ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the traditional meaning of urban design as project design. Urban design thus involves establishing a vision of a city, or much more likely a precinct within it or, even more likely, a few blocks within it, and creating the mechanisms to bring that vision into fruition. In the design fields, place is usually defined as a locale associated with events or a locality, a geographic setting. Place can also refer to position in a hierarchy. Two closely related hierarchies are of importance in urban design: temporal and status. The physical character of a city contributes to its sense of locale and locality, and to a sense of its place in time and its status. To many observers the globalization of the world's economy is the path to eliminating poverty in the world. The urban design paradigms and generic solutions of globalization are seen as the response to the common problems faced by cities.
