PLN3 - History of Urban Planning

The Linear City, 1882

• By Arturo Soria y Mata

• Zone for railway lines

• Zone of production together with educational institutions

Industrial City

• By Tony Garnier

• A self contained new settlement with its own industries and housing close by

• Designed as a socialist utopian form of living for 35,000 inhabitants

True

True or False: in Tony Garnier’s Industrial City, there were no churches or law enforcement buildings in hope that man could rule himself

Le Corbusier

• Most notable for his Unite’d’ Habitation at Marseilles in France and his grand project for the Capital City of Punjab at Chandigarh

• Wrote 2 books:

  • The City of Tomorrow

  • The Radiant City

Unite’d’ Habitation, France

• By Le Corbusier

• Communal Living

• A city within a city innovative approach toward spatial organization to accomodate the living spaces as well as the public, communal spaces

Radiant City

• By Le Corbusier

• Corridor streets were destroyed

• Automobile traffic was to circulate on pilotus supported roadways 5m above the earth

• The entire ground was given as a “gift’ to pedestrians, with pathways running in orthogonal and diagonal projections.

Mohenjo Daro

An ancient planned city known for its grid layout and sophisticated drainage system.

Hippodamus of Miletus

Ancient Greek architect, planner, physician, mathematician, meteorologist, and philosopher considered the “father of urban planning.”

Hippodamian Plan

Urban plan based on streets intersecting at right angles

Democratic

Hippodamus of Miletus envisioned the city as more than a place to live and work he viewed it as something “______, dignifiedm and graceful".”

Physical Base

4 Bases of Pattern of Planning for Cities:

• Visible manifestations of roads, buildings, open spaces, and other features that give it form

Political Base

4 Bases of Pattern of Planning for Cities:

• Essential for the meaning of the city

Economic Base

4 Bases of Pattern of Planning for Cities:

Provides a reason for its existence

Social Base

4 Bases of Pattern of Planning for Cities:

City life

Middle Ages (5th - 15th C.)

• Dwellings which give shelter for livestock and as place of refuge from attackers

• Towns as centers of trade, marketing as well as defense

• Centered on the church

Renaissance Cities (14th - 17th Century)

• Axis style of city design

• Formal piazzas, monumental designs for open spaces, boulevards, dwellings.

14th Century Onwards

• Development of capitalist society

16th Century

• The rise of centralized monarchies and transatlantic trade tended to concentrate growth around the royal court (seat of government) or the port as the focus of trade.

Industrial Revolution

Modern urban and regional planning has arisen in response to specific social and

Ebenezer Howard

Founder of Modern Town Planning

Egalitarian Principle

• Never became wealthy from his new town ventures, and he continued to work as a shorthand writer to meet his family’s modest needs right up until his death.

Garden Cities of Tomorrow

• By Ebenezer Howard

• An alternative to the endlessly sprawling 19th century industrial city

  • Paved the way to regional planning - where areas outside the cities were also considered

  • Idea - combination of town & country life

  • Decentralization of industries

  • New town build around the decentralized industry

Letchworth, Hertforshire

• First Garden City

• Architects: Raymond Unwin & Barry Parker

Robert Owen

Profitability ≠ Poorly Treated Employees

New Lanark, Glasgow, Scotland

• By Robert Owen

• Cotton Industry

• Housing for workers

• Epitope of utopian socialism

• 2500 people

• First infant school in Britain 1817

Saltaire, West Yorkshire, England

• By Titus Salt

• Victorian Model village

• Combination of housing & employment

• Houses for employees better than slums they were living at in Bradform.

Bournville, Birmingham, England

• By George Cadbury

• Employment with Housng

• Model Village

• Still Exists today - rented out to low income

Radburn, New Jersey

• By Stein & Wright

• 1st American town built upon the principle of E. Howard’s Garden City

• Separation of vehicular and pedestrian traffic

Greenbelt, Maryland

• Ideal & Utopian

  • Public cooperative community in the New Deal Era

Clarence Perry’s “Neighborhood Unit”

• Originally from Howard’s concept of “wards”

• A residential design model

  • For a neighborhood population of about 5,000 - 9,,000 residents

  • With school, places of worship and recreational area at its center

Christopher Alexander

“A neighborhood is not a tree”

• Suggested that sociologically the whole idea of the “neighborhood unit” was false ; different people had varied needs for local services & the principle of choice was paramount.

• Planners should aim to reproduce a variety and freedom of choice

Sir Alker Tripp’s Precinct Diagram

• Hierarchy of Roads

• Main rods would be sealed off from local side access, to give better traffic flow and safety

• Residential areas would be protected from heavy traffic

Patrick Geddes

• British Biologist & Sociologist

• Cities in Evolution

• He gave planning a logical structure where human geography was to provide the basis of planning

Cities in Evolution

Human ecology - combines geography, culture and civic education reform toward city betterment

Abercrombie’s Greater London Plan

• Integration at a regional scale including both the city and its surrounding hinterland

• Weld the ideas of Howard, Geddes to Unwin and turn them into graphic blueprint for the future development of a great region

Daniel Burnham

Who started the City Beautiful Movement?

Frank Lloyd Wright’s Broadacre City

• Low-density urban spread (1 acre for each family)

• Super highways for automobiles for connectivity

• Anticipated the “out of town shopping centers”