ARPLANN 3_Topic #5: Historical Overview and Influences

Mesopotamia (10,000 BC – 7

th Century)

“Fertile crescent” means land between rivers

 Along Tigris and Euphrates river system

 Urban development started along the bodies of water

 Summer was one of the early civilization

 15 city-states created

 Religion was power

Ancient Egypt (3,000-300 BC)

Religion still powerful (Egyptians worshipped kings as gods)

 Once buried, lives forever

 Pyramids constructed in capital cities

 Cities of dead people (necropolis)

Ancient Greece

The period following Mycenaean civilization

 Ended about 1200 BC., to the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC.

 A period of political, philosophical, artistic and scientific achievements that formed a legacy with

unparalleled influence on western civilization.

Hippodamus of Miletus (498-404 BC)

“Inventor / Father of formal city planning”

 Made the Hippodamian Plan or the Grid City to maximize winds in the summer and minimize them

on winter

 Has a geometric, arranged style in design

 Work on Piraeus Port and Alexandria

Plato (428-347 BC.)

Established the Polluter Pays Principle

“ if any one internationally pollutes the water of another, whether the water of a spring, or collected

in reservoirs, either by poisonous substances or by digging, or by theft, let the injured party bring

the cause before the wardens of the city, and claim in writing the value of the loss; if the accused

be found guilty of injuring the water by deleterious substances, let him not only pay damages, but

purify the stream or the cistern which contains the water, in such manner as the laws.. Order the

purification to be made by the offender in each case”

Aristotle (384-322 BC.)

Provide the foundation for the concept of Intergenerational Equity.

 For our children’s children

 “Human well-being is realized only partly by satisfying whatever people’s preferences happen to be

a particular time; it is also necessary for successive generations to leave behind sufficient

resources so that future generations are not constrained in their preferences”

Roman Empire (29 BC. - 393 AD.)

Excelled in military science and engineering

 Design and inventions looked at improving transport and military strategies.

 Heavily dependent on water

 Engineered sewerage, canals, hydraulic

 Socio-political events resulted to religious division, absence of military discipline, murder and

citizen unrest.

 Moral decay led to the fall of Rome.

Medieval Period (5th

-15th Century AD.)

Church and Monasticism

 Rise of Islam

 Byzantine Empire

 State Power

Renaissance (14th

-17th Century AD)

Commerce as a driving factor

 Called for accessibility and mobility

 Like Medieval Period, had a radial growth pattern

 Plans began to follow the topography of an area

Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472)

Wrote the De Re Aedificatoria: Ten Book of Planning and Design Principles

Georges-Eugene Haussmann (1809-1891)

Plan and renovation of Paris

City Beautiful Movement (1800s-1900s)

Emphasized beauty and aesthetics

 Think monuments, grand buildings, parks, perfect landscape, lakes, and circular road systems

Daniel Hudson Burnham (1846-1912)

Father of American City Planning

 Designed the World’s Columbian Exposition, the first comprehensive planning document in the US,

together with Frederick Law Olmstead and John Wllborn Root.

 “Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men’s blood and probably themselves will not be

realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram

once recorded will never die, but long after we are gone will be a living thing, asserting itself with

ever-growing insistency. Remember that our sons and grandsons are going to do things that would

stagger us. Let your watchword be order and your beacon beauty”

 Greatest feat was the plan of Chicago (Paris on a Prairie); other plans include Manila, Baguio,

Cleveland and San Francisco.

Sir Ebennezer Howarh (1850-1928)

Wrote the book Garden Cities of Tomorrow

 Addressed population and pollution that came about by the industrial revolution by creating garden

cities

Le Corbusier (Charles Edouard Jeanneret 1887-1965)

Created the Radiant City

 Modernist, Futuristic and orderly

 But socially disadvantageous and unrealistic for settlements

 Criticized because he tried to solved congestion with more congestion

 Wrote the books Urbanism and The City of Tomorrow and its Planning

Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1957)

Champion and proponent of Urban Decentralization

 Involved communities

 Designed the 1,000-hectares Broad acre City

 Includes social services in the form of school, trains and museum, as well as employment in the

forms of market, offices, nearby farms and industrial areas

 Plan included a helicopter, which was criticized

Henry Wright (1878-1936) / Clarence Stein (1882-1975)

Henry Wright created the superblock

 Clarence Stein initiated plans to produce greenbelt resettlements all over US.

