Managing Urban Design: A Guide to Good Practice

This is an introduction to the secrets of Urban Design Management (UDM). The book examines the roles of the players involved in land-use projects and describes good collaborative methods of practice in project-based urban design and planning, putting emphasis on the creative co-operative skills and the wide knowledge of the participants in a working group. The role of the architect is examined in relation to design, planning and project management with particular emphasis on collaboration and negotiation skills. Specific issues considered include:

• The make-up of a good project team
• Ways to make the project team function together
• Objectives and benefits of project-orientated planning
• The need to take local characteristics into account in project-orientated planning
• The preparation required for a co-operative planning process and how initial information can be collected and used
• How to define project content, and outlining the project itself
• Partner-specific strategies

Urban Design Management contains international examples and many diagrams and photographs, making it a useful and accessible guide for all built environment professionals working in the public realm and those studying architecture, urban design and planning at a graduate level.

Antti Ahlava teaches urban design at Helsinki University of Technology and practices architecture at MOD Architects’ office. He was recently a Visiting Professor at Aarhus School of Architecture in Denmark.

Harry Edelman is a consultant in Urban Design Management at Edelman Group Ltd, Finland. He has conducted research internationally in conjunction with the recent affiliation at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a Research Scholar.