Overall Urban Design

Coming into being in the late 1990s and the early 2000s in China, the overall urban design, which is also called general urban design, integrated urban design, or comprehensive urban design for its fussing meaning, mainly refers to the urban design carried out for an entire city or a large-scale urban area. Compared with the urban design at the micro level that is usually done for a specific site, the overall urban design is more strategic, comprehensive, general, and policy-oriented, aiming to address design issues at the macro level, such as urban identity, urban landscape, civic activities, open space system, transportation system, advertisement and identification system, urban color, city skyline, etc. It provides certain design controls over urban development through urban design guidelines, design principles, design briefs, research reports, and so on, which is a very important complement to the statutory urban master planning that has been widely criticized for emphasizing too much on static land use and ignoring the three-dimensional shape of urban space.