Montgomery, John. 1998. “Making a City: Urbanity, Vitality and Urban Design.” Journal of Urban
Design 3 (1): 93–116. https://doi.org/10.1080/13574809808724418.
New Zealand Urban Design Protocol. [2005] Wellington, New Zealand, Ministry for the
Environment. See, especially, “Section 3 – Key Urban Design Qualities – the Seven Cs,” pp 17-24.
https://environment.govt.nz/assets/Publications/Files/urban-design-protocol-colour.pdf
Background
Part of planning is about managing, supporting, and shaping development to create places that
have good infrastructure, amenities, meet public policy goals, and create good, livable urban
places. In this assignment, students will evaluate the areas in which their first assignment
development profiles were located and develop a short paper on whether these areas are well
planned or are becoming good urban places. This is part of the job of a planner and is even a
criterion for why development may or may not be approved by City Council or the Provincial
appeals tribunal. While what is “good” is not entirely objective, your evaluation should be based
on clear criteria and observed evidence of what ways your study areas may or may not be good
planning. The optional reading may give you some guidance as well as class lectures and
discussions for deciding on your evaluation criteria.
Learning Objectives for Development Profiles.
In this assignment students should:
• Start to develop a set of concepts about what is a good urban place based on the
optional reading, other sources, your own ideas, etc.
• Apply these concepts to evaluate an urban place thorough grounded observation.
• Communicate this understanding in writing.
Outline of Assignment
Students will write a 1,250 to 1,500 word paper (about 4-5 pages double spaced) to evaluate
whether their study area constitutes good planning.
You can draw on course lectures, the optional readings, and your own ideas to develop some
criteria or concepts for how you might evaluate this. You may also do additional readings or
online sources but be sure to properly cite them in your paper.
Do not think in terms of what you like or dislike (as in, ‘that building is a funny colour!’) but
rather what elements of the built environment are meeting planning goals and serving people’s
needs.
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The following are some potential questions you might ask:
• Does your area have good accessibility to the kinds of goods and services you need on a
regular basis? Can you get to these things by walking?
• Is your neighbourhood walkable? What elements of the area can you point to that
demonstrates the quality of the walking environment?
• Are there good neighbourhood amenities such as parks and good public spaces?
• Are there attractive public spaces that seem like they would feel inviting and be well
used? What are indicators can you use to evaluate this?
• How public or private does your area feel. Does is feel inclusive, welcoming a range of
types of people, or exclusive and unwelcoming? How might the development here
contribute to this?
• What might be missing from this place that you think should have been provided as part
of the development of the area?
• What might have been lost from its development?
This is not a required list. You can pick out a few or even just one of the issues on the list and
analyze your area based on them. Or you might want to ask very different questions as well.
Again, the option readings can be helpful here. You might also look at Secondary Plans that
contain city policies for subareas of the city (here) and use some of the stated objectives in these
plans and ask if the development occurring is contributing to these goals. You can also be
creative in what you do if you are clear about what you are evaluating and how. Part of the
intellectual work of this assignment is to decide what indicators to look at or what criteria to use
to make your judgment.
Study Areas
I suggest that you use the area in which your development profile was located. Each of these is
in a secondary plan area – a district with a set of planning policies for that place. You can find the
secondary plans here.
You are not expected to do a complete, systematic, detailed evaluation of a whole secondary
plan area. Some of them are too large and complex to do so. How you approach this depends on
the approach that you take and what you decide to look at. Some things might be measured
across the whole area. For others you might want to select a subarea to look at in more detail.
You could also do something like take a “transect” or a walk across the study area to examine
the characteristics of this route. State how you decide the area to focus on and include a simple
map.
Sources
Sources are your building profile, course lectures and discussions, and, especially, your own
observations. You do not need to formally cite yourself but should make clear what information
is from your own observations. You can do this in the text, or might want to add a note that
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applies to the whole document (“In this report, all observations related too….are based on my
own field observations…).
For observations, visit the area if you able to and take notes and photographs. If you cannot visit,
use Google Street View to get a sense of what it looks like on the ground. You might, for
example, takes a virtual “walk” through it. Figure out ways to record this information through
notes, screenshots, drawings, or maps.
You may also draw on other sources including historical and other planning documents. This is
not, however, intended to be an exercise in secondary research. You could spend many hours
doing this, but it is not necessary to receive a good grade.
Map and other visual material
Include some simple maps of where you looked at and visual material such as photographs to
illustrate your observations and analysis. At minimum, include a simple location map (based on
google maps is fine), and a map that what part of the area you analyized (e.g. a subarea or
transect). If there is spatial information (e.g. the distribution of parks), this is also something you
might include. Be selective: each of your maps and photographs should be described.
Photographs and/or diagrams should be clearly related to your analysis. Please do not submit
more three pages of maps and photographs.
Working with other students
You may discuss your area with your classmates and share information. The essay should be
individual work.
Ethics
Your analysis may draw on your observations of inhabitants or users, but this should not be a
focus of your assignment. Observing people in public spaces conforms to research ethics
guidelines if:
• it does not involve any intervention staged by the researcher, or direct interaction with
the individuals or groups;
• individuals or groups targeted for observation have no reasonable expectation of privacy;
and
• any dissemination of research results does not allow identification of specific individuals.
This included photographs.
Anything that goes beyond these guidelines requires approval by the University Research Ethics
Board.
Grading:
Everyone is given 20% as a base for on-time turn-in. The remainder of the assignment will be
graded on:
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• content (50%)
• organization and mechanics (20%)
• maps and photographs (10%)
Content will be judge on the clarity of communication and the demonstration of analytical
thinking that draw from course material. Essays that are purely descriptive are not considered
complete in this regard.
Successful essays will clearly state the concepts and criteria you are using to evaluate the area
(accessibility, walkability, amenity, contextuality, connections, choice, etc) and how you define
them. You should clearly communicate the information/evidence you used to decide how your
area meets your criteria using evidence. This evidence should be based on your observations.
You should make a clear overall evaluation of the area based on this evaluation, that is how well
the area meets your criteria of evaluation.
Clear communication includes concise, grammatically correct writing that is easily understood.
A few relevant photographs, maps, or diagrams (3 pages max) should support your essay, but
including superfluous material that does not add to your main points will not improve your
grade.
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