Sir Partrick Geddes (1954-1932)

Introduce the notion of a region

 Father of Regional Planning

 Biologist, sociologist and geographer

 Dissected the planning environment by analyzing occupational activities

 Used observational and rational methods

 Used conservative surgery instead of gridiron planning

 Introduce the term Conurbation, which means “an aggregation of continuous network of urban

communities”

 Emphasized the relationship of people and cities, thus the city-region term

Sir Leslie Patrick Abercrombie (1932-1952)

Created the post-war plans of London, and combatted sprawling by resettlements

 Made the London Country Plan (1944) and the Greater London Plan (1943)

Lewis Mumford (1895-1990)

A historian-sociologist who studied cities and architecture

 Organic City Concept

 Rationalized how planning has various disciplines

Benton Mckaye (1879-1975)

Originator of the 3,500 km. Appalachian Trail in the eastern United State (Georgia to Maine)

 A forester and conservationist, and co-founded the Wilderness Society

 Championed regional conservationism.

Regional Planning Association of America

Clarence Stein, Benton Mckaye, Lewis Mumford, Alexander Bing (real estate developer), and

Henry Wright are the founders of the association

Edward Bassett (1863-1948)

Father of American Zoning, urban planner and lawyer

 Use zoning as a means of implementing land use in New York

 Coined the term Freeway and Parkway

Don Artutro Soria Y Mata (1844-1920)

Introduce the Linear City Concept

 Many parallel and spcialized function.

Tony Garner (1869-1948)

Introduce the Linear Industrial City

 Used the concept of zoning and labeled space into leisure, industry, work and transport

 Plan caters to 35,00 residents

 Follows the principles of function, greeneries, open space and exposure to the sunlight

 City is linked by a circular patterns

Thomas Adams (1871-1940)

Founded the British Town Planning Institute

 Worked primarily on low-density residences or garden suburbs

 Pushed for planning legislation by mandate, local plans, zoning, building regulations, and

recognized the responsibility of a licensed or professional planner

Constantinos Apostolos Doxiadis (1914-1975)

Studied the science of human settlements, called Ekistics

 Looks into the culture, economics and society in varying scales

Francis Stuart Chapin (1888-1974)

A sociologist and educator, stresses the importance of quantifying social activities in an evolving

city through statistics.

 First to write the textbooks on urban and regional planning; Land Use Planning and Urban Growth

Dynamics

Ira Lowry

Published A Model of Metropolis, a computer for spatial organization of anthropogenic activities in

metropolitan area

 Generates an assessment that can be the basis for urban policy decisions

 Expand the gravity modeling, or trip distribution in transport planning, or distance decay in physics

Wiliam Levitt (1907-1994)

Father of American Suburbs / The King of Suburbia / Inventor of the Suburbs

 Mass produced houses that were affordable

Janet Jacobs (1916-2006)

An urban activist who was strong and vocal against renewal; she fought for new urbanism

Rachel Louise Carson ( 1907-1964)

A marine biologist

 Wrote the powerful book Silent Spring, a haunting compilation and narrative of research about the

detrimental and even lethal effects of pesticides and fertilizers on the living environment

Ian Mcharg (1920-2001)

An Architect who valued a site’s natural features

 Transformed efforts of traditional planning into environmental planning by using the technique of

sieve mapping or overlay, which took into account the varied features of the environment.

 Laid the foundation for geographic information system

 Wrote the book Design with Nature, which triggered responsible planning of landscapes, respecting

natural features

Theory

a system of ideas intended to explain something, especially one based on general principles

independent of the thing to be explained

 Exploratory, normative & predictive

Von Thunen’s 1826 / Agricultural Land Use

Rural areas organize agricultural production in support of urban center. Distance from the

center determines the land use of land.

William Christaller’s 1933 / Central Place Theory

The range of good and threshold population of retail shops and service establishments are the

major influences in explaining the number, size and distribution patterns of settlements.

Weber 1929 / Least Cost Theory of Industrial Location

Factory or plant locates where transport and labor costs are at a minimum, determined by cost

of distance vs. weight of raw materials, cost of labor, agglomeration and deglomeration.

W. Alonso’s 1964 / Theory of Land Rent : The Bid-Rent Function

The price of land and demand for land changes according to the distance from the center

(CBD). The center commands the highest value of land because of its proximity to business

establishments and support services as well as the market.