RESEARCH ON

PLANNING 2

Submitted by: Rex Julian S. Imperial

Early history

Evidence of planning has been unearthed in the ruins of cities

in China, India, Egypt, Asia Minor, the Mediterranean world,
and South and Central America. Early examples of efforts toward planned urban
development include orderly street systems that are rectilinear and sometimes
radial; division of a city into specialized functional quarters; development of
commanding central sites for palaces, temples, and civic buildings; and
advanced systems of fortification, water supply, and drainage. Most of the
evidence is in smaller cities that were built in comparatively short periods as
colonies. Often the central cities of ancient states grew to substantial size before
they achieved governments capable of imposing controls.

For several centuries during the Middle Ages, there was little building of cities in
Europe. Eventually towns grew up as centres of church or feudal authority, of
marketing or trade. As the urban population grew, the constriction caused by
walls and fortifications led to overcrowding, the blocking out of air and light, and
very poor sanitation. Certain quarters of the cities, either by custom or fiat, were
restricted to different nationalities, classes, or trades, as still occurs in many
contemporary cities of the developing world.

The Roman settlement of Londinium, c. AD 200, which developed into the

modern metropolis of London.Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
The physical form of medieval and Renaissance towns and cities followed the
pattern of the village, spreading along a street or a crossroads in circular patterns
or in irregular shapes, though rectangular patterns tended to characterize some
of the newer towns. Most streets were little more than footpaths—more a
medium for communication than for transportation—and even in major European
cities paving was not widely introduced before the 12th century (1184 in Paris,
1235 in Florence, and 1300 in Lübeck). As the population of the city grew, walls
were often expanded, but few cities at the time exceeded a mile in length.
Sometimes sites were changed, as in Lübeck, and many new cities emerged with
increasing population—frequently about one day’s walk apart. Towns ranged in
population from several hundred to perhaps 40,000 (as in London in the late 14th
century, although London’s population had been as high as 80,000 before the
arrival of the Black Death). Paris and Venice were exceptions, reaching 100,000.
Conscious attempts to plan cities reemerged in Europe during the Renaissance.
Although these efforts partly aimed at improving circulation and providing military
defense, their prime objective was often the glorification of a ruler or a state.
From the 16th century to the end of the 18th, many cities were laid out and built
with monumental splendour. The result may have pleased and inspired the
citizens, but it rarely contributed to their health, to the comfort of their homes, or
to efficiency in manufacturing, distribution, and marketing.

The New World absorbed the planning concepts of European absolutism to only

a limited degree. Pierre L’Enfant’s grandiose plan for Washington, D.C.(1791),
exemplified this transference, as did later City Beautiful projects, which aimed for
grandeur in the siting of public buildings but exhibited less concern for the
efficiency of residential, commercial, and industrial development. More influential
on the layout of U.S. cities, however, was the rigid grid plan of Philadelphia,
designed by William Penn (1682). This plan traveled west with the pioneers,
since it was the simplest method of dividing surveyed territory. Although it took
no cognizance of topography, it facilitated the development of land markets by
establishing standard-sized lots that could be easily bought and sold—even sight
unseen.
In much of the world, city plans were based on the concept of a centrally located
public space. The plans differed, however, in their prescriptions for residential
development. In the United States the New England town grew around a
central commons; initially a pasture, it provided a focus of community life and a
site for a meetinghouse, tavern, smithy, and shops and was later reproduced in
the central squares of cities and towns throughout the country. Also from the
New England town came the tradition of the freestanding single-family house that
became the norm for most metropolitan areas. The central plaza, place, or
square provided a focal point for European city plans as well. In contrast to
American residential development, though, European domestic architecture was
dominated by the attached house, while elsewhere in the world the marketplace
or bazaar rather than an open space acted as the cynosure of cities. Courtyard-
style domiciles characterized the Mediterranean region, while compounds of
small houses fenced off from the street formed many African and Asian
settlements. (See atrium.)
The era of industrialization

In both Europe and the United States, the surge of industry during the mid- and
late 19th century was accompanied by rapid population growth,
unfettered business enterprise, great speculative profits, and public failures in
managing the unwanted physical consequences of development. Giant sprawling
cities developed during this era, exhibiting the luxuries of wealth and the
meanness of poverty in sharp juxtaposition. Eventually the corruption and
exploitation of the era gave rise to the Progressive movement, of which city
planning formed a part. The slums, congestion, disorder, ugliness, and threat of
disease provoked a reaction in which sanitation improvement was the first
demand. Significant betterment of public health resulted from engineering
improvements in water supplyand sewerage, which were essential to the further
growth of urban populations. Later in the century the first housing reform
measures were enacted. The early regulatory laws (such as Great
Britain’s Public Health Act of 1848 and the New York State Tenement House Act
of 1879) set minimal standards for housing construction. Implementation,
however, occurred only slowly, as governments did not provide funding for
upgrading existing dwellings, nor did the minimal rent-paying ability of slum
dwellers offer incentives for landlords to improve their buildings. Nevertheless,
housing improvement occurred as new structures were erected, and new
legislation continued to raise standards, often in response to the exposés of
investigators and activists such as Jacob Riis in the United States and Charles
Booth in England.

