Urban design within the planning process a case study of current practice "Block E" in Minneapolis

by Gritzmacher, Christopher.

This thesis examines the topic of urban design implementation by local government. The process of urban design implementation and the tools: policy, review, and regulation will be explored in detail. The study uncovered a wide body of literature pertaining to urban design; the literature however, was in many respects confusing and contradictory in regard to the nature of implementing urban design by public planning officials. The literature review revealed many different approaches to defining the tools of urban design, yielding a wide variety of terminology and jargon used to describe implementation procedures. Out of this bewildering quagmire, George Varkki’s pointed criticism of the literature describing the lack of a definition of urban design offers a workable framework for analysis for academics, practitioners, and students. Varkki article gives rise to an alternative definition of urban design which relies on the processes and techniques of the practicing urban designer. This theoretical paradigm was developed to analyze the effectiveness of the literature and examine case study findings of current practice in Minneapolis, MN. A framework was subsequently constructed to further clarify the tools of urban design and examine the ways in which these tools were applied in a case study. The implementation of urban design in Block E utilized many of the tools of urban design (urban design policy, urban design review, and regulation). How urban design was enacted in this process, however, was again unclear and muddled, upholding Varkki’s claim. This study, thus confirms Varkki’s argument and advocates for increased attention of scholarly research to be focused on the procedural elements of urban design. I II