People-centred Urban Design & Public Space

The aim of this course is to enable students to design public spaces based on an understanding of how people perceive, understand and utilize urban space, that would in turn lead to future places that are supportive to what people want to do, minimizing the chance of misuse or neglect of these spaces. The course covers the seminal normative theories of urban design and illustrates to the students the relation between those theories, their limitations and how they relate to other courses such history of urban form, neighbourhood design and the basic theories of environment-behaviour studies. The course conveys to the students the importance of public space and the multiple functions it plays in people’s lives; how its is at once a place for movement, for leisure, a workplace and a place to learn and grow. It equips students to address public space and be able to address its multiple economic, social and political dimensions; having the knowledge and synthesizing skills to plan and design the most integral and central urban element as defined by the latest global manifestos. Through field visits and literature review, the students will be trained on physical survey, behavioral observation, reading maps, photographic documentation, conducting interviews, documentation and analysis of collected data as well as participatory design and presentation to stakeholders.