URBAN DESIGN: The art of creating and shaping cities and towns

Urban design involves the arrangement and design of buildings, public spaces, transport systems, services, and amenities. Urban design is the process of giving form, shape, and character to groups of buildings, to whole neighborhoods, and the city.  It is a framework that orders the elements into a network of streets, squares, and blocks. Urban design blends architecture, landscape architecture, city planning, engineering, and development economics together to make urban areas functional and attractive. It draws these and other strands together creating a vision for an area and then deploying the resources and skills needed to bring the vision to life.
The reason of poor physical environment in our cities is especially the poor organization of space. The aim of this course is to focus on the potentials and problems of urban space within the framework of urban design. This course attempts to teach the basic elements and principles of urban design are, and the background and method to criticize and analyze the urban space and urban design projects.
This course combines theoretical discussions, readings, group works, and presentations on urban design in order to develop design students’ capabilities to read and analyze the urban space. To do this, it requires the active participation of students to the course. Therefore, each discussion and reading on urban design ends with a group work and a presentation. These group works which consolidate the knowledge and capabilities of students on urban design help the instructor appraise the learning levels of students. Furthermore, the performance of students determines the major part of final grading. The final grading includes a mid-term, and a personal research and its report as well.