URBAN PLANNING

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 LESSON PLAN

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 LESSON PLAN

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 LESSON PLAN

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 LESSON PLAN

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 EVOLUTION OF CITY PLANNING
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 INTRODUCTION
Only on rare occasions does urban
planning start from scratch, usually it
deals with
Physical

Economical

Social and

Political conditions
That have been in place from a long time.

Urban Planners do not have the luxury of

proposing to dismantle cities and start a
new. On the contrary, they must protect
what is good about cities while attempting
to plan for growth and change. This is
why fundamental knowledge of history is
so important.

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 INTRODUCTION
Urban planning has been evolving as an
art and science for almost 6000 years.
From the city-states of Assyria to the
redevelopment of today central cities,
there has been an evolution of thought
and practice that is built around a simple
assertion – people can plan cities.

From this evolution has come a rich set of

lessons, experiences, traditions and
trends. Especially with regards to trends,
it must be understood that most of what
we will be doing in urban planning will
come from what we have already done.

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 INTRODUCTION
Even those who argue that we must
eschew the past and find new ways to
plan cities, would agree that such a
change must be based upon historical
analysis and understanding. To ignore
the experience of our predecessors will
only lead to repeating the mistakes of the
past.

By its very nature, urban planning

requires that we start from where we are
and where we have been. Only then can
we choose efficiently where we want to
go.

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 INTRODUCTION

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 INTRODUCTION
Plan of a portion of the ancient Sumerian
city of Ur, as it was about 1900 B.c.

A, B, C, and D are wayside chapels.

Number 1 at the upper corner was the

house of a merchant in the copper trade
with Dilmun (present Bahrein), and
number 14 on the lower left was a
restaurant.

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 INTRODUCTION
WHAT IS CITY

Cities are places

A.Dealing with densities.

B.Cities come in clusters.

C.Physical / legal, circumscription,

D.Social hierarchy

E.Source of income

F.Written records.

G.Engaged with countryside

H.Monumental definition

I.Made up of buildings & people.

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 INTRODUCTION
More we know about cultures, about
structure of society in various period of
history in different part of the world, the
better we are able to read their built
environment.

Some of big names associated with

urban planning are: Baghdad (Iraq): Geometric 8th century ground plan,
organised around Caliph's palace, was a casualty of
city’s success. By 9th century sprawling growth had
destroyed the original autocratic diagram
Hippodampus of Miletus

Designer of Renaissance Ferrara

Biagio Rosetti
Baron Haussmann of Paris

Daniel Burnham of Chicago

The Campus Maritus was Imperial Rome’s
monumental core. Only Pantheon, recognizable by
its round stepped dome, survived intact into the
Renaissance
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 INTRODUCTION
Kelvin Lynch, in his three categories,
called “Normative Models”, have less to
do with political or economic order than
they do with prime motivation of city, or
its self perception.

The Cosmic City:

Takes the plan to be an interpretation of
the universe & of the Gods. Main
design features of this model are

Monumental axis,

Enclosure & its protected gates,

Dominant landmarks,

Reliance on regular grids &

The Cosmic City:
Spatial organisation by hierarchy. A spatial diagram of social hierarch

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 INTRODUCTION
The Practical Model:
The city is a machine. It is
Factual,

Functional,

Cool,

Not in the least magical.

It is the concept that motivates

Colonial towns and company towns,

The speculative grid towns of US,

Le corbusier’s radiant city.

The Practical City:

A functional construct of interrelated part
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 INTRODUCTION
The Organic Model:
Living thing rather than a machine

It has definite boundary

Optimum size,

A cohesive

Indivisible internal structure, and

A rhythmic behaviour

The creators of this model were

Frederick law Olmsted,

Ebenezer Howard,

Patrick Geddes and

The Organic City:
Lewis Mumford. An individual living organism.

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 INTRODUCTION
Cities are
Amalgams of buildings and people
Ultimate memorial of our struggle and
glories
Pride of the past is set on display

What historians & practitioners of

architecture loosely call Urban Fabric is TOWN PLAN LAND USE
comprised of three interlocking elements. STREET PATTERN
PATTERN

1.Town Plan

2.Land Use Pattern

3.Building Fabric

BUILDING FABRIC
The Basic Components Of A Plan Are
Identified By Urban Geography
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 INTRODUCTION
PERIODS & CATEGORIES
Term ‘medieval’ conventionally finite for
West, is only of relative use when applied
to China; “Renaissance” is of no use at
all. Style periods methodically developed
by historians in last one hundred years
remain of limited relevance to urban form.

