b'MUDD 25 - Urban Intensity l Urban Design - SydneyI really wanted a real estate, construction and buildingReflecting recently on another 25th anniversary in our dimension, colleagues in the School of Buildingfield, a quarter century of the Journal of Urban Design, I were not very enthusiastic (we ultimately went to theexpressed the challenge of sustaining this as follows:development industry for this expertise).We met at theOnly theory constitutes the difference between late Professor Reids home and settled all the detailsprofessional and lay opinion.It is also the sole in an afternoon.Everyone agreed on an integratedmeans of prediction that deals with reality.This development and design approachthe double Ddoes not assume that experience, practice and of MUDDengagement with Sydney as an urbanprofessional conduct are insignificant. But they laboratory, a strong international focus and the idea of aare all manipulable by a diversity of interests and three- session program, where one whole session wouldare collectively unable to formulate a coherent focus on an international field trip built into the structurepraxis of society and space - the foundation of the program.The name was agreed -Master infor urban design . . . . Urban design projects Urban Development & Design, and MUDD came intomerely manifest as rather large commodities existence.Mutual respect dictated that each foundingwhere constellations of spaces of different member would take a period as MUDD coordinator, withsizes and locations serving different economic Professor James Weirick going well beyond any call offunctions are organized, constructed, sold and duty in his current and long- standing commitment. exchanged like any other good . . . the answer as to future research and scholarship may have Over the last quarter of a century, the world hasto be constituted in an intellectual collision and inexorably changed.Urban Design awareness has alsoultimate fusion of commodified production qua changed with it.When MUDD began, Globalisationurban design (practice) and political economy had a relatively low profile, there was not the feeling of(substantial theory) . . . . Such integration is desperation that exists todayclimate change, politicalnecessary so that urban designers cannot ignore dtente, neo-corporate control, the weakening ofthe meaning and morality of what they do as nation states.Similarly, there was space to think, sinceagents of the state and capital. (Cuthbert 2020, software had not yet replaced imagination and creativity. pp.11,13)Urban Design has been changed by all of these events.But it is accompanied by the demand for sustainableIt is now quarter of a century since the MUDD Program development (as it is simultaneously undermined by thebegan, and it has educated over 650 students from institutions of capitalbanks, insurance companies,39 countries.Intake has morphed from a largely corporations, think tanks etc, all driven by profit and anAustralian and Indonesian entry in the beginning to overarching neo-con ideology).Students today haveone that is largely Chinese today, and we still have to good reason to be politically motivated beyond any priorsee the wreckage that NCV could impact on university era since the challenges to their future are immediateprograms internationally.Over that time, technology and life threatening.Tragically, all of the aggressionhas also changed, and the first MUDD yearbooks (folios) between nation states with the war industry in the U.S.contain many projects that are hand-drawn (at that Britain and other countries bringing nuclear and othertime architects could still draw). In addition the rise of a weapons into play, bacteria could easily win outAIDS,business model as opposed to an academic model for SARS and now NCV -the Novel Corona Virus, could beuniversity education has even changed the look of covers more lethal without wasting one third of all planetaryto the yearbooks, since everything now must possess resources on the war machine. a corporate, standardised appearance, where even the colours are dictated.It is worthwhile to take a look at The MUDD Program has always endeavoured tothe first ten years of MUDD covers and compare what maintain a critical view of global development forces,greater freedom allowed in design. Jodi Lawson has describing and analysing them through the lens ofbeen a stalwart in the program for around twenty years, spatial political economythe manifestation in urbanwithout whose input the yearbook would never have form of global patterns of investment and disinvestment. reached the heights it has attained.Many others too 8P1-20200229-FOLIO INTRO.indd 11 2020/3/3 1:21:08'