DEFINITION OF PLANNING

Planning

Planning is the process of thinking regarding the activities required to achieve a desired goal. Planning is
based on foresight, the fundamental capacity for mental time travel. The evolution of forethought, the
capacity to think ahead, is considered to have been a prime mover in human evolution. Planning is a
fundamental property of intelligent behavior. It involves the use of logic and imagination to visualize not only
a desired end result, but the steps necessary to achieve that result. An important aspect of planning is its
relationship to forecasting. Forecasting aims to predict what the future will look like, while planning
imagines what the future could look like.
Planning according to established principles is a core part of many professional occupations, particularly in
fields such as management and business. Once a plan has been developed it is possible to measure and
assess progress, efficiency and effectiveness. As circumstances change, plans may need to be modified or
even abandoned.
The term 'planning' is a very broad one that typically refers to making plans for some sort of undertaking.
This might involve; assessing needs, quantifying resources, defining goals, developing strategies,
describing and allocating tasks and monitoring progress. However, in the construction industry, the term
‘planning’ can also refer to the process of obtaining planning permission, or the general subject of town and
country planning.
Thus, planning is the process of particularizing and, ultimately, of harmonizing the demands of
environment, use, and economy. This process has a cultural as well as a utilitarian value, for in creating a
plan for any social activity the architect inevitably influences the way in which that activity is performed.
The goal of planning is to maximize the health, safety, and economic well-being of all people living in our
communities. This involves thinking about how we can move around our community, how we can attract
and retain thriving businesses, where we want to live, and opportunities for recreation. Planning helps
create communities of lasting value.
While architects often focus on a single building, a planner's job is to work with residents and elected
officials to guide the layout of an entire community or region. Planners take a broad view and look at how
the pieces of a community — buildings, roads, and parks — fit together like pieces of a puzzle. Planners
then make recommendations on how the community should proceed. One of the greatest challenges for
planners is to imagine what can and should happen to a community: how it should grow and change, and
what it should offer residents 10, 15, or even 20 years into the future.

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HISTORICAL OVERVIEW

History of Planning

In the United States, "planning" began to emerge as a standardized profession and practice in the early
1900s. The following timeline highlights the evolution of planning in the United States, and how the practice
has both influenced and responded to changes in American society.

Early City Planning Commission (June 1902)

Cleveland's chapter of the Architectural Institute of America and the city's Chamber of Commerce
presented a bill to form a "Board of City Planning for Ohio Cities." Ohio Gov. George Nash fulfilled the bill
by appointing Daniel Burnham, John Carrere, and Arnold Brunner as the Group Plan Commission for
Cleveland. Although not technically a city planning commission, this group essentially acted like one, with
the power to give advice about many broad planning improvements in the city.

First Official City Planning Commission (March 26, 1907)

Hartford, Connecticut, became the first city in the United States with an official and permanent City
Planning Commission. Prior to this, planning commissions were generally disbanded once a plan had been
developed. A planning commission makes recommendations about the planning and zoning of a city or
town to the local council.

First Course in City Planning (1909)

Harvard College introduced "The Principles of City Planning," the first college course in city planning,
through its Landscape Architecture department. The university was also the first to launch programs in city
and regional planning, in 1923, and urban design, in 1960.

First National Conference on City Planning (May 21, 1909)

Benjamin Marsh, at the impetus of the Committee on Congestion of Population, organized the first national
meeting on planning, the National Conference on City Planning, in Washington, D.C. Most of the prominent
urbanists of the time attended the event, including Frederick Law Olmsted, John Nolen, and George Ford.
The conference led directly to the creation of the American City Planning Institute in 1917.

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American City Planning Institute (May 1917)
The American City Planning Institute, one of the predecessors of the American Planning Association, was
founded, with Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. as its first president. The organization served to formalize the
group that had organized the first National Conference on City Planning in 1909. The American City
Planning Institute later became the American Institute of Planners.

First Comprehensive Plan (1925)

Cincinnati became the first American city to have a comprehensive plan approved and adopted into law by
a city council. Previously, comprehensive plans had been developed by civic organizations and adopted by
cities. Alfred Bettman, Ladislas Segoe, George Ford, and Ernest Goodrich worked on the Official Plan of
the City of Cincinnati, which included factors like schools and play yards, garbage and refuse disposal,
ways to finance improvements, and other municipal issues.

State-Level Land-Use Plan (1925)

The New York State Housing and Regional Planning Commission, chaired by Clarence Stein, published the
first state-level land-use plan in the United States. The plan, which was primarily written by Henry Wright,
focused on providing transportation corridors and settlement areas, as well as on preserving rural land. A
state-level land-use plan can promote effective planning for factors that have an impact outside of one
community, such as growth and environmental protection.