Shelter for immigrants in a New York City tenement, photograph by Jacob Riis, 1888. Library of Congress,
Washington, D.C. (digital file no. 3a18572)

Also during the Progressive era, which extended through the early 20th century,
efforts to improve the urban environment emerged from recognition of the need
for recreation. Parks were developed to provide visual relief and places for
healthful play or relaxation. Later, playgrounds were carved out in congested
areas, and facilities for games and sports were established not only for children
but also for adults, whose workdays gradually shortened. Supporters of the parks
movement believed that the opportunity for outdoor recreation would have a
civilizing effect on the working classes, who were otherwise consigned to
overcrowded housing and unhealthful workplaces. New York’s Central
Park, envisioned in the 1850s and designed by architects Calvert
Vaux and Frederick Law Olmsted, became a widely imitated model. Among its
contributions were the separation of pedestrian and vehicular traffic, the creation
of a romanticlandscape within the heart of the city, and a demonstration that the
creation of parks could greatly enhance real-estate values in their surroundings.
(See landscape architecture.)

The Mall at Central Park, New York City, in 1902.Library of Congress, Washington D.C. (neg. no. LC-USZ62-
121334 DLC)

Concern for the appearance of the city had long been manifest in Europe,
in the imperial tradition of court and palace and in the central plazas and great
buildings of church and state. In Paris during the Second Empire(1852–
70), Georges-Eugène, Baron Haussmann, became the greatest of the planners
on a grand scale, advocating straight arterial boulevards, advantageous vistas,
and a symmetry of squares and radiating roads.

The resulting urban form was widely emulated throughout the rest of
continental Europe. Haussmann’s efforts went well beyond beautification,
however; essentially they broke down the barriers to commerce presented
by medieval Paris, modernizing the city so as to enable the efficient
transportation of goods as well as the rapid mobilization of military troops.

His designs involved the demolition of antiquated tenement structures and

their replacement by new apartment houses intended for a wealthier clientele,
the construction of transportation corridors and commercial space that broke up
residential neighbourhoods, and the displacement of poor people from centrally
located areas.

Haussmann’s methods provided a template by which urban redevelopment

programs would operate in Europe and the United States until nearly the end of
the 20th century, and they would extend their influence in much of the developing
world after that.

As the grandeur of the European vision took root in the United States through
the City Beautiful movement, its showpiece became the World’s Columbian
Exposition of 1893, developed in Chicago according to principles set out by
American architect Daniel Burnham. The architectural style of the exposition
established an ideal that many cities imitated. Thus, the archetype of the City
Beautiful—characterized by grand malls and majestically sited civic buildings in
Greco-Roman architecture—was replicated in civic centres and boulevards
throughout the country, contrasting with and in protest against the surrounding
disorder and ugliness. However, diffusion of the model in the United States was
limited by the much more restricted power of the state (in contrast to European
counterparts) and by the City Beautiful model’s weak potential
for enhancing businesses’ profitability.

Whereas Haussmann’s approach was especially influential on the European

continent and in the design of American civic centres, it was the utopian concept
of the garden city, first described by British social reformer Ebenezer Howard in
his book Garden Cities of To-Morrow (1902), that shaped the appearance of
residential areas in the United States and Great Britain. Essentially a suburban
form, Howard’s garden city incorporated low-rise homes on winding streets and
culs-de-sac, the separation of commerce from residences, and plentiful open
space lush with greenery.

Howard called for a “cooperative commonwealth” in which rises in property

values would be shared by the community, open land would be communally held,
and manufacturing and retail establishments would be clustered within a short
distance of residences. Successors abandoned Howard’s socialist ideals but held
on to the residential design form established in the two new towns built during
Howard’s lifetime (Letchworth and Welwyn Garden City), ultimately imitating the
garden city model of winding roads and ample greenery in the forming of the
modern suburban subdivision.

Perhaps the single most influential factor in shaping the physical form of the
contemporary city was transportation technology. The evolution of transport
modes from foot and horse to mechanized vehicles facilitatedtremendous urban
territorial expansion. Workers were able to live far from their jobs, and goods
could move quickly from point of production to market. However, automobiles
and buses rapidly congested the streets in the older parts of cities. By
threatening strangulation of traffic, they dramatized the need to establish new
kinds of orderly circulation systems. Increasingly, transportation networks
became the focus of planning activities, especially as subway systems were
constructed in New York, London, and Paris at the beginning of the 20th century.
To accommodate increased traffic, municipalities invested heavily in widening
and extending roads. (See also traffic control.)

Many city governments established planning departments during the first third of
the 20th century. The year 1909 was a milestone in the establishment of urban
planning as a modern governmental function: it saw the passage of Britain’s first
town-planning act and, in the United States, the first national conference on city
planning, the publication of Burnham’s plan for Chicago, and the appointment
of Chicago’s Plan Commission (the first recognized planning agency in the
United States, however, was created in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1907).
Germany, Sweden, and other European countries also developed planning
administration and law at this time.

The colonial powers transported European concepts of city planning to the cities
of the developing world. The result was often a new city planned according to
Western principles of beauty and separation of uses, adjacentto unplanned
settlements both new and old, subject to all the ills of the medieval European
city. New Delhi, India, epitomizes this form of development. Built according to the
scheme devised by the British planners Edwin Lutyens and Herbert Baker, it
grew up cheek by jowl with the tangled streets of Old Delhi. At the same time, the
old city, while less salubrious, offered its inhabitants a sense of community,
historical continuity, and a functionality more suited to their way of life. The same
pattern repeated itself throughout the British-ruled territories, where African
capitals such as Nairobi, Kenya, and Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia
(now Harare, Zimbabwe), were similarly designed to accommodate their white
colonial rulers. Although the decorative motifs imposed by France in its colonial
capitals reflected a somewhat different aesthetic sensibility, French planners
likewise implanted broad boulevards and European-style housing in their colonial
outposts.

