Explaining the Creative Design Process of Urban Space

Problem statement: 

As a professional mix of Science and Art, Urban Design always needs skillful people in order to submit suitable results with artistic and functional values. For this purpose, specialists of urban design managed to develop different patterns about designing process. Creative Designing is one of the mentioned processes.

The real objective of this paper is to define a process of creative urban design in an urban scale. It may not only consider general steps of creativity but also respect the common process of urban space designing. For this purpose, the main question of this research is: “What are the various steps of creative designing of urban space?” This paper intends to examine the extant ideas in the field of creative process and also urban design process and compatibility of these two concepts.

Upon a comprehensive evaluation of current ideas about creative designing in different fields, in this study, the relevant process and upgrading techniques have been extracted with a qualitative method and analytical attitude. Then its compliance with the urban space designing process by the use of focus group was examined. Finally, the steps of the creative designing process of urban space were extracted accordingly.

Some of the major factors in the complexity of creativity in urban space designing are complexity and various dimensions of urban space, variety of stakeholder groups, a great number of visual elements and effects of other involved fields in the creation and upgrading the qualities of urban space. Creative designing of urban space is different from other creative designing methods and is applicable in five major steps including 1. Introduction; 2. Focus; 3. Incubation; 4. Illumination; 5. Assessment.