ABSTRACT
Architecture is most often privileged in imagining cities and their urban form, while planning is seen as an abstract instrument codified in policy with no three-dimensional implications attributed to the processes and procedures that those policies imply. This chapter argues for the importance of urban design as a bridge practice that connects the site specificity of architecture and the abstraction of planning by creating feedback loops that inform both those disciplines. Furthermore, the chapter argues that urban design can be more expansive and go beyond architecture as the singular instrument to mold urban form and as the only spectacle of the city. And it further suggests that the growth of the urban informal economy, transforming work-life relationships, and the importance of reversibility and impermanence are related issues that could be productively addressed in imagining the shape and form of cities in the future.
