| Abstract: | Urban design is becoming a hot topic in academic discussions and engineering practice in the transformation of urban development in China. This paper systematically summarizes the historical development concerning urban design ideas and thoughts. Based on an in-depth analysis on the development frontier in urban design discipline and professional field in both China and abroad, the paper concludes that urban design has undergone several development phases, including traditional urban design, modernist urban design, and green urban design. Considering the new urban design development trend that is characterized by digitalization as the method and tool, the paper puts forward the "digital urban design paradigm" as the fourth generation and sums up its five innovative values. The most important characteristic of urban design is "multi-scale experiential control on space in the whole chain," and digital urban design has greatly expanded the scale of such kind of experiential control. The relationships between the four generations of urban design paradigms are not simply successive, but inherited and partially iterative urban design "paradigm synthesis" under the joint effects of design objectives with difference in similarity, various spatial scales, and various social demands. Digital urban design possesses not only the social values and design originalities of man-machine dialogues, but also quantitative properties and database outcomes, which can more effectively combine with or even merge into the statutory urban planning system of China. Thereupon, the leap-forward development of urban design based on systematical coordination can be realized. |
