Urban growth, as it is progressing in the United States, requires that land
be used in a coordinated, rational manner. The author of this paper
discusses various facets of land use planning, and points out
relationships to public health.
ASPECTS OF LAND USE PLANNING
B. Budd Chavooshian
ONE of the foremost challenges facing
this country today is how to al-
locate usable land to best serve the in-
terests of the people. With a population
of about 175 million growing at around
1.7 per cent each year, compounded, the
competition for ideal sites for housing,
industry, public utilities, schools, farm-
land, and commercial centers becomes
more intense.
At the same time there is a marked
trend for Americans to move from the
country into the city, and from the inner
core of the city toward the suburbs and
their outer fringes. In 1950 more than
100 million-or about 60 per cent-
Americans lived in standard metropoli-
tan areas. By the year 2000, it is esti-
mated that 220 million of a possible 300
million Americans will be living in
metropolitan areas. (Standard Metropoli-
tan Areas-SMA's-usually consist of a
county or adjoining counties in which at
least one city has more than 50,000
people.) In 1950 there were 168 such
areas in the United States.
The 1960 census showed that this
trend toward urbanization of the land-
scape has increased still further. Recent
studies by the U. S. Bureau of Census.
the Urban Land Institute, and by other
planning groups have already made fore-
casts as to the future extent of metropoli-
.434
tan areas throughout the United States.
They envision a series of "strip-cities"
throughout this country.
Even now the urban region from Port-
land, Me., down to Norfolk, Va., is
approaching this condition. Later on
the San Francisco to Los Angeles strip
and the L-shaped strip from Milwaukee
south to Chicago and east through De-
troit to Cleveland will become steadily
urbanized. That is, unless some unfore-
seen economic or natural upheaval
should intervene.
Along with this growing urbanization,
will come the inevitable social, economic,
and political problems of how to divide
up the urban landscape among com-
peting and conflicting demands. In
New Jersey, for example, the North-
eastern Metropolitan Region (Newark,
Jersey City. Elizabeth, Paterson, and so
forth), in which the boundaries between
cities are often ill-defined, has been con-
fronted with numerous land use prob-
lems. Social and economic forces in this
area are causing an increase in blighted
or run-down housing areas.
In other sections of New Jersey de-
mands for more reservoirs in the Dela-
ware River Basin have conflicted with
those of neighboring states of Pennsyl-
vania and New York. Problems like
these are repeated in other urban areas
VOL. 51. NO. 3. A.J.P.H.

throug,hout the country and may be ex-
pected to become more serious before
improving. It is here that a description
of land use planning might help those
N ho are concerned with the problems of
urban expansion and congestion.
Land Use Planning-A Definition
Land use planning is one phase of the
over-all field of city and regional plan-
ning. Essentially it involves the study
of past and present land uses in a com-
munity, a projection of the needs of the
populace to meet demands-ratio of serv-
ices to numbers of people, and finally a
wvritten, graphic and visual proposal of
how the total land space might be most
economical and fairly divided among
foreseeable uses (factories, schools, farm-
land, housing, roads, parks, and others).
Also involved is the political climate in
which the land use planner finds him-
self. For the politicians, as representa-
tives of the people of the community,
have to approve the tools of effectuation
to carry out or insure the success of the
comprehensive or master plan.
One part of land use planning which
has assumed more prominence recently
is the need to plan for the circulation
of automotive and rapid transit traffic in
urban areas. In almost all the larger
cities the problem of traffic congestion in
the downtown area has reached the criti-
cal stage. (The downtown area is
technically referred to as the "central
business district.") Narrow streets
which could handle the light traffic loads
of 40 years ago are today seldom ade-
quate for this task. The number of cars
in a city has often increased at a faster
rate than the number of drivers. This
has added to the traffic congestion and
at the same time taken business away
from public transit service.
