ABSTRACT
Today’s urban design field has an abundance of theory to draw on, both seminal theories that helped establish the field and more recent theories directed at establishing new directions. Key theoretical ideas and debates have been presented throughout The Urban Design Reader. The older theories helped shape the evolution of the field, but it is important to recognize that successive ideas did not completely supplant earlier ones. Late nineteenth and early twentieth century ideas about urban form – the parks movement, the garden city movement, neighborhood units, modernism – continue to inspire urban designers today. It is likewise with mid-twentieth-century theories: ideas about the importance of place-making, imageability, and regional ecological analyses remain central to the field. In recent times, there has been a proliferation of theories claiming to be the important new approach to urbanism – New Urbanism, Post Urbanism, Everyday Urbanism, Landscape Urbanism, Ecological Urbanism. Within academia, proponents of each theory claim its intellectual and practical basis to be the most compelling. What is an urban design practitioner to do?
