History of Planning in the Year 1801-1850
For many skilled workers, the
INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
An Industrial Revolution at its core occurs
when a society shifts from using tools to make
products to using new sources of energy, such as
coal, to power machines in factories
The Industrial Revolution provided the
countries that first adopted it with the technological
and economic advantages necessary to eventually
rule most of the world. In short, the Industrial
Revolution is the “game changer” of modern world
history.
As the modernity boosts up many factories to
rise, came the effects to the people, their living and
working condition that resulted to several problems
that concerns the public.
Prevailing Influences
I. Growth of Industrial Cities
▪ One of the defining and most
lasting features of the Industrial
Revolution was the rise of cities.
▪ By 1850, for the first time in world
history, more people in a country—
Great Britain—lived in cities than in
rural areas
▪ This process of urbanization
stimulated the booming new
industries by concentrating workers
and factories together. And the new
industrial cities became, as we read
earlier, sources of wealth for the
nation.
II. Problems of Industrialization
▪ Working Conditions - Well, for starters, the
working class—who made up 80% of society—
had little or no bargaining power with their new
employers. Since population was increasing in
Great Britain at the same time that landowners
were enclosing common village lands, people
from the countryside flocked to the towns and
the new factories to get work.
▪ Living conditions - Working in new industrial
cities had an effect on people’s lives outside of
the factories as well. As workers migrated from
the country to the city, their lives and the lives
of their families were utterly and permanently
transformed.
quality of life decreased a great deal in the first
60 years of the Industrial Revolution
III. Housing and Public Health Concerns
▪ In the first half of the 19th century,
urban overcrowding, poor diets, poor
sanitation, and essentially medieval
medical remedies all contributed to
very poor public health for the majority
of English people.
▪ The densely packed and poorly
constructed working-class
neighborhoods contributed to the fast
spread of disease Roads were muddy
and lacked sidewalks. Houses were built
touching each other, leaving no room
for ventilation. Perhaps most
importantly, homes lacked toilets and
sewage systems, and as a result,
drinking water sources, such as wells,
were frequently contaminated with
disease.
▪ Cholera, tuberculosis, typhus, typhoid,
and influenza ravaged through new
industrial towns, especially in poor
working-class neighborhoods
▪ Doctors still used remedies popular
during the Middle Ages, such as
bloodletting and leeching. They
concocted toxic potions of mercury,
iron, or arsenic. They also encouraged
heavy use of vomiting and laxatives,
both of which severely dehydrated
patients and could contribute to early
death, especially among infants and
children whose bodies would lose water
dangerously fast.
IV. Social Equity Concerns
▪ There is barely sufficient work
as a result, the new factory owners
could set the terms of work because
there were far more unskilled laborers
who had few skills and would take any
job, than there were jobs for them.
▪ Worse still, since only wealthy people in
Great Britain were eligible to vote,
workers could not use the democratic
political system to fight for rights and
reforms.
 ▪ Child labor was, unfortunately, integral
to the first factories, mines, and mills in
England. In textile mills, as new power
looms and spinning mules took the
place of skilled workers, factory owners
used cheap, unskilled labor to decrease
the cost of production. And, child labor
was the cheapest labor of all. Some of
these machines were so easy to operate
that a small child could perform the
simple, repetitive tasks.
▪ And, children did not try to join workers
unions or go on strike. Best of all, they
were paid 1/10 of what men were paid.
It’s not surprising, then, that children
were heavily employed in the first
factories in history.
DOMINATING IDEOLOGIES
▪ STATE INTERVENTION, MARXISM- is an
economic policy perspective favoring
government intervention in the market process
to correct the market failures and promote the
general welfare of the people.
government intervention- regulatory actions
taken by government in order to affect
or interfere with decisions made by
individuals, groups or organizations
regarding social and economic matters.
▪ UTILITARIANISM- Utilitarianism is an ethical
theory that determines right from wrong by
focusing on outcomes. It is a form of
consequentialism. Holds that the most ethical
choice is the one that will produce the greatest
good for the greatest number.
▪ UTOPIANISM- is an imagined community or
society that possesses highly desirable or nearly
perfect qualities for its citizens. Utopia focuses
on equality in economics, government and
justice, though by no means exclusively, with
the method and structure of proposed
implementation varying based on ideology.
DEVELOPMENT ORIENTATION POLICIES
▪ COOPERATIVE HOUSING SCHEMES - A housing
cooperative forms when people come together
to own and control the buildings, they live in.
They form a cooperative corporation to which
they pay a monthly amount to cover operating
expenses. The cooperative owns the land, the
buildings, and any common areas. Members
buy shares in the cooperative.
e.g. New Harmony, Indiana
▪ SELF-CONTAINED COMMUNITY HOUSED IN
MEGASTRUCTURES
▪ SANITARY HOUSING CONCEPT - one of the
drawbacks of industrial revolution was the
major problems in sanitation. So proposed
housing communities was initially planned to
minimize these problems.
