ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to define the nature of design as a prelude to translating its substance into policy. It draws on the history of design policy and control practice sketched in Chapter 2, and outlines the development of design theory and the broadening conception of design that has informed planning thought and practice in England over the last two decades. It begins by exploring the emphasis on design as the external appearance of development, how this narrow view was developed into the ‘townscape’ philosophy, and then gradually supplanted by broader conceptions of design drawing on a variety of American urban design writing. It outlines attempts to define principles of urban design and to delimit the scope of the subject, leading to an increasing ‘environmental’ concept of urban design. The relationships between design and aesthetic theory are explored, and different modes of perception defined that can be related to the design literature. The relationship between these modes of perception and human needs is defined to emphasize a broader role for urban design. A second set of ideas, which define design as a process rather than a product, are then explored. These ideas focus less on the substance of urban design and more on its creative and problem-solving nature, seeking to define the procedures of urban design, and emphasizing the importance of seeing it as a collaborative process operating at various scales and with various time frames. Specific discussion of how urban design theory might relate to issues of architecture, landscape and conservation, and what theoretical issues are relevant to their consideration, are discussed in the first parts of Chapters 8, 9 and 10 respectively.