The Presidential House (Rashtrapati Bhavan), formerly the Viceroy's House, New
Delhi, India, designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens, constructed 1913–30.Lutyens Trust
Photographic Archive; photograph, Andrew W. Barnett

The creation of National Parks was an idea that sprang out of 19th century
America.

The conservation movement was inspired by writers and artists such as Henry
David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and George Catlin. As the vast American
wilderness began to be explored, settled, and exploited, the idea that some wild
spaces had to be preserved for future generations began to take on great
significance.
In time writers, explorers, and even photographers inspired the United States
Congress to set aside Yellowstone as the first National Park in 1872. Yosemite
became the second National Park in 1890.
John Muir

 John Muir. Library of Congress

John Muir, who was born in Scotland and came to the American Midwest as a
boy, left a life of working with machinery to devote himself to preserving nature.

Muir wrote movingly of his adventures in the wild, and his advocacy led to the
preservation of the magnificent Yosemite Valley of California. Thanks in large
part of Muir's writing, Yosemite was declared the second United States National
Park in 1890.
George Catlin

 Catlin and his wife, English novelist and autobiographer Vera Mary Brittain , talk to the
secretary of the PEN Club Herman Ould.
The American artist George Catlin is widely remember for his remarkable
paintings of American Indians, which he produced while traveling extensively on
the North American frontier.
Catlin also holds a place in the conservation movement as he wrote movingly of
his time in the wilderness, and as early as 1841 he put forth the idea of setting
aside vast areas of wilderness to create a "Nations Park." Catlin was ahead of
his time, but within decades such altruistic talk of National Parks would lead to
serious legislation creating them.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

 Ralph Waldo Emerson. Stock Montage/Getty Images

The writer Ralph Waldo Emerson was the leader of the literary and philosophical
movement known as Transcendentalism.

At a time when industry was on the rise and crowded cities were becoming the
centers of society, Emerson extolled the beauty of nature. His powerful prose
would inspire a generation of Americans to find great meaning in the natural
world.

Henry David Thoreau

Henry David Thoreau, a close friend and neighbor of Emerson, stands as
perhaps the most influential writer on the subject of nature. In his
masterpiece, Walden, Thoreau recounts the time he spent living in a small house
near Walden Pond in rural Massachusetts.

While Thoreau was not widely known during his lifetime, his writings have
become classics of American nature writing, and it's nearly impossible to imagine
the rise of the conservation movement without his inspiration.
George Perkins Marsh

Writer, lawyer, and political figure George Perkins Marsh was the author of an
influential book published in the 1860s, Man and Nature. While not as familiar as
Emerson or Thoreau, Marsh was an influential voice as he argued the logic of
balancing man's need to exploit nature with the need to preserve the planet's
resources.

Marsh was writing about ecological issues 150 years ago, and some of his
observations are indeed prophetic.

Ferdinand Hayden

 Ferdinand V. Hayden, Stevenson, Holman, Jones, Gardner, Whitney, and Holmes at

Camp Study.

The first National Park, Yellowstone, was established in 1872. What sparked the
legislation in the US Congress was an 1871 expedition led by Ferdinand Hayden,
a doctor and geologist assigned by the government to explore and map the vast
wilderness of the west.

Hayden put together his expedition carefully, and team members included not
only surveyors and scientists but an artist and a very talented photographer. The
expedition's report to Congress was illustrated with photographs which proved
that the rumors about the wonders of Yellowstone were absolutely true.

William Henry Jackson

William Henry Jackson, a talented photographer and Civil War veteran,

accompanied the 1871 expedition to Yellowstone as its official photographer.
Jackson's photographs of the majestic scenery established that the tales told
about the area were not merely exaggerated campfire yarns of hunters and
mountain men.

When members of Congress saw Jackson's photographs they knew the stories
about Yellowstone were true, and they took action to preserve it as the first
National Park.

John Burroughs

Author John Burroughs wrote essays about nature that became extremely
popular in the late 1800s. His nature writing captivated the public and turned
public attention toward the preservation of natural spaces. He also became
revered in the early 20th century for taking well-publicized camping trips with
Thomas Edison and Henry Ford.
The Garden City Movement
The garden city movement is a method of urban planning that was initiated in
1898 by Sir Ebenezer Howard in the United Kingdom. Garden cities were
intended to be planned, self-contained communities surrounded by "greenbelts",
containing proportionate areas of residences, industry and agriculture.

Edward Bellamy's novel Looking Backward and Henry George's work Progress

and Poverty inspired Ebenezer Howard to publish his book To-morrow: a
Peaceful Path to Real Reform in 1898 (reissued in 1902 as Garden Cities of
To-morrow).

Ideally his garden city would accommodate 32,000 people on a site of 6,000
acres (2,400 ha), planned on a concentric pattern with open spaces, public parks
and six radial boulevards, 120 ft (37 m) wide, extending from the centre. The
garden city would be self-sufficient and when it reached full population, another
garden city would be developed nearby. Howard envisaged a cluster of several
garden cities as satellites of a central city of 50,000 people, linked by road and
rail.

The second edition of his book, Garden Cities of To-morrow was successful and
this provided Howard with the support needed to realise his vision. The
overcrowding and deterioration of cities was one of the troubling issues of the
time. Howard’s garden city concept combined the town and country in order to
provide the working class an alternative to working on farms or ‘crowded,
unhealthy cities’.

In order to build a garden city Howard needed to find finance to buy land. To do
this he founded the Garden Cities Association (later known as the Town and
Country Planning Association or TCPA), which created First Garden City, Ltd. in
1899 to create the garden city of Letchworth.

