Urban Design

In this basic textbook prospective architects, urban and landscape planners receive assistance in working on urban development projects and designs. This edition has been expanded by two chapters on informal urban planning and regional urban development. The contents presented and their preparation are based on the design process in practice and embed it in a theoretical framework of necessary background knowledge. As an introduction, an overview of the understanding of the city, of urban structures and the laws governing them is given. In order to make the multi-layered structure of the city more comprehensible, it is broken down into different layers and building blocks. The approach to urban design is described using the "layer method" in the form of successive phases. Examples of urban development projects and competitions illustrate the individual design steps.

This book is a translation of the original German 5th edition Städtebauliches Entwerfen by Reicher, Christa, published by Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature in 2017. The translation was done with the help of artificial intelligence (machine translation by the service DeepL.com). A subsequent human revision was done primarily in terms of content, so that the book will read stylistically differently from a conventional translation. Springer Nature works continuously to further the development of tools for the production of books and on the related technologies to support the authors.

The Content

Introduction - To understand the basic concepts - An excursion: from history to theory - The "grammar" of the city - Building blocks of the city - Reading the city - Urban design - Urban design and attitude - Urban design as a process - Informal urban design - Regional urban design - Selected fields of activity

The target group

Architects, urban and spatial planners in study

The author

Prof. Dipl.-Ing. Christa Reicher is an architect and urban planner and teaches urban development, urban design and urban land use planning at the RWTH Aachen University.