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Learning objectives :
To familiarize the historical progress of planning
To review old concepts of spatial planning

How planning reached its present stage.

Major contents:
A.
B.
C.
D.

Elements of Urban Structure

Evolution of urban forms / cities
Planning Procedure
Planning Today

The physical elements of the city can be

divided into three categories:
networks,

buildings, and
open spaces

First true urban settlements appeared

around 3,000 B.C. in ancient
Mesopotamia, Egypt, and the Moen-JoDaro, Indus Valley.
Ancient cities displayed both "organic"
and "planned" types of urban form.
These societies had elaborate religious,
political, and military hierarchies.

Features of the ancient city:

Two typical features of the ancient city
are the wall and the citadel:
the wall for defense in regions periodically

swept by conquering armies, and

the citadel -- a large, elevated precinct
within the city -- devoted to religious and
state functions.

Jerusalem, Israel - 3000 B.C

Kirkuk, Iraq - 3000 B.C.

Luxuor, Egypt 2160 BC

Moen-Jo-Daro, Sindh, Pakistan

2600 BC
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Greek cities did not follow a single

pattern.
Cities growing slowly from old villages
often had an irregular, organic form,
adapting gradually to the accidents of
topography and history.
Colonial cities, however, were planned
prior to settlement using the grid system.

Heraklion, Greece
Founded by the Arabs in 824 AD
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Athens, Greece -1400 BC

Acropolis of Athens
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The Romans engaged in extensive city-building

activities as they consolidated their empire.
Rome itself displayed the informal complexity
created by centuries of organic growth,
although particular temple and public districts
were highly planned.
In contrast, the Roman military and colonial
towns were laid out in a variation of the grid.
Many European cities, like London and Paris, sprang

from these Roman origins. (grid-iron pattern)

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According to Roman tradition, the city of Rome was founded by Romulus on 21 April
753 BC
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The medieval times also known as the middle ages started

after the fall of the western Roman Empire (5th Century)

Features Of The medieval Cities

Narrow winding streets converging on a market square

with a cathedral and city hall.
Many cities of this period display this pattern, the product
of thousands of incremental additions to the urban fabric.
However, new towns seeded throughout undeveloped
regions of Europe were based upon the familiar grid.
In either case, large encircling walls were built for defense
against marauding armies; new walls enclosing more land
were built as the city expanded and outgrew its former
container.

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View of Marrakesh and El Badi Palace - 1640

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During the Renaissance, architects

began to systematically study the
shaping of urban space, as though the
city itself were a piece of architecture
that could be given an aesthetically
pleasing and functional order.

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Features of Renaissance Cities

Parts of old cities were rebuilt to create elegant
squares, long street vistas, and symmetrical
building arrangements.
Responding to advances in firearms during the
fifteenth century, new city walls were designed
with large earthworks to deflect artillery, and starshaped points to provide defenders with sweeping
lines of fire.
Spanish colonial cities in the New World were built
according to rules codified in the Laws of the Indies
of 1573, specifying an orderly grid of streets with a
central plaza, defensive wall, and uniform building
style
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(i) The Grand Manner or Baroque Style

The first notable trend in urban planning arises
with renaissance era political authorities, most
notably absolutist-minded princes of Europe,
seeking to fortify or to perfect their capitol
cities.
Main features:
The spooked wheel was deemed to be the
most perfect city shape for the purpose of
military and civil defense - to allow easy routes
for the movement of troops to quell riots in the
center of the city - or to move rapidly to
defend the walls against external enemies.
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The city of Palmanova in Italy (built 15931623) is an almost perfectly preserved

example of this type of radial starburst
design with extensive fortifications and
outworks.

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(ii) Transition to the Industrial City

Cities have changed more since the Industrial Revolution

(Nineteenth century) than in all the previous centuries of
their existence.

New York had a population of about 313,000 in 1840 but

had reached 4,767,000 in 1910. Chicago exploded from
4.000 to 2,185,000 during the same period.

Millions of rural dwellers no longer needed on farms

flocked to the cities, where new factories churned out
products for the new markets made accessible by
railroads and steamships.
In the United States, millions of immigrants from Europe
swelled the urban populations.

Increasingly, urban economies were being woven more

rightly into the national and international economies.
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Technological innovations poured forth, many

with profound impacts on urban form.
Railroad tracks were driven into the heart of
the city. Internal rail transportation systems
greatly expanded the radius of urban
settlement: horse-cars beginning in the 1830s,
cable cars in the 1870s, and electric trolleys in
the 1880s.
In the 1880s, the first central power plants
began providing electrical power to urban
areas.
The rapid communication provided by the
telegraph and the telephone allowed formerly
concentrated urban activities to disperse
across a wider field.
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The increasing crowding, pollution, and disease in the

central city produced a growing desire to escape to
a healthier environment in the suburbs.

