City Planning
City Planning, the unified development of cities and their environs. For most of its history, city planning dealt primarily with the regulation of land use and the physical arrangement of city structures, as guided by architectural, engineering, and land-development criteria. In the mid-20th century it broadened to include the comprehensive guidance of the physical, economic, and social environment of a community. Elements characteristic of city planning include (1) general plans that summarize the objectives of (and restraints on) land development; (2) zoning and subdivision controls that specify permissible land uses, densities, and requirements for streets, utility services, and other improvements; (3) plans for traffic flow and public transportation; (4) strategies for economic revitalization of depressed urban and rural areas; (5) strategies for supportive action to help disadvantaged social groups; and (6) guidelines for environmental protection and preservation of scarce resources.
City planning is conducted by governments on all levels—local, county, regional, state, and federal—and by private groups. It is also a subject of university-level study. Professional societies include the American Planning Association, the Canadian Institute of Planners, and in the United Kingdom, the Royal Town Planning Institute.
HISTORY OF CITY PLANNING
Processes that Led to Early Urbanism
Encarta Historical Essays reflect the knowledge and insight of leading historians. This collection of essays is assembled to support the National Standards for World History. In this essay, Charles L. Redman argues that expanding food production, emerging industry and trade, and increasingly hierarchical governments—as well as the resulting changes in social relations—were the major forces behind early urbanism.
Archaeological excavations of ancient cities reveal evidence of some deliberate planning: the arrangement of housing in regular, rectangular patterns and the prominent location of civic and religious buildings along main thoroughfares.
A. City Planning in Greece and Rome
Aerial view of Central Athens Symmetry and geometric design played an important role in city planning in ancient Greece and Rome. City planners designed distinct residential, marketing, recreation, and religious areas and interspersed them evenly throughout the city. Streets often followed a gridiron pattern as developed by Hippodamus, the father of city planning. Many cities were surrounded by high fortification walls. Hippodamus’ gridiron pattern of city blocks remains a legacy in many Greek cities, as in this photograph of modern Athens, Greece.
The emphasis on planning broadened during the Greek and Roman eras. The Greek architect Hippodamus of Miletus planned important Greek settlements such as Priene and Piraeus (Pireás). Called the father of town planning, he emphasized a geometric design for towns. Religious and civic citadels were oriented so as to give a sense of aesthetic balance; streets were arranged in a grid pattern; and housing was integrated with cultural, commercial, and defense facilities.
The Romans continued these principles. Their designs for monumental temples, arches, gymnasiums, and forums are classic examples of city planning based on strict regard for symmetry. Their colonial cities, planned as military camps called castras, were laid out with a grid of streets surrounded by rectangular or square defensive walls. After the fall of the Roman Empire, cities declined in population and importance. From the 5th to the 14th century ad, medieval Europe planned towns around castles, churches, and monasteries, with informal street arrangements.
B. The Renaissance and Beyond
Vienna The design of Renaissance cities departed significantly from that of medieval cities. Whereas cities built in the Middle Ages often had narrow, curving streets, Renaissance cities were built around wide boulevards. Renaissance planners and designers often used statues and fountains as focal points throughout the city. They constructed circular streets around these points with other streets shooting out from the points in a spoke-and-wheel design. This 19th-century painting, View of Vienna, shows some of the effects of Renaissance city planning.
The emulation of Greco-Roman classicism during the Renaissance revived city-planning efforts along classical lines. The Piazza of Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome and the Piazza of Saint Mark's in Venice exemplify an ideal of grandeur in civic structures and public places. In sharp contrast to the narrow, irregular streets of medieval settlements, Renaissance planning stressed wide, regular radial and circumferential streets, that is, streets forming concentric circles around a central point, with other streets radiating out from that point like spokes of a wheel. Examples include the street design in the Plan for London (1666) by the English architect Sir Christopher Wren and the streets of Mannheim and Karlsruhe in Germany.
Olmsted's "The Unplanned Growth of Cities"
The pioneering landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, who helped design Central Park in New York City, described his vision of the role of parks in urban development in a speech given in Boston, Massachusetts, on February 15, 1870. He understood that the physical and mental well-being of a city’s population translated directly into its economic health. Olmsted also saw parks as emblems of social democracy where all classes of city dwellers could mingle in a rejuvenating environment. Olmsted eventually became discouraged by the lack of public support for his projects and spent his later efforts designing private parks for wealthy clients.
These themes of Renaissance planning were transplanted to the New World in British and Spanish colonial cities settled in the 16th and 17th centuries, among them Savannah, Georgia; Williamsburg, Virginia; Mexico City; and Lima, Peru. City planning in the early United States also reflected the preference for grand public buildings and thoroughfares. A notable example is the 1791 design of the District of Columbia by the French American engineer Pierre Charles L'Enfant. His plan featured a network of wide streets converging on major parks, malls, and other open spaces and on public structures such as the Capitol and the White House. The ideals of public grandeur and radial, circumferential streets continued in the 19th century, exemplified in the plan for the reconstruction of Paris (1850-74) by the French administrator Baron Georges Eugène Haussmann.