The donors would collect interest on their investment if the garden city generated
profits through rents. Howard tried to include working class cooperative
organisations but could not win their financial support. Because he had to rely
only on the wealthy investors he had to make concessions to his plan, including
eliminating the cooperative ownership scheme with no landlords, short-term rent
increases, and hiring architects who did not agree with his rigid design plans.

In 1904, Raymond Unwin, architect and town planner, along with his

partner Barry Parker, won the competition run to plan Letchworth, an area 34
miles outside London. Unwin and Parker planned the town in the centre of the
Letchworth estate with Howard’s large agricultural greenbelt surrounding the
town. They shared Howard’s notion that the working class deserved better and
more affordable housing. However, the architects ignored Howard’s symmetric
design, instead replacing it with a more ‘organic’ design.

Letchworth slowly attracted more residents because it was able to attract

manufacturers through low taxes, low rents and more space. Despite Howard’s
efforts, the home prices in this garden city could not remain affordable for blue-
collar workers to live in. The population was made up mostly skilled middle class
workers. Ten years later the First Garden City became profitable and started
paying dividends to its investors. Although many viewed Letchworth as a
success, it did not immediately inspire government investment into the next line
of garden cities.

A very good book with a great deal of detail of all aspects of the development of
Letchworth and a comprehensive bibliography of other books on the subject is
"Letchworth The First Garden City by Mervyn Miller".
In 1919 Howard bought land at Welwyn to house the second garden city. The
purchase was at auction, with money Howard borrowed from friends. The
Welwyn Garden City Corporation was formed to oversee the construction.

Even until the end of the 1930s, Letchworth Garden City and Welwyn Garden

City, both in the County of Hertfordshire, England. remained as the only existing
garden cities. The movement succeeded in emphasising the need for urban
planning policies that eventually led to the New Town movement.

Frederic James Osborn, a colleague of Howard, was successor at the Garden

City Association.

After WWII the concept was again implemented when the New Towns Act
initiated the development of many new communities based on Howard's
egalitarian ideas.

City Beautiful movement

City Beautiful movement, American urban-planning movement led by

architects, landscape architects, and reformers that flourished between the
1890s and the 1920s. The idea of organized comprehensive urban
planning arose in the United States from the City Beautiful movement, which
claimed that design could not be separated from social issues and should
encourage civic pride and engagement. Its influence was most prominent in cities
such as Cleveland, Chicago, and Washington, D.C.
The movement first gained ground in 1893 with the World’s Columbian
Exposition in Chicago. Daniel H. Burnham headed the construction of the fair’s
temporary city, known to those who attended as the “White City,” a semi-utopia in
which visitors were meant to be shielded from poverty and crime. Burnham’s
plans for the site incorporated the designs of architects trained at the École des
Beaux-Arts in Paris, who paired the balance and harmony
of Neoclassical and Baroque architecture with the aesthetic of Chicago’s
buildings and cityscape. The landscape of the Columbian Exposition, which
included lagoons and big green expanses, was designed by Frederick Law
Olmsted, Sr., famous for his winning design of New York City’s oasis, Central
Park, which broke ground in 1857. To not only enhance the city’s appearance but
also help the flow of vehicle and pedestrian traffic, the City Beautiful concept
focused on incorporating a civic centre, parks, and grand boulevards.
The holistic and multipurpose approach to urban planning that was championed
by Burnham and displayed at the Columbian Exposition remained at the forefront
of architecture, landscape architecture, and design for many years. Its impact is
still visible in many cities throughout the United States.
 Burnham, Daniel H.Daniel H. Burnham, the director of works for Chicago's 1893 World's Columbian
Exposition.Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (digital file no. 3a37085)

Aside from making cities more livable and orderly, the City Beautiful movement
was meant to shape the American urban landscape in the manner of those
in Europe, which were primarily designed in the Beaux-Arts aesthetic. Burnham
especially thought of the movement as a mechanism by which the United States
could establish visible and permanent ties to European Classical traditions. His
opponents, Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright among them, wanted to avoid
borrowing from and outright replication of European design and instead invent a
new and truly American style.

The City Beautiful movement emerged at a time in U.S. history when the
country’s urban population first began to outnumber its rural population. Most city
dwellers perceived that cities were ugly, congested, dirty, and unsafe. As cities
grew—an increasingly rapid condition enhanced by an influx of immigrants at the
end of the 19th century—public space was being usurped. With increased
congestion, city dwellers needed open outdoor areas for recreation as they never
had before. In addition, the chaotic approach to sanitation, pollution, and traffic
found in most big American cities affected rich and poor alike, which is how the
City Beautiful movement gained both financial and social support. The
movement’s chief spokesperson, Charles Mulford Robinson,
a muckraking journalist from Rochester, New York, helped inspire politicians to
perceive it as a move toward increased civic virtue and the waning of social ills.
He published his first major book on the subject, The Improvement of Towns and
Cities, in 1901. It subsequently became the bible of the movement.

Washington, D.C., in 1902 became the first city to carry out a City Beautiful
design, the McMillan Plan, named for Michigan’s U.S. Sen. James McMillan, who
was chairman of the Senate Committee on the District of Columbia. It limited
building heights and positioned new structures and monuments throughout the
city to create a balanced aerial composition. Other cities that benefited from the
movement were Cleveland (1903), San Francisco (1905), and St. Paul,
Minnesota (1906).
 Union Station facade (Washington, D.C.)The grand facade of Union Station, Washington, D.C., by
Daniel H. Burnham.Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (reproduction no. LC-DIG-det-4a20012)

The pinnacle of the movement came in 1909 with Burnham and fellow architect
and urban planner Edward H. Bennett’s design for Chicago, published as
the Plan of Chicago and also known as the Burnham Plan. The plan involved a
60-mile (95-kilometre) radius in which avenues would extend out from a civic
centre. It included an extensive rail system, a bi-level boulevard for commercial
and regular traffic (what is now Wacker Drive), and a sprawling network of parks.
The lakefront, in particular, was an important component of the proposed plan; a
park and trail were constructed to run near the shore of Lake Michigan. In
addition, a comprehensive highway system that promoted simplicity
and efficiency was to connect the city to its suburbs and the suburbs to one
another. The implementation of much of the Burnham Plan took place over the
course of 20 years, starting in 1909 and coming to an end—though incomplete—
at the start of the Great Depression in 1929.

