Part 1

PRINCIPLES OF PLANNING
SECTION 1
Human Settlement Design in History

ANCIENT TIMES

Natural factors that affect the development and growth of urban areas
▪Potential for natural calamities (fire, flooding, volcano eruptions, etc.)
▪Presence of fertile soil, bodies of water, and other natural resources
▪Slope and terrain and other forms of natural defenses
▪Climate

PRIMARY SETTLEMENT PATTERNS

▪ Workable forms, obtained by trial and error, become physical models for planning
▪ Two patterns have characterized the form of human settlements in history:
▪ Rectilinear pattern
▪ Circular pattern

Rectilinear patterns originated in architectural societies, deriving from the obvious logic
of parallel plowing.
Rectilinear patterns have endured the test of time because they are extremely suitable for
orderly land planning, property ownership, and construction.

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 Circular patterns came from the practices of herding societies.
The necessity of enclosing the maximum amount of land with the minimum amount of
fence.
This was later applied to defensive architecture such as forts.

Both rectilinear and circular patterns have been used for planning towns, especially colonial
ones. Rectilinear planning is usually seen in agricultural settlements. Circular planning is often
evident in military installations.

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CLASSICAL GREECE

Some of the earliest and most influential town planning principles evolved in classical Greece.
Greek town planning was largely formulated by Hippodamus, a lawyer and planner from
Miletus.

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Hippodamus planned Greek towns using a rectilinear pattern of blocks. These blocks terminate
in an irregular enclosing wall, largely determined by the topography.

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These towns contained a harbor, a market, a theater, a temple and other public buildings. The
size of the towns are limited by the food supply obtainable from the surrounding region.

When a town reaches the largest practical size, a new town is started at another nearby site. The
new town would be called the neopolis, while the old one would be referred to as the paleopolis.

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PRIENE, TURKEY
An ancient Greek town

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ROMAN TOWN PLANNING

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▪ Largely derivative of Greek principles, but with some notable variations
▪ Roman towns used the rectilinear form like the Greeks
▪ Unlike the Greeks, however, the enclosing walls were regular rand rectilinear

▪ Roman towns had two main intersecting streets:

▪ The main street, oriented north-south, was called the cardo
▪ The secondary main street, oriented east-west, was called the decumanus

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CARDO
Apamea, Syria

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CARDO
Petra, Jordan

DECUMANUS
Palmyra, Syria

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▪ There were two types of Roman towns:
▪ Oppidum, or commercial town
▪ Castrum, or military town
▪ All Roman towns were connected by transport networks, forming the Roman
Empire

MEDIEVAL TOWN PLANNING

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▪ Most Medieval towns were built upon the foundations of pre-existing Roman outpost towns.
▪ After the fall of Rome, these outposts all over Europe became the nuclei of new societies.

▪ Settlements were often centered around.

▪ churches (rise of religion)
▪ castles of the lords (rise of feudalism)

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THE RENAISSANCE

▪ The Renaissance era recalled the forms of the classical world

▪ The classical forum was revived in the updated form of the town square or plaza
▪ These plazas served as a public gathering place as well as a setting for civic buildings

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IDEAL CITIES
▪ A popular idea explored by planners during the Renaissance.
▪ Radially symmetrical cities, usually star-shaped.
▪ An idealization of military towns, encircled by defensive walls subdivided into a star
pattern of streets and blocks.

SFORZINDA
An ideal city proposed by Filarete

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PALMA NOVA
An ideal city built in Italy

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BAROQUE PLANNING

▪ Was inspired by the practices of French landscape architecture.

▪ Long, straight boulevards (“vista avenues”) served to make large expanses of terrain
visible, and thus comprehensible.

▪ The idea was to connect the city with long boulevards and create sites for civic buildings.
▪ This principle was first used for forest landscapes.
▪ A masterplan using these principles were drawn for London after The Great Fire in 1666.

▪ The plans for modern Paris as well as Washington D.C. were also based on these
planning principles.
▪ Baroque planning further influenced the City Beautiful Movement, as well as the designs
of the cities of Canberra, New Delhi, and Brasilia.

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VERSAILLES
Planned according to Baroque principles

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 PRINCIPLES OF PLANNING
SECTION 2
Theories of Human Settlement Planning

GARDEN CITIES

▪ Proposed by Ebenezer Howard in his 1898 book Tomorrow: A Peaceful Path to Social Reform.
▪ Ebenezer Howard proposed a cluster configuration of cities using what he believed were
optimum city size.

▪ The Garden City cluster was composed of the following:

▪ A central city of 58,000 people
▪ Smaller garden cities of 30,000 people each
▪ The said cities would be linked by rails and roads
▪ The cities would be separated by permanent green spaces

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LETCHWORTH
The first Garden City that was built

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CITY BEAUTIFUL MOVEMENT

▪ Often called “The Golden Age of Urban Design”.

▪ Drew upon many ideas in the history of designing cities and enlarged upon these ideas
significantly.
▪ Highly ambitious, grand, and formal designs.

▪ The movement sought to cure the ills of city plans of the 1900s
▪ Cities were overpopulated
▪ Cities were poorly planned
▪ Cities developed in an ad hoc fashion
▪ Cities became shapeless, inefficient and ugly

CHICAGO

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1900s, before the City Beautiful Movement

▪ The main goal was the beautification of cities, which would have the following effects:
▪ Beauty will inspire civic and moral loyalty and pride.
▪ American cities would be equal to their European competitors.
▪ Beautiful civic spaces will encourage upper classes to work and spend money in
urban areas.

