Customer Reviews

The Urban Design Handbook: Techniques and Working Methods

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The Pittsburgh-based firm Urban Design Associates has been in practice for nearly 40 years, over the decades accumulating quite a lot of experience in urban design. This is UDA's in-house training manual, polished and augmented for public use. If you are starting out in the urban design field, or are just curious about the methods of a successful firm, this is a good place to begin your investigations.

The first section introduces some basic principles and organizing concepts. Ideas like the "Urban X-Ray" and "Urban Assembly Kit" are easy to understand but at the same time provide a powerful means of evaluating locations and organizing the design process.

The second section, taking up one-third of the book, is a case study of the design process from beginning to site plan. It's really the heart of the manual. This section takes you through information collection, analysis, charrettes, preliminary design, negotiation, and final presentation. UDA can be justifiably proud of their work here, as the site (a housing project in Winston-Salem) was extremely challenging, yet the final plan was quite good from a number of perspectives. You get some idea of the politics, persuasion and patience necessary when working with established residents, officials, engineers and developers.

The following two sections cover pattern books and architecture. These sections are mostly about basic concepts and the firm's standardized methods, which can be dry reading. The information is sound, but presented in a rather generic way, and so is less engrossing than the earlier section. It will be of interest to students wanting to understand how one firm tackles contextual residential design.

In the extensive appendices, the roots of the manual become more apparent. These cover everything from filing system notation to line weight (how to draw a block of houses). Mainly of interest to those wanting to compare office administration procedures, students, and new UDA employees.

The Urban Design Manual delivers the goods in a concise format, focusing on UDA's methods rather than trying to encompass a variety of possible approaches. The illustrations are a treat to look at, and convey at least as much information as the text. The writing is clear and professional, yet also conversational and even a bit lighthearted. Mini "war story" vignettes in the margins bespeak the writers' understated humor. It is the first step-by-step manual of urban design (hopefully the first of many by various authors), and is valuable resource for students and practitioners.

The architects at Urban Design Associates use war stories and bold illustrations to provide detailed instructions on how to transform a blighted urban area into an aesthetically pleasing community. This Pittsburg-based firm created the architectural plans for city redevelopment in communities from Cincinnati, Ohio to Winston-Salem, North Carolina to Riverside County, California. The book shares UDA's time-tested, 10-part "charrette process."

The charrette brings together local residents, government officials, real estate developers and other stakeholders to guide the design process. Using the existing community's "best addresses" as an ideal, UDA produces a unique pattern book that describes preferred neighborhood building arrangements and architectural styles. The plans emphasize the area's natural features by making parks and public space an integral part of each project.

UDA has one cardinal rule that guides these working sessions: "No matter how many encounters you may have with participants, the first time you meet people, you are asking questions, not giving answers." Judging from the work presented in this full-color manual, they are asking the right questions. Their designs are scaled for pedestrians and they incorporate building sites that can accommodate single-family homes, multi-family residences, civic buildings and commercial space.

The book is stuffed with specifics--everything from consensus building tips to digital filing guidelines. Architects, engineers, planners and developers are the obvious target audience for this trade book. But, new urbanists and city enthusiasts everywhere will also enjoy it as an entertaining and instructive reference.

I was extremely disappointed in the book. I was expecting a book to learn from, but found that the whole thing read like a sales pitch / qualifications for the firm that wrote the book. I think if I had paid more attention to the fact that the "author" was a firm, I would not have bought it.

It is geared toward residential development, rather than overall urban design issues.

UDA's Urban Design Handbook is a good reference for architects, planners, community activists, and real estate developers. Gindros and Co. explain how their firm designs neighborhoods and towns is a wide range of settings.

Folks who are in this business will appreciate the step by step approach which extends right down to UDA's conventions for organizing slides and computer files. -always a challange in a collaborative work environment.

The book grew from the firm's internal training material. If your approach to design differs from UDA's, the Urban Design Handbook is still a valuable framework for developing your own tools for communicating the mechanics of your firm's technique and vision to new employees effectively.

John Anderson
Chico, CA...

Gindros and Company at UDA distilled the stuff they do every day (-designing buildings, neighborhoods and towns), into a manual for their own new hires. Then they expanded this information into a handbook for publication. The book presents an excellent framework for design work at several scales, from the individual building through the building blocks of great neighborhoods, the street, the block, the public spaces.

This is a great book for any architecture or planning firm. Learn from the 40 plus year history of Urban Design Associates.

It gives a good idea on Urban Design Projects in clear steps. And I also encourage all Architecture and Urban Design students to buy it. It makes urban design fun to practice.

a great book for any student of architecture, urban design or planning. a must. the pictures are quite beautiful and full of color. extremely helpful even if your professors are difficult to impress, take some hints from this book and you'll be spot on.

This book is a rare but insightful look into the practice of one of the New Urbanist legends. UDA began the pattern book revival a decade ago (and also has a book out describing the process of writing one.) They also are one of the pioneers of the New Urbanist revolution, which, by discarding the fictions of Modernist planning, have rediscovered existing methods and have discovered new methods of creating compact, mixed-use and walkable neighborhoods that were always the basic cellular structure of cities from the dawn of time until just before World War II. We have understood the basic principles again for some time. What this book shows are some of the mechanics of how to do it again.

this a firm way of working
just one way of doing things