Chicago: Lake Shore DriveAerial view of North Lake Shore Drive in Chicago, looking north. Lake Shore
Drive, weaving through lakefront beaches and parks, was an integral part of Daniel H. Burnham and
 Edward H. Bennett's plan to keep the Chicago lakefront “forever open, clear, and free.” ©
Lya_Cattel/iStock.com

Over time, the movement’s shortcomings came to the fore, and it became
apparent that improvement of the physical city without addressing social and
economic issues would not substantively improve urban life. The movement, as a
whole, began to wane by World War Iand was then succeeded by a modernist
approach to architecture known as the International style. Examples
of extant buildings from the City Beautiful period are Union Station in
Washington, D.C., the Field Museum in Chicago, and the Boston Public Library
in Boston.

The Urban Theory of Everything

Why Seemingly Unrelated Phenomena Tend to Thrive in Large Cities

As we experience rapid urbanization around the globe – and especially in the

developing world – it becomes more critical to understand the dynamics of cities
and their dual capacity to both spur creativity and wealth, and to amplify crime
and disease. With this motivation in mind, a research collaboration between
Harvard’s Center for International Development (CID) and the T.H. Chan School
of Public Health has resulted in the formation of a unified model to analyze how
social phenomena occur in urban areas. This exciting new research could
influence the ways in which urban policies are developed, by helping local
governments anticipate when these phenomena would occur and take
precautionary measures to address them.

Today, around 80% of people in the Americas and Europe live in urban areas.
While this number is “only” 40% for Africa and 48% for Asia, these regions have
been experiencing a dramatic increase in urban population. According to
the United Nations World Economic Projections, 56% of Africa’s projected
population will be urban by 2050.

According to researchers Andres Gomez-Lievano, Oscar Patterson-Lomba,

and Professor Ricardo Hausmann, no other species on Earth has the type of
social groups that humans have, especially with regards to the composition and
size of those groups. “Humans get together and create these fantastic
agglomerations of millions of people which we call cities, and all sorts of different
things start to occur: technological innovation, wealth creation, new jobs, but also
inequality, crime, and disease. Each of these aspects of urbanization has
typically been studied in isolation from one another. We believe we have
developed an integrated understanding of how these outputs co-relate,” says
Gomez-Lievano.

The starting point of their research is the well-established fact that the prevalence
of such social phenomena vary systematically with city size: larger cities have
more inventors per capita, but also more crime and cases of disease. Drawing
ideas from physics, economics and anthropology, their research shows that
some phenomena correlate more positively to city size than others, and that the
same mathematical model can be used to understand employment, innovation,
disease, education and crime.

According to the researchers, “The model innovates in accounting for the

difference in scaling exponents and average prevalence across phenomena, as
well as the difference in the variance within phenomena across cities of similar
size. It reveals that phenomena that require more factors will be less prevalent,
scale more superlinearly and show larger variance across cities of similar size.”
But what exactly does that mean?

To understand why and how urban phenomena occur, the researchers propose
to look at a city like a big kitchen that contains many ingredients, and to look at
different social phenomena as the result of recipes that combine different
ingredients. In their words, “There is a recipe for creating a job, a recipe for
committing a robbery, and a recipe for creating a patent. Social phenomena are
like recipes. Some require a large list of ingredients that need to get mixed so
that the phenomenon occurs, others need only few ingredients. The more
ingredients a recipe needs, the more ‘complex’ we say it is.”

A city’s list of ingredients is a measure of its diversity, and related to its size. On
the other hand, the number of ingredients a social phenomenon requires is
related to its complexity, which is a measure of its “difficulty.” Hence, the keys to
understanding their theory is that cities differ in diversity and urban phenomena
differ in complexity, or difficulty. According to Gomez-Lievano, “The question of
explaining the prevalence of a particular social phenomenon in a city is a
question of calculating the probability that the right ingredients will get combined
given the diversity of ingredients the city has.”

"Urban Phenomena: A city’s list of ingredients is a measure of its diversity"

The urban complexity model explains the dissonance in the incidence of many
social phenomena in relation to city size, such as the proportion of Ph.D. holders
to high school graduates, the cases of robberies with respect to larcenies or
cases of syphilis in relation to chlamydia. The model tells them it is because
earning a Ph.D. degree, getting syphilis, or committing a robbery, is, respectively,
more difficult than earning a high school degree, getting chlamydia, or committing
larceny. The reason why difficult, or “complex” social phenomena tend to be
observed predominantly in large cities is because this is where a wide variety of
“ingredients” exist and get combined, exponentially facilitating their occurrence.
In essence, large cities make “difficult recipes” exponentially easier to cook.

