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RMIT Centre for Urban Research
A hub for interdisciplinary urban researchers responding to the globally important need to shape cities that are environmentally, socially and economically sustainable.
‘People make cities,
and it is to them, not buildings,
that we must fit our plans’
and it is to them, not buildings,
that we must fit our plans’
Jane Jacobs
What is Urban Design?
Urban design is a collaborative process to help shape and design the future form and performance of our cities. Cities are complex, made up of physical elements such as infrastructure, landscape and buildings, but also more intangible elements such as culture, governance and the experiences of those who live there. Urban design coordinates these elements to make cities and neighbourhoods where people want to live, creating places that respond to their context.
Urban design is visionary
Negotiating complex issues and interests, seeking to address current and future problems within our built environments. Through urban design, we pursue an equitable urban environment with a human and ecological focus.
Urban design is a process
Exploring how to improve and protect our urban environments. Often operating at a strategic scale, urban design navigates the intersection of social, economic and environmental factors over a long period of time.
Urban design is an integrated discipline
Bringing together people from diverse fields to collaboratively explore complex relationships in our cities. Urban designers focus on the public realm – all elements of built and unbuilt space – and intentionally shape our urban environments.
