Urban design is an approach to the design of buildings and the spaces between them that focuses on specific design processes and outcomes. In addition to designing and shaping the physical features of towns, cities, and regional spaces, urban design considers 'bigger picture' issues of economic, social and environmental value and social design. The scope of a project can range from a local street or public space to an entire city and surrounding areas. Urban designers connect the fields of architecture, landscape architecture and urban planning to better organize physical space and community environments.
Jane Isabel Jacobs was an American-Canadian journalist, author, theorist, and activist who influenced urban studies, sociology, and economics. Her book The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961) argued that "urban renewal" and "slum clearance" did not respect the needs of city-dwellers.
Public art is art in any media whose form, function and meaning are created for the general public through a public process. It is a specific art genre with its own professional and critical discourse. Public art is visually and physically accessible to the public; it is installed in public space in both outdoor and indoor settings. Public art seeks to embody public or universal concepts rather than commercial, partisan, or personal concepts or interests. Notably, public art is also the direct or indirect product of a public process of creation, procurement, and/or maintenance.
Bharat Ratna Mankombu Sambasivan Swaminathan was an Indian agronomist, agricultural scientist, geneticist, administrator and humanitarian. Swaminathan was a global leader of the green revolution. He has been called the main architect of the green revolution in India for his leadership and role in introducing and further developing high-yielding varieties of wheat and rice.
Yasmeen Lari is Pakistan's first female architect. She is best known for her involvement in the intersection of architecture and social justice. Since her official retirement from architectural practice in 2000, her UN-recognized NGO Heritage Foundation Pakistan has been taking on humanitarian relief work and historical conservation projects in rural villages all around Pakistan. She was awarded the prestigious Fukuoka Prize in 2016 and the RIBA's Royal Gold Medal in 2023.
The Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP) is the architecture school of Columbia University, a private research university in New York City. It is also home to the Masters of Science program in Advanced Architectural Design, Historic Preservation, Real Estate Development, Urban Design, and Urban Planning.
The Urbz: Sims in the City is a video game for the Game Boy Advance, GameCube, PlayStation 2, Xbox, and Nintendo DS. It is the third Sims game for video game consoles and is the second Sims game not to be released on Microsoft Windows, after a planned PC port and sequel were both cancelled due to mediocre sales. The next release for consoles and handhelds was the console port of The Sims 2.
A sustainable city, eco-city, or green city is a city designed with consideration for the social, economic, and environmental impact, as well as a resilient habitat for existing populations. This is done in a way that does not compromise the ability of future generations to experience the same. The UN Sustainable Development Goal 11 defines sustainable cities as those that are dedicated to achieving green sustainability, social sustainability and economic sustainability. In accordance with the UN Sustainable Development Goal 11, a sustainable city is defined as one that is dedicated to achieving green, social, and economic sustainability. They are committed to this objective by facilitating opportunities for all through a design that prioritizes inclusivity as well as maintaining a sustainable economic growth. Furthermore, the objective is to minimize the inputs of energy, water, and food, and to drastically reduce waste, as well as the outputs of heat, air pollution. Richard Register, a visual artist, first coined the term ecocity in his 1987 book Ecocity Berkeley: Building Cities for a Healthy Future, where he offers innovative city planning solutions that would work anywhere. Other leading figures who envisioned sustainable cities are architect Paul F Downton, who later founded the company Ecopolis Pty Ltd, as well as authors Timothy Beatley and Steffen Lehmann, who have written extensively on the subject. The field of industrial ecology is sometimes used in planning these cities.
Amanda Jay Mortimer Burden is an American businesswoman who is a principal at Bloomberg Associates, an international consulting service founded by Michael Bloomberg as a philanthropic venture to help city governments improve the quality of life of their citizens. She was the director of the New York City Department of City Planning and chair of the City Planning Commission under Mayor Bloomberg from 2002 to 2013.
Mitchell Joachim is an architect and urban designer. He is the Co-Founder of Terreform ONE, and a Professor of Practice at NYU. Previously he was the Frank Gehry Chair at University of Toronto and a faculty member at Pratt, Columbia, Syracuse, Washington, The New School, and the European Graduate School.
Paul F Downton is a sustainable city theorist and activist, ecological architect, urbanist and professional writer on architecture, ecocities, environment and the arts. He designed the Christie Walk development in Adelaide, Australia.
Susan Morton Blaustein is an American feminist, international development practitioner, professor, and philanthropist. She is the founder and executive director at WomenStrong International which invests in local women's organizations worldwide, brings them together to learn and share, and amplifies their solutions to improve the lives of urban women and families and to advance progress toward gender equality. Blaustein, who also teaches at Columbia University, was previously a journalist and foreign policy analyst focused on international human rights issues, and a prizewinning American composer, with awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Library of Congress, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Guggenheim Foundation.
Tane Matsukata (in kana まつかた たねこ), often written Tané Matsukata or Matsukata Taneko, was a Japanese educator and librarian, founder and principal of the Nishimachi International School in Tokyo.
The contributions of women in climate change have received increasing attention in the early 21st century. Feedback from women and the issues faced by women have been described as "imperative" by the United Nations and "critical" by the Population Reference Bureau. A report by the World Health Organization concluded that incorporating gender-based analysis would "provide more effective climate change mitigation and adaptation."
Soumya Swaminathan is an Indian paediatrician and clinical scientist known for her research on tuberculosis and HIV. From 2019 to 2022, she served as the chief scientist at the World Health Organization under the leadership of Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. Previously, from October 2017 to March 2019, she was the deputy director general of programmes (DDP) at the World Health Organization.
Tatiana Bilbao Spamer is a Mexican architect whose works often merged geometry with nature. Her practice focuses on sustainable design and social housing.
Karla Maria S. Rothstein is an American architect and adjunct Associate Professor at Columbia Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, where she is also the founder and director of Columbia University's trans-disciplinary DeathLAB Rothstein is also the co-founder of Latent Productions, an architecture, research, and development firm in New York City, which she co-founded in 1999 with Salvatore Perry. A significant focus of her architecture practice, research, and teaching has been redefining urban spaces of death and remembrance.
Louise Harpman is a New York–based architect, urban designer, teacher, and author. She is a Professor of Architecture, Urban Design, and Sustainability at New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study and the founding principal of the design and research practice, Louise Harpman__PROJECTS. She was previously a founder and principal of the architecture and design firm, Specht Harpman.
Kotchakorn Voraakhom is a Thai landscape architect and chief executive officer of Porous City Network, a social enterprise that looks to increase urban resilience in Southeast Asia. She is also the founder of the Koungkuey Design Initiative, which works with communities to rebuild public spaces. She campaigns for more green space in cities and is a 2018 TED fellow.
Urban vitality is the quality of spaces in cities that attract diverse groups of people for a range of activities at different times of the day. Such spaces are often be perceived as being alive, lively or vibrant, in contrast with low-vitality areas, which may repel people and be perceived as unsafe.