While the model can describe the speed with which a multitude of social
phenomena evolve with respect to population increases in urban areas, there is
still much to be studied to understand how it can be used to help create better
policy in urban areas. The question that now unfolds is: if many things
disproportionately concentrate in large cities, is there a way to foster “the good”
and hinder “the bad”?
The New Communities Movement of the 1960s and 1970s
In the 1950s and 1960s, early post-World War II suburban expansion was
criticized for its ugliness, cultural conformity, social isolation, and environmental
problems. From the 1950s through the 1970s, some real–estate developers and
parts of the planning profession responded to these complaints. They proposed
master-planned new communities throughout the United States related to the
new–towns programs then active in Europe. Ranging in projected population
from 10,000 to 500,000, these communities were planned to be phased,
coordinated, socially balanced, environmentally aware, and economically
efficient. Their developers wanted to create whole communities rather than
simple subdivisions. By avoiding many of the problems of unplanned incremental
growth—or sprawl—they imagined both improving urban areas and creating a
real–estate product that would sell.

While around 150 of these new communities were publicized in the 1960s and
1970s, not all the proposed developments were built. In addition, the
developments differed in character. Some developments were relatively small—
much closer to 10,000 than 100,000 in population. While the ideal of the new
community was the comprehensive new town with employment, retail, cultural
facilities, and recreational opportunities, many were more like bedroom suburbs
either in their initial concept or due to scaling back of the development after
construction commenced.

This project examines three of the biggest and most comprehensive of the
satellite new communities. Irvine, California; Columbia, Maryland; and The
Woodlands in suburban Houston, Texas, were all initially planned in the 1960s
and 1970s but used many techniques currently advocated by the various anti-
sprawl movements, such as smart growth and new urbanism. Still under
construction, and with relatively few discontinuities in their planning and
development, they can now offer the lessons of several decades of continuously
implemented cutting-edge suburban design and planning from the private sector.
How well did these planned communities avoid the problems of sprawl? Did they
create more sustainable or livable places? Are the techniques that they used still
viable alternatives or are they now part of the problem? Can private–sector
planning achieve important public purposes?

The lesson of these developments is that many techniques for achieving such
aims as protecting open space or creating convenient places to live are still
relevant. However, even when successfully implemented not all techniques
achieved the outcomes they were intended to produce, particularly in the areas
of transportation and housing. These failures still have a great deal to teach the
current period, because they are likely to be failures, as well, of the current
generation of suburban smart–growth projects that use essentially the same
techniques. However, to do much more, outside of some small niche
developments, such as many of those constructed by new urbanists, would be to
go beyond the market, and thus require government intervention. This project
explores those limits to marketable urban innovation and examines where the
public sector needs to intervene if larger goals are to be met.
 Town & Country Planning of Britain
The Town and Country Planning Act 1947 was an important piece of
British legislation that introduced the basis for much of the
contemporary planning system. It was intended as a response to the post-
Second World War need for large-scale rebuilding
and planning of townsand cities, as well as to help reorganise industry.

The 1947 Act democratised the use of land, controlling it and requiring planning

permission to be granted prior to development beginning. The significance of
the Act lay in the fact that by establishing the requirement for planning
permission, the right to develop land was no longer a given of ownership.

This meant that local authorities, which were reorganised from 1,400 to 145, had
to prepare a comprehensive local plan which set out detailed policies
and proposals for the use and development of land within their area. Permitted
development rights were granted to sectors such as agriculture which exempted
them from some planning controls.

Wide-ranging powers were given to local authorities, including:

 Approval of planning proposals.
 Redevelopment of land.
 Compulsory purchase orders to buy land and lease to private developers.
 Powers to control outdoor advertising.
 Powers to preserve woodland or buildings of architectural/historic interest.

The latter power was the beginning of the listed building process, which provide

protections to certain historic buildings.

Town and Country Planning Act 1968.

Brought effective protection to listed buildings for the first time and was the key to
the conservation revolution.

For more information see: Town and Country Planning Act 1968.

1990 Act

The Town and Country Planning Act 1990 superseded the 1947 Act and made

several changes, principally dividing planning into
forward planning and development control, i.e. setting out the future strategy of
the local authority, and controlling the current development.

This principle was amended by the Planning and Compensation Act 1991, which
introduced the plan-led system, meaning that development plans should be
determined in line with planning applications.

Part 3 of the Act places all significant development decisions by private

landowners in publicownership, which was seen as being necessary to
prevent development taking place that was against the will or best interests of
the community.
Section 102 enables a Notice to be issued ordering the discontinuing use, or
alteration or removal of buildings or works. A local planning authority (LPA) can
issue a Notice if they consider it is in the interests of the proper planning of
their area, including being in the interests of amenity. For more information,
see Section 102.

Section 106 allows for the setting in place of planning agreements or planning

obligations that developers must meet in order to secure planning permission.
The purpose of Section 106 is to offset the costs (social, infrastructural,
economic, etc.) entailed with the development going ahead. This can take the
form of a provision for social or affordable housing, or a contribution towards the
provision of better local infrastructure. For more information, see Section
106contributions.

Sections 137-171 relate to the landowner’s right to require purchase of interests,

i.e. interests affected by planning decisions or orders. Known as property blight,
this involves the reduction in marketability and value of land as a result of
a public sector decision. For more information, see Property blight.

Section 215 enables an LPA to serve a notice if they judge

the condition of land or buildings to be harmful to the area. A typical application
of a Section 215 notice is to require the tidying up of waste and detritus on
open land. For more information, see Section 215.

Sections 226-246 relate to the acquisition and appropriation

of land for public and planningpurposes, as well as the extinguishment of certain
rights.

