Abu Dhabi Urban Planning Council's Urban Street Design Manual on Abu Dhabi University's Curriculum

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3 Jun 2014

One of the Abu Dhabi Urban Planning Council (UPC)’s key design tools has now, for the first time, been included on a university degree course in the Emirate. From September 2014 their award-winning Urban Street Design Manual (USDM) is to be a permanent fixture on the curriculum at Abu Dhabi University (ADU).

Piloted in the 2013 educational year, the USDM was taught at ADU as part of the Highway Engineering course for civil engineering students, and plans have been put into place to implement the UDSM into the Urban Design course for architecture students. As a result of its success, the USDM will now be permanently included in these courses at the university from September 2014 onwards.

The USDM plays a significant role in developing Abu Dhabi’s urban streets and equips designers with the necessary tools to plan, design and build safer and more walkable streets in line with the objectives of Abu Dhabi Vision 2030. Although several lectures on the Manual have been delivered at a number of universities and colleges in the UAE, this is the first time that the Manual standards and guidelines have been officially included in a university’s curriculum.

This is a clear reflection of the USDM’s importance in defining and shaping Abu Dhabi’s urban landscape.

Representatives from the UPC will be working in collaboration with ADU to train and support their professors on how to teach the USDM.

Abdulla Al Shamsi, Executive Director, Strategic Affairs, UPC, said: “The UPC is always striving to plan Complete Sustainable Communities across the Emirate. A suite of manuals, including the USDM, were created specifically to achieve this objective.

“The UPC often collaborates with universities across the Emirate and the wider UAE to run courses and workshops to build awareness not only of the technical manuals, but also of the wider role our young students can play by embarking on a career in urban planning to support the realisation of Vision 2030. We are extremely proud that this collaborative approach has led to our award-winning Urban Street Design Manual having been chosen as a permanent fixture, for the first time, on ADU’s syllabus, and we look forward to working together in a similar manner with other Government and private educational institutions,” he added.

Commenting on the initiative, Dr. Aly Nazmy, Interim Provost of Abu Dhabi University and the Dean of the College of Engineering said: “This initiative unveils new horizons to our engineering students, and gives them the opportunity to be introduced to this unique Manual of international calibre in urban street design.

“This coincides with our constant strive to update and enhance our curriculum to include the latest developments and practices in each specialty to meet global standards. I believe many of our engineering and architecture students will be looking forward to learning more about the USDM with the beginning of the upcoming academic year 2014- 2015.”

The USDM has been gaining international acclaim recently for its best practice in street design. In 2013 it won the prestigious ITE (Institute of Transport Engineers) award for Best Programme, the first time the award has been won outside of the United States of America.
The UPC’s Urban Street Design Manual online design tool is also increasingly attracting international attention and is currently being used by architectural and engineering students at distinguished universities in the USA, including Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

The design tool is a complimentary application on the UPC’s website that can be accessed from anywhere in the world. Since its launch in 2012, approximately 11,000 users have used the tool, with 50% of these being from outside of the UAE.