The project, of  a small or large space, is the main device architects, urbanists, landscape architects share. Designing is a process of learning by doing,  a mode of thinking and advancing knowledge (Schon 1980). It is about the kind of processes, the form limit or make possible (i.e. social, environmental, economic).  

Three cognitive strategies are constitutive of the designer/planner way of thinking trough designing: conceptualizing (i.e. utilizing or generating concepts), describing (i.e. reveling hidden orders) and projecting (i.e. testing hypothesis of transformation) (Vigano´ 2016). This is a useful frame to order groups of relevant techniques of design/planning the contemporary city.

The term technique refers to both the instruments and the procedures used to achieve a result (i.e. ideas, tools, chain of operations, rules) (Gabellini 2010). Techniques are `invented´ or adopted from other disciplines, modified along time, to form the toolkit of the `reflective practitioner´, that remain open to innovation.