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Figure 4.16
Drawings of Piazzas after Camillo Sitte,
Excerpted from ‘The American Vitruvius,’ by
Hegemann and Peets, 1922. These two examples,
San Gimignano and Perugia (Perouse), illustrate
one of Sitte’s main points about the asymmetrical
placement of major buildings in public space,
thus creating a series of varied spaces of different
sizes and character.
(Illustration in the public
domain)
manner of Pierre L’Enfant’s plan for Washington DC
(1791), or the Beaux Arts-inspired plans of the
American City Beautiful movement at the end of the
nineteenth century. Townscape principles of spatial
articulation are often hard to achieve in the context
of American towns and cities dominated by a repeti-
tive and uniform grid – derived from Thomas
Jefferson’s scheme for land division in the newly set-
tled lands of the expanding western frontier. But we
believe that these techniques are even more valid in a
context where the urban fabric lacks richness and
variety. By selectively, and we stress 
selectively
, break-
ing the unforgiving monotony of American grids,
and creating a more diverse palette of spaces for
human activity, the urban designer can create memo-
rability and significance (see Figure 4.18). These
qualities help mediate the complex and conflicting
demands, discussed later in this chapter, regarding
tensions inherent in a lot of urban design and plan-
ning. Global forces that seek to unify cities with com-
mon buildings and products are contrasted with and
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human behavior on design was importantly extended
by Christopher Alexander and others in their com-
pendium of design ideas, 
A Pattern Language
(1977)
and raised to a specifically urban level of considera-
tion in 
A New Theory of Urban Design
(1987). To
show how interconnected all these different strands
of urban design are, Alexander’s emphasis on urban
patterns also connects back to the work of Sitte,
whom Alexander frequently cites.
While this American socially based approach
shares many similarities and intentions with its
European picturesque counterpart, it also illustrates
an important difference. The townscape technique of
urban design retains the viewpoint of the specialist
designer. It is his or her eye that is composing the
urban scene. For Lynch, Jacobs and Whyte it’s the
perceptions and use of space by ordinary urban
residents that are paramount. This devolution of
design, and a desire to construct neighborhoods
and cities that are responsive to the needs and expec-
tations of their citizens is an important tenet of 
contemporary urban design. It illustrates the
push toward democratic populism and community
activism in architecture planning, noted in Chapter 1.
At the same time it indicates a third methodology
of urban design. This third, pragmatic mode of
operation is best categorized as ‘making places for
people,’ and synthesizes the design of urban space as
an aesthetic entity and a behavioral setting based
on the realities of human use and activity (Carmona
et al.: p. 7).
The place where the Americans, Lynch, Jacobs,
and Whyte most clearly come together with their
British counterparts, Cullen, Tibbalds and others is
DESIGN FIRST: DESIGN-BASED PLANNING FOR COMMUNITIES