ENVIRONMENTAL PLANNING:

HISTORY, THEORIES, AND CONCEPTS

Ragene Andrea L. Palma, EnP
ragenepalma@gmail.com
littlemissurbanite.com
REFERENCES
➤ The City Reader, Sixth Edition (2016) edited by Richard
T. LeGates and Frederic Stout
➤ Happy City: Transforming our Lives through Urban Design
by Charles Montgomery
➤ Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York by
Robert Caro
➤ Why Nations Fail by Daren Acemoglu and James Robinson
➤ Cities in Time by Ali Madanipour
OUTLINE
➤ The evolution of cities
➤ Urban culture and society
➤ Urban space
➤ Urban politics, governance, and economics
➤ Urban planning history and visions
➤ Urban planning theory and practice
➤ Urban design and placemaking
➤ Cities in a global society
 THE EVOLUTION OF CITIES
➤ The urban revolution by V
Gordon Childe

THE ➤

➤
The polis by HDF Kitto
City origins by Henri Pirenne

EVOLUTION ➤

➤
Great towns by Friedrich Engle

The American Industrial

metropolis by Sam Bass

OF CITIES ➤
Warner
Contemporary America by
Kenneth Jackson
➤ Beyond suburbia by Robert
Fishman
 CITY ORIGINS:
THE ANCIENT CITIES
V. GORDON CHILDE (1892-1957)
➤ The “single most influential
archaeologist of the twentieth
century”
➤ Wrote the book “Man Makes
Himself ” in 1936
➤ Pioneered human historical
development and came up
with the Three Age System
➤ Wrote about the first cities in
Mesopotamia
 THE THREE-AGE SYSTEM
➤ Stone Age - from hunter-
gatherers to settled agriculture
was the Neolithic Revolution
➤ Bronze Age - from the
Neolithic agriculture to
complex city systems was the
Urban Revolution
➤ Iron Age - the Industrial
Revolution of the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0
http://img06.deviantart.net/e8bd/i/2010/298/a/4/mesopotamian_city_by_r_w_shilling-
d31h7ig.jpg
 MESOPOTAMIA, 10,000 BC-7TH CENTURY AD

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/6c/
41/99/6c4199e409ff41855b0d9f1ebab509fb.gif
WATER-BASED
 ANCIENT BABYLON (4,000 BCE)
➤ First Mesopotamian City is
though to be Uruk
➤ Babylon, home to the
legendary Tower of Babel and
Hanging Gardens, and the
kings Hammurabi and
Nebuchadnezzar
➤ Had the Ziggurat (temple, and
royal palace)

Painting by Maurice Bardin, as sen in the

Oriental Institute at the University of
Chicago; copyright The City Reader
THE ATHENS OF SOCRATES (5TH CENTURY BCE)
 HDF KITTO
➤ British classical scholar
➤ Professor of Greek, studied
the Polis
➤ Wrote In the Mountains of Greece
and the treatment The Greeks
(1951)

(c) Comparte Libros

 THE POLIS
➤ Closest words we use are
“city-state” and “self-
governing community”
➤ Physical form stressed
public space, private houses
were turned away from streets
➤ Made it possible for every
citizen to realise his spiritual,
moral, and intellectual
capacities
➤ However, did not support the
development of women and
slaves

Copyright The City Reader

ACROPOLIS
➤ The “high city”
➤ With the Parthenon and
temple structures
➤ Symbol of the citadel
AGORA
➤ The Marketplace
➤ The Open Space
➤ Where they held debates,
conversed, shopped, and
settled disputes
➤ Greek citizens exercised and
competed in public stadiums
and gymnasia
➤ They participated in the
cultural life of the community
in large open-air theaters
 And let this be the law: If any one intentionally
pollutes the water of a spring, or collected in

“
reservoirs, either by poisonous substances, or by
digging, or by theft, let the injured party bring the
cause before the wardens of the city, and claim in
writing the value of the loss; if the accused be found
guilty of injuring the water by deleterious substances,
let him not only pay damages, but purify the stream
or the cistern which contains the water, in such
manner as the laws… order the purification to be
made by the offender in each case. (Polluter Pays
Principle)
-Plato
 Human well-being is realized only partly

“ by satisfying whatever people’s

preferences happen to be at a particular
time; it is also necessary for successive
generations to leave behind sufficient
resources so that future generations are
not constrained in their preferences.
(Intergenerational Equity)
-Aristotle
“
Zoon politikon.
(The animal that lives in a polis)

- Aristotle
HIPPODAMUS OF MILETUS (498-408 BC)
➤Invented formal city planning

➤Made the Hippodamian Plan or the grid city to

maximise winds in the summer and minimise them in
winter. This shows his geometric, arranged style in
design

➤Also worked on the Piraeus Port and Alexandria

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/fe/e6/72/
fee672f60beab2fa75ba4e4d3fb88299.jpg
Google
 THE ROMAN EMPIRE
AND
THE MEDIEVAL CITIES
The castra, Via Appia, and aqueduct
 Religious divisions,
absence of military
discipline, murder, and
citizen unrest also
brought about
instability 

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/w7x8P9-_Osg/maxresdefault.jpg
 THE VIKINGS
➤ Cut off the aqueduct
➤ Overthrew the Roman culture

(c) Quora
 HENRI PIRENNE
➤ Belgian historian
➤ Wrote “City Origins” and
“Cities and European
Civilisation”
➤ Argued that barbarian
invaders were absorbed into
Roman culture (which they
overthrew), and did not
damage Roman cities as much
as possible
➤ Argued that trade revived
cities during the eleventh
century

