Bermelyn Grace S.

Bornea 3ABPolSci-A

Synthesis Paper:

Urban Planning History and Visions

All the goals and functions of planning both the ancient holdovers and the
modern elaborations are present in the first planning responses to the urban conditions
associated with the Industrial Revolution. As Friedrich Engels and other contemporary
observers described, the cities of the new industrialism were characterized by
horrendous overcrowding, ubiquitous misery, and despair. There were daily threats to
the public health and safety, not just for the impoverished working class but for the
capitalist middle class as well. These conditions gave rise to movements for housing
reform, to great advances in the technologies of water supply and sewage disposal, and
to the emergence of middle-class suburbs. They also led to the construction of model
“company towns” by various industrial firms in both Europe and America, and eventually
to the development of a modern urban planning profession.

Charles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris, better known as Le Corbusier, was another

utopian visionary who never saw his ideal plans fully developed but who was
enormously influential nonetheless. Le Corbusier wanted his “Contemporary City of
Three Million,” illustrated in Plate 26, to be a series of exquisite towers, geometrically
arranged in a surrounding park, and he spent years looking for governmental and
industrial sponsors for his plan. Many “Corbusian” high-rise urban developments have
been built throughout the world. Indeed, the “International Style” of modern architecture
and the principles of the International Congress of Modern Architecture (CIAM), which
Le Corbusier pioneered, have become global standards of urban development.

The “Contemporary City” proposal certainly caught the attention of the public, but
it did not win Le Corbusier many actual urban planning commissions. Throughout the
1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, he sought out potential patrons wherever he could find them
the industrial capitalists of the Voisin automobile company, the communist rulers of the
Soviet Union, and the fascist Vichy government of occupied France mostly without
success. Le Corbusier’s real impact came not from cities he designed and built himself
but from cities that were built by others incorporating the planning principles that he
pioneered. Most notable among these was the notion of “the skyscraper in the park,” an
idea that is today ubiquitous. Whether in relatively complete examples like Brasilia,
designed by modernists Lucio Costa and Oscar Niemeyer, or Le Corbusier’s own
Chandigar, India where totally new cities were built from scratch or in partial examples
such as the skyscraper parks and the high-rise housing blocks that have been built in
cities worldwide, the Corbusian vision has truly transformed the global urban
environment.
 The concept of sustainability was defined and raised to a level of worldwide
prominence by the publication in 1987 of the report of the World Commission on
Environment and Development (WCED), commonly known as the Brundtland Report
because the Commission chairperson was Gro Brundtland of Norway, the first
environment minister of a European nation to become prime minister. According to the
Brundtland Report, sustainable development is “development that meets the needs of
the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own
needs.” Concerned about “the biosphere’s ability to absorb the effect of human
activities,” the WCED defined humanity’s basic needs as “food, clothing, shelter, and
jobs” and called on the nations of the world to pay special attention to “the largely unmet
needs of the world’s poor, which should be given overriding priority.” In the wake of the
Brundtland Report, the world’s nations have been asked to cut back on industrial
production and the emission of greenhouse gases that affect the climate, and cities
around the world have been asked to adopt “green policies” relating to transportation,
energy use, resource management, and sprawl.

In its “Call to Action,” the Brundtland Report argued that during the twentieth
century “the relationship between the human world and the planet that sustains it has
undergone a profound change” and that the increased “rate of change is outstripping
the ability of . . . our current capabilities.” As a result, the world needs to embrace the
concept of sustainable development, defined as “development that meets the needs of
the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own
needs. . But today, despite continued resistance to the imposition of strict controls on
economic development, concerns about climate change and carbon dioxide emissions
from the burning of fossil fuels have caused more and more governments to look for
new, cleaner sources of energy. And in urban planning, the idea of “sustainability” has
been broadly adopted as one of the key concepts behind urban development projects
worldwide, especially in Europe and North America and most particularly in the work of
New Urbanists and other advocates of environmentally low-impact building techniques,
pedestrian-friendly cities, electric automobiles, and renewable energy sources like solar
and wind.
Urban Planning Theory and Practice

Urban planning draws on social science and design as well as specialized

knowledge related to land use, transportation, open space, historic preservation,
housing, safety, and environmental and other planning specialties. Planning methods
rely heavily on quantitative social science methods such as statistical analysis of data
using computerized statistical packages and spatial analysis using Geographical
Information Systems (GIS) software, but can also involve qualitative methods. In
addition to analytic skills planners need verbal, written, and visual communication skills
and the ability to work with people. Studying cities at any scale from observing a single
neighborhood through mastering complex urban modeling for entire regions is
interesting work. The opportunity to make plans as humble as a one-street traffic
calming plan for a small town to planning an entire new city for three million inhabitants
in China is an exciting enterprise.

Peter Hall’s “The City of Theory” discusses the evolution and current status of
twentieth-century urban planning theory. According to Hall, planning theory at that time
was preoccupied with how to create stable cities geared to a static world. During this
“golden age” the planner was free from political interference and serenely sure of his
technical capacities. He produced new town plans strongly influenced by the Garden
Cities and City Beautiful movements. Theoretically perfect physical plans were hand
drawn in excruciating detail a mixture of art and architecture only to gather dust. While
this first stage of urban planning theory represented an advance over earlier static
architectural city planning, this ivory-tower planning approach was never very practical
and was no longer defensible after World War II as the pace of urban development and
urban change accelerated.

According to Hall, the first planning paradigm of the modern era viewed urban
planning as essentially architecture writ large. Hall points out that before World War II,
urban planning was defined as the craft of physical planning. Professors who had been
educated as architects dominated urban planning teaching and writing. The first
generation of planning professors taught students to prepare architectural drawings
extended to city scale particularly self-contained, end-state physical plans like Raymond
Unwin’s plan for the Garden City of Letchworth, England. As Hall notes, few planners
actually get to plan whole new towns from scratch. Rather, they usually have to decide
how to integrate new housing, streets, commercial and retail districts, industrial areas,
parks, open space, and infrastructure into existing cities and emerging suburbs. City
planning does not end the way an architect’s plan for a new house does with a final set
of drawings that will be built exactly as drawn. Rather, city planning is an ongoing, fluid,
messy process.

Timothy Beatley describes green urbanism in Europe and what planners

worldwide can learn from it and identifies core aspects of the European sustainable
urban development agenda, provides specific examples of exemplary green practices
that some European cities have implemented, and eloquently argues that green
urbanism is possible and can produce livable cities that respect the natural
environment. Beatley’s selection combines theory and practice. It is both realistic about
urban environmental challenges and optimistic about what can be done.

Until recently, hardheaded decision-makers generally dismissed alternative

green visions as hopelessly unrealistic. In their view it is easy to dream of cities where
clean, renewable solar and wind power produce much of the communities’ energy
needs rather than non-renewable resources like coal that cause pollution and contribute
to global warming. It is pleasant to fantasize about communities where people walk and
bicycle to work rather than drive cars, travel in all-electric cars, recycle sewage sludge
into biogas, and grow many of their vegetables in urban gardens. But, critics of green
urbanism say, alternative energy sources can never produce enough energy to run
cities. Bicycle and pedestrian paths are nice, but people need cars and super highways
to get around. The technology for all-electric cars is improving rapidly, but they are not
yet a cost-effective alternative for most people. Agribusiness, not urban gardens, is the
only way to grow enough food cheaply enough to feed the earth’s seven billion-plus
inhabitants. Beatley disagrees. He produces hard evidence from Europe that compact,
walkable, energy-efficient, clean, green communities can be economically viable as well
as sustainable and livable.