In the U.S., extensive public park systems were developed in New York City, Boston, Philadelphia, and elsewhere by landscape architects such as the American Frederick Law Olmsted and the Anglo-American Calvert Vaux.
During this century of the Industrial Revolution, the few design standards that were introduced often neglected basic physical and aesthetic considerations. This is evident in New York City's Commissioner's Plan of 1811, which divided Manhattan into identical rectangular blocks as a means to encourage further rapid settlement. By the end of the 19th century, the largely unfettered growth of New York and other major cities led to serious overcrowding, with a host of attendant problems. The reaction to these conditions became the basis for a new era of city planning.
C. 20th-Century City Planning
The U.S. and Britain responded similarly to the need to improve the living conditions in cities. Their initial action was to regulate the sanitary conditions and density of tenement housing. A movement then arose in both countries for a more comprehensive, long-term approach, a process of city planning that would examine and control the many forces affecting modern cities. The 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago featured a planned “White City” that stood in vivid contrast to the squalor of most urban settlements. In the U.S. it sparked the “City Beautiful” movement, which emphasized municipal grandeur embodied in handsome new public buildings, park systems, and main thoroughfares.
Important steps were taken in the early 20th century to formalize and legalize city planning. In the bellwether year 1909 Britain passed a Town Planning Act, which authorized local authorities to prepare “schemes” controlling new development. In 1909, in the U.S., the First National Conference on City Planning was conducted; this was the first of a series of annual meetings, which continue even today, that proved influential in coalescing support for city planning. Also in 1909 the American architect Daniel Burnham published his Plan of Chicago, a design that was groundbreaking in its regional perspective and comprehensive integration of transportation systems, parks, streets, and other facilities.
City planning received further support during subsequent years. In 1919 Britain made the preparation of planning schemes obligatory for many local governments, and in 1921 Canada enacted a city-planning law. Other European countries and Australia also undertook city planning.
In the U.S. during the 1920s local planning increased significantly. In 1920 approximately 100 cities had municipal planning commissions; by 1930 the number was almost 500. This growth can be accounted for in various ways. In 1928 the U.S. Commerce Department published a Standard City Planning Act that provided communities with a convenient procedural model for their planning efforts. The U.S. Supreme Court decision in Euclid v. Ambler (1926) removed any lingering doubts about the legality of zoning, a critical end product of city planning. (The first zoning ordinance in the U.S. had been enacted by New York City in 1916.) Other influences leading to the increased acceptance of city planning were the rapid growth of cities during the 1920s and the ensuing pressures on transportation facilities and public services.
During the Great Depression of the 1930s regional and national governments intervened more forcefully in city planning. To foster economic development in depressed regions, the United Kingdom authorized the appointment of special commissioners with wide-ranging powers. Britain, France, the Netherlands, and other European countries carried out extensive public-housing projects. In the U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, under his New Deal program, established a Public Works Administration to deal with capital improvements, a National Planning Board to coordinate long-range development, and a program that produced three greenbelt towns. The Tennessee Valley Authority was created to prepare and implement a sweeping regional plan. Federal housing insurance and public housing became important in city building.
D. After World War II
The extensive physical rebuilding of cities following World War II lent new urgency to city planning. In 1947 Britain enacted its significant Town and County Planning Act, which placed all development under regional control. The building of new towns was also encouraged. The founding of new communities had been pioneered in Britain in the early 20th century by the British city planner Sir Ebenezer Howard. The “garden city” settlements of Letchworth (1903) and Welwyn (1920), built according to his ideas, had been designed as self-contained cities that were protected from urban encroachment by greenbelts, or farmland areas. In the 1950s and '60s British development of new towns received new emphasis; it became official policy, and numerous new communities were built, many on the outskirts of London.
Other European countries similarly emphasized physical planning after World War II. Major urban reconstruction took place in Rotterdam, the Netherlands; Hamburg, West Germany (now part of the united Federal Republic of Germany); Helsinki, Finland; and elsewhere. New towns were also built, among them Tapiola, in Finland, and Melun Senart, on the outskirts of Paris. Europe's new towns in turn encouraged the planning and construction of similar self-contained communities in other areas of the world, including Brasília, in Brazil, and Ashdod, in Israel.
