CE 78 : URBAN PLANNING & LAND DEVELOPMENT

CHAPTER 2
HISTORICAL OVERVIEW
 URBAN PLANNING HISTORY
• The history of urban planning runs parallel to
the history of the city, as planning is in evidence
at some of the earliest known urban sites.
• Pre-classical:
A number of cities laid out according to fixed
plans, though many tended to develop
organically.
• Designed cities were characteristic of
the Minoan, Mesopotamian, Harrapan,
and Egyptian civilisations of the third millennium
BC
 CITY OF URUK, MESOPOTAMIA
• The first recorded description of urban
planning appears in the City of Uruk.
• For thousands of years, southern
Mesopotamia (ancient Iraq) was home to
hunters, fishers, and farmers, exploiting fertile
soil, rivers, and abundant animals.
• By around 3200 B.C., the largest settlement
in southern Mesopotamia, if not the world,
was Uruk: a true city dominated by
monumental mud-brick buildings.
URUK CITY MAP
 MINOAN CIVILIZATION
City of Knossos:
• The settlement was established well before
2000 BCE and was destroyed, most likely by
fire (though some claim a tsunami) c. 1700
BCE.

• Knossos was destroyed and re-built at least

twice.
CITY MAP OF KNOSSOS
Crete, The Magnificent Minoan Palace Of
Knossos Europe's Oldest City
AERIAL VIEW
EARLY ROAD NETWORK
 OTHER ANCIENT CITIES
• Distinct characteristics of urban planning from
remains of the cities of Harappa, Lothal,
Dholavira, and Mohenjo-daro in the Indus
Valley Civilisation (in modern-day
northwestern India and Pakistan) lead
archeologists to interpret them as the earliest
known examples of deliberately planned and
managed cities.
• The streets of many of these early cities were
paved and laid out at right angles in a grid
pattern, with a hierarchy of streets from major
boulevards to residential alleys.

• These ancient cities were unique in that they

often had drainage systems, seemingly tied to
a well-developed ideal of urban sanitation.
 GRECO-ROMAN
• the Greek philosopher Hippodamus (5th century
BC) is regarded as the first town planner and
‘inventor’ of the orthogonal urban layout.
• Alexandria the second largest city and a major
economic centre in Egypt, extending about 32 km
(20 mi) along the coast of the Mediterranean
Sea in the north central part of the country. Its
low elevation on the Nile delta makes it highly
vulnerable to rising sea levels.
Alexandria, beautiful city in Egypt ,
along the coast of the Mediterranean
Sea, on the Nile Delta .
CITY OF MILETUS, EGYPT
Ancient Piraeus, Greece (451 BC)
 ALEXANDRIA CITY, EGYPT
• Alexander commissioned the
architect Dinocrates to lay out his new city
of Alexandria, the grandest example of
idealized urban planning of the
ancient Hellenistic world, where the city's
regularity was facilitated by its level site near a
mouth of the Nile.
ALEXANDRIA CITY, EGYPT CITY MAP
 ANCIENT ROMANS
• The Romans used a consolidated scheme for city
planning, developed for civil convenience.
• The basic plan consisted of a central forum with
city services, surrounded by a compact,
rectilinear grid of streets.
• All roads were equal in width and length, except
for two, which were slightly wider than the
others. The decumanus, running east–west, and
the cardo, running north–south, intersected in
the middle to form the centre of the grid.
• Each square marked by four roads was called
an insula, the Roman equivalent of a modern city
block.
 MIDDLE AGES
• Urban development in the early Middle Ages,
characteristically focused on a fortress, a fortified
abbey, or a (sometimes abandoned) Roman
nucleus, occurred "like the annular rings of a
tree", whether in an extended village or the
centre of a larger city.
• The new centre was often on high, defensible
ground, the city plan took on an organic
character, following the irregularities of elevation
contours like the shapes that result
from agricultural terracing.
RENAISSANCE EUROPE

MUNICH, GERMANY
 STAR SHAPED CITIES
• Florence was an early model of the new urban
planning, which took on a star-shaped layout
adapted from the new star fort, designed to
resist cannon fire.
• This model was widely imitated, reflecting the
enormous cultural power of Florence in this age;
was impressed upon utopian schemes: this is the
star-shaped city".
• Radial streets extend outward from a defined
centre of military, communal or spiritual power.
 Sforzinda City
• The plan for Sforzinda, an ideal
city named after Francesco
Sforza, then Duke of Milan.
Although Sforzinda was never
built, certain aspects of its
design are described in
considerable detail. The basic
layout of the city is an eight-
point star, created by overlaying
two squares so that all the
corners were equidistant. This
shape is then inscribed within a
perfect circular moat.
 Palmanova
• Angled and star-shaped bastions
had already been developed in
Italy during the 16th century to
counter the effects of increasingly
powerful and accurate artillery,
and remove blind-spots in
defensive walls. But Palmanova
presented a unique opportunity
to harmonize the entire urban
layout with its defensive
perimeter. Thus the heart of the
town took the form of a huge
nine-sided piazza, with
symmetrical streets radiating out
to an exactly measured outer
poligon, its nine sides linked by
triangular bastions - creating a
perfect star.
 AMERICAN CITY PLAN
• PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA
In 1682, William Penn founded Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania, planning it as a city to serve as a
port on the Delaware River and as a place for
government.
• Penn laid out roads on a grid plan to keep
houses and businesses spread far apart, with
areas for gardens and orchards.
• WASHINGTON DC
Washington, D.C., formally
the District of Columbia and
commonly referred to as
"Washington", "the District", or
simply "D.C.", is the capital of
the United States.
 20TH CENTURY URBAN PLANNING
• Planning and architecture went through a
paradigm shift at the turn of the 20th century.
• The industrialized cities of the 19th century had
grown at a tremendous rate, with the pace and
style of building largely dictated by private
business concerns.
• Around 1900, theorists began developing urban
planning models to mitigate the consequences of
the industrial age, by providing citizens, especially
factory workers, with healthier environments.
 MODERNISM
• In the 1920s, the
ideas
of modernism began
to surface in urban
planning.
• The influential
modernist architect
Le
Corbusier presented
his scheme for a
"Contemporary City"
for three million
inhabitants (Ville
Contemporaine) in
1922.
 DANIEL BURNHAM

CITY OF CHICAGO,USA
MANILA CITY PLAN, Daniel Burnham
THE END