A Humanism Urban Design Cognitive Theory

The urbanization of China has entered the stage of reducing speeds and seeking qualities.Human needs and the relationship between citizens and cities have gradually become the new dominant factors.Among them,the need for cognition become the type of citizens' needs that modern urban design has to deal with first by transcending other basic needs and leading to the Ultimate Care of Human finally.However,the existing urban design cognitive theories are stuck in the limitations of Empiricism.Through returning Humanism,restarting from Kant's Critical Philosophy and using Husserl's Intentionality as a new Epistemology this paper attempts to develop a new urban design cognitive theory.The results show that the new theory has two parts:(1)The premise of urban design for perceptual cognitive need is to give up the Natural Attitude and realize the spontaneity of perception,while refusing to maintain the absolutely passive acceptance of presentations and recognizing the potentials of optimizing presentations in urban physical environments.Following the Transcendental Attitude,the urban design should explore the various perceptual objects deprived by the modern cities,and try to ensure the objects can present themselves fully to citizens.In the worst situation,misconceptions can be used to compensate for the lack of perception.(2)The goal of urban design involving Categorical level for rational cognitive need is to make citizens' rational lives realities.The urban design should focus on the elements' significances in urban physical environment rather than the images,promote their Identities(the Common Meanings)from the Ambiguity to the Clarity,ensure that the Categorical activities of designers and citizens become the Subjectivity Activities leading to the truths about urban material environment and make the rational cognitive activities provided with the Evidence parts of citizens' rational lives.Besides,the Evidence from the Ambiguity to Clarity is also proved to have two parts: the truth of correctness and the truth of disclosure.They are categorized to the perceptual cognitive needs and the rational cognitive needs respectively.This paper directs the path to the Evidence for urban design: refuse the psychological reductionism on the Evidence;dispel the superstition of Rationalism about Methodology and logic reasoning;understand a truth that the rational lives are built up in complex mixtures of the Absent,the Present,the Ambiguity and the Clarity;distinguish the structural layers of Propositions in significances;treat individual evidences as the foundation of the Evidence.In the introduction firstly there is a description based on the assimilation of the modern Urban Design and Urban Planning which is totally a tool of public administration in China and a cause analysis of theories pointing out that the main Urban Design theories are unable to respond to the human needs standing on the anthropocentric position due to their philosophical foundations are scientific or naturalistic in the West.Secondly the transcendence of cognitive needs puts forward a perspective that it is necessary for Urban Design to respond to needs for cognition before representing Ultimate Concern.At last,the existing cognitive theories of Urban Design are attributed into three categories: New Functionalism,Environmental Psychology and City Image.The main part of this paper begins with the argument on the defect of Jan Lang's New Functionalism cognitive theory and the decline of Environmental Psychology pointing out that the Empirical epistemological foundations lead to the limitations of the modern Urban Design in cognitive field.Then the Empirical tendency is proved to be inherent for the modern Urban Design with the separation between Urban Design and Urban Planning which adheres to the Economy Principle and the Rationalistic tendency.At the end of Chapter 2,with the inherent cognitive defect of Empiricism the existing cognitive theories of Urban Design is proved to be impossible to overcome the Empirical limitations by themselves.In Chapter 3,the Renaissance origin of Humanism is disproved with evidences from the ancient Greek and the historical system of Humanism is discovered by interpreting Alan Bullock's The Humanist Tradition in the West which states that Empiricism is just a very small part of Humanism in history.Preparing for finding a new available epistemological foundation in its tradition Humanism is also proved to be stabilized and viable at the end of the Chapter.Kant's break through Empiricism is the beginning of Chapter 4 which chooses Edmund Husserl's Intentionality Theory to replace the Empirical epistemological foundations with its attribute of transcendental ego interpreting Herbert Spiegelberg's The Phenomenological Movement and collating the theoretical framework of the early Phenomenological movement at the end.By interpreting Robert Sokolowski's Introduction to Phenomenology his classification and summary of Husserl's Intentionality Theory are systematically collated in Chapter 5.In Chapter 6 interpreting Kevin Lynch's The Image of the City sublates the concept of public images which is replaced by common meanings and on the other hand reveals the real effects and complex relevance of perceptions and language in the process of cognizing the extrinsic physical environment.And based on all above,developing a Humanism Urban Design cognitive theory which is constructed on Intentionality Theory and to approach the Evidence is tried.As the conclusion Chapter 7 summarizes the approaches and premises of urban design to the Evidence,and finally tries to explain that the evidences of the Beautiful or the Good is higher than the Subjectivity owning the Truths;as the prediction puts forward three orientations for the Humanism Urban Design cognitive theory to develop in the future: a kind of Urban Design which is against the visual-centered tendency and serves all kinds of perceptions,a kind of unphysical infrastructure which is made up of the Common Meanings and a kind of city which is full of sympathies and diversified cultures by suppressing the endless requirement of comfort.