Physical planning also dominated city planning in the United States during the 1950s and '60s. Efforts were focused on designing vast new suburban housing subdivisions and providing for their transportation needs. The redevelopment of older central cities was also a major concern. The Housing Act of 1949 authorized significant federal funding for urban renewal. For the next two decades the typical redevelopment strategy in the U.S. was to replace slum areas with new construction. The Housing Act of 1954 required the formulation of “workable plans” to forestall urban deterioration, and it provided the backbone of funding for most of the master plans then in existence. Additional federal housing subsidies led to new urban residential projects that included both the construction of new housing and the rehabilitation of existing housing. The interstate highway network of expressways, begun in the early 1950s, influenced the shape of all metropolitan areas.
The development of new towns was also tried in the U.S., although without notable success. The two best-known new towns—Reston, Virginia, and Columbia, Maryland—were begun in the early 1960s. Later in the decade the development of new towns was encouraged by several federal housing acts. Reston and the federally aided communities, however, experienced financial and operating problems.
MODERN CITY PLANNING
City planning in the U.S. and other countries broadened in the late 1960s beyond a purely physical orientation. In its modern form, city planning is an ongoing process that concerns not only physical design but also social, economic, and political policy issues. As a fabric of human organization, a city is a complex weave. On one level it consists of the arrangement of neighborhoods, industry, and commerce according to aesthetic and functional standards and the provision of public services for them. On another, perhaps more important, level it also comprises (1) the background, education, work, and aspirations of its residents; (2) the general functioning of the economic system to which they belong, as well as their positions in and rewards from that system; and (3) their ability to make or influence the policy decisions that affect their daily lives.
Viewed from this perspective, city planning requires more than a narrow specialist who can develop and implement a physical plan. More general skills and activities are also needed. They include (1) the collection and analysis of data about the city and its population; (2) research into the need for and availability of social services; (3) the development, evaluation, coordination, and administration of programs and timetables to supply these services; (4) programs for economic and housing development and redevelopment—not only planning, but also packaging, financing, and carrying out the development, establishing public and private partnerships, and so forth; and (5) effective use of political activity and citizen participation to influence the character of and give support to development programs.
A. The Comprehensive Plan
The basic city-planning document is a comprehensive plan that is adopted and maintained with regular revisions. The plan receives its day-to-day expression in a series of legal documents—zoning ordinances, subdivision regulations, and building and housing codes—that establish standards of land use and quality of construction. The comprehensive plan serves many purposes: It brings together the analyses of the social, economic, and physical characteristics (such as the distribution of population, industry, businesses, open spaces, and publicly built facilities) that led to the plan; it examines special problems and opportunities within the city and establishes community-development objectives; it coordinates land development with transportation, water supply, schools, and other facilities; it proposes ways to accomplish these coordinated objectives over time; it relates the plan to its impact on public revenues and expenditures; and it proposes regulations, policies, and programs to implement the plan. The comprehensive plan is the guide to making daily development decisions in terms of their long-range consequences.
B. Development Controls
Land is allocated and private activities are coordinated with public facilities by means of zoning ordinances and subdivision regulations. A zoning ordinance governs how the land may be used and the size, type, and number of structures that may be built on the land. All land within a city is divided into districts, or zones. In these districts certain land uses are allowed by right, and general restrictions on building height, bulk, and use are specified. The zoning regulations carry out the land allocations recommended in the comprehensive plan. Specific locations are given for different types of residences, industries, and businesses. Specific numbers are given for allowable heights of buildings, coverage of a lot, and density. Allowable land uses are specified for each zone, including special conditions such as required off-street parking. Most regulations are termed “matter-of-right”; if the specified requirements are met a permit will be given. Other regulations provide general standards with considerable flexibility in the mixture of building uses or the building design. These require more extensive review before approval.
The conversion of raw land (construction on previously undeveloped land) is controlled by subdivision regulations and by site-plan review. These ordinances establish standards of land development by regulating such features as roadway width, drainage requirements, traffic circulation, and lot sizes. Subdivision regulations and site-plan review guide orderly development, protect prospective and current residents from poorly designed buildings or business districts, and ensure that most of the costs of land conversion are borne by those who will benefit from the development, that is, by the developer and the future residents.
Building and housing codes govern the quality and safety of construction of new buildings, as well as subsequent maintenance. In most instances, the codes specify the materials to be used, their minimum quality, and the building components necessary in a structure that is suitable for human occupancy.
C. Social, Economic, and Environmental Policy
Urban Renewal of South Street Seaport During the 1940s cities began implementing urban renewal programs to improve the condition of neighborhoods that had been allowed to deteriorate for many years. Architects and engineers reconstructed building facades, repaved streets, and stabilized the structure of the buildings. Unfortunately, this often happened without consideration for the people living there, many of whom were forced to find housing elsewhere because the costs of the improvements increased the value of the property and the cost of rents they paid. Today, city planners take environmental and neighborhood concerns into account before proceeding with urban renewal programs. These photographs show South Street Seaport in New York City before and after urban renewal.Ray Ellis/Photo Researchers, Inc. Rafael Macia/Photo Researchers, Inc.