(c) Alchetron
MEDIEVAL CITIES
➤ Fostered trade after the fall of
the Roman Empire
➤ Protected its limits with walls
➤ Layout became a basis for the
Garden City and New
Urbanism later on
 A MEDIEVAL CITY:
CARCASSONE, FRANCE

(c) City Reader

 TRADERS
➤ Seen on the outskirts, “below
cities” (origin of suburbia)
➤ Poor people traveling about
with goods, peddling from
place to place
➤ Helped to set the stage for the
renaissance

(c) Google
“
Towns were chiefly inhabited by
tradesmen and mechanics, who seem
in those days to have been of servile
or very nearly of servile condition.
- Adam Smith
(The Wealth of Nations, 1776)
 ITALY, FRANCE, BELGIUM, ENGLAND,
GERMANY, NETHERLANDS

RENAISSANCE

http://resources.touropia.com/gfx/d/tourist-attractions-in-italy/
santa_maria_del_fiore.jpg
COMMERCE BECAME THE DRIVING FACTOR OF CITIES
http://brandavenue.typepad.com/.a/
6a00d8341c12a453ef013488a3e536970c-500wi
Mercantile cities: Amsterdam and Milan
https://twistedsifter.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/milan-italy-at-night-from-space-
nasa.jpg?w=800&h=534
https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/652909497862721536/Qj-aNER8.jpg;
Wikipedia
 (c) Venngage

GREAT TOWNS
(THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION)
 FRIEDRICH ENGELS (1820-1845)
➤ Wrote “Great Towns,” from
the The Condition of the
Working Class in England in
1844
➤ Icon of international
communism; friend and
partner of Karl Marx
➤ Wrote about the horrors of
industrial urbanism, slums,
decay, filth, misery, and
despair
➤ Used a peripatetic method
(traveling from place to place)

MySpace
BEFORE AND AFTER THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
BEFORE
➤ Church spires are
dominant
➤ Land is empty, air
and water are
clean

AFTER
➤ Factory
smokestacks are
dominant
➤ Sprawl and
smoke
PATTERS OF IMMIGRATION 1820-1914
ACCELERATED THE INDUSTRIAL
REVOLUTION AND TRANSPORTATION (c) Tes
 THE AMERICAN
INDUSTRIAL
METROPOLIS

http://digitallibrary.usc.edu/cdm/ref/collection/p15799coll65/id/7132
 SAM BASS WARNER
➤ American professor
➤ Wrote the book Streetcar Suburbs:
The Process of Growth in Boston
➤ Studied changes in urban life after
the industrial revolution, such as
new types of power, economic
booms, and new mobilities
➤ New technology and economic
change brought about:
➤ Inner city neighbourhoods
➤ Suburbs
➤ Specialized industrial districts
➤ Commercial downtowns

(c) Amazon
MySpace
 SAM BASS WARNER
➤ Noted social transformation
such as:
➤ Massive foreign
immigration
➤ Labor union power
➤ Women rights
➤ African-American
engagement
➤ Segregation, discrimination,
and inequality issues

(c) Amazon
MySpace
 THE DRIVE-IN CULTURE
OF
CONTEMPORARY AMERICA (c) journal.christiancascadia.com
 KENNETH T. JACKSON
➤ The Jacques Barzun Professor
of History and Social Sciences
at the Columbia University
➤ Wrote Crabgrass Frontier: The
Suburbanization of the United
States
➤ Critiqued the negative and
social cultural effects that the
private automobile has had on
urban society

(c) Amazon
MySpace
 KENNETH T. JACKSON
➤ Wrote about the:
➤ The interstate highway
➤ The garage
➤ The motel
➤ The drive-in theater
➤ The gas service station
➤ The shopping centre
➤ The house trailer and
mobile home
➤ A drive-in society

(c) Amazon
MySpace
 CRITIQUES ON SUBURBIA
➤ Friedrick Engels, Frank Lloyd
Wright, Sam Bass Warner,
Robert Bruegmann, Robert
Fishman, Myron Orfield
➤ The Crack in the Picture
Window (1986)
➤ The Split-Level Trap (1961)
➤ Trouble in Paradise (1986)
➤ Bourgeois Nightmares (2005)
➤ The Geography of Nowhere
(1993)
➤ Sprawl Kills (2005)

(c) Inhabitat
“
The anti-city.
A centerless city.
“ …the automobile
transformed both the
structure and social
life of modern cities.
BEYOND SUBURBIA:
THE RISE OF THE
TECHNOBURB
ROBERT FISHERMAN
➤ Professor of history in the
University of Michigan
➤ Wrote Bourgeois Utopias: The
Rise and Fall of Suburbia and
Urban Utopias of the Twentieth
Century
➤ Coined two terms:
Technoburb and techno-city
“ Tehnoburbia, a dominant new urban reality
that can no longer be considered suburbia in
the traditional sense… City and suburb
form urbanised and un-urbanized areas,
high-tech and conventional development
flow seamlessly together.

-The City Reader / Robert Fisherman

APPLE ACADEMY IN CUPERTINO, CA
MICROSOFT HEADQUARTERS IN REDMOND, WASHINGTON
TECHNOBURB
➤ Peripheral zones that have
emerged as viable
socioeconomic units
➤ New technoburbs are spread
out along highway growth
corridors
➤ Composed of metropolitan
region shopping malls,
industrial parks, campus-like
office complexes, hospitals,
schools, and housing type
varieties
TECHNO-CITY
➤ A whole metropolitan region
that has been transformed by
the coming of the technoburb
 URBAN CULTURE AND SOCIETY

URBAN ➤ What is a city by Lewis

Mumford
➤ Minorities and majorities by

CULTURE ➤
Albert Camarillo

The uses of sidewalks: safety

by Jane Jacobs

AND ➤ The creative class by Richard

Florida

SOCIETY