Today, the cities are faced with a
need to plan for an ideal pattern of
traffic circulation. Such a system would,
among other functions, carry intercity or
MARCH, 1961
ASPECTS OF LAND USE PLANNING
interstate traffic through or around an
urban area with minimum disruption of
the internal traffic pattern of the city.
Planners have to estimate how much this
new road pattern would change the city's
economic and social structure; and dif-
ferences in approach between the urban
planner and highway engineer have to
be vorked out. In short, traffic and
highway planning is still a young field.
Planning for recreation facilities is
another kind of land use planning which
might bring together the professionals of
urban planning and public health. It is
increasingly recognized that a minimum
area of land in each commuinity is
needed to satisfy the impulse to play
and relax-for adults as well as for
children. The shortage or inaccessibility
of parks and playgrounds in our largest
cities may prove to be an important
factor in the increasing incidence of
mental illness in some of these areas.
Land which is used for parks or natural
preserves can often be put to a greater
number of uses, since it is frequently
cheaper to clear away the natural vege-
tation than to tear down any buildings
that might have been erected on the
same site.
However, vacant and undeveloped
land often is too expensive to maintain
because of taxes, so that there is fre-
quently strong economic pressure to
build an income-producing structure like
an apartment or office building. In
certain instances this has made it diffi-
cult for a city to acquire additional park
or recreation space, since private de-
velopers can often outbid what the city
government can afford to pay.
A minimum area of land in each
urban area must be reserved for educa-
tional facilities such as elementary
schools, high schools, and colleges. W'hat
this proportion will be is determined
partly by present and forecasts of the
future age-distribution of the local popu-
lation. For instance, many of the newer
suburbs throughout the country often
435
contain a greater proportion of school-
age and under school-age children than
do neighborhoods in the older sections
of that urban area.
With more than 4 million children
being born each year, it is clear that
a vast capital outlay will be needed to
provide adequate facilities for educa-
tion. The land use planner is prepared
to help this program by allocating the
most economical and otherwise suitable
sites for school buildings and grounds.
Public utilities form still another cate-
gory of land use which is essential to
the well-being of a community. Some
of the essential services like water supply
and sewage disposal present jurisdic-
tional problems which extend beyond
the boundaries of the urban area. For
example, New York City, Philadelphia,
and other cities in Pennsylvania, New
York, and New Jersey all receive their
water from the Delaware River basin.
This set of claims has led to political
and administrative conflicts as to how
much land area in each state's portion
of the basin should be saved for water
supply reservoirs. Fortunately, the Corps
of Engineers prepared a comprehensive
survey of this basin which was com-
pleted in 1960. At the same time the
governors of the four basin states agreed
to take the necessary steps to create an
organization to administer the water re-
sources of the basin.
The amount of land to be allocated
for power plants, sewage disposal facili-
ties, gas holders, transmission lines, and
other utility services should also be in-
corporated into the comprehensive plan
of the urban area.
In making up a comprehensive plan it
is convenient to reduce the diversity of
land uses into a few manageable cate-
gories. "Residential" land use, as an
example, would apply to those areas in
a community which contained structures
devoted to sleeping purposes. In a com-
prehensive plan these areas would be
situated in such a way that the families
436
living there would have ideal access to
schools, playground and park space,
shopping centers, working quarters, and
others. The density of buildings and
lots in residential areas tends to be lower
than in the commercial section of a city,
partly because land values and taxes
are lower than in the first case.
"Commercial" land use is a classifica-
tion which includes any use of land for
business, for wholesale and retail sales,
banking, and so forth. This category
exhibits widely varying characteristics
of density and ground coverage, some-
times reaching a very high concentrated
level in the older "downtown" sections
of metropolitan areas. In new shopping
centers or campus-type office building
centers, on the other hand, density and
coverage often fall below the levels
exhibited by purely residential neighbor-
hoods.