Although the physical appearance and functioning of the city are the traditional focus of city planning, the city's population and economic resources are an important concern. Thus, contemporary city planning continues to focus on physical design, but also addresses the many long-range social and economic decisions that must be made.
A city has social needs and economic capital. The city government acts as a purchasing agent for many services needed by residents and businesses—for example, education, water supply, police and fire protection, and recreation. The quality, character, and efficiency of these services require planning to fit needs and desires with funding, with technological change, and with objectives for physical development.
City planning, moreover, should be concerned with providing decent housing (and minimal economic aid) to residents who cannot afford this basic amenity. When local housing is deficient and economic resources permit its upgrading, the city planning department may survey housing conditions and coordinate funding to finance its development and rehabilitation.
The city's economic development and redevelopment also fall within the scope of city planning. Economic development plans make use of a mixture of incentives, technical assistance, and marketing to create jobs, establish new industry and business, help existing enterprises to flourish, rehabilitate what is salvageable, and redevelop what cannot be saved. Economic development, however, must go beyond the enterprise and the facility to reach the workers. In a rapidly evolving technological environment with frequent global shifts in trade relations, skilled workers need new skills and unskilled people need some skills. Job training is a necessary part of development strategy, especially for the city's poor and unemployed citizens.
Capital improvement programming is the budgeting tool used by planners to schedule the construction and financing of public works. Capital projects—such as road improvements, street lighting, public parking facilities, and purchase of land for open spaces—must be sorted out and assigned priorities. A program prepared each year sets the priorities for the next six years on projects needed to implement the comprehensive plan and replace the wornout infrastructure. In rapidly growing regions, city planners are constantly faced with public facilities that have become inadequate for future development.
In declining areas, economic redevelopment is of prime concern. Before any new capital improvements are scheduled, the condition and viability of the neighborhood must be assessed and strategies for remedy must be adopted. Some declining neighborhoods require vigorous public development; others should be left to available private development.
The urban-renewal movement of the 1940s was insensitive to the cyclical ebbs and flows of city neighborhoods. From the 1940s through the 1960s it was believed that if an economic function such as business or industry failed, all that was needed was to crop out the “decay” and clear the land for reuse. In many instances the redevelopment never appeared. The multiple forces that affect neighborhood changes were ignored or improperly analyzed. City planners now understand that regional, interregional, national, and international economic forces affect a city. They also realize that the effectiveness of plans to bring about a city's continued economic viability depends on the correct analysis and interpretation of these forces. These are the lessons of the shifts in suburban, nonmetropolitan, and interregional economic patterns that took place in the 1960s and '70s.
City planners today are becoming ever more involved with environmental concerns. Environmental planning coordinates development to meet objectives for clean air and water; removal of toxic and other wastes; recycling of resources; energy conservation; protection of wetlands, beaches, hillsides, farmlands, forests, and floodplains; and preservation of wildlife, natural reserves, and rivers. Historic preservation strives to keep important buildings and places as part of the permanent environment and uses them to finance the maintenance costs.
Although city planners may report to mayors, city managers, or other officials, their true clients are the people and businesses of the city. Their plans must reflect the interests and priorities of these two groups, and the programs that are implemented must, at the same time, help the city survive and maintain the quality of life that these groups desire. Political astuteness is required in order to ensure that neighborhood programs and priorities will be properly perceived by local, state, and federal officials and will stand a chance for implementation.
THE FUTURE OF CITIES AND CITY PLANNING
City planning in the last decades of the 20th century is becoming increasingly involved in setting or executing policy about public services and with delivering these services. Since it is apparent that resources are limited and that global events affect the future of each community, city planning must be done within a framework of national and international planning for mutually sustainable development.
The capital infrastructures of many older cities need replacement. Public schools and city hospitals are a shadow of formerly dominant city institutions. For half a century the American public was mesmerized by the outer reaches of metropolitan areas. The force of this attraction has been so strong that when travel distances to jobs in the central city became excessive, companies moved and took the jobs to the suburbs. In the late 20th century, however, the newest generation of adults—younger than most city residents, more mobile, frequently childless, and having greater freedom in their living relationships—has become enamored of city life. Cities are responding by directing public services and capital improvements toward upgrading the quality of life in those areas that have unique attractions for this new population.
In this setting, different groups of city residents have become more sophisticated in pursuing their special interests. They are better informed, understand laws and procedures, have greater political skills, and are more militant and persistent. They have learned that planning brings order to change and, thus, they want to influence the planning. In turn, city planners are attempting to balance the demands of competing interests into a dynamic community consensus sufficient to allow decisions to be made.
