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Detailed Summary of History of Urban Design,
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Detailed summary of History of Urban Design, by Professor M. Ryckewaert
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History of urban designLes 1
Urban history
Contents
• Unplanned city
o Organic patterns
▪ Regular
o The city edge
▪ Almost intertwined with the idea of the city
▪ Recognisable that the city ended there
o Not created by a designer
o Or we do not know if there were designers
o But: clearly some decisions
• Planned city
o By a designer
o Grid
o Development of urban design as a discipline from the renaissance to
the mid 20th century (in Western Europe)
• Focus on western Europe Renaissance until mid 20th century
o Development of a formal vocabulary that rules urban design into the
19th century
o Clear origins in renaissance but subsequent periodization is a bit
sketchy
▪ Artists, architecture history
,Timeline
• Early urban societies
o 5000 BCE Mesopotamia
o Similar developments independently elsewhere and in other periods
▪ Even in some cases the periodisation is different, e.g. central-
America, China…
• The Greek polis
o 8th – 5th century BCE
• Helenic period
o Alexander The Great, 4th – 2nd century BCE
o Strong period in city formation
• Urban planning in the Roman empire
o 1st BCE – 4th / 6th AC
• Decline of the Roman Empire, ca. 4th century
o Little Roman cities in the Low Countries / Northern Europe
o Planned / grided cities largely disappear
o City fortifications remain
o Decline in city building, some of these cities were disappearing or
remaining fragmented
• High middle ages (11th – 13th century) formation cities
o Civil liberties (city charters)
▪ To urban societies
▪ Take up their own urban positions
o Fortifications
▪ In relation to the trade and craft, going hand in hand with
economic growth
• Late middle ages (14th – 15th century) expansion of cities
o Suburban growth
o Second, third ring of fortifications
o City edge is increasing by constructing new edges of the city
,• Renaissance (16th century)
o Fortifications
o Planned cities, composition, perspective, harmonic proportion
systems…
o No longer strictly utilitarian or pragmatic principles, but real “design” and
aesthetic principles (the grand manner)
o Laying out rules of proposition
o When you can say that urban design emerges for the first time: city
construction or design goes from practical to design and aesthetic
• Baroque (17th century) & classicism (18th century)
o Vocabulary developed in the renaissance is extensively used
o Grandeur, mannerism -striving for visual effects, baroque staging of the
urban image
o Scale of intervention expanded to the city as a whole and even the
surrounding territory
▪ Territory becomes subject of design
▪ Design becomes incorporated into landscape
• The industrial city (19th century)
o Industrial revolution
▪ Adapting the city to industrial rule
o Urban explosion
▪ Strong urban growth
▪ New social problems in cities, new class in society: urban
workers
• Social, hyghienic and health issues
o Infrastructure & industry
o Urban proletariat
o Social utopias as an alternative to create better urban societies
• The modern city (20th century)
o First half of the 20th century
▪ From social utopia to modern city model
▪ The functional city
, • City planning: it is conceived as a rational problem to be
solved
• When we split up a problem / production process in
different parts, we can arrange them → incorporate this
rule in city design
• Protecting green areas
• Leading to a dominant practice of zoning
o Second half of the 20th century
▪ The “zoned city”
▪ Urban sprawl, splintering urbanism, the diffuse city
▪ The generic city in a context of globalisation
What is a city?
The city as a socio-political and economic system
• Several theories that have studied early urban societies such as
o First urban societies in Mesopotamia
o The Greek Polis
o The Medieval City
• The urban revolution (Childe)
• The Greek polis (Kitto)
o Political system of the city states
• City origins (Henri Pirenne)
o On the early medieval city in the Western Europe (9th century)
o Development of trade
• Cities and European civilization (Henri Pirenne)
o Start of the bloom period of European cities (from 10th century)
The city as a built artefact
• Definition of Spiro Kostoff based on an analysis of the rise of cities
o Definition of basic ingredients that make up city form
▪ You encounter in every urban form
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