"Industrial" land use applies to sites
which are used for the processing and
manufacture of raw materials. Factories,
shops, and public utilities are examples
of this category. In practice, industry
may locate at an economically advan-
tageous site-such as near the central
business district of an urban area-but
such a location may be adverse with
regard to air pollution, to cite one in-
stance.
An often neglected type of land use
which is nevertheless of importance to
urban land use planning is the category
known as "agricultural." Historically,
the city has usually been somewhat
skeptical of the economic importance of
rural areas. Today, however, about
3,000 acres of open space (mostly farm-
land) are lost each day in the United
States as a result of "urban sprawl"-
the process through which urban areas
annex land beyond their outer fringes
for new housing and other municipal
improvements, such as roads and others.
Urban and metropolitan area planners
have increasingly tried to grapple with
this problem, and in some regions more
VOL. 51, NO. 3, A.J.P.H.

than a token effort has been made to
plan for optimum use of cropland on
urban fringe areas. In Santa Clara
County, Calif., planners and county offi-
cials were able, in 1954, to create an
agricultural zone in which cropland
would be preserved from further en-
croachment by housing developments.
After a comprehensive land use plan
has been completed the next step is to
develop procedures to implement it. At
this time, planners and lawyers must
combine to draft zoning laws and ordi-
nances for the communities they serve.
"Zoning," which is the legal determina-
tion of a land use pattern, is an import-
ant device to insure that a given area is
developed in conjunction with a coordi-
nated plan.
Subdivision controls are another fea-
ture of a controlled land use planning
program. In towns which have subdivi-
sion ordinances regulating the size of
lots in newly acquired tracts, public
officials can sometimes confer with the
planning board to determine ideal lot
size. For example, as of January 30,
1959, municipal zoning ordinances had
been adopted in 423 of New Jersey's
municipalities, and a total of 378 had
subdivision controls. In New Jersey,
the municipalities with both subdivision
ordinances and controls were thus in a
favorable position to control their future
growth.
Still another, and perhaps the most
spectacular way of carrying out an effec-
tive land use planning program es-
pecially in the larger cities in the
United States, is through the technic of
urban renewal. First, it must be added
that even smaller cities and towns some-
times require a face-lifting to provide an
adequate housing and living environ-
ment for their citizens. Quite a few
people are now aware that there are vast
areas of blighted and run-down housing
in the metropolitan centers, as well as
inadequate street systems, air pollution,
stream pollution, excessive noise, and
MARCH, 1961
ASPECTS OF LAND USE PLANNING
other shortcomings of the urban environ-
ment. The federal government has
recognized the seriousness of this situa-
tion in a provision of the Housing Act
of 1954 dealing with urban renewal.
The Federal Urban Renewal Adminis-
tration has made available funds to
enable communities to finance the costly
operation of tearing down the blighted
structures, and of replanning and re-
developing the area for the future.
Since a master plan for an urban area
may advocate a change in use and popu-
lation density for a core area of the city,
there is bound to be a prolonged process
of relocation of residents from present
congested and blighted neighborhoods.
The process will not be final, however,
until the planners, public officials, and
special interest groups of the community
agree to carry through all the provisions
of the master plan, including enforce-
ment of building codes and pertinent
public health regulations.
Land Use Planning and Public Health
The land use planner has a need to
know how his master plan will affect the
chemical composition and the circulation
patterns of the atmosphere in and around
an urban area. By cooperating with
public health engineers and meteorolo-
gists he may be able to determine suit-
able locations for industry and heavily
traveled traffic arteries so that the
esthetic and health needs of the com-
munity are satisfied.
Likewise, through consultation with
experts in water supply and water con-
servation, plans can best be adapted to
the local requirements for this vital
natural resource. In this case he is in a
position to plot the location of a new
reservoir with the cooperation of public
health officials and other water special-
ists. The problem of water supply in
the near future will become increasingly
acute. With the rapid growth in popu-
lation and living standards and in the
437
 possibilities for water pollution, the need
for a solution is urgent.
