The Education of Integration | Nov 8th at 11:20am
The three fields of urban design, urban planning and architecture are semi-amorphous. They overlap a great deal and aim towards many of the same goals. But by looking at the skill sets of most practitioners, you wouldn’t even realize that overlap exists. There is a striking lack of understanding between these silos of thought and practice—a problem that starts in the classroom.
The mid-morning discussion on education emphasized the need for better integration of these fields. They are in a constant state of interaction, but often the professionals within each of thee fields are not. This segregated existence is caused by segregated education, according to the panel of esteemed educators. Each is calling for the borders of these fields to blend, to create a more complete education of urban design.
“Many schools of arhitecture neglect the context, neglect urban design,” said Taner Oc, Director of the Institute of Urban Planning at the University of Nottingham. “It should be at the core of architectural education.”
Doug Kelbaugh, former dean at the University of Michigan’s architecture and planning school, agrees on the need, but underlines the difficulties
“Design education in general needs revamping,” Kelbaugh said. “The challenge is to bring great urbanism and great architecture together.”
This need is especially relevant today. More and more architects are undertaking huge projects across the globe that call on them to act as both architects and master planners. But an architect is not a master planner. Not those who were educated in the past, anyway.
And really, that’s true of the present. I remember being an undergrad studying urban planning not long ago and I would walk from one end of campus to the other to get from the planning school to the architecture school. But I wasn’t trying to get to class or hear a lecture. i was going there to meet friends. In my own education, the two realms of planning and architecture had virtually no interaction at the academic level.
The challenge is to bridge the gap. This doesn’t necessarily mean that planners should be designing trusses or that architects should be drafting housing policies. But they should at least be able to understand the importance of each, and understand how the micro and the macro of the other fields are inseparable. The change all starts with education, and educators who understand how these fields have failed to fully integrate in the past.
Nate Berg is the assistant editor of the urban planning news website Planetizen, where he reports, blogs and podcasts about urban planning issues. The topic areas he's most interested in right now are the environment, public space and event-based urbanism.
DSAdams in Toronto on Tue, Nov 11, 2008 at 9:27pm
The divide between urban planning, urban design, architecture and landscape architecture for that matter couldn’t be greater; the University of Waterloo (where I studied urban planning) and the University of Toronto (where I now study architecture) are proof. At the University of Waterloo urban planning is on the main campus and the School of Architecture forms a satellite campus in a different city, not that they talked much when they were in the same building. At the University of Toronto, the Daniel’s Facutly has done a good job at integrating architecture, landscape and urban design in the same building, unfortunately there is little discussion between them. Beyond this the University of Toronto has a second master of urban design program, with its planning program and run out of the Department of Geography. Aside from dividing talent and resources, when at the end of the day our combined efforts and work focus on the project of the city, this division sets up disciplinary tensions that stay with students well into professional careers.