The Regional City

Regional planning is a branch of land use planning and deals with the efficient
placement of land use activities, infrastructure and settlement growth across a
significantly larger area of land than an individual city or town.
Regional planning addresses problems of economic, social and political
transformations at geographical scales greater than a municipality, state or even
country. The region is connected and united by cultural identity, economic
interests, geographic features, as well as common developmental and
environmental concerns. Since the independence, the need for regional planning
has arisen from changing social and economic phenomena affecting local
communities and regions throughout the country.

1. AIM OF REGIONAL PLANNING

a) Utilizing Resources in an optimal manner so as to realize the development

potential of the region over a given time-frame with minimal negative impacts in
order to achieve economic-equity.
b) Securing the planning and equitable distribution of population and economic
resources of a country.
c) The task of arranging the available land in a pattern which is most profitable
and productive to the region and the country at large.
d) Allocation of certain basic resources to generate economic activity in
backward regions for stabilization of their economy by planning an adequate
number of medium sized towns and to provide them with services, employment,
and social and cultural facilities.
e) Preventing irregular and unhealthy urban expansion.

3. PRINCIPLES OF REGIONAL PLANNING

Specific interventions and solutions will depend entirely on the needs of
each region in each country, but generally speaking, regional planning at the
macro level will seek to:
1) Resist development in flood plains or along earthquake faults. These areas
may be utilized as parks, or unimproved farmland.
2) Designate transportation corridors using hubs and spokes and considering
major new infrastructure.
3) Some thought into the various ‘role’s settlements in the region may play,
for example some may be administrative, with others based upon
manufacturing or transport.
4) Consider designating essential nuisance land uses locations, including
waste disposal.
5) Designate Green belt land or similar to resist settlement amalgamation and
protect the environment.
6) Set regional level ‘policy’ and zoning which encourages a mix of housing
values and communities.
7) Consider building codes, zoning laws and policies that encourage the best
use of the land.

4. APPROACHES TO REGIONAL PLANNING

The approach to regional planning can be either 'total' or 'selective'. In the
total regional planning approach an attempt is made to develop all regions of an
economy, while in the selective approach the attention is concentrated on the
development of some regions only. However, this differentiation between the
'total' and 'selective' approaches is possible only in the context of an economy
where no national planning exists. In most of the underdeveloped countries,
there is some sort of planning for all regions, at least in the overall framework of
a national plan. Under these circumstances, it is better to define the total regional
planning approach as the one which aims at equal development rates for all
regions of the economy by providing equal investment in all of them. The
selective regional planning approach will then be one that aims at unequal
development rates for the different regions of the economy by providing unequal
investments in them. When we talk of equal investment, we mean equal
investment in relation to the size of the region (size can be determined in relation
to either area or population or both). Thus, if region 1 is double the size of region
2, it receives investment twice as much compared with region 2. This is
necessary, for otherwise equal investment will, in fact, imply unequal
investments, as is fairly obvious. For example, if regions 1 and 2 receive the
same investment, it clearly amounts to discrimination in favor of region 2.
As for the choice between the total regional planning approach and the
selective regional planning approach, it is easy to see that the resources required
by the former in terms of funds, physical resources, entrepreneurial and
managerial skills, technical capabilities, etc., will be beyond the reach of an
underdeveloped country. Therefore, an underdeveloped country has, of
necessity, to rely on the selective approach in its regional planning strategy.
Under such an approach it will devote more resources to the development of
some regions and less resource to the development of others.
The advantages of selective approach are many:
a) Different kind of regions for different purposes can be designated
b) A loose delineation of regional boundaries can be adopted so that they can
be changed whenever required (this introduces an element of flexibility in
planning process)
c) The regional effort can be largely dropped when the purpose has been
largely accomplished.
d) Fewer planning personnel and organization resources are required, and
the available ones can be shifted from region to region as situation
changes.

According to Perloff (economist at University of California), the selection of

region for special attention will in general, be guided by the following factors:
i. The possibility of developing an outstanding untapped resource, even of a
limited type, such as a multipurpose river basin development.
ii. The solution to a severe and nationally threatening problem, such as an
extremely depressed area, a culturally backward area not in the national
mainstream, or an area threatening to break away politically.
iii. A combination of both significant potentials and tough problems, such as
planning of major metropolitan regions.

Though the adoption of the selective approach, a country can concentrate

more on the lagging regions and help them develop at a faster rate than other
regions. As a consequence of this policy, employment opportunities will expand
in backward regions, per capita income will increase and the incentive to migrate
to prosperous regions will decline. This will also be the advantage to the
prosperous region in long run.

5. REGIONAL DISPARITIES
Regional inequalities existed in all countries at all times and it will be
ridiculous to expect that they can be abolished altogether. Complete equality
among regions is not possible because resources and human skills are unevenly
distributed over the different regions of a country and mobility of factors is
imperfect. Thus, even in USA, there is a vast underdeveloped area known as
Appalachia, characterized by rural poverty. In Canada, the maritime provinces,
southern part of Italy, northern part of Sweden, large areas in Scotland and
Wales of UK, western area of France, northern regions of Finland and Norway:
have all lagged considerably behind in the race of development and are
designated ‘problem areas’. Because of the widespread poverty and below-
subsistence level of existence of the vast majority of people in many backward
regions in the underdeveloped countries, the task is twofold: (1) reduction of
regional disparities, and (2) ensuring at least a minimum level of subsistence to
majority of people inhabiting the backward areas and living below the level of
subsistence.
If we take example of India, we can say that the states like Maharashtra,
Tamil Nadu, West Bengal which are considered to be industrial states, do not
have all their areas developed, instead, there majority of areas are backward
areas. The objective of ‘removal of regional inequalities’ should be re-formulated
in the Indian context as follows:
 Reducing disparities among states
 Reducing inequalities among different areas of the same state in such a
way that all the inhabitants are ensured a certain minimum level of
subsistence.