The planner and the sanitation en-
gineer could further share each other's
knowledge on problems of sanitation and
sewage disposal, to mention two ex-
amples. As suburban housing develop-
ments expand outward from the central
city, the costs of providing new sewers
have risen. Also, a number of suburbs
have found septic tanks inadequate for
the demands placed on them due among
other factors to undesirable drainage
features and improperly designed septic
systems. In New Jersey this problem
has been met by Chapter 199, adminis-
tered by the State Health Department,
which regulates the installation of septic
systems in terms of type of soil, includ-
ing but not limited to internal drainage
characteristics, number of occupants in
the structure, types of facilities in the
structure, and other features. In the
summer resort center, Ocean City, N. J.,
a study by the New Jersey State Plan-
ning Bureau has been undertaken to
help plan for the future development of
that town's sewer system, which has
proved at times incapable of handling
peak demands
As was earlier mentioned, zoning and
subdivision ordinances should be tailored
to the public health needs of a munici-
pality. The chief objectives for planners
and public officials concerned with zon-
ing would be the greatest possible re-
duction of such features of the environ-
ment as pollution of air and water,
unattractive landscape, and noise (from
traffic, trains, aircraft, factories, and con-
struction projects).
Planners owe a debt of thanks to the
American Public Health Association for
its pioneering work in delineating the
concept of "healthful housing." These
findings have paved the way for a more
accurate technic of measuring the extent
and rate of spread of urban blight, and
should therefore prove to be a boon to
urban renewal programs.
438
Land Use Planning and Metropolitan
Coordination
Wlith urban sprawl steadily growing,
along with the number of conflicting in-
terests over the use of the landscape, it is
apparent that some new policy or set of
policies will have to be applied to the
problem. As one observer explains:
". . . There are many local efforts by
private and public groups to cointrol spra+s l
and save open space. . . . Watershed groups,
for example, hav e not made commoni cause
wvith the recreation people or utilities: farmers
and urban planners have a joint interest in
open space, but act more as antagonists than
allies and all go down to piecemeal defeat.
"It is going to take a political fight to
bring these groups to focus on the prob-
lem. . . . Many planners feel they should
work first for a master government to deal
with all the problems of the metropolitan
area. . . ."1
In some cities an effort is now being
made to achieve metropolitan-wide plan-
ning. Toronto, Dade County (Miami),
Detroit, and Minneapolis-St. Paul have
established metropolitan planning boards
or the equivalent to deal with the con-
flicting planning interests of the suburbs
and cities within each area. Since the
suburbs are usually economically de-
pendent upon the core city of a metro-
politan center, it is expedient for all to
get together to solve their common prob-
lems.
Street and highway systems, public
utilities, and tax structure are a few
of the common features of suburb and
core city which show inconsistency in
development. For instance, the traffic
plan of one suburb has in some cases
allowed a channelization of its traffic
into an inadequate street system in a
neighboring suburb. This case is just
another argument for the establishment
of a metropolitan land use planning
agency to coordinate divergent and con-
flicting land uses among the towns in the
region.
New Jersey State Planning Program-
VOL. 51, NO. 3, A.J.P.H.

In a similar respect the New Jersey
State Planning Program has been work-
ing on the problem of coordinating land
use patterns throughout the state. The
State Planning Bureau in New Jersey is
one of the few in the nation to set up a
reservoir of planning services for the
benefit of a long list of communities, in-
cluding the state government itself.
Under various federal programs New
Jersey's municipalities are increasingly
showing their desire to solve the prob-
lems of rapid metropolitan development.
The Local Planning Assistance Program
of New Jersey's Department of Conserva-
tion and Economic Development is now
helping 120 communities of the 567 in
the state. Under the program, offered
through Section 701 of the United States
Housing Act of 1954. federal, state, and
local funds amounting in the aggregate
to over $1,300.000, are made available
to provide technical planning assistance
to municipalities of less than 25,000
people. Master plans for approximately
60 communities have thus far been com-
pleted tinder the program; plans for 15
others are in the final stages. The 1959
Housing Act has broadened the program
to include cities up to 50,000.
