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This is a praxis-oriented study that compares architects and planners' approaches to understanding and dealing with built environments. It examines the underlying issues regarding the conception of'good'built forms, which contributes to the current intellectual divide between architecture and planning professions. While planners generally deal with urban form as a by-product of socioeconomic relations and good planning processes, architects perceive urban form as determinative of the urban experience and quality of life. The study ultimately aims to develop a nuanced understanding of urban design concerns within a North American context. Planners and architects are profoundly involved with community issues, politics, and public decision making and hence face-to-face dialogues with practitioners is an effective tool to build informed urban design knowledge. The researcher elected the urban region of Toronto as the locale to interview practitioners due to its economic and cultural centrality within Canada (in particular) and North America (in general). Toronto region is home to an array of planners, architects, landscape architects and other professionals who deal with local, regional, and global issues affecting urban design and related practices. Urban design involves partnership and interaction on many levels; as such, the research methodology is rooted within a constructivist interactive paradigm predicated on achieving pluralistic understanding of urban issues. More emphasis is placed on inductive approaches, contextual analyses, and mutual learning informed by explanatory social, architectural, and planning models. This approach not …