National Planning Board (July 20, 1933)

The National Planning Board was established under the authority of the Public Works Administration. The
board, which included Frederick Delano, Charles Merriam, Wesley Mitchell, and Charles Eliot, worked to
promote the idea of planning in public works and push for comprehensive regional plans. Over the next
decade, the NPB evolved into the National Resources Board, the National Resources Council, and finally
the National Resources Planning Board.

First Multistate Regional Planning Commission (January 1934)

Representatives of the planning boards of Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Montana formed the first
multistate regional planning commission. The commission focused on the need to plan for new agricultural
and industrial development in response to federal investment in power, reclamation, and navigation
projects. Multistate regional planning commissions can tackle planning-related issues that have an impact
across a broader region than just one state.
American Society of Planning Officials (1934)
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The American Society of Planning Officials was formed with Walter Blucher as executive director. The
group's membership primarily consisted of public officials involved in planning, such as citizen planning
commissioners and city managers. ASPO aimed to improve communication among professional planners
and better distribute information about planning. ASPO was one of two organizations that merged in 1978
to form the American Planning Association.

The Planners' Journal Launches (May 1935)

The American Institute of Planners published the first volume of The Planners' Journal. The publication
became Journal of the American Institute of Planners in 1945 and Journal of the American Planning
Association in 1979. The journal focuses on research, commentaries, and book reviews for practicing
planners, policy makers, scholars, students, and citizens of urban, suburban, and rural areas.

Code of Professional Conduct for Planners (January 10, 1948)

The American Institute of Planners published an early code of professional conduct for planners, focusing
on the profession's responsibility to the public, the client, and other planners. This code of conduct was
revised many times, but eventually became the current AICP Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct.

First African American to Earn Planning Master's Degree (1952)

Samuel Cullers was possibly the first African American to earn a graduate degree in city planning, receiving
his master's from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1952. Cullers was later involved in a
discrimination complaint against McKinley Park Homes in Hartford, Connecticut, after his apartment rental
application was rejected despite evidence that there were apartments available. He also worked as a
planner in Thailand, Canada, and Chicago.

Advocacy Planning (November 1965)

The Journal of the American Institute of Planners published "Advocacy and Pluralism in Planning" by Paul
Davidoff, which laid out the concept of advocacy planning. He argued that planners needed to advocate for
the poor and powerless, which became an influential concept among activist planners in the 1960s and
1970s. Davidoff later founded the Suburban Action Institute to take legal action against exclusionary
zoning. APA's Advancing Diversity and Social Change in Honor of Paul Davidoff award continues his
legacy.

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INFLUENCES

Influence of Planning

Planning the environment

The natural environment is at once a hindrance and a help, and the architect seeks both to invite its aid and
to repel its attacks. To make buildings habitable and comfortable, the architect must control the effects of
heat, cold, light, air, moisture, and dryness and foresee destructive potentialities such as fire, earthquake,
flood, and disease.
The methods of controlling the environment considered here are only the practical aspects of planning.
They are treated by the architect within the context of the expressive aspects. The placement and form of
buildings in relation to their sites, the distribution of spaces within buildings, and other planning devices
discussed below are fundamental elements in the aesthetics of architecture.

Orientation
The arrangement of the axes of buildings and their parts is a device for controlling the effects of sun, wind,
and rainfall. The sun is regular in its course; it favours the southern and neglects the northern exposures of
buildings in the Northern Hemisphere, so that it may be captured for heat or evaded for coolness by turning
the axis of a plan toward or away from it. Within buildings, the axis and placement of each space
determines the amount of sun it receives. Orientation may control air for circulation and reduce the
disadvantages of wind, rain, and snow, since in most climates the prevailing currents can be foreseen. The
characteristics of the immediate environment also influence orientation: trees, land formations, and other
buildings create shade and reduce or intensify wind, while bodies of water produce moisture and reflect the
sun.

Architectural forms
Planning may control the environment by the design of architectural forms that may modify the effects of
natural forces. For example, overhanging eaves, moldings, projections, courts, and porches give shade and
protection from rain. Roofs are designed to shed snow and to drain or preserve water. Walls control the
amount of heat lost to the exterior or retained in the interior by their thickness and by the structural and
insulating materials used in making them. Walls, when properly sealed and protected, are the chief defense
against wind and moisture. Windows are the principal means of controlling natural light; its amount,
distribution, intensity, direction, and quality are conditioned by their number, size, shape, and placement
and by the characteristics of translucent materials (e.g., thickness, transparency, texture, colour). But the
planning of fenestration is influenced by other factors, such as ventilation and heating. Since most
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translucent materials conduct heat more readily than the average wall, windows are used sparingly in
extreme climates. Finally, since transparent windows are the medium of visual contact between the interior
and exterior, their design is conditioned by aesthetic and practical demands.