The upper classes had always been able to retreat to

homes in the countryside.

Beginning in the 1830s, commuter railroads enabled

the upper middle class to commute in to the city
center. Horse-car lines were built in many cities
between the 1830s and 1880s, allowing the middle
class to move out from the central cities into more
spacious suburbs.

Finally, during the 1890s electric trolleys and elevated

rapid transit lines proliferated, providing cheap urban
transportation for the majority of the population.
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 Based on landscape architecture & garden

design
Parks shifted from private to public settings
naturalistic parks were created in the U.S. by
Frederick Law Olmstead
goals:
support active and passive uses
collect water

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This form was seen

as uplifting urban
dwellers and
addressing the social
and psychological
impacts of crowding

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designed by
Olmsted, 1869
fashionable
location for
the wealthy to
live
often copied

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 Idea of housing studies by

Jane Addams; more

responsive and scientific

Residents survey of slum

populations

goals: educating, elevating

and saving the poor
the gathering of information
from such surveys and studies
became central to urban

planning

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 Ebenezer Howard: Garden

Cities of To-morrow (1902)

garden city would house
32,000 people on 24 sq. km
area
Planned in concentric
pattern with open spaces
Self contained city with
gardens
separated from central city
by greenbelt

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would combine the

best elements &
would avoid the worst
elements of city and
country
two actually built in
England

Letchworth
Welwyn

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Digswell Viaduct Welwyn Garden City

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 main emphasis: showy urban landscapes

aped classical architecture

iconography of and for the urban elites

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 emerges during the first third of the 20th c.

first national conference on city planning in

Washington D.C., 1909

shifts slowly from concern with aesthetics
(city beautiful) to concern with efficiency
and scientific management

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 A town for the motor age

The separation of pedestrian and vehicular

traffic, Padestrian do not have to cross main

roads
Idea of dead end streets or cul de sacs
Cars must be given parking place

Further readings: http://www.radburn.org/geninfo/history.html

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Radburn,
New Jersey

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access to greenspace
between 48% and 95%

of the surface area is

reserved for
greenspace

gardens
squares
sports fields
restaurants
theaters

with no sprawl, access

to the protected zone

(greenbelt/open space)
is quick and easy
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Elements of Le Corbusiers Plan

very high density
1,200 people per acre in skyscrapers
overcrowded sectors of Paris & London
ranged from 169-213 pers./acre at the time
Manhattan has only 81 pers./acre
120 people per acre in luxury houses
6 to 10 times denser than current luxury
housing in the U.S.
multi-level traffic system to manage the

intensity of traffic

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The logic of increasing urban density

The more dense the population of a city is the

less are the distances that have to be
covered.
traffic is increased by:
the number of people in a city
the degree to which private transportation is more

appealing (clean, fast, convenient, cheap) than

public transportation
the average distance people travel per trip
the number of trips people must make each week

The moral, therefore, is that we must increase

the density of the centers of our cities, where
business affairs are carried on.
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The modern city should be a combination of the

human scale and the mechanical scale.
Smaller units, which can be planned on human
dimensions, should be based on the human scale,
While larger areas are based on the mechanical
one.

Islamabad
The Developing Urban Detroit Area
Guanabara and Rio de Janeiro
Aspra Spitia. A New "Greek" City
The University of the Punjab
Doxiadis Office Building

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1867-1959
532 architectural
designs built
(twice as many
drawn)
designed houses,
office buildings and
a kind of suburban
layout he called
Broadacre City
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Each house 1 acre

low-density
car-oriented
train station and a few
office and apartment
buildings also proposed
freeways +feeder roads
multinucleated

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Typical urban planning procedure

follows a cyclical process:
Data collection, estimates, diagnostics,

Determination of stakes and objectives,

Definition and choice of strategy,
Drawing up of plans of action,

Promotion and implementation,

Assessment and check.

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 main tool: zoning

tends to actually do little in the way of

planning rather it manages the

development

imposes a rigidity to existing land uses

discourages mixed use, pedestrian areas
encourages separation by class

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 Drawn from:
Richard LeGates and Frederic Stout,

Modernism and Early Urban Planning,

1870-1940

A Brief History of Urban Planning

http://www.simcitycentral.net/knowl

edge/articles/a-brief-history-ofurban-planning/

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THANKS

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