In the future, city planning will continue to work under conditions of scarce urban economic resources and will constantly be faced with competing priorities—of neighborhoods, interest groups, businesses, and residents. The targeting and delivery of adequate public services will pose serious problems during the rest of the 20th century. As cities search for a revision of their role, they will undergo recurring adjustments. It is the task of city planning to minimize the impact that changing cycles have on the city's residents and businesses.
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City planning is conducted by governments on all levels—local, county, regional, state, and federal—and by private groups. It is also a subject of university-level study. Professional societies include the American Planning Association, the Canadian Institute of Planners, and in the United Kingdom, the Royal Town Planning Institute.
HISTORY OF CITY PLANNING
Processes that Led to Early Urbanism
Encarta Historical Essays reflect the knowledge and insight of leading historians. This collection of essays is assembled to support the National Standards for World History. In this essay, Charles L. Redman argues that expanding food production, emerging industry and trade, and increasingly hierarchical governments—as well as the resulting changes in social relations—were the major forces behind early urbanism.
Archaeological excavations of ancient cities reveal evidence of some deliberate planning: the arrangement of housing in regular, rectangular patterns and the prominent location of civic and religious buildings along main thoroughfares.
A. City Planning in Greece and Rome
Aerial view of Central Athens Symmetry and geometric design played an important role in city planning in ancient Greece and Rome. City planners designed distinct residential, marketing, recreation, and religious areas and interspersed them evenly throughout the city. Streets often followed a gridiron pattern as developed by Hippodamus, the father of city planning. Many cities were surrounded by high fortification walls. Hippodamus’ gridiron pattern of city blocks remains a legacy in many Greek cities, as in this photograph of modern Athens, Greece. The emphasis on planning broadened during the Greek and Roman eras. The Greek architect Hippodamus of Miletus planned important Greek settlements such as Priene and Piraeus (Pireás). Called the father of town planning, he emphasized a geometric design for towns. Religious and civic citadels were oriented so as to give a sense of aesthetic balance; streets were arranged in a grid pattern; and housing was integrated with cultural, commercial, and defense facilities.
The Romans continued these principles. Their designs for monumental temples, arches, gymnasiums, and forums are classic examples of city planning based on strict regard for symmetry. Their colonial cities, planned as military camps called castras, were laid out with a grid of streets surrounded by rectangular or square defensive walls. After the fall of the Roman Empire, cities declined in population and importance. From the 5th to the 14th century ad, medieval Europe planned towns around castles, churches, and monasteries, with informal street arrangements.
B. The Renaissance and Beyond
Vienna The design of Renaissance cities departed significantly from that of medieval cities. Whereas cities built in the Middle Ages often had narrow, curving streets, Renaissance cities were built around wide boulevards. Renaissance planners and designers often used statues and fountains as focal points throughout the city. They constructed circular streets around these points with other streets shooting out from the points in a spoke-and-wheel design. This 19th-century painting, View of Vienna, shows some of the effects of Renaissance city planning. The emulation of Greco-Roman classicism during the Renaissance revived city-planning efforts along classical lines. The Piazza of Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome and the Piazza of Saint Mark's in Venice exemplify an ideal of grandeur in civic structures and public places. In sharp contrast to the narrow, irregular streets of medieval settlements, Renaissance planning stressed wide, regular radial and circumferential streets, that is, streets forming concentric circles around a central point, with other streets radiating out from that point like spokes of a wheel. Examples include the street design in the Plan for London (1666) by the English architect Sir Christopher Wren and the streets of Mannheim and Karlsruhe in Germany.
Olmsted's "The Unplanned Growth of Cities"
The pioneering landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, who helped design Central Park in New York City, described his vision of the role of parks in urban development in a speech given in Boston, Massachusetts, on February 15, 1870. He understood that the physical and mental well-being of a city’s population translated directly into its economic health. Olmsted also saw parks as emblems of social democracy where all classes of city dwellers could mingle in a rejuvenating environment. Olmsted eventually became discouraged by the lack of public support for his projects and spent his later efforts designing private parks for wealthy clients.
These themes of Renaissance planning were transplanted to the New World in British and Spanish colonial cities settled in the 16th and 17th centuries, among them Savannah, Georgia; Williamsburg, Virginia; Mexico City; and Lima, Peru. City planning in the early United States also reflected the preference for grand public buildings and thoroughfares. A notable example is the 1791 design of the District of Columbia by the French American engineer Pierre Charles L'Enfant. His plan featured a network of wide streets converging on major parks, malls, and other open spaces and on public structures such as the Capitol and the White House. The ideals of public grandeur and radial, circumferential streets continued in the 19th century, exemplified in the plan for the reconstruction of Paris (1850-74) by the French administrator Baron Georges Eugène Haussmann.