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▪ Daniel Burnham was a major proponent of this beautification.
▪ Magnificent parks
▪ Grand buildings as focal points
▪ Wide boulevards
▪ Public gathering spaces with monuments and fountains
▪ Networks of parks and plazas

WASHINGTON D.C.
Designed according to the principles of the City Beautiful Movement

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CHICAGO
Designed according to the principles of the City Beautiful Movement

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MANILA
Designed according to the principles of the City Beautiful Movement

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QUEZON CITY
Used Burnham’s original plans as a reference

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PARIS REDEVELOPMENT

▪ Baron Haussman worked on the reconstruction of Paris.

▪ Demolished crowded neighborhoods.
▪ Built wide avenues to connect key points of the city.
▪ Constructed parks, fountains, and sewers.

BRASILIA (BRAZIL)

▪ A completely new 20th century city.

▪ Designed primarily by Lucio Costa with a lot of influence from Le Corbusier.
▪ Oscar Niemeyer was commissioned to design many of the civic buildings.

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▪ Two huge axes in the sign of the cross define the overall layout
▪ One axis is for the government and civic uses, while the other is for commercial and
residential developments

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BRASILIA
Masterplan by Lucio Costa

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CHANDIGARH (INDIA)

▪ Capital of Punjab, a province in India.

▪ The only realized city plan of Le Corbusier.
▪ The masterplan was based on an 800m x 1200m block module.

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CANBERRA (AUSTRALIA)

▪ Designed primarily according to the principles of the City Beautiful Movement.

▪ Triangular formation of three important civic buildings: Court of Justice, Parliament
House, and the Capitol Building.

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VILLE RADIEUSE (THE RADIANT CITY)

▪ An unrealized urban plan by Le Corbusier, also often called

“The City of Towers”
▪ Designed to contain effective means of transportation, as well as an abundance of green
space and sunlight
▪ Radical, strict and nearly totalitarian in its order, symmetry and standardization

▪ The Radiant City was to be built on the grounds of demolished European cities
▪ Contains prefabricated and identical high-density skyscrapers spread across a vast green
area, arranged in a Cartesian grid
▪ The city is intended to be a “living machine”

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▪ The city would be strictly zoned into commercial, business, entertainment, and residential
areas
▪ Although never realized, The Radiant City proposal became highly influential because it
holistically addressed healthy living, traffic, noise, public space, and transportation

THE RADIANT CITY

Le Corbusier’s city of the future would not only provide residents with a better lifestyle, but would
contribute to creating a better society

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 Unlike Ebenezer Howard, Le Corbusier believed that the solution to overcrowding was
building up, and not building out.

His plan, also known as “Towers in the Park,” proposed numerous high-rise buildings each
surrounded by green space.

The housing districts would contain pre-fabricated apartment buildings, known as

“Unités.” Reaching a height of fifty meters, a single Unité could accommodate 2,700 inhabitants
and function as a vertical village.

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Parks would exist between the Unités, allowing residents with a maximum of natural daylight, a
minimum of noise and recreational facilities at their doorsteps.

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Space was clearly delineated between different uses (in the diagram, this includes
“Housing,” the “business center,” “factories” and “warehouses”).

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Although never realized, the proposal influenced later the planning of later cities, such as Brasilia.

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THE RADIANT CITY

Le Corbusier’s Unite de Habitacion in France was also inspired by the unites proposed in The
Radiant City

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BROADACRE CITY

▪ Frank Lloyd Wright’s vision of an ideal city

▪ Each family would own one acre of land
▪ All important transport is done by automobile and the pedestrian can exist safely only
within the confines of the one acre plots where most of the population dwells

THE LINEAR CITY

▪ Proposed by Spanish planner Arturo Soria y Mata

▪ An elongated urban formation designed along a fast mass transit system
▪ The idea was sparked by the need to redevelop Madrid, for which Arturo Soria y Mata
proposed a 30-mile long city built along a tram line.

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THE ARCOLOGY PROPOSAL

▪ Proposed by Paolo Soleri

▪ A huge structure housing a self-sustaining community isolated from the rest of the world
▪ Includes residential, commercial and agricultural facilities

▪ An arcology is supposed to sustainably supply all or most of the resources for comfortable
life, such as:
▪ power
▪ climate control,
▪ food production

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▪ air and water purification,
▪ sewage treatment

MASDAR CITY
An arcology project in Dubai, UAE. Designed by Foster and Partners, it will rely solely on solar
and other renewable energy sources, with a principle of zero-carbon, zero-waste.

CRYSTAL ISLAND

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A proposed arcology in Moscow that will run on built-in solar panels and wind turbines. If
constructed, the tower component will be the largest structure on earth in terms of floor space.

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THE METABOLISM MOVEMENT

▪ A Japanese architectural movement that fused ideas about architectural megastructures

with those of organic biological growth
▪ Produced highly imaginative proposals such as underwater cities, floating cities, and
“biological” cities

KIKUTAKE’S MARINE CITY

▪ A city that would float free in the ocean, free of ties to a particular nation and therefore free
from the threat of war
▪ The city itself was not tied to the land and was free to float across the ocean and grow
organically like an organism

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▪ The artificial ground of the city would house agriculture, industry and entertainment and
the residential towers would descend into the ocean to a depth of 200 metres
▪ Once it became too aged for habitation it would sink itself

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