**Theoretical Aspects of Spatial Planning**

**1** 

*Canada* 

Abraham Akkerman

**Philosophical Urbanism and** 

*University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK* 

**the Predilections of Urban Design** 

*Department of Geography & Planning, and Department of Philosophy* 

The scholarly thrust of urban planning is its use of, as well as its contribution to, social science. As a discipline bordering with civil engineering, furthermore, urban planning has always carried also an important cross-disciplinary message beyond social science. Yet the association of urban planning with *humanistic* disciplines and the fine arts has been undervalued or ignored altogether. At a time when the vast majority of humanity resides in cities, however, this association is implicit in the primary purpose of urban planning, as a constituent of contemporary social, scientific and technological progress, aimed at the

Epitomizing the bond of urban planning with humanistic concerns and the liberal arts is urban design, sometimes considered a sub-discipline of urban planning, at other times viewed as an extension of architecture or landscape architecture. Also due to the long history of built form, urban design has a tradition of thousands of years. Whereas urban planning usually traces its origins to the nineteenth century, the deliberate design of built

The purpose of the present chapter is to explore urban design from the perspective of two of its historical, albeit overlooked, aspects: philosophy and psychoanalysis. Focusing on the historical perspective of urban design the present chapter aims precisely upon these two aspects as presently missing links. Philosophical concerns and psychoanalytic backdrop that throughout history have been instrumental in the built urban form have been largely ignored in discussions surrounding urban design. Yet urban design, and by extension, urban planning in general, ought to consider these two missing links in the construction and understanding of our built environments not only as historically significant, but also as guiding considerations in the planning and design of human

Some recent reflections upon the built environment have related urban design with what has been termed by Friedrich Nietzsche as the Dionysian and Apollonian dispositions of the arts, and with the philosophical urbanism of Walter Benjamin. The present chapter will explore the nature of this linkage suggesting a psychoanalytic discourse related to foundational gender aspects in the process of urban design. In the contemporary milieu of

advancement of both society as well as the individual human being.

urban form goes millennia back, to Çatalhöyük, Mohenjo daro and Jericho.

**1. Introduction** 

habitat in the third millennium.
