pursued in an academic context and the needs of current professional practices confronting urban scale design challenges. Grounded in over ten years of design-based research generated by the post-graduate Constellation Urban Design studio at Columbia University (MSAUD), the book makes three claims: First, that urban design sites are extensive territories, spatially and temporally. Second, that no matter their size, projects built in cities do more than house use-program; they provoke urban transformations far-reaching in time and space. Third, that polishing the surface appearance of the city is insufficient. The ideas and projects in Constellations argue that to achieve a substantive effect the urban designer must engage a broad array of physical forms, infrastructural interconnections, development models and social agents. The diverse content of the book conveys the breadth and variety of practices that can today be included under the rubric of urban design, while revealing a shared approach to framing urban design problems using innovations in representation to promote conversations across design disciplines, between theory and practice, and among the many processes and players implicated in city-making.

Hide more