ABSTRACT
This book adopts a broad understanding of urban design, which is focused on the making of places for people (Figures 1.1, 1.2). More precisely and realistically, it focuses on urban design as the process of making better places for people than would otherwise be produced. This definition asserts the importance of four themes that occur throughout the book. First, it stresses that urban design is for and about people. Second, it emphasises the value and significance of ‘place’. Third, it recognises that urban design operates in the ‘real’ world, with its field of opportunity constrained and bounded by economic (market) and political (regulatory) forces. Fourth, it asserts the importance of design as a process. The idea that urban design is about making better places is unashamedly and unapologetically a normative contention about what it should be, rather than what it is at any point in time.
