Urban Design is creating,
planning, inventing, conceiving, crafting and building cities and elements
of cities.
There is a growing recognition of the need for Urban Design in shaping,
managing and civilizing the quality of the metropolitan environment, not
just in the inner-city, but for the entire urban area, from center to
edge. Urban Design is now considered one of the central components of
planning education and practice.
We specialize in urban aesthetics and streetscape, urban structure and
form, sustainable development, urban conservation, neighborhood conservation,
identity, design controls and guidelines, and review of plans for proposed
development.
We collaborate with many different disciplines to create functional and
beautiful environments within cities. Bender Wells Clark Design
is capable of bringing together diverse specialists and technicians to
create a unified and coherent three-dimensional design. We work in a contributory
processes with our clients, governmental agencies, an assortment of constituencies,
and concerned parties to arrive at a vision that may guide the design
of a district, public policy, or investment strategies for an individual
project. We produce plans, perspective drawings, altered photographs,
models, and detailed drawings of key elements, particularly in the design
of public space.
"Urban
design is a subset of urban planning, concerned with the direct arrangement
of the physical space. Urban planning must consider other important issues,
including demographics, ecology, water supply, sewage treatment, transport,
energy supply, and so forth. Urban design deals with what we can see;
urban planning is effort undertaken to assure that the entire city actually
functions once built."
-J.H. Crawford