Towards Methods for Criticism of the Urban Environment

Abstract

Environmental criticism, particularly the criticism of the built environment, has been mostly emotional and narrow-scoped. Architectural and planning competitions have been said to involve genuine criticism in the procedure of judging and ranking the entries. However, systematic and logically grounded principles are not easily found in the final documents of the competitions. Possible lines for developing methods of criticism are sketched here, although one has to admit that "the spirits of the ages" tend to stamp their marks on the practice of criticism.