Toward an Urban Design Manifesto

It is about six years since Donald Appleyard and I completed "Toward a New Urban Design Manifesto."In large measure it was student-generated, growing out of afirst-time course that Donald and I gave, "Theories of Urban Form." The course examined the physical forms of urban development associated with particular periods, or with design movements, or with ideas about urban form-ideas such as the livable city or the new towns' movement, or the Charter of Athens. We tried to distill the essential urban physical characteristics of each period and of each idea and attempted to assess them against values such as health and comfort, self-reliance, opportunity, and accessibility. Students, as always in the good classes, contributed to the research, the presentations, and the debates as much as Donald or I did. We concluded, among many conclusions, that the new towns and garden city movements, on the one hand, and the cities inspired by the Charter of Athens and the International Congress of Modern Architecture, on the other hand, were perhaps the most powerful influences on the form of today's cities as we experience it. I think they are still, even though we have turned slightly back toward the importance of the street in city design. We, like others, were pleased with neither movement's principles. At a final class session, students suggested we write our own manifesto, a "Berkeley Design Manifesto," fhey called it. It was time for something different, something better to help guide our work and perhaps the efforts of others as well-an assertion of what was right. Donald and I took their challenge. How could we not? "Toward a New Urban Design Manifesto" was the result. We had an opportunity to test our conclusions at a major address that was part of the American Planning Association Conference in Sun Francisco in 1980. The response was better than we might have expected, just as it has been at the numerous other occasions when it has been presented in one form or another. It was not so warmly received, however, by the editors and reviewers of JAPA, who wondered where the research was to support our assertions.