Colour
Colour has a practical planning function as well as an expressive quality because of the range of its
reflection and its absorption of solar rays. Since light colours reflect heat and dark colours absorb it, the
choice of materials and pigments is an effective tool of environmental control.

Materials and techniques

The choice of materials is conditioned by their own ability to withstand the environment as well as by
properties that make them useful to human beings. One of the architect’s jobs is to find a successful
solution to both conditions; to balance the physical and economic advantages of wood against the
possibility of fire, termites, and mold, the weather resistance of glass and light metals against their high
thermal conductivity, and many similar conflicts. The more violent natural manifestations, such as heavy
snow loads, earthquakes, high winds, and tornadoes, are controlled by special technical devices in regions
where they are prevalent.
Any number of these controls may be out of reach of the planner for various reasons. The urban
environment, for example, restricts freedom of orientation and design of architectural forms and creates
new control problems of its own: smoke, dirt, noise, and odours.

Interior control
The control of the environment through the design of the plan and the outer shell of a building cannot be
complete, since extremes of heat and cold, light, and sounds penetrate into the interior, where they can be
further modified by the planning of spaces and by special conditioning devices.
Temperature, light and sound are all subject to control by the size and shape of interior spaces, the way in
which the spaces are connected, and the materials employed for floors, walls, ceilings, and furnishings. Hot
air may be retained or released by the adjustment of ceiling heights and sources of ventilation. Light
reflects in relation to the colour and texture of surfaces and may be reduced by dark, rough walls and
increased by light, smooth ones. Sounds are transmitted by some materials and absorbed by others and
may be controlled by the form of interiors and by the use of structural or applied materials that by their
density, thickness, and texture amplify or restrict sound waves.

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Planning for use
While environmental planning produces comfort for the senses (sight, feeling, hearing) and reflexes
(respiration), planning for use or function is concerned with convenience of movement and rest. All
activities that demand architectural attention require unique planning solutions to facilitate them. These
solutions are found by differentiating spaces for distinct functions, by providing circulation among these
spaces, and by designing them to facilitate the actions of the human body.

Differentiation
The number of functions requiring distinct kinds of space within a building depends not only upon the type
of building but also upon the requirements of the culture and the habits and activities of the individual
patrons. Some houses have a single room with a hearth area, and others have separate areas for cooking,
eating, sleeping, washing, storage, and recreation. A meetinghouse with a single hall is sufficient for
Quaker religious services, while a Roman Catholic cathedral may require a nave, aisles, choir, apse,
chapels, crypt, sacristy, and ambulatory.
The planning of differentiated spaces involves as a guide to their design (placement, size, shape,
environmental conditions, sequence, etc.) the analysis of use (number of uses and character, duration, time
of day, frequency, variability, etc., of each), users (number, behavior, age, sex, physical condition, etc.),
and furniture or equipment required.

Circulation
Communication among differentiated spaces and between the exterior and the interior may be achieved by
openings alone in the simplest plans, but most buildings require distinct spaces allotted to horizontal and
vertical circulation (corridors, lobbies, stairs, ramps, elevators, etc.). These are designed by the procedure
of analysis employed for differentiating uses. Since their function is usually limited to simplifying the
movement of persons and things toward a particular goal, their efficiency depends on making the goal
evident and the movement direct and easy to execute.

Facilitation
The convenience of movement, like the comfort of environment, can be increased both by planning and by
devices. Planning methods are based on analysis of the body measurements, movements, and muscular
power of human beings of different ages and sexes, which results in the establishment of standards for the
measurements of ceilings, doorways, windows, storage shelves, working surfaces, steps, and the like and
for the weight of architectural elements that must be moved, such as doors, gates, and windows. These
standards also include allowances for the movement of whatever furnishings, equipment, or machinery are
required for the use of any building.

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BASIC PLANNING CONCEPTS

Planning Concepts

Planning concepts and their relevance to Indian planning practice in respect of:

 Ebenezer Howard-Garden city concepts and contents

 Patrick Geddes-Conservative Surgery-Case study
 C.A. Perry -Neighborhood concepts
 Le Corbusier-concept and case studies.

Industrial revolution from the 18thcentury onwards marked the cut off between the ancient and modern
planning. Industrialization was a boon to the growing population all over the world. Its impact like the rising
production and the pace of life created chain reactions affecting both natural and built environment. The
problems arose mainly because of the concentration of the working class in poorly built housing near
factories and mills. Many utopian plans for better housing and urban development were presented by
industrialists. These plans were not executed but highlighted the growing ill effects of the urban areas. The
concepts of four leading thinkers of modern urban planning had a significant impact in shaping the
contemporary cities all over the world. They were Ebenezer Howard, Patrick Geddes, C.A. Perry and Le
Corbusier.