In the U.S., extensive public park systems were developed in New York City, Boston, Philadelphia, and elsewhere by landscape architects such as the American Frederick Law Olmsted and the Anglo-American Calvert Vaux.
During this century of the Industrial Revolution, the few design standards that were introduced often neglected basic physical and aesthetic considerations. This is evident in New York City's Commissioner's Plan of 1811, which divided Manhattan into identical rectangular blocks as a means to encourage further rapid settlement. By the end of the 19th century, the largely unfettered growth of New York and other major cities led to serious overcrowding, with a host of attendant problems. The reaction to these conditions became the basis for a new era of city planning.
C. 20th-Century City Planning
The U.S. and Britain responded similarly to the need to improve the living conditions in cities. Their initial action was to regulate the sanitary conditions and density of tenement housing. A movement then arose in both countries for a more comprehensive, long-term approach, a process of city planning that would examine and control the many forces affecting modern cities. The 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago featured a planned “White City” that stood in vivid contrast to the squalor of most urban settlements. In the U.S. it sparked the “City Beautiful” movement, which emphasized municipal grandeur embodied in handsome new public buildings, park systems, and main thoroughfares.
Important steps were taken in the early 20th century to formalize and legalize city planning. In the bellwether year 1909 Britain passed a Town Planning Act, which authorized local authorities to prepare “schemes” controlling new development. In 1909, in the U.S., the First National Conference on City Planning was conducted; this was the first of a series of annual meetings, which continue even today, that proved influential in coalescing support for city planning. Also in 1909 the American architect Daniel Burnham published his Plan of Chicago, a design that was groundbreaking in its regional perspective and comprehensive integration of transportation systems, parks, streets, and other facilities.
City planning received further support during subsequent years. In 1919 Britain made the preparation of planning schemes obligatory for many local governments, and in 1921 Canada enacted a city-planning law. Other European countries and Australia also undertook city planning.
In the U.S. during the 1920s local planning increased significantly. In 1920 approximately 100 cities had municipal planning commissions; by 1930 the number was almost 500. This growth can be accounted for in various ways. In 1928 the U.S. Commerce Department published a Standard City Planning Act that provided communities with a convenient procedural model for their planning efforts. The U.S. Supreme Court decision in Euclid v. Ambler (1926) removed any lingering doubts about the legality of zoning, a critical end product of city planning. (The first zoning ordinance in the U.S. had been enacted by New York City in 1916.) Other influences leading to the increased acceptance of city planning were the rapid growth of cities during the 1920s and the ensuing pressures on transportation facilities and public services.
During the Great Depression of the 1930s regional and national governments intervened more forcefully in city planning. To foster economic development in depressed regions, the United Kingdom authorized the appointment of special commissioners with wide-ranging powers. Britain, France, the Netherlands, and other European countries carried out extensive public-housing projects. In the U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, under his New Deal program, established a Public Works Administration to deal with capital improvements, a National Planning Board to coordinate long-range development, and a program that produced three greenbelt towns. The Tennessee Valley Authority was created to prepare and implement a sweeping regional plan. Federal housing insurance and public housing became important in city building.
D. After World War II
The extensive physical rebuilding of cities following World War II lent new urgency to city planning. In 1947 Britain enacted its significant Town and County Planning Act, which placed all development under regional control. The building of new towns was also encouraged. The founding of new communities had been pioneered in Britain in the early 20th century by the British city planner Sir Ebenezer Howard. The “garden city” settlements of Letchworth (1903) and Welwyn (1920), built according to his ideas, had been designed as self-contained cities that were protected from urban encroachment by greenbelts, or farmland areas. In the 1950s and '60s British development of new towns received new emphasis; it became official policy, and numerous new communities were built, many on the outskirts of London.
Other European countries similarly emphasized physical planning after World War II. Major urban reconstruction took place in Rotterdam, the Netherlands; Hamburg, West Germany (now part of the united Federal Republic of Germany); Helsinki, Finland; and elsewhere. New towns were also built, among them Tapiola, in Finland, and Melun Senart, on the outskirts of Paris. Europe's new towns in turn encouraged the planning and construction of similar self-contained communities in other areas of the world, including Brasília, in Brazil, and Ashdod, in Israel.
Physical planning also dominated city planning in the United States during the 1950s and '60s. Efforts were focused on designing vast new suburban housing subdivisions and providing for their transportation needs. The redevelopment of older central cities was also a major concern. The Housing Act of 1949 authorized significant federal funding for urban renewal. For the next two decades the typical redevelopment strategy in the U.S. was to replace slum areas with new construction. The Housing Act of 1954 required the formulation of “workable plans” to forestall urban deterioration, and it provided the backbone of funding for most of the master plans then in existence. Additional federal housing subsidies led to new urban residential projects that included both the construction of new housing and the rehabilitation of existing housing. The interstate highway network of expressways, begun in the early 1950s, influenced the shape of all metropolitan areas.
