08/08/2022
! Lecture x Simona Paplauskaite, Colm mac Aoidh, Frederick Serroen -
TUNE IN via link in bio.
The quality of the urban environment derives from various interventions and policy decisions over time and reflects the collective work of multiple stakeholders – public, private, and community.
While European cities have developed sophisticated laws and regulations (‘hard power’) to secure diverse public interest objectives through the governance of urban design, the quality of the resulting urban places can be disappointing. Often the outcomes are not aligned with commonly shared objectives such as creating environmental sustainability, human scale, land use mix, conviviality, inclusivity, or supporting cultural meaning. This shows the limits of formal framework within which the urban developments are planned and delivered.
Over the last two years, Urban Maestro project aimed to understand and encourage innovation in the field of urban design governance through a better knowledge on alternative non-regulatory (‘soft power’) approaches and their contribution to the quality of the built environment. As a result, it selected and highlighted a panorama of innovative practices that can be used as a source and inspiration for future policy updates supporting the informal approach to the governance of urban design.