Urban Design Inside Buildings?

We have seen plenty of buildings without consideration for urban design, it is quite a pleasant surprise, therefore, that urban design seems to have found its way into buildings. Yes, not as a consideration of the surroundings and the setting, but as an interior organizer!

Uber design by SHoP Architects

Architect Magazine reports this in its article about the new Uber building and its design:

The building is designed as a kind of vertical city, divided into "neighborhoods" with a circulation spine on the Third Street side called "the Commons." [...] the idea is really that every neighborhood, every engineered neighborhood is connected to this interior street called the Commons." (Christopher Sharples, Principal SHoP Architects)

 Even the Department of Defense uses urban design terminology in its ed-specs for its 21st century schools on army bases (DOD's school system is only a tad smaller than the Baltimore City School System which also uses the term 21st century schools for its school construction program and has similar words in its ed specs:

A neighborhood has four different sizes of instructional spaces, the Learning Hub, the Learning Studio, The Group Learning Space and the One to One Space

What can possibly go wrong inside these buildings with their streets, neighborhoods and commons? Not much more than in any actual city!

Klaus Philipsen, FAIA