The article discusses the theoretical basis of the environmental design development as project assimilation of cultural and environmental realities of a large city urban environment, which is characterized by acute manifestation of all environmental problems. The relevance of environmental approach is reasoned, methodological context of which reflects the main position - "human-inclusion" - an inseparable integrity of the person and the environment. The potential of environmental design is revealed as a way of implementing an environmental approach to the design of the urban environment in order to harmonize relations in the urban system "man - nature" and include the responsibility of a man into them. In the context of complementary strategies for the development of the city environment the leading philosophical ideas, principles and functions of ecological design, implementing a co-evolutionary path of sustainable development, approaches of postnonclassical science and postmodernism through the expansion of knowledge by rational and irrational methods, nonlinear processes of thinking, discourse, artistic creativity are justified.