Urban systems involve a multitude of closely intertwined components, which are more measurable than before due to new sensors, data collection, and spatio-temporal analysis methods. Turning these data into knowledge to facilitate planning efforts in addressing current challenges of urban complex systems requires advanced interdisciplinary analysis methods, such as urban informatics or urban data science. Yet, by applying a purely data-driven approach, it is too easy to get lost in the ‘forest’ of data, and to miss the ‘trees’ of successful, livable cities that are the ultimate aim of urban planning. This paper assesses how geospatial data, and urban analysis, using a mixed methods approach, can help to better understand urban dynamics and human behavior, and how it can assist planning efforts to improve livability. Based on reviewing state-of-the-art research the paper goes one step further and also addresses the potential as well as limitations of new data sources in urban analytics to get a better overview of the whole ‘forest’ of these new data sources and analysis methods. The main discussion revolves around the reliability of using big data from social media platforms or sensors, and how information can be extracted from massive amounts of data through novel analysis methods, such as machine learning, for better-informed decision making aiming at urban livability improvement.

The organization of modern city planning into “neighborhood units” – most commonly associated with the Clarence Perry proposal of 1929 – has been enormously influential in the evolution of modern city form, and at the same time has also been the subject of intense controversy and debate that continues to the present day. New issues under debate include social and economic diversity, maintenance of viable pedestrian and public transit modes, viability of internalized community service hubs, and efficient use of energy and natural resources, including greenhouse gas emissions. We trace the history of this controversy up to the present day, and we discuss new developments that may point the way to needed reforms of best practice.

Livability reflects the quality of the person–environment relationship, namely how well the built environment or the available services in a city fulfill the residents’ needs and expectations. We argue that livability assessment can aid the implementation of certain New Urban Agenda (NUA) goals by providing a flexible way to assess urban environments and their quality. However, a reliable and transferable assessment framework requires the key elements of livability to be defined in such a way that measurable factors adequately represent the person–environment relationship. As an innovative approach, we determined key livability elements accordingly and asked over 400 residents worldwide to evaluate their urban environments using these parameters. Thereby, we could calibrate the livability assessment workflow by including personal aspects and identifying the most relevant livability factors through an ordinal regression analysis. Next, we performed relational-statistical learning in order to define the individual and combined contribution of these statistically significant factors to the overall livability of a place. We found that urban form and mobility-related factors tend to have the highest influence on residential satisfaction. Finally, we tested the robustness of the assessment by using geospatial analysis to model the livability for the city of Vienna, Austria. We concluded that the workflow allows for a reliable livability assessment and for further utilization in urban planning, improving urban quality by going beyond simple city rankings.

The year 2007 marked the 20‐year anniversary of A New Theory of Urban Design (1987), a slender volume by Christopher Alexander and colleagues that serves as a notable milepost within the half‐century old “design methods movement” in which Alexander himself played a seminal role. The “generative” design method of A New Theory focused less upon the specification of a final form through schematic planning, and more on the stepwise process by which a form might emerge from the evolutionary actions of a group of collaborators. In so doing, it challenged the notion of “design” as a progressive expression of schematic intentions, and argued for a conception of design as a stepwise, non‐linear evolution in response to a series of contextual urban factors. In the 20 years since, significant progress has been made to develop the insights of generativity in urban design, as in other fields. Some of Alexander’s ideas have been incorporated – notably by practitioners of The New Urbanism – and some have been challenged and dismissed, including, notably, by Alexander himself. The author assesses progress since this milepost volume – substantial, he argues – as well as setbacks and shortcomings, and significant opportunities still remaining.

The design of campuses, like other aspects of contemporary environmental design, must be reassessed in light of the challenge of sustainability. This paper considers the “modern” campus design typology (including business campuses, commercial districts, hospitals, and schools) as a design paradigm for pedestrian public space, with implications for human flourishing and well-being. Its findings point to a serious problem: while the foundational design theories of a century ago have been widely critiqued as an obsolete way of thinking about cities, human nature, biological nature, and even the nature of mathematical and physical structures, we find that, in the case of campuses, the pervasive influence of these obsolete theories can still be seen in practice. Specifically, a new “techno-modernist” aesthetic offers visually exciting new “neoplastic” forms but is built on essentially the same discredited concepts of urban space. We propose a more directly human-oriented design methodology to promote the well-being of occupants, and improve outcomes for creative development, education, and health. This analysis resurrects tested traditional design tools and validates them through scientific findings from mathematics and neuroscience. It also adopts the older “design pattern” methodology of Christopher Alexander by linking it to biophilia and neuro-design.