The life of city dweller is an infinite series of the journeys among sequences of
distinct colours, textures, resonances, events and experiences. The collected memories of these urban
wanderings is what he uses to construct and understand the city. Todays city dweller is under pressure,
confused and lost. On the one hand, there is a mass exodus. While on the other hand, city planners have
become obsessed with urban branding. lnto this near schizophrenic situation leaps the modern urban
designer as philosopher, artist, composer, agony aunt, hero, magician and saviour. In his role as
philosopher, the urban designers first task is to deal with the inhabitantsdeclared intention to leave
town as soon as possible, thus asking whether the place he is headed to is any better than the city he
is leaving. As a composer he must combine the different elements that conform the city into a series
urban symphonies and soundtracks: anti-monotypic landscapes, physical interpretations rieh in colour and
diversity. The urban designer must face up to the citys other horror story: the urban marketing blitz.
For this he must put on his heros cape and bring hope in the form of a plan: a landscape bombo When
managed as a creative and partiaIly controlled force, it has the power to punch holes in the fabric of
the Xerox city, producing spaces that are breeding grounds for fresh experimentation to give the people
something different. Different, in this case, can mean unstable, provocative and ugly. Who says the city
dwellers still need prettiness and quaint hule spaces in order to be happy? And finally, an essential
task for the urban designer is to glorify the citys identity. He does this by injecting challenging
environments and objects into all available space, generating new perceptive places that cannot be found
elsewhere. The sum total of which becomes the City itself.