6. TYPES OF REGIONAL PLANNING

The term regional planning can be said as a cover for three different types
of planning namely, interregional planning, interlocal planning and locational
planning.
Interregional planning deals with overall national planning to promote
socio-economic development of the nation. The interregional planning solves the
problem of interregional allocation of tasks – the problem how to outline the role
of each region in the formulation and implementation of national objectives.
Interlocal planning is done at region (state) level. It has to be developed
within the institutional framework of state government. Depending on the social,
economical and political structure of the state, the interlocal planning agency
formulates different objectives for socio-economic development.
The interregional and interlocal planning activities are representing explicit
spatial dimensions of the planning system. So, for planning of a particular
location, locational planning supports the above two types on the micro level of
location.

7. DEVELOPMENT STRATEGIES IN REGIONAL PLANNING

The main question is how to achieve these objectives in regional development
programmers and what strategies could be adopted for that purpose. It is
different from region to region depending upon degree of region’s natural
endowments, status of its present development problem that may have surfaced
and constraints to future development. Yet certain common factors spelt out and
the total regions although the total package that may emerge for any particular
region will have its own distinctive pattern of contents. These common factors
may be stated;
1) Growth in both economic and social terms
2) Human resources assessment both quantitatively and qualitatively
3) Natural resources endowments
4) Development infrastructure
5) Inter-regional linkage and trade-off

The development strategies for any particular region would be an admixture of

these 5 factors. The features are briefly discussed below.
1) Growth in both economic and social terms:

At the national level two distinct situations are possible, one where
economic growth has achieved a high level as in the case of advanced countries
with high consequent to such economic growth, social development fairly
advanced with high per capita income, and high level of services available to the
people. The second situation is that developing countries with low rate of growth,
less than adequate level of services which neverthless one being increased by
means of appropriate development programmes. In the former case the
development strategy, if we may continue to call it development is concerned
with sustaining the present high level of growth in the future also and if necessary
even bringing down, the high level to level at which the resources of the country
would sustain it on a long term basis. In the latter case, namely the developing
countries it is the husbanding of the resources and their exploitation so as to
make it possible to reach a higher rate of economy growth.
2) Human Resource

The economic growth possibilities are greatly depends upon the human
resources in each region, their present level of capability, equipment and talent
and the readiness with which they can be drawn into the programs of accelerated
economic development. It is not usual that in the underdeveloped areas, the
manpower is very much unprepared for the development task which they have to
undertake to achieve rapid growth. This is owing to the migration in the past of
talented people to devaluated areas impoverishing the man power in that region
and more seriously lack of attention to the development of man power. Therefore
manpower development will be the one the key tasks which will determine the
successes or otherwise the regional development strategies.
In dealing with such manpower planning and developing, it will be
necessary to recognize the constraints which the cultural milieu of that area
imposes on its developments. A hasty imposition of manpower training programs
not geared to those areas specially may tend to break down the traditional and
long standing economic and social fabric in those areas and thereby render the
human resources incapable of either adopting the traditional pattern or accepting
the new pattern with any efficiency or effort. The great sensitivity with which
manpower planning and development is developed will largely determine the
success of the regional development program. Thus the development of
appropriate manpower and skills with indigenous resources will be a crucial
aspect of development strategy.
3) Natural Resources endowment

The level of development of any specific region is largely dependent on its

resources endowment in terms of cultivable land, forests, water, minerals and so
on. The distribution of this resources are not uniform specially in a large regions
which are poorly endowed and regions which are richly endowed in degree of
endowments the populations in these region can also be rich or poor.
4) Infrastructure

Once the economic growth rate is stipulated, a programme for manpower

development is evolved and the needed natural endowment is secured through
the process of regionalization, the next step in the regional development strategy
is to consider infrastructure development within each region. By infrastructure we
mean here not merely water, power and transportation requirement but also
more important component of the settlement system which serves the need of
economic developmental activates and at the same time makes it possible to
achieve better social well, energy and transportation requirement and largely
governed by the pattern of economic activity envisaged in each region and the
infrastructure support which they need.

5) Inter regional linkages

At the sub national level it is obvious that we are not dealing with a region
as a unit in isolation; there are no barriers across the boundaries of the several
region hindering the flow of economic activities and social activities. Population
and essentially dealing with a very fluid unit and regional development strategy
must recognize the dynamite of the situation and appropriately provide for it. In
fact this dynamism is of utmost important as it provides for inter regional
exchanges and thereby helps to even out the differences that may be there
because of different patterns not being the same in all the achievement of a
satisfactory mix of goods and services to be provided to the people of each
region and this can be achieved through only multi lateral exchange amongst the
different regions. There may be a tendency for inter directions only and that
would go against the policy of balanced growth. The regional development
strategy must foresee such trends and structure the production pattern so as to
ensure that flows are evenly distributed in multi lateral direction.

8. SUMMARY
It has been brought out that major of the existing approaches are largely
meant for industrialized and urbanized societies. So, this urban-industrial bias
should be corrected to suit the rural and agricultural context of developing
societies, else planning won’t be able to reach its goals.
The old concept of a region being a physical geographical area and
having a fixed boundary appears to have given way to more flexible and realistic
way of looking at the issue.
Regional planning must become a tool for generating rural employment
and removing poverty, among the marginalized people in both rural and urban
areas, not only for the few who have wealth.
The main problem is not the lack of resources but their optimum utilization.
The lack of competent people to manage planning and development processes
at lower territorial levels is very acute. The skill with the masses is not available
in those backward regions.