ABSTRACT
Many urban designs have been based on designers’ self-referent images of the ways of life and values of people for whom they are designing and/or how they should behave. While some generic ideas (e.g., congestion charging) have been developed in Asia, most of the urban design paradigms and generic solutions at an architect’s or landscape architect’s disposal were developed in Europe or North America. The City Beautiful movement, although a reform movement, promoted an urban design of grandeur. Modernist urban designs have received both praise and criticism. Rationalists and empiricists have disparaged each other’s ideas. Liverpool University’s civic design program’s educators did not hold back in their criticism of many rationalist urban design ideas, despite feeling that they were being left behind by the boldness of the projects advocated by CIAM’s members.
