ABSTRACT
Many aspects of sustainability planning are a question of design, that is, the creative arrangement of elements within a given context. This process draws upon linear, rational thought, but also upon the brain’s more creative sides, including intuitive understandings about how to balance physical and less tangible aspects of a situation in relation to one another. As ecological architect Bill McDonough has argued, design permeates human systems and good design can often solve sustainability problems far more elegantly than an emphasis on engineering or technology. 1
Although policies, programs, industrial systems, and entire societies can be designed in various senses of the word, design applies most directly to the physical world around us, a process often known as urban design. Urban design includes not just the arrangement of land uses, public spaces, streets, neighborhoods, and homes, but the configuration of less traditional spatial elements such as greenway systems, regional growth patterns, transportation networks, water and sewer systems, and flows of energy and materials. Designing such systems requires thinking about how they relate to all other elements of a place, combining physical planning (concerned with land use, infrastructure, buildings, and the design of public places) with public policy frameworks (including tax systems and economic incentives) that can support such changes. Thus sustainable urban design is a creative weaving-together of elements in a particular place to improve long-term human and ecological well-being.
