At its best, urban design helps turn complexity into something legible. It does not try to iron out the life of a place. It tries to understand it, work with it, and create the conditions for it to thrive.
Urban Design is not a Tidy Sport
07 Jul 26
Belgium’s win on Tuesday morning got us thinking about Belgian Art……..
Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s Children’s Games painting (above) is basically a 16th-century town centre on World Cup quarter-final night.
People everywhere. Noise. Movement. Games within games. No obvious rules. Someone probably blocking a desire line.
For urban designers, that is the point. Towns and cities are not tidy diagrams. They are messy, emotional, unpredictable places shaped by people, memories, movement, economics, landscape, heritage, politics and the occasional person who absolutely must park outside Greggs.
So, what is our role in all of that?
At its best, urban design helps turn complexity into something legible. It does not try to iron out the life of a place. It tries to understand it, work with it, and create the conditions for it to thrive.
Richard Sennett’s idea of the “open city” is useful here: places should be adaptable, incomplete and capable of changing over time. Yi-Fu Tuan’s idea of “topophilia” reminds us that places also carry emotional weight. People care about the streets, buildings and corners they grew up with.
Add in the need for compact growth, better connectivity, climate resilience, biodiversity, economic vitality, heritage, viability and planning policy, and the urban designer starts to look less like an artist with a blank sheet and more like a referee, coach and midfielder rolled into one.
In Scotland, National Planning Framework 4 brings many of these themes together through its focus on liveable, productive and sustainable places. That makes the role of urban design increasingly important.
At Iceni, we are now home to 12 disciplines (and that doesn’t mean 11 staters and a sub). For me, that is the real strength of working here. Our Urban Design team can draw directly on community engagement, heritage, economics, transport, landscape, impact management and planning expertise.
That means ideas are tested, challenged and improved from the start. It also means we can help clients move from ambition to delivery without losing sight of what makes a place distinctive.
Because good urban design is not about creating perfect places. Perfect places are usually quite dull. It’s more like good football. The pitch needs clear markings, sensible rules and a referee, but it’s the unpredictable movement, creativity and atmosphere that people come to see.
If you would like to know more about Iceni’s Urban Design work in Scotland, or want to discuss a project, please contact me at rgibson@iceniprojects.com.
Written by Robbie Gibson with football references thanks to Ian Anderson
Robbie Gibson
Urban Designer Consultant,Masterplanning and Urban Design
Ian Anderson
Chief Executive,Planning
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