design. He, like our contemporary critical regionalists, believed
that design should be grounded in its context and be related to
historical traditions without losing a sense of modernity.

Di Fausto’s works in Libya had a simplicity of form but were

6
See Anderson (2010) for an overview of the work Di Fausto and
McLaren (2006: 183-218) on Di Fausto’s regionalism.
FOCUS 11 ■ Lang: International Urban Designs ■ 23

A problem-solving, program based approach to urban design

follows a rational model. The first step is always the political
one of setting broad goals and then designing the definition
of these goals in a set of specific objectives for activities and
aesthetic ends. A statement of these ends forms the program
for a project. The program is then met by linking ends with
particular patterns of built form through the application of
evidence-based design principles. The creative task is one of
synthesizing a design that meets often contradictory ends. The
design also has to function in a future context that cannot be
predicted with certainty. Our ability to predict outcomes well
depends on the quality of our substantive theory about how
cities work and an understanding of the relationship between
social and physical systems. The knowledge is there for us to
use if we so desire (Lang and Moleski, 2010).
Figure 9: Alvaro Siza’s critical regionalism:
Quinta da Malagueria in Evora, Portugal. The issues that have to be addressed in forming a program
(photo by Eduardo Belleza; www.flickr.com) are numerous. Whose values take precedence? Is it the young
or the elderly? Is designing for the flushing effect of breezes
Landscape Urbanism represents an approach to urban design
more important than the economic benefits of particular
that promises much but has yet to present a coherent unified
patterns of land parcelization? How much should one worry
model of its intentions to the professional world. Starting with
about desirable species of the fauna and flora of cities. Do,
the plea of Ian McHarg to “design with nature” (McHarg, 1969).
for instance, monkeys have the right to continue to live in
Landscape Urbanists take the position that the natural ecology
a city? How comfortable or challenging should the built
of an area should provide the framework, the basic armature,
environment be? Do the symbolic qualities of cities override
for an urban design (Steiner, 2011; Kuitert, 2013). Applying
their pleasantness as places in which to conduct our daily lives?
this concept to green-field sites may be conceptually, if not
How does one create a sense of place, social and physical?
politically and economically straight forward, but applying it
Does the aesthetics of globalization take precedence over the
to existing cities is less so. Little has been said by Landscape
aesthetics of regionalism? How does one marry the two? What
Urbanists about how to provide for the ways of life of diverse
elements of a city should be in the foreground and what in the
sets of people within diverse cultural environments.
background? Are all such questions to be left to the market
place to dictate? The list of questions goes on and on.
Conclusion: A Neo-Functional Approach to Urban Design?
The designing process is one of conjecturing and testing.
Each of our current paradigms represents a thoughtful way to Designers argue about ends and means among themselves,
deal with particular concerns. They cannot be dismissed simply their sponsors, and a variety of interest groups each striving to
as poorly considered models; they meet the basic requirements be heard. Designers’ power comes from their knowledge about
set by the market place. They do, nevertheless, incur substantial how cities function in a multi-dimensional manner for diverse
opportunity costs. The question many observers are therefore populations. Good evidence for designers’ claims comes from
now asking is: ‘Rather than applying a brand, a pre-conceived
image of an urban design to a new development, is it possible
Figure 10: A generic design for the arid climate Islamic Arabic City.
to develop a problem-solving, opportunity-seizing approach (image courtesy of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture)
to urban design in which a rich program becomes the basis
for a design?’ or ‘Is it better to marry a paradigmatic and a
programmatic approach to design?’ Colin Rowe thought so
fifty years ago (Rowe, 1963).

Much thought has been given over the past fifty years to how
best to create cities and the precincts that will function well-
enough to satisfy the full range of human needs and aspirations
of their diverse inhabitants and visitors. This statement
recognizes that the problems that need to be addressed are
wicked and that the best that can be hoped for in any design
is a Prato optimal solution – one that fulfils the requirements
of some specific ends without being harmful to others. Such
designs also need to be robust enough to undergo change.
24 ■ Essays ■ FOCUS 11

case studies, and deducing patterns from research-based

theoretical knowledge, but we rely more heavily on personal
experiences and beliefs. These experiences are important and
cannot be discounted but are inevitably heavily biased by our
own cultural and social frameworks.