The development of new towns was also tried in the U.S., although without notable success. The two best-known new towns—Reston, Virginia, and Columbia, Maryland—were begun in the early 1960s. Later in the decade the development of new towns was encouraged by several federal housing acts. Reston and the federally aided communities, however, experienced financial and operating problems.
MODERN CITY PLANNING
City planning in the U.S. and other countries broadened in the late 1960s beyond a purely physical orientation. In its modern form, city planning is an ongoing process that concerns not only physical design but also social, economic, and political policy issues. As a fabric of human organization, a city is a complex weave. On one level it consists of the arrangement of neighborhoods, industry, and commerce according to aesthetic and functional standards and the provision of public services for them. On another, perhaps more important, level it also comprises (1) the background, education, work, and aspirations of its residents; (2) the general functioning of the economic system to which they belong, as well as their positions in and rewards from that system; and (3) their ability to make or influence the policy decisions that affect their daily lives.
Viewed from this perspective, city planning requires more than a narrow specialist who can develop and implement a physical plan. More general skills and activities are also needed. They include (1) the collection and analysis of data about the city and its population; (2) research into the need for and availability of social services; (3) the development, evaluation, coordination, and administration of programs and timetables to supply these services; (4) programs for economic and housing development and redevelopment—not only planning, but also packaging, financing, and carrying out the development, establishing public and private partnerships, and so forth; and (5) effective use of political activity and citizen participation to influence the character of and give support to development programs.
A. The Comprehensive Plan
The basic city-planning document is a comprehensive plan that is adopted and maintained with regular revisions. The plan receives its day-to-day expression in a series of legal documents—zoning ordinances, subdivision regulations, and building and housing codes—that establish standards of land use and quality of construction. The comprehensive plan serves many purposes: It brings together the analyses of the social, economic, and physical characteristics (such as the distribution of population, industry, businesses, open spaces, and publicly built facilities) that led to the plan; it examines special problems and opportunities within the city and establishes community-development objectives; it coordinates land development with transportation, water supply, schools, and other facilities; it proposes ways to accomplish these coordinated objectives over time; it relates the plan to its impact on public revenues and expenditures; and it proposes regulations, policies, and programs to implement the plan. The comprehensive plan is the guide to making daily development decisions in terms of their long-range consequences.
B. Development Controls
Land is allocated and private activities are coordinated with public facilities by means of zoning ordinances and subdivision regulations. A zoning ordinance governs how the land may be used and the size, type, and number of structures that may be built on the land. All land within a city is divided into districts, or zones. In these districts certain land uses are allowed by right, and general restrictions on building height, bulk, and use are specified. The zoning regulations carry out the land allocations recommended in the comprehensive plan. Specific locations are given for different types of residences, industries, and businesses. Specific numbers are given for allowable heights of buildings, coverage of a lot, and density. Allowable land uses are specified for each zone, including special conditions such as required off-street parking. Most regulations are termed “matter-of-right”; if the specified requirements are met a permit will be given. Other regulations provide general standards with considerable flexibility in the mixture of building uses or the building design. These require more extensive review before approval.
The conversion of raw land (construction on previously undeveloped land) is controlled by subdivision regulations and by site-plan review. These ordinances establish standards of land development by regulating such features as roadway width, drainage requirements, traffic circulation, and lot sizes. Subdivision regulations and site-plan review guide orderly development, protect prospective and current residents from poorly designed buildings or business districts, and ensure that most of the costs of land conversion are borne by those who will benefit from the development, that is, by the developer and the future residents.
Building and housing codes govern the quality and safety of construction of new buildings, as well as subsequent maintenance. In most instances, the codes specify the materials to be used, their minimum quality, and the building components necessary in a structure that is suitable for human occupancy.
C. Social, Economic, and Environmental Policy
Urban Renewal of South Street Seaport During the 1940s cities began implementing urban renewal programs to improve the condition of neighborhoods that had been allowed to deteriorate for many years. Architects and engineers reconstructed building facades, repaved streets, and stabilized the structure of the buildings. Unfortunately, this often happened without consideration for the people living there, many of whom were forced to find housing elsewhere because the costs of the improvements increased the value of the property and the cost of rents they paid. Today, city planners take environmental and neighborhood concerns into account before proceeding with urban renewal programs. These photographs show South Street Seaport in New York City before and after urban renewal.Ray Ellis/Photo Researchers, Inc. Rafael Macia/Photo Researchers, Inc. Although the physical appearance and functioning of the city are the traditional focus of city planning, the city's population and economic resources are an important concern. Thus, contemporary city planning continues to focus on physical design, but also addresses the many long-range social and economic decisions that must be made.