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GARDEN CITY -Ebenezer Howard

Sir Ebenezer Howard is a British town planner and a well-known sociologist. He observed the disastrous
growth in Chicago, New York and London. This created an everlasting impression in his mind.
Congestion, Squalor and discomfort at all levels in the growing urban centers had to be checked at once.
To address these issues Howard evolved the concept of garden city.

 Garden city most potent(strong) planning in western urban planning

 Created by Ebenezer howard in 1898 to solve urban and rural problems
 Source of many key planning ideas during 20th century.

Garden city:
The garden city is part of urban movement and is a method of urbanplanningthatwasinitiatedin1898bySir
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.
Redirecting the urban growth into newt owns that would surround by existing cities.
These towns were called Garden Cities.

GARDEN CITY |THE CONCEPT

‘Garden City’–an impressive diagram of THE THREE MAGNETS namely the town magnet, country magnet
with their advantages and disadvantages and the third magnet with attractive features of both town and
country life.

 Naturally people preferred the third one namely garden city.

Howard wanted to combine the best of the new industrial society with the best of the country side in his
ideal community named as Garden city.

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C.A. Perry -NEIGHBOURHOOD CONCEPT

 Clarence Arthur Perry (1872-1944) was an American planner.

 He formulated his early ideas about the neighborhood unit and community life which is 5-minute
walk to define walking distances from residential to non-residential components.
 Perry was very concerned about the walkability to and from schools. His ideas were realized in
neighborhoods like Radburn through the work of Clarence Stein.

Vision of Neighborhood

Clarence A. Perry (1929) was one of the first to give some consideration to the physical form of the
neighborhood unit.
Perry’s neighborhood unit concept began as a means of insulating the community from the ill-effects of
burgeoning sea of vehicular traffic. However, it evolved to serve a much broader purpose of providing a
discernible identity for the concept of the neighborhood, and of offerings to designers a framework for
disseminating the city into smaller subareas.
He said” the underlying principle of the scheme is that an urban neighborhood should be regarded both as
a unit of larger whole and a distinct entity in itself.
here are certain facilities, functions or aspects that are strictly local and peculiar to a well arranged-
residential community. They may be classified under four heads:
1. The elementary school
2. Small parks and playgrounds
3. Local shops and
4. Residential environment, other neighborhood institutions and services are sometimes found, but
there are practically universal.

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He laid down the fundamental elements on which he intended the neighborhood unit should be based on
size, boundaries, open spaces, institutional sites, local shops and internal road system.
Geddes viewed the city as a super structure raised on a formwork developed by place, work and folk.
In his book “cities in evolution “–published in 1915 –Geddes coined the term “conurbation” to describe the
waves of population inflow to large cities, followed by overcrowding and slum formation, and then the wave
of back flow –the whole process resulting in amorphous sprawl, waste, and unnecessary obsolescence.

THE CONCEPT OF PLACE, WORK AND FOLK

The town planning primarily meant establishing organic relationship among “Folk, place and work", which
corresponds to triad (Geddisian triad) of organism, function and environment. Geddes was keen that the
task of planning should not force people into new places against their associations, wishes and interests.
Instead the task must be to find the right places for the right kind of people where they would flourish. He
insisted on a socio-economic survey while developing a city or while planning an entirely new town.

CONCEPTS
Patrick Geddes explained an organ i s m”s relationship to its environment as follows:
“The environment acts, through function, upon the organism and conversely the organism acts, through
function, upon the environment. “(Cities in Evolution, 1915)
In human terms this can be understood as a place acting through climatic and geographic processes upon
people and thus shaping them. At the same time people act, through economic processes such as farming
and construction, on a place and thus shape it. Thus both place and folk are linked and through work are in
constant transition.

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  Geddes was concerned with the relationship between people and cities and how they affect one
another.
 He emphasized that people do not merely needed shelter, but also food and work, the recreation
and social life. This makes the house an inseparable part of the neighborhood, the city and the
surrounding open country and the region.

Le Corbusier 1887-1965

 He was a French architect whose ideas have greatly influenced the modern town planning
 Corbusier wanted man to live in urban life in truth with security and ease collectively and
individually.
 The meaning and idea of visual order and relationship and the city as a synthesis of form
embracing verities of
 structures and systems is the theme repeatedly proclaimed by him.
 He tried to create totally different world from the existing ones. He wanted to grow with the machine
and take full advantage of its potential for speed and verticality.
 eg.1 Contemporary city (La villa contemporine ,1922) (Plan voisin ,1925) 2. Radiant city (La ville
Radieuse, 1930) 3. Linear city ,1945

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SOURCE:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planning
https://www.designingbuildings.co.uk/wiki/Planning
https://www.britannica.com/topic/architecture/Architectural-planning
https://www.planning.org/aboutplanning/
https://www.planning.org/timeline/
https://pdfcoffee.com/unit3-planning-concepts-pdf-free.html

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