This paper explores the proposition that the combination of emerging theories of urban design and local economic development offers a powerful paradigm to explore community sustainability and a rich medium to explore contemporary issues in cities and rural centres. The proposition is able to ask any of four questions of design processes and outcomes depending on the study area context:
•  Can community design involve socially disadvantaged transient populations on the periphery?
•  Can design develop urban design interventions that act as a catalyst for new forms of employment?
•  Can design develop innovative solutions to environmental sustainability?
•  Can design explore the environmental, social and economic tensions between the centre and periphery of poly-nucleated cities?

Examples are drawn from a number of advanced landscape design studios at the Queensland University of Technology in which students are required to justify their design interventions in terms of their potential to assist local economic development and not in superficial terms of cosmetic improvements to urban landscape amenity. Recent work indicates that these concepts are also transferable to non-urban contexts. The studios are important contributions to QUT’s commitment to using the design studio as a site for research.

INTRODUCTION

In recommending a National Urban Design Education Strategy (NUDES) the Australian Council of Building Design Professions (BDP 1996, 2) suggested that urban design is relevant to urban construction activity of all types and scales and that urban design is also concerned with:
· the physical arrangement and functioning of urban activities;
· the physical appearance of the built environment and its relationship to the natural environment;
· the way people experience it; and
· the social and economic factors, which influence its character.
In concerning itself with these things urban design is said to centre on the quality of areas for all users by focusing on how we can consciously improve the quality of our urban environments (BDP 1996, 2).

Support for this approach to a definition of urban design notes that contemporary urban design embraces environmental, social and economic issues and as such is much larger than the three professions of architecture, landscape architecture and planning that have traditionally laid claim to the activity of urban design. The “Mant Report” (1994, 7) noted that urban design is socially important as a means of building equitably supportive towns and cities; and for the way it can strengthen economic life and competitiveness. NUDES (BDP 1994, 3) argued that an urban design education strategy is of national significance because it affects the quality of life, economic performance and environmental quality and sustainability in rural villages, small and large towns, and regional and capital cities.

Human habitat and urban design have thus become the focus of much attention in the last decade. As a result there has been a proliferation of writings which have re-invigorated debates about urban issues. Urban design requires both creative problem solving and design skills that are well informed by research, analysis and cultural criticism. Research and analysis provides a framework upon which it is possible to build an understanding and make sense of issues in particular communities. Writings on urban design encompass many disciplines and many different approaches from traditional studies of urban form to challenging propositions about the impact on urban life of economic reform, cultural studies and the space/time collapse of cyberspace. In an era of profound economic and social re-structuring there has been a serious questioning of traditional paradigms and within the context of post-modernism and beyond, a search for appropriate new paradigms that are more robust in dealing with these complexities. Underlying the search for alternative possibilities are equity concepts such as community, collaboration and sustainability.

What appears to be strong in the “Mant Report” but weaker in the BDP’s adopted definition of urban design is the reference to economics. Mant asserts that urban design can strengthen economic life and competitiveness whereas BDP simply notes that character can be influenced by economic factors. Both assert that economics is a necessary consideration in urban design but neither offers any recommendations about how economics might influence education in urban design. Closer examination of the “Mant Report” (1994, 8) however, shows that it draws on an unreferenced OECD Report, Revitalising Urban Economies, that includes a statement to the effect that strong infrastructure investment and a focus on environmental quality is necessary to stimulate economic activity. This OECD Report is cited as also asserting that the quality of a region’s urban environment can be a decisive factor in attracting and accommodating investment and economic activity.

The OECD appears to draw back from the view expressed in Revitalising Urban Economies when it subsequently notes that there are tensions between social, environmental and economic concerns in seeking sustainable outcomes in urban development. This shift in view is evident in a reference to revitalised regional economies in Europe which have done nothing to regenerate local labour markets by polarising incomes, deepening social segregation, increasing commuting, and contributing to high levels of long term unemployment in poorer areas (OECD 1996, 63). It can be argued that this observation calls into question the “Mant Report” (1994, 8) focus on global and national competition among cities as being a valid basis for considering economic issues in the BDP Education Strategy.

What is beginning to emerge is a realisation that local and regional economic sustainability can be greatly enhanced by a more multi-layered approach in which local economic development assumes a much higher profile. In this scenario local economic development becomes an essential player with the primary goal of adding local stability to offset the fluctuating effects of national and global economies. Local Economic Development (LED) (or Community Economics) is emerging world wide as a means of value adding the inherent latent strengths of communities such as: imbedded local tacit knowledge; the mutually supportive potentials of diversity of social capital; untapped local resources and opportunities for diversification; and the new knowledge economies of cyberspace.