Addressing the Challenges of Urban Landscapes: Normative Goals for Urban Design

Despite the flourishing of the urban design field over the last quarter of a century, many of the issues and problems haunting urban environments have not been resolved. Forces such as globalization, immigration, the explosion of digital technologies, and the rise of a service economy centred on consumption have important spatial and design implications, while how we design our cities may have repercussions on a variety of concerns ranging from climate change to the epidemic of obesity. The paper traces some of the spatial implications of socio-economic shifts during the last decades, and explores the role and responsibility of urban design in addressing the outlined challenges.