Urban Design: Shaping Attractiveness of the Urban Environment

Urban design is one of the key instruments of physical transformation employed to enhance urban quality and achieve sustainable urban environments. Confined by environmental, economic and social realities, urban design is largely influenced by the principal power brokers, including developers and public authorities. The lack of direct end- users participation in the preparation of design solutions is one of the major shortcomings of contemporary urban design. Solving this problem is an important challenge to the contemporary urban design practice. This book develops an approach that identifies subjective views of end-users in any urban locality as to what constitutes, for them, attractiveness of the urban environment, and further determines how this information could be integrated into the urban design process. The concept of attractiveness of the urban environment, introduced to this study is based on the subjective views of end-users. This innovative concept of urban design will be more user friendly, reflect local values, cultures and conditions and also contribute to the creation of a more diversified sustainable urban environment.