Urban design theory and practice aimed at sustainability. The Liverpool Study Cases in the United Kingdom planning system

Abstract

Urban design is the most traditional field of physical planning which focuses more on the physical design of places and deals with fine-tuned design approaches (John Lang, 2005). It is founded upon the social, environmental, political, aesthetic and economical sector, but public realm is also important factor for the urban design, to serve the public interest and to provide opportunities and cultural dimensions. In present, urban design challenges are very different from the past. In contemporary situation the cities have been facing environmental, social and economic challenges that demand to devise new planning approaches. At the same time, the cities also have been suffering the lack of policies to resolve these problems, and any singular approach is not sufficient to address the new challenges. The design theories applied to city planning are traditional- which are not capable to meet the demand of the growing complexity of the world. To cope up with the urban design challenges, the main contributions of this thesis are detail evaluation of the urban design methods, analysis of applying these methods in real life practice. The main questions are: What are the theoretical approaches for the urban design for sustainable changes? And how to react with the sustainable changes in theory to practices? Firstly, I describe the urban design land-use plan and policies, application fields, participating actors, different types of urban projects, considering related issues and methods for implementation process. Secondly, I have done a case study of contemporary practices in the United Kingdom, specially the Liverpool city's urban regeneration planning approaches toward sustainable developments. In this case study, I analyze the land-use plan and planning rules, urban projects and their context, local and transit oriented development, the decision making and the implementation process. After detail analysis of urban design methods, this thesis bridges the gap between theory and practice, by focusing on how to improve the theoretical approaches and how to use these approaches in contemporary planning practice