The Good City: Design for Sustainability

• The design professions are changing and designers are taking up new challenges.
• There is no set definition of what a designer is or what he or she does.
• The many problems in the world require new ways of thinking about solutions.
• The city is a practical sphere of action for designers.
• What is needed is an approach to sustainable system design for urban areas.

Today, we are faced with many problems to which designers can contribute solutions. Action can take place at three levels: the micro level, that of individual action; the meso level is the level of groups where the individual may still have some influence; and the macro level includes governments, international organizations, and large companies. At the outer limits of the meso level is the city, which is still potentially capable of adopting coherent policies for change. There are many good ideas about urban design although it is rare to find a city that has integrated a large number of them into a holistic system. What is called for is a systemic approach to these initiatives that will form the basis of a new theory of sustainable urban planning. Such a theory would take into account the following factors as well as others: 1) producing and distributing food; 2) recycling soft and hard waste; 3) providing shelter and eliminating homelessness; 4) microlending and stimulating cooperative businesses; and 5) providing alternative energy.