A city has social needs and economic capital. The city government acts as a purchasing agent for many services needed by residents and businesses—for example, education, water supply, police and fire protection, and recreation. The quality, character, and efficiency of these services require planning to fit needs and desires with funding, with technological change, and with objectives for physical development.
City planning, moreover, should be concerned with providing decent housing (and minimal economic aid) to residents who cannot afford this basic amenity. When local housing is deficient and economic resources permit its upgrading, the city planning department may survey housing conditions and coordinate funding to finance its development and rehabilitation.
The city's economic development and redevelopment also fall within the scope of city planning. Economic development plans make use of a mixture of incentives, technical assistance, and marketing to create jobs, establish new industry and business, help existing enterprises to flourish, rehabilitate what is salvageable, and redevelop what cannot be saved. Economic development, however, must go beyond the enterprise and the facility to reach the workers. In a rapidly evolving technological environment with frequent global shifts in trade relations, skilled workers need new skills and unskilled people need some skills. Job training is a necessary part of development strategy, especially for the city's poor and unemployed citizens.
Capital improvement programming is the budgeting tool used by planners to schedule the construction and financing of public works. Capital projects—such as road improvements, street lighting, public parking facilities, and purchase of land for open spaces—must be sorted out and assigned priorities. A program prepared each year sets the priorities for the next six years on projects needed to implement the comprehensive plan and replace the wornout infrastructure. In rapidly growing regions, city planners are constantly faced with public facilities that have become inadequate for future development.
In declining areas, economic redevelopment is of prime concern. Before any new capital improvements are scheduled, the condition and viability of the neighborhood must be assessed and strategies for remedy must be adopted. Some declining neighborhoods require vigorous public development; others should be left to available private development.
The urban-renewal movement of the 1940s was insensitive to the cyclical ebbs and flows of city neighborhoods. From the 1940s through the 1960s it was believed that if an economic function such as business or industry failed, all that was needed was to crop out the “decay” and clear the land for reuse. In many instances the redevelopment never appeared. The multiple forces that affect neighborhood changes were ignored or improperly analyzed. City planners now understand that regional, interregional, national, and international economic forces affect a city. They also realize that the effectiveness of plans to bring about a city's continued economic viability depends on the correct analysis and interpretation of these forces. These are the lessons of the shifts in suburban, nonmetropolitan, and interregional economic patterns that took place in the 1960s and '70s.
City planners today are becoming ever more involved with environmental concerns. Environmental planning coordinates development to meet objectives for clean air and water; removal of toxic and other wastes; recycling of resources; energy conservation; protection of wetlands, beaches, hillsides, farmlands, forests, and floodplains; and preservation of wildlife, natural reserves, and rivers. Historic preservation strives to keep important buildings and places as part of the permanent environment and uses them to finance the maintenance costs.
Although city planners may report to mayors, city managers, or other officials, their true clients are the people and businesses of the city. Their plans must reflect the interests and priorities of these two groups, and the programs that are implemented must, at the same time, help the city survive and maintain the quality of life that these groups desire. Political astuteness is required in order to ensure that neighborhood programs and priorities will be properly perceived by local, state, and federal officials and will stand a chance for implementation.
THE FUTURE OF CITIES AND CITY PLANNING
City planning in the last decades of the 20th century is becoming increasingly involved in setting or executing policy about public services and with delivering these services. Since it is apparent that resources are limited and that global events affect the future of each community, city planning must be done within a framework of national and international planning for mutually sustainable development.
The capital infrastructures of many older cities need replacement. Public schools and city hospitals are a shadow of formerly dominant city institutions. For half a century the American public was mesmerized by the outer reaches of metropolitan areas. The force of this attraction has been so strong that when travel distances to jobs in the central city became excessive, companies moved and took the jobs to the suburbs. In the late 20th century, however, the newest generation of adults—younger than most city residents, more mobile, frequently childless, and having greater freedom in their living relationships—has become enamored of city life. Cities are responding by directing public services and capital improvements toward upgrading the quality of life in those areas that have unique attractions for this new population.
In this setting, different groups of city residents have become more sophisticated in pursuing their special interests. They are better informed, understand laws and procedures, have greater political skills, and are more militant and persistent. They have learned that planning brings order to change and, thus, they want to influence the planning. In turn, city planners are attempting to balance the demands of competing interests into a dynamic community consensus sufficient to allow decisions to be made.
In the future, city planning will continue to work under conditions of scarce urban economic resources and will constantly be faced with competing priorities—of neighborhoods, interest groups, businesses, and residents. The targeting and delivery of adequate public services will pose serious problems during the rest of the 20th century. As cities search for a revision of their role, they will undergo recurring adjustments. It is the task of city planning to minimize the impact that changing cycles have on the city's residents and businesses.
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