It is clear that the rational model cannot be implemented in a

step-by-step fashion. To do so would require comprehensive
knowledge and objective thinking. Designing programs and
the consequent built environments is a more fragmented
process that involves many iterations of thought. The model
does, however, provide an ‘ideal’ framework for asking serious
questions about how to design a salubrious city or precinct
that is full of opportunities for people to lead a rich life without
deleterious effects on the natural flora and fauna of a place.
The argument against attempting to follow such a process
is that it is time consuming. In the ‘real’ world decisions have
to be made quickly so we have to rely on the brands of good
urban form that we have at our disposal. Figure 10 a, b & c: Two proposals for the new CBD in Central Dammam,
Saudi Arabia (top). The economic libertarian (middle) and the neo­
Modernist urban design, despite many premature obituaries, traditional (bottom), 2007. (souces: a) Google Earth + author archives;
is alive and well in many places. Such designs function well b) author; c) courtesy Marina Khoury, DPZ Architects)
when the assumptions about people, nature and ways of life
on which they are based coincide with contemporary culture-
based activity systems, economic conditions and aesthetic
values. People do adapt to them well-enough even if the
designs do not function well. The modernist urban design
paradigm continues to be employed by city planners and
architects engaged in new town and housing precinct design
in countries such as Korea and China. It is valued for its up-to­
date qualities and the privacy it affords. It, has, however been
largely rejected in countries such as the United States and
the United Kingdom, the so-called Anglo-Saxon world, and in
Continental Europe. Even where it is still in vogue, there is a
great sense of opportunity costs – the designs could have been
better if another paradigm had been followed and/or a much
more thorough programming process with community input
had been followed. In many east European countries such as
Hungary, the unused and meaningless open spaces between
blocks of buildings are being filled in to create an environment
that affords a richer range of settings for engagements in a
communal life. It is no easy design task.

For commercial areas, the urban designs of international

economic libertarianism rules supreme in many places and
particularly in the modernizing world. Its bold individual
buildings set in space attract the attention of many corporate
and political leaders around the world today. It assumes the
individual motor vehicle is the major mode of transportation
and the pedestrian is of little consequence. It is the image that
counts. In one proposed design for the proposed new CBD for
Dammam in Saudi Arabia the buildings are set in a lush green
precinct replete with ponds (Figure 10). Such a design stands
in strong contrast to a neo-traditional design for the same site.

The density of the two schemes responds to the same program,

or brief, but the way of handling the density is very different.
FOCUS 11 ■ Lang: International Urban Designs ■ 25

The neo-traditional design follows the generic qualities Groat, Linda and David Canter. (1979). A study of meaning:
of Dammam’s existing street pattern, mixed-use qualities, Does Post-Modernism communicate? In Progressive Archi­
patterns of climate control, and housing patterns. It provides tecture 60 (12): 84-87.
a much richer set of offerings for the pedestrians in a shaded
Kuitert, Wybe (2013): Urban landscape systems understood by
world. Which is the better scheme? It depends on the criteria
geo-history map overlay. In Journal of Landscape Architec­
used in the evaluation.When I show these two schemes to lay
ture 8 (1), p. 54-63.
people, architects and students at public and professional
society presentations, the economic libertarian scheme is Lang, Jon. (2005). Urban Design: A Typology of Procedures
clearly the preferred proposal in the audience’s eyes; it is and Products illustrated with over 50 Case Studies. Oxford:
seen as up-to-date. Ultimately it is the power elite that make Architectural Press.
decisions but they can be persuaded by strong arguments. Lang Jon and Walter Moleski. (2010). Functionalism Revisited:
Architectural Theory and Practice and the Behavioral Sci­
How does one move ahead? I have been an advocate for a
ences. Farnham: Ashgate.
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