Design must be appreciated as a crucial factor in sustainability. Through design, we can create a “sense of place” and engender a sense of belonging and individuality. Through design can we enable people to make an emotional connection to a place by imbuing it with character, memory, identity, orientation and individuality.
As we globalize and become more homogenous, there is an increasing need to create a new or enhanced identity that differentiates neighbourhoods or cities. Our practice is often asked to create a “place”, and establish an identity, as distinctiveness and uniqueness may give a city a competitive edge, something of crucial importance to new and regenerating cities. We are often tasked to decipher what the image should be for an individual project, a community or even a city - one that is unique to that particular place, that is strong enough to create an identity, and most importantly, will be embraced by the public.
Cities are the most sustainable approach to diminishing global resources and using proximity as a means of efficiency. Our cities’ public landscapes require a special focus, as these landscapes can provide and enable a positive life for the people who live in cities and view it as a piece of a city’s infra-structure. It is the urban landscape that serves as the platform for sustaining our natural environment, contains our public transportation, infra-structure as well as provides for variety of places and spaces for citizens to meet, recreate, and connect to one another as citizens of a place.
Due to the rise of mega-cities, a vast global trend towards urbanization, plus a surge of new and old cities that are growing, the role of the urban landscape is rapidly evolving in its importance. The urban landscape is fast becoming understood as being crucial to a city’s performance and liveability. It is also shaped by social, cultural, economic and political operations of people and communities. These more human-generated systems are rooted in our own, very human behaviour. However, without understanding their inclusion in the planning and design process, it will be impossible to design successful public spaces, or to achieve sustainability, not only on a city-scale, but at any scale.
Very importantly for new and evolving cities, the urban landscape underwrites both environmental and human health and provides the arena for social interaction and integration of immigrant communities. Well planned and designed public plazas and streets can help to spur regeneration of cities and underwrite an urban economy. Many mayors of major cities acknowledge the role the urban landscape plays in keeping existing population and by attracting new populations to their cities so they can grow their economies and thrive.
The beautification of a city and the accessibility to green spaces and tree-lined streets are used to entice knowledge-based workers to come to live and work in that city. The public realm landscape is the new stage for cultural events. In a city’s major civic open-spaces is expressed the cultural aspirations by which a society wishes to see itself and be seen by the world. The ability for the urban landscape of a city to provide the forum for the cultural life of a city is now of utmost importance, as the cultural and environmental health of cities is a major attractor for a city.
Great urban landscapes help to generate a positive quality of life in cities, and are, in part, what makes communities desirable and cities “great”. The character of a city comes through good planning, the quality of the housing stock, and the design of attractive streets and pedestrian walkways, parks and open spaces. These are the elements that create community’s or city’s “character”- much more so than individual signature buildings. We all choose to live in a neighbourhood first and then choose the house. As well, we choose to live in the city first and then look for a nice neighbourhood.
Design in itself cannot make cities successful, as cities are a very complex layering of moving parts. However, for a city or a project to function maximally, the design quality of the landscape becomes extremely important. The design quality of the environment is a crucial factor in whether a city or an individual project can achieve sustainability and reach its fullest potential.