The term urban design is used at Harvard inquite a limited and specific sense to mean an area of interaction between the three professions of architecture, landscape architecture and city planning, which are there housed together under the general umbrella of the Graduate School of design. I have come to this conference fresh from the Harvard commencement ceremonies and this year considerable play was made with the president's traditional greeting to the graduating class from, the Harvard Law School as men qualified to devise "those wise restraints which make men free." I would like to take this phrase as a description of the tasks and limits of urban design as we see it.