All-of-a-piece urban design

To many observers, organizing urban design projects to be carried out building-by-building, and landscape-by-landscape by a number of developers according to an overall conceptual design is the core of urban design work. Many architects see all-of-a-piece urban design as inferior to total urban design because it is less a work of individual art. They believe projects would be better if dreamt of and designed by one hand as in Le Corbusier's design for the capital complex in Chandigarh or Oscar Niemeyer's work in Brasilia. Others, however, believe that it is only through all-of-a-piece urban design that both a unity and variety can be captured in large project design today.
The products of all-of-a-piece urban design run the gamut of design types: new towns, new precincts and urban renewal schemes. Few all-of-a-piece urban design are as theatrical as many total urban design although Haussmann did very well in Paris! Their focus of attention depends on the nature of a culture and the nature of the priorities established by the stake-holders concerned.
The source of funding is always a concern but a special set of issues arises with all-of-a-piece urban design in capitalist countries. How are the pieces going to be implemented? Is the infrastructure to be built by the public sector? Or by the developer of the overall project? Or by the developers of individual site? Is the public sector to subsidize the work? Who is to oversee the development? Some public authorities or a private developer? All-of-a-piece urban designs vary considerably in dealing with all the concerns implicit in these questions.
Guidelines that can be defended in court contain three parts: the objective, the pattern required to achieve it and the argument for the pattern based on empirical evidence. If they do not, they are easy to challenge and to be dismissed in the courts and administrative tribunals of democratic societies.
All-of-a-piece urban designs involve the specification for individual buildings to some extent. The most global requirement id for building uses but many other factors can be stipulated for building and open space design.
The degree to which building designs should be controlled is open to debate. The urban design objective has been to define the character of the public realm - streets, squares and other open spaces - and to obtain a sense of unity and/or diversity.