ABSTRACT
What matters to inhabitants of cities, apart from fundamentals such as the availability of work and essential services, is the quality of buildings and the in-between spaces they generate. All the right strategic decisions may be made, and the planning theory be impeccable, but if the physical consequences, the actual objects in space, do not add up to a satisfying and vigorous environment, good feasibility decision-making is of no consequence. In the present arrangement of things, armies of planners seem to be engaged in the scientific aspects of the urban design agenda. But things so often go wrong at the last stage. New towns are, to varying degrees, deficient in that indefinable quality called urbanism. Things are even worse in the sphere of urban renewal. All towns and cities have their share of high prestige, low satisfaction urban non-events. Perhaps this is because we do not know what urbanism really is, in the psychological sense.
