I am delighted to write this editorial for the first issue in Volume 14 of URBAN DESIGN International (UDI). At the same time, I feel very privileged to have been asked to serve as co-editor of the journal. This dedicated task brings the honour, happiness and challenge in maintaining quality and achieving the popularity of the journal. Yet, I am fortunate to be joined with an outstanding group of colleagues who have contributed to the journal's success, and who will continue to support UDI in the coming years.
I am very pleased to work and share the responsibility of co-editor with my colleague Michael Pitt who is Professor of FM and Head of Business Development in the School of the Built Environment at Liverpool John Moores University.
Michael and I would like to thank the previous editors, UDI has had, for the strong position we have inherited and the Editorial Board for their continued support. With this in mind, we are using this as an opportunity to revise and update the Board. As you will see from the Editorial Board listing on the inside front cover (or website if you are reading this online), we have added a number of individuals who represent a wide range of professionals from designers and architects to surveyors, engineers and policy makers. We are grateful for their willingness and enthusiasm to join the Board to select and improve the quality of the papers being published. The new Board is not yet finalised and we would welcome your suggestions and recommendations for potential new candidates.
With this first issue of 2009, we present papers from around the world reporting ongoing research and applications in urban design.
In the first paper, Quentin Stevens introduces his research on the contemporary urban waterfronts that are used in the leisure landscape developments. The paper examines public perceptions and use of urban waterfronts, focusing on the careful shaping of the land and water interface as well as the potential negative impact of artificial design on the waterfront environment.
The next two papers explore the urban design developments through urban morphological analysis, a relatively new research area for UDI. Mustapha Ben-Hamouche describes the cultural aspects and particularly the legal system that has a major impact on the traditional urban fabrics in traditional Muslim cities today. Fei Chen and Ombretta Romice recognise in their research the historical and cultural processes and their impact to urban forms and analyses the historical process of transformation of the urban blocks, plots and building fabrics and proves to be effective tool to solve the current problems in urban developments of Chinese cities.
UDI has a tradition of publishing at least one special themed issue each year, as such the journal invites contributions on the theme ‘GIS Technologies and Applications in URBAN DESIGN and Planning’. Please see the journals homepage at http://www.palgrave-journals.com/udi/index.html for full details and instructions on how to submit a manuscript. We also encourage proposals for future potential special issues and look forward to discussing these with you. In addition we invite reviews and research papers on the topic ‘Historical Development of URBAN DESIGN: From Babylon to Modern Cities’ for future regular issues of the journal.
Finally, I wish to invite researchers and practitioners from all urban design related disciplines and specialties to submit regular research papers, book and topic reviews and other contributions to the editorial office. We also welcome all criticisms and good suggestions on how to improve the quality of our journal and look forward to working with you.