Urban renewal

Urban renewal, as its name suggests, refers to the process of rebuilding areas of cities that have become obsolete and abandoned, or are in a state of considerable decay. Unless cities become economically static urban renewal projects will continue to be undertaken. Over the last half of the twentieth century much has been learnt about how best they can be conducted. The field of urban design as a professional endeavour has grown with the experience of building total or all-of-apiece urban renewal projects.

Sometimes, urban renewal has involved slum clearance and the total rebuilding of environments but more usually now it has involved selective demolition and the integration of the old and the new in their design (e.g. Charles Center, Baltimore; see Chapter 5). Often the urban renewal occurs in a laissez faire manner without any overall cooperative intention. It would not be regarded as urban design here (although some projects might be regarded as piece-by-piece urban design). Some urban design projects have involved the retooling of existing areas by upgrading their physical infrastructure and the provision of new uses for existing buildings (e.g. Ghirardelli Square, San Francisco and Clarke Quay, Singapore, both described later in this book). Others have retained the original mix.

After the devastation of World War II in Europe, vast segments of cities were rebuilt sometimes replicating the past (e.g. Warsaw), but more frequently they were modernized. Cities such as Coventry and Rotterdam acquired new hearts. In European and the North American cities, major slum clearance and new housing estate projects have been carried out. They have had mixed results because the highly physically deteriorated world they replaced was often socially viable. The new products were unable to provide an environment for the re-creation of that social stability. Many of them have been demolished and rebuilt too. In some cases, such as the Paternoster Square precinct north of St Paul’s cathedral in London, areas were rebuilt only to be later demolished and rebuilt anew (see Chapter 8).

A new type of urban renewal project began to appear during the last two decades of the twentieth century. As the demographic characteristics of suburban areas changed so the demand for new facilities in their shopping centres occurred. What have appeared are new suburban downtowns rather like the traditional cores of cities. Sometimes this process has been abetted by the building of a new rail link (e.g. Bethesda, Maryland; see Figure 2.8). At other times it has happened because the suburbs have strategic locations on major traffic routes between major cities (Garreau, 1991). What has generally occurred has been that two- or three-storey high precincts have been replaced by high-rise commercial and residential developments. This process has often taken place willy-nilly but there are many examples where the redevelopment has involved a concerted urban design effort (e.g. Glendale, see Chapter 8 and Bellevue, Washington, see Chapter 9).

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