Urban Maestro is an initiative that sought to identify, document, analyse and encourage innovative strategies for the governance of urban design, in Europe and beyond.
European cities have established sophisticated laws and regulations to organise and guide the great number of interventions and decisions that shape the urban environment over time. These rules are meant to secure diverse public interest objectives such as creating environmental sustainability, human scale, land use mix, conviviality, inclusivity, or supporting cultural meaning. However, if these sophisticated regulatory frameworks are good at protecting against the worst forms of urban development, they do not necessarily lead to satisfactory results. More than often, the quality of the resulting urban places is disappointing.
At its core, the Coordination and Support Action Urban Maestro aimed at understanding the contribution of alternative, non-regulatory approaches to the quality of the built environment. These approaches - that were qualified as ‘soft-power’ in contrast to the ‘hard-power’ of formal regulation and control – consider that the role of governments in urban development can be wider than acting as simple regulators or direct investors. They enhance the ability of public authorities to intervene as enabler, broker, or inspirational leader in shaping the future of cities, therefore emphasising the political dimension of urban design policy making.
Strategies to promote a high-quality built environment often combine different formal and more innovative informal tools to guide, encourage and enable better design. Example of informal tools include supplementing a zoning-based planning system with non-mandatory guidance, organising architectural competitions, establishing a peer review mechanism for design proposals, instigating temporary urban interventions, or creating financial incentives linked to achieving certain design or other social objectives. Of these various strategies, financial mechanisms and their relationship to informal tools of urban design governance represented a particular focus of the project, as synergies between such tools have the potential to make both approaches more effective in attaining their desired outcomes.
Urban Maestro highlighted and captured knowledge about how such initiatives are used in practice, with what purpose, and with what impact on delivering better-designed places. Ultimately, Urban Maestro has contributed to the global urban debate and the realisation of United Nations Sustainable Development Goals by spotlighting the potential of urban design governance practices within Europe and beyond.
