Paper long abstract:

Urban spaces are increasingly technologically dense environments posing several requirements for urban design. This paper approaches urban design as creative action and examines the creative processes of the development of technologically dense urban environments. The paper builds on recent literature emphasizing that various types of constraints are an inherent part of all creative action. The aim here is to identify the key constraints in the development of technologically dense urban environments and to analyze the urban design practices of dealing with such constraints. Empirically, the study focuses on the development of an area, currently named Baana that cuts across downtown Helsinki. Baana was opened up in 2012 and it is presently a combined walk and cycle-way that was built on old cargo railway tracks. Interestingly, parallel to the design of Baana, an informal group of 17 professional artists, planners, industrial designers, engineers, business people, and researchers developed a detailed alternative for Baana and its surroundings, a design called urBaana. The study analyzes the urban design practices of this informal group and is based both on interviews of the professionals in the group and the design booklet produced by the group. The results refer to and discuss the importance of critical material entities, such as weather, existing urban plans and infrastructure that act as key constraints in the creative design of technologically dense urban environments.