Planning and Urban Design Standards

Urban design is an interdisciplinary and group activity that involves a problem-solving process and solutions aimed at the physical organization of the city's public realm in a way that enhances the functional quality of the environment and the aesthetic experience of urban places. Urban design is concerned with the layout appearance and function of our suburbs towns and cities. It is both a process and an outcome of creating places where people live interact with each other and engage visually and practically with the physical space around them. Urban design is an interdisciplinary science encompassing many different disciplines including planning development architecture landscape architecture engineering economics law and finance and lessons from sociology anthropology cultural landscape studies environmental psychology human geography and health studies. Urban design operates at a variety of scales from the macroscale of urban structure (planning zoning transportation and infrastructure networks) to the microscale of street furniture and lighting. When fully integrated into policy and planning systems urban design can be used to inform land use plan.