Walter: I cannot be convinced that city design can be encompassed by formuae, any more than zoning standards constitute urban design. Opinion is unavoidable, and the job of architects is to arrive at a consensus as to irreducible basics couched in terms of values. The ultimate design program statement will be in words, not equations. Matrices, graphs, and sundry mathematical systems may come to bear, but they will serve a goal statement. History is unavoidable, as is a discussion of the purpose of cities as instruments of human habitation. Without agreement on a statement of purpose independent of categories of use, we will not have reached the fundamental theoretical raison d'etre for urban design which will predict a certain range of physical and pshycic proportions in order to be meaningful - and useful. My own conviction is that while any city may be interesting to adults in some of its various parts, we will not really understand what we are doing until we can make a cogent universal statement about the sum of the city's parts.
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Gary Collins AIA
Principal
Gary R. Collins, AIA
Jacksonville OR
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