March 2006 is the fiftieth anniversary of the First Urban Design Conference at Harvard—an event that, under the leadership of José Luis Sert, marked a beginning of the self-conscious pursuit of urban design as an intellectual discipline and as a professional focus distinct from architecture, landscape architecture, and urban planning. This issue of Harvard Design Magazine critically examines the ideas and goals expressed in that first conference and at how those have and have not been affirmed by historical actualities since then. A recognition that, since designing a city is within no one person’s powers, urban design has to occur in more small-scale and indirect ways pervades these essays, even as they affirm the need for all design professionals to think as if they were urban designers to advance civilized life.
24: The Origins and Evolution of “Urban Design,” 1956–2006 S/S 2006
Table of Contents
Essays
Assuaging Youthful Indiscretions: Gentlemen Rediscovering Urbanism
Design Will Save the World!: On Bruce Mau’s Massive Change and the Mediatization of Culture
Fragmentation and Friction as Urban Threats: The Post-1956 City
HDM SYMPOSIUM: CAN DESIGN IMPROVE LIFE IN CITIES? Closing Comments
HDM SYMPOSIUM: CAN DESIGN IMPROVE LIFE IN CITIES? Opening Remarks
HDM SYMPOSIUM: CAN DESIGN IMPROVE LIFE IN CITIES? Real Estate Developers’ Panel
Survival in a Declining Post-Industrial City: The Case of Camden, New Jersey
The Elusiveness of Urban Design: The Perpetual Problems of Definition and Role
The Emergence of Urban Design in the Breakup of CIAM
Trying to Fuse Vision and Efficacy: A Review of the Symposium
Unforeseen Urban Worlds: Post-1956 Phenomena
Urban Design at Fifty, and a Look Ahead: A Personal View
Where and How Does Urban Design Happen?
Reviews
Charlotte Perriand: A Life of Creation An Autobiography by Charlotte Perriand
Charlotte Perriand: An Art of Living edited by Mary McLeod
Concrete and Clay: Reworking Nature in New York City by Matthew Gandy
Gottfried Semper and the Problem of Historicism by Mari Hvattum
Moment of Grace: The American City in the 1950s by Michael Johns
post ex sub dis: Urban Fragmentations and Constructions edited by the Ghent Urban Studies Team
Roberto Burle Marx in Caracas: Parque del Este, 1956-1961 by Anita Berrizbeitia
The New Civic Art: Elements of Town Planning edited by André Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, and Robert Alminana
