Urban Design: A new journey for me

I worked in Residential landscape design in China before I came to study in Newcastle. The projects I have experienced include small gardens in residential areas, municipal parks, and commercial street landscape design. This work experience is of great help to me, enabling me to understand in practice what is reasonable space layout, humanized design, and more economical and practical completion of a design scheme.

I also encountered some difficulties in my work, which made me realize that I still have a lot to learn on the road of design. I want to stop and study and think, to study in a different country and think in a different way. Therefore, I chose urban design as my major. At first, I only knew the content of this major and this course through the description of some related books and the school’s enrollment brochure. Unlike architecture, landscape, and planning, the concept of urban design seems vague, inextricably linked to the other majors but not categorized.

Based on the period of study after this semester, I think urban design focuses on “connection”. The “connection” in the city, for example, the connection between the interior of the building and the external environment, the connection between a block and adjacent blocks, and the functional complementarity between regions.

What this discipline allows us to learn is how to design such a link to connect the contents of architecture and landscape, and at the same time, it also completes the plan step by step according to the framework of the planning scheme.

Urban design is the work of shaping the three-dimensional space of human settlements. Its purpose is not only to make a place more beautiful but also for better interaction between people and between people and the environment. Good urban design helps to improve the overall quality of urban life. Thus, it is not just a physical design process, but a balance of political, economic, cultural, and physical factors that affect a particular place. Urban design is always a collaborative effort because it requires a very broad knowledge base, background, and understanding. This is a multidisciplinary discipline. Among these professions, landscape architects, architects, and planners are the main ones. Urban designers work in many fields, which is especially important because each major and discipline brings different training and knowledge, as well as different feelings, to urban design teams.

I think, because of this, the urban design major also accepts and welcomes students with different professional backgrounds so that we can find the balance in urban design through teamwork.