Unider Section 702 of the same Hous-
ing -ct. municipalities and public
authorities may obtain interest-free
federal loans for the purpose of prepar-
ing preliminary and final plans for pro-
posed public works. These are needed
for housing, urban renewal, industrial
and economic expansion, and area and
reaionial growth. The projects include:
sewere water, and sanitation facilities;
streets. bridges and grade separation;
bospitals and health facilities; public
buildings; and other projects including
garbage disposal plans, port deN elop-
ments and harbor and flood relief facili-
ties. Sinice this "702" program began
in 1954. assistance has been approved
for 26 projects totaling more than $1.1
million.
MARCH, 1961
ASPECTS OF LAND USE PLANNING
Another case of planning for metro-
politan coordination is to be found in
the Urban Renewal Survey now under
way at the State Planning Bureau. The
study area of the survey covers the
urbanized portions of 278 municipali-
ties in a nine-county area in northeastern
New Jersey. Eighteen of the 40 urban
renewal projects in this region are situ-
ated in the six major central cities
(Jersey City, Paterson, Newark, Eliza-
beth, East Orange, and Passaic). A
comprehensive survey of blight and
urban renewal policies and procedures
will be followed by suggestions for
regional urban renewal goals. The com-
pleted research will then be made avail-
able as a guide for both private and pub-
lic action within the deteriorating sec-
tions of northeastern New Jersey.
This survey is a joint undertaking of
the Planning Bureau and Rutgers Uni-
versity, and will help state and federal
government determine whether regional
cooperation can be of assistance to local
communities in renewal programs. The
first of the kind in the country, the
survey will be undertaken with a grant
of $130,106 from the Federal Urban Re-
newal Administration, and $65,053 from
the state of New Jersey in staff and
supervisory services.
Conclusion
To summarize this discussion on the
role of land planning in the urbaniza-
tion process, it might pay to quote a
recent observation:
"As this country moves from a space-
abundant to a space-poor nation, human needs
wvill mount. More people will be brought in
contact with one another, more often than not
in over-standardized environments. Strains
and stresses may be reflected in even higher
rates of juvenile delinquency, alcoholism,
mental illness, air and water pollution, com-
municable diseases, etc."2
If this statement is true, then the
urban planner and the public health en-
439
gineer have a big job ahead of them to
see that their respective programs
better society are publicized and then
REFERENCES
for a 1. Whyte, William H., Jr. Urban Sprawl. Fortune (Jan.).
1958 (reprint).
2. Population Reference Bureau, Inc. Space-A Finite
Factor. Population Bull. 13,6:98 (Oct.), 1957.

Mr. Chavooshian is chief, Bureau of Planning, New Jersey State Planning

Bureau, Trenton, N. J.
This paper was presented before a Joint Session of the Conference of
Municipal Public Health Engineers, the Conference of State Sanitary Engineers
and the Engineering and Sanitation Section of the American Public Health
Association at the Eighty-Seventh Annual Meeting in Atlantic City, N. J.,
October 21, 1959.

Normal Behavior
"No valid comparative statistics of the incidence of mental illness in different
parts of the world is possible today because of the great differences in social
attitudes as to what constitutes mental illness or abnormal behavior in different
countries. What is considered as manifestation of severe mental illness in one culture
may be looked upon, in a culture with a more primitive outlook, as a high form of
religious attainment. Thus, comparative surveys of the attitudes of the peoples
toward variations in human behavior and toward facilities and techniques for the
treatment of those considered mentally ill are basic to a genuine international
epidemiological study of mental illness and mental health."
(F. Fremont-Smith, M.D. World Mental Health Year. Hospital Progress, February, 1960.)

440 VOL. 51. NO. 3, A.J.P.H.