Beyond Geometry: The Hubris of Urban Design

I was listening to a podcast recently that revisited Sigfried Giedion’s lectures, later published as the now-iconic Space, Time and Architecture, and one idea stayed with me long after the episode ended. Giedion never proposed a single “ideal city”, but rather traced how different eras tried to impose order on the city through geometry, from Renaissance diagrams to star-fort plans, each one drawn with the belief that space could be organised for generations still to come. "

"What struck me was not the geometry itself, but the confidence behind it: the assumption that what we shape today is worthy of being carried by people we will never meet!! Contemporary urbanism is sometimes structured around short cycles like project timelines, funding windows, election periods, feasibility phases, name it! We speak about adaptability and process, but rarely about futures we ourselves will not inhabit!!"

"James Corner’s argument echoes in that space. He calls for a shift from the fixed “master plan” to the open “framework”, and that shift feels especially familiar in the Netherlands, where we work with kaders and ontwikkelstrategieën: spatial structures designed to evolve rather than conclude, confident in what they set in motion, but humble enough to accept that they will change."

"Somewhere between the historical urge to draw cities with absolute intention and our contemporary tendency to keep everything provisional sits a question that keeps returning to me: what takes centre stage: Designing with the future in mind, or only with the present in hand?