Yazdani is design principal of CannonDesign and the founder and director of the Yazdani Studio / Yazdani Studio

There has been “a wonderful renaissance” in public realm design, but a lack of meaningful investment threatens to hold back further progress.

That is the view of Mehrdad Yazdani, design principal of Yazdani Studio at CannonDesign, who told CLADglobal that “the design community needs to lead the way in helping cities address issues” challenging the long-term success of great public spaces.

“My team has worked on a vast array of public projects and over the past three decades of my career, I’ve seen our collective perception of public space evolve,” he said. “Emerging generations of urbanites are moving back into our cities’ urban cores and seeking quality public spaces and amenities. The urban environment is attractive to young people disinterested in owning a car, more focused on environmentally friendly transit, and eager to ride, bikes, visit cafes, and socialise in the public realm.

“Occurring in parallel, a large number of Baby Boomers are now retiring, leaving suburbia and moving into downtown apartments and condos. They represent a highly educated population with resources who prefer to be within walking distance of public amenities like performing arts centres, museums, great restaurants. The convergence of these two trends - Millennials and Boomers - is fueling a wonderful renaissance for urban spaces.”

Yazdani argued that these trends are driving the creation of more livable cities. He said: “Across the world, cities with downtowns that had come to resemble ghost towns are welcoming all different types of people, activity and opportunity.

“This civic resurgence is an exciting moment for architects and landscape designers – it compels our most innovative work. Urban centres are often plagued by limited space, congestion, high construction costs, and so even the smallest interventions, like transforming a redundant parking area into a sidewalk seating area or a small park, require us to address these constraints and require high levels of creative energy.”

However, the architect warned that, in the US at least, a lack of meaningful investment is threatening the long-term success of the current public realm renaissance.

“The level of investment and the prioritisation of public space that has occurred for centuries in Europe, the Middle East and Asia doesn’t exist anymore in the US,” he said.

“I remember taking my teenage daughter to Rome and we had just visited St. Paul’s Cathedral and were sitting in the Piazza reflecting on the experience when she looked at me and said, ‘Dad, this is an amazing space. Why don’t we have these kinds of spaces in the US?’

“Public spaces here often aren’t owned by entities committed to creating lasting contributions to our public realm. Cities struggle with limited budgets and creating lasting public space is rarely a key agenda item for governments. This means it can fall to communities and/or private developers with different interests or even tighter budgets. Fixing this reality is the largest challenge we face. Until we do, we’re still far from creating the lasting spaces our future generations deserve.”

Yazdani heads his own laboratory for exploration and experimentation, Yazdani Studio, within the international architecture firm CannonDesign in order to “leverage the best attributes of a small design studio with the resources and reach of a global practice”

The firm's cultural and leisure designs include proposals for the Armenian American Museum in Glendale, California and the Bollywood Museum in Mumbai's Film City.

He is currently working on projects including four high-rise residential and hotel towers in Dubai, a remodelling and expansion of the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles and a new Global Neurosciences Institute in Philadelphia.

CannonDesign's Baltimore basketball arena 'embraces movement' through design

'An icon for the city': CannonDesign craft Maryland Heights sports and wellness centre

Quebec ice hockey and entertainment arena to deliver 'unrivalled spectator experience'