▪ LOCAL GOVERNMENT INITIATIVE - as solution
finding was in process in the timeline, local
government have imposed different steps,
together with planners to minimize the effects
or urbanization and industrialization.
▪ PLANNER – REFORMIST - most planners from
1801-1850 were reformists who proposed
utopias of their own point of view or thought.
One of the famous reformists of that time was
Robert Owen.
PLANNERS OF INFLUENCE
The first fifty years of the 19th century was full of
change. It was an Age of Change, a hopeful half century
that with its basic optimism. (1820-1850) Utopian
projects of this century were hopeful solutions to the
problems of humanity that had been worsen by the
uncontrolled and unregulated effects of the Industrial
Revolution.
▪ ROBERT OWEN - A pioneer of modern
British socialism; atheist, philanthropist and
labor reformer.
Three great obstacles seemed to him
specially to block the path to social reform:
private property, religion, and the present form
of marriage.
After the American experiment Owen's
thought became increasingly radical. Between
1832 and 1834 he was the leader of English
trade union movement.
▪ CHARLES FOURIER - French social reformer and
utopian socialist.
He based his thought on a
philosophico-psychological theory which
derived human actions not from economic gain
but from personal attraction.
THE HISTORY BASED ON COMBINATION (ACCORDING
TO FOURIER):
At present humanity was passing from
the fourth period (barbarism) to the fifth
(civilization); the sixth would following
(guaranteeism- respect for civil rights-) and
lastly the seventh (harmony)
CHARACTERISTICS OF HARMONY
- New communities, called phalanxes;
- New town units, called phalansteries;
- Economic activities strictly linked to
the area surrounding the phalanstery;
- Reduction in the importance of
industry and new emphasis on agriculture,
handicrafts, intellectual activities and
amusement;
- Restriction of private property and
social inequality;
- Restriction of any kind of exploitation
and promotion of the attractive work.
INFLUENTIAL PLANNING WORKS
▪ NEW LANARK IN ENGLAND
A purpose-built 18th century mill
village, set in a Scottish landscape near the Falls
of Clyde, where in the early years of the 19th
century, the Utopian idealist Robert Owen
(1771-1858) inspired a model industrial
community based on textile production.
In 1799 Owen and his partners bought
the New Lanark mills in Scotland. He resolved to
modernize the mill and improve both the
working and social conditions of his workers,
built an elementary school and crèche, the first
in England, near the factory. New Lanark
factories became famous and had visitors from
all parts of the world.
The ideal number of inhabitants in the
plan was between 300 and 2000.
He rejected the courts, alleys, lanes and
streets that create many unnecessary
inconveniences and harmful to health.
The village was founded in 1785, and
the cotton mills, powered by water-wheels,
were operational from 1786 to 1968. At the
turn of the 19th century the mill buildings
formed one of the largest industrial groups in
PLANNING CONCERN OUTCOMES
the world.
The creation of the model industrial
settlement at New Lanark, in which planning
and architecture were integrated with a
humane concern on the part of the employers
for the well-being of the workers, is a milestone
in social and industrial history.
. The nature and layout of New Lanark
inspired other benevolent industrialists to
follow his example, and this movement laid the
foundations for the work of Ebenezer Howard
(1850-1928) in creating the concept of the
Garden City. The social and economic systems
that Owen developed were considered radical
in his own time but are now widely accepted in
modern society.
▪ NEW HARMONY, INDIANA
New Harmony resulted from the
utopian vision of Robert Owen. Owen based his
conception of utopian society on the belief that
an individual's character was shaped by his or
her environment.
New Harmony provided equality for all
its inhabitants, male and female.
In order to provide motivation for his
workers in this system, Owen instituted a
system of "time money" and "time stores".
New Harmony currency was worth the amount
of time that a worker had labored, and could be
exchanged for commodities worth the
equivalent amount of labor.
There was no central covenant that
committed the residents of New Harmony to
their enterprise.
They lacked the strong central belief
which served to unite other utopian groups, the
members of the community were lacking the
commitment to carry out the mission that
Owen envisioned. New Harmony dissolved in
less than three years.
▪ BROOK FARM, MASSACHUSETTS
Brook Farm, a celebrated nineteenth-
century New England utopian community, was
founded by Unitarian minister George Ripley
and other progressive, Transcendentalist
Unitarians, to be, in Ripley's words, a new
Jerusalem, the "city of God, anew."
▪ Development of water-borne sewage systems in
Britain
▪ Prussian lines act
▪ Building law
▪ Failure of utopian communities