A.Open City

B.Medieval Town is, Closed City, it is

C.Comprises Subjugated Towns

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 INTRODUCTION
Industrial City: The urban landscape was fundamentally transformed when urban
land came to be seen as source of income, when ownership, was divorced from
use, and property became primarily means to produce a rent. It was this ‘Land Rent
Gradient’ that, in words of J.E.Vance Jr., ended the idea of the ordered city and
economically encouraged the segregation of uses.

Grid of sub divided lots, more densely occupied towards the town center, is a graphic reminder of a Land
Rent Gradient and profit motive for city building
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 INTRODUCTION
Socialist City:
Its cycle is not yet closed, but basic features are already fully manifest. Central
operative principle here is the abortion of capitalist ownership of land & property.
By and large property is not seized if it does not greatly exceed the acceptable per
capita living space norms and is used solely for shelter , thus private property persists
in the housing sector in town and country.

Uniform density of settlement from edge to core and large open spaces in the heart of
town are made possible through centralized development authority and rejection of
differential land values.
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 INTRODUCTION
THE CITY IN HISTORY
URBAN CYCLES:
These days, nobody believes in Diffusion Theory anymore, that city originated in
Mesopotamia in 4th millennium BC & spread from there to Indus Valley and China &
westward to Greece. With that premise, we only had to worry about one place & its
cities in accounting for birth of urban form. Some Neolithic settlements in Western
Asia – Jericho, AinGhazal, Catal Huyuk & Khirokitia, about 3000yr before
Mesopotamia.

There is a hiatus of at least 1500 yr between demise of these proto urban settlements
& rise of first true cities in mud plains between Tigris & Euphrates around 3500 BC.
In Nile Valley urbanization came a little later perhaps by 3000BC. Then a millennium
or so after that we have cities of Indus Valley

Wall Painting reconstructed from a shrine at Catal Huyuk (Turkey) may be oldest extent of graphic
representation of the town plan. The closely spaced rows of houses beneath a figure thought to represent
an erupting volcano suggest pattern of dwellings in tis Neolithic settlements founded around 6500 BC
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 INTRODUCTION
THE CITY IN HISTORY
URBAN CYCLES:
In China, the settings of the first cities were the
western flood plains of the Yellow River and
the lower Wei River Valley: the earliest city
was said to be Yin at Anyang.
In the new world, the Maya Cities of Yucatan
in Guatemala come first, Tikal and Uaxactun
are among the oldest.
Two points need to be made in relation to this
brief survey of urban beginning:
First, we must stress the unevenness of
urban development over space and time. At
the very least we have to conclude that the so
called urban revolution flared independently
in several place on earth at different times,
exactly as we now know to be the case with
Neolithic revolution.
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URBAN CYCLES:
Second, if town making and urban life, are not
steady state of existence but surge & lapse
in irregular cycles across continents, alternate
orders of human settlement should be given
due attention. It is possible that we have made
altogether too much of the city.
URBAN ORIGINS
So it is with the Concept Of Surplus i.e. cities
started when there was shift away from a
simple self satisfying village economy.
Surplus production presumes irrigation and
efficient irrigation systems presume a complex
bureaucracy, and that means cities.
Positive ecological base, a site favourable to
trade, advanced technology that include large
scale irrigation works, metallurgy, animal
husbandry & like, a complex social
organization, a strong political structure,
these are all relevant to genesis of cities.
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 INTRODUCTION
THE CITY IN HISTORY Urban form is generated
EARLY CITY FORM through a variety of
Early cities came in many shapes. The first settlement processes
Mesopotamian towns, probably owned their
shapes as much to some erratic social
agglomeration around an institutional core Through Synoecism, several
as they did to natural adjustments or independent villages are
‘biological’ rhythms. consolidated into a single
community.
There were plenty of towns that did not in the
least look natural or organic. Some like El
Lahun, were dormitory communities for
workers, not full fledged towns in reality. But
they showed, knowledge in old kingdom Egypt
to design totally ordered environments, with
street seriated housing units, & residential
hierarchy that is anything but random.

In cities like Mohenjo Daro, we have schematic

Orthogonal Planning applied to entire urban
fabric, blocks were of roughly equal size &
rational distinction was made between main
streets & alleys that separated houses.

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 INTRODUCTION
THE CITY IN HISTORY Urban form is generated
EARLY CITY FORM through a variety of
Whatever the actual practices of urbanization settlement processes
may have been, ancient traditions insisted that
making cities was an intentional act,
approved & implemented at the highest level. Center service precincts grow
As far as the people’s belief is concerned, up near palace, temple or
cities were made, they did not happen. fortress compounds, attracted
by their concentration of wealth

In many ancient cultures, the city on earth was

supposed to represent a celestial model which
it was extremely important to reproduce
accurately. Ritual properties like orientation to
the four points of the compass, symmetrically
arranged gates, and dimensions of round
magical numbers had to be observed. Which in
turn meant an artificial layout, often of some
geometric purity.

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