ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the diverse terrain of urban design as it pertains to landscape architectural pedagogy. Urban design negotiates the space between these often-contradictory aspects of the urban condition. Most deliberately positioned as a cure for the dehumanizing ills of the modern metropolis, traditional urban design offers a template for compact walkability and built form drawn from pre-industrial cities. Despite abundant rhetoric to the contrary, these overlapping and intertwining urban design doctrines demonstrate that no single approach offers a complete self-contained account of city making. Injecting urban design into landscape architectural education through the reverse process of urban decline vividly reveals how the topic is fundamentally grounded in landscape and pertains to far more than buildings and streets. Returning from the underground to the surface reveals the strong predisposition of conventional urban design towards flatlands. In addition to historical influences, the technical complexity of designing with landform contributes to the continuing urban design bias towards the flatlands.
