| Urban Design and People
By Michael Dobbins
John Wiley & Sons 2009 $42.00
Michael Dobbins has worked for more
than 40 years as a planner, urban
designer, administrator, or planning
teacher; first in New York under
Mayor Lindsay, later in New Orleans,
Birmingham and Berkeley, and most
recently in Atlanta, where from 1996
to 2002, he headed the city's planning,
development and neighborhood conser-
vation efforts. For the past seven years
he has been Professor of Practice at
Georgia Tech. His long experience as a
public sector urban designer imbues
Urban Design and People with an
in-the-trenches understanding of how to
get things done.
Urban design is clearly improving,
Dobbins believes. "Until recently, city
planners have tended to view urban
design as prettying up places here and
there in the city--maybe a nice thing to
do, but not the serious business or
larger policy and equity issues that
could actually make cities better,"
he observes. This has changed,
mainly because of Jane Jacobs,
historic preservationists, and
other nondesigner-- people who
forced planners to conceive of
urban design much more
meaningfully than used to be
the case.
This book, a distillation of what
Dobbins has learned in the course
of his career, aims to help readers
-- students, teachers, practioners,
everyday citizens -- seize urban
design's full potential.
Public spaces should possess
human scale, he says. Mixed uses
should be encouraged. Conditions
should be created in which pedestrian
activity can thrive. The key:
"Design places to reflect the people
who are or will be there."
PUBLIC DOMAIN IS MORE
THAN A CHANCE FOR
PERSONAL EXPRESSION
Dobbins is highly critical of the effect
that modernism has had on cities.
"Architects and landscape architects need
to back off from looking at work for the
public domain solely as a personal
opportunity to express themselves," he
declares. "Rather they should look for
public guidance, willingly incorporate
ideas they didn't think up and interact
with community leaders and other
design disciplines. This approach
is likely to produce more satisfying and
enduring results."
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