ABSTRACT
The capacity for natural and built elements to act as symbols and to transform onefs mental picture of a place has been implicitly understood and utilized for centuries in the building of cities. In contrast to the intuitive and pragmatic application of urban design aspects in urban development by rulers, recent analysis suggest that the process can be rationalized and codified to act as conceptual framework for plan preparation and implementation. Such studies can be applied to a particular socio-cultural setting in order to explore the implications of the findings in planning and urban design policy for that setting. This study attempts such an application, in which some aspects of urban design as they relate to the Aims and Objectives of Urban Planning and Development, are examined. The contextual analysis 1B based on Kaduna Metropolis, Capital of Kaduna State, Nigeria. Essentially, the investigations cover the theoretical undertones of urban design relevant to urban planning in Nigeria in general and Kaduna in particular, in order to identify the options for articulating same in plan preparation and development control. A wholistic yiew is maintained as the basic approach for the analysis, with landuse and legibility as the control factors. This is in view of the scale of planning under question and the relative stability of the factor chosen. Furthermore, all policy decisions and actions ultimately are transformed in spatial terms. This is by no means the only important property of relevance to urban design, it is of special importance when considering environments at the urban scale in terms of scale, size, time series, complexity of space use and land as the fundamental platform for man's activities. The elements of the urban spatial composition were studied by observation and field measurements articulated in sketches and photographs. These were subsumed under four broad categories forming the structural components of Kaduna urban design aspects. These are landmarks, nodal points, areas of special interest and regional elements. The factors responsible for these categorization have been explained to be according to certain urban design principles and concepts described with the aid of illustrations. The study culminated into outlining general recommendations and conceptual models for curative and preventive measures. This was applied to Kaduna central area as curative measures. The study revealed that urban design is a component of urban planning. It offers a set of guiding principles which, when articulated in plan preparation and control of development, provides the foundation for a functional and aesthetically sensitive physical environment. At Independence, Nigeria inherited urban design aspects which now feature alien techniques and standards that lack the expression of the people's social and economic system. This has been accepted and applied without question. The development control measures are too general and do not provide the developer with satisfactory guidance of what is acceptable on planning grounds. Thus they fail to ensure that permitted devdopment blends into the built environment. More fundamentally is the case that the imput on urban design considerations during plan preparation stage is very minimal. Evidence suggest that curative and preventive measures exist for application of urban design aspects. Instead of handing over city designs or policy positions as an ostensibly finished products, physical planners should seek to write the rules for the significant choices that shape the city. This is to be done within an institutional framework that can be modified as times and needs change.