ABSTRACT
Although titled The New Urban Design Companion, this volume is a sequel to our earlier project, Urban Design Companion, which was published in 2011. In the introduction of the earlier publication, we discussed how the field of urban design, while having roots in architecture, landscape architecture, and urban planning, has become increasingly interdisciplinary, as appropriate for a field that focuses on the urban form and the socio-spatial organization of cities. Indeed, in addition to technical and aesthetic matters of form, urban design’s content and praxis are influenced by public policy, relevant social sciences, and also the arts and humanities. As an intellectual endeavor intended to inform practice, urban design scholarship is interested not only with aesthetic issues but also with the social, political, cultural, and economic forces that affect the built environment and its residents, as well as the human and environmental consequences of design interventions. Accordingly, this New Companion continues the assemblage of rich and critical ideas about urban form and design from a set of new contributors. Purposefully, not all authors invited have design backgrounds; nevertheless, they all have interest in the contemporary urban experience, are engaged in critical analysis of the urban outcome, and are willing to discuss normative implications of their critical arguments for urban design.
