Arplan3 Module 1

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ARPLAN 3

PLANNING 3 : INTRODUCTION TO URBAN & REGIONAL PLANNING

MODULE 1a: INTRODUCTION

PREPARED BY: AR./ENP. RACHELLE S. MORALES


INTRODUCTION TO URBAN AND REGIONAL PLANNING

PLANNING
• a universal human activity, a basic survival skill involving the consideration of
outcomes before choosing among alternatives

• a deliberate, organized and continuous process of the environment (social, economic,


physical, political), determining their present state and interaction, projecting them in
concert throughout a period of time in the future, and formulating and programming a
set of actions and plans to attain desired results

• according to Friedmann, a way of thinking about social and economic problems, is


oriented predominantly towards the future, is deeply concerned with the relation of
goals to collective decisions and strives for comprehensiveness in policy and program
INTRODUCTION TO URBAN AND REGIONAL PLANNING

PLANNING
• a continuous series of controls over the development of an area, aided by devices
which seek to simulate or model the process of developments that this control can be
applied

• According to Peter Hall, it is the making of an orderly sequence of action that will lead
to the achievement of a stated goal or goals

• the noun can either mean ‘a physical representation of something’- as for instance a
drawing or a map; or a ‘method of doing something; or an ‘orderly arrangement of
parts of an objective’.
INTRODUCTION TO URBAN AND REGIONAL PLANNING

TOWN PLANNING
• According to L. Keeble, is the art and science of ordering the use of land and siting of
buildings and communication routes so as to secure the maximum practicable degree
of autonomy, beauty and convenience

• An attempt to formulate the principles that should guide us in creating a civilized


physical background for human life whose main impetus is foreseeing and guiding
change (Thomas Sharp and Brian McLoughlin)

• Concerned with providing the right site, at the right time, in the right place, for the right
people (John Ratcliffe)
INTRODUCTION TO URBAN AND REGIONAL PLANNING

URBAN AND REGIONAL PLANNING


• often still called as town and country planning

• ‘town planning’ seems simply to mean any sort of planning

• ‘urban’ planning conventionally means something more limited and precise: it refers to
planning with a spatial, or geographical component, in which in some way is better
than the pattern of existing without planning

• such planning is also known as ‘physical’ planning (or regional planning – a special
case of general planning), which does include the plan-making, or representational
component
INTRODUCTION TO URBAN AND REGIONAL PLANNING

RATIONALE OF TOWN & COUNTRY PLANNING


• Would avoid unnecessary implementation expenditures in terms of money, effort and
time that will possibly come about in a planning process that follows a trial and error
method
• Would enable the area to have a rational and sound basis for reclassifying land uses
that are consistent with legal, environmental, sociological, political and economic
considerations that ensure its smooth passage and approval by concerned national
and local agencies such as the local Sanggunian, Sangguniang Panlalawigan,
HLURB, etc.
• Would serve as a basis for enacting a zoning ordinance to ensure a more balanced
and orderly spatial development
INTRODUCTION TO URBAN AND REGIONAL PLANNING

RATIONALE OF TOWN & COUNTRY PLANNING


• Allows the introduction of new trends in planning and management of territories that
are dynamic and responsive to the needs of the place
• Ensures that development would take a sustainable path, which means the future
generation of the municipal population can benefit from the town’s resource base
• The plan will facilitate the sourcing of funds for the implementation of the
recommended programs and projects
• To respond to problems of inequality, deprivation and squalor caused by the interplay
of free market forces and lack of social concern prevalent during the industrial
revolution and the 19th century
INTRODUCTION TO URBAN AND REGIONAL PLANNING

RATIONALE OF TOWN & COUNTRY PLANNING


• To deal with problems arising with regard to the use of spaces or land occupied by an
increasingly mobile population that should lead to promoting liveability
• To balance private needs and communal or collective demands
• To balance the interplay of physical and cultural elements in human habitations, e.g.
the interaction between environmental and economic concerns
• To direct and control the nature of the built environment in the interest of society as a
whole (utilitarian principle of John Stuart Mill)
INTRODUCTION TO URBAN AND REGIONAL PLANNING

BASIC FEATURES OF MODERN URBAN & REGIONAL PLANNING


• urban and regional planning is concerned primarily with public issues involving a
broadly defined group of clients with diverse interests

• it is a deliberate, self-conscious activity that usually involves persons trained


professionally as planners

• it has goals and objectives, as well as the means of achieving them, and are often
highly uncertain
INTRODUCTION TO URBAN AND REGIONAL PLANNING

BASIC FEATURES OF MODERN URBAN & REGIONAL PLANNING


• urban and regional planners themselves seldom make decisions, rather, they lay out
major alternatives and recommendations for those elected or appointed to make such
decisions

• urban and regional planners employ a variety of specialized tools and methods in
analyzing and presenting alternatives

• the results of the most planning activities are discernible only to 5 to 20 years after the
decision has been made, making feedback and corrective measures difficult
INTRODUCTION TO URBAN AND REGIONAL PLANNING

CATEGORIES OF PLANNING
• Physical planning- concerned with the spatial qualities and relationships of
development
• Economic planning- facilitates the working of the market
• Allocative planning- regulatory planning
• Innovative planning- development planning
• Indicative planning- lays down general guidelines; advisory in nature
• Imperative planning- otherwise called command planning, involves specific directives
• Normative planning- otherwise called utopian planning
• Behavioral planning- otherwise called reformist planning. Actual limitations that
circumscribe the pursuit and achievement of rational action; proposes piece meal
“disjointed incrementalist” approach to societal change. (C.E Lindboom)
INTRODUCTION TO URBAN AND REGIONAL PLANNING

TYPES OF PLANNING
Traditional Planning
• The type of planning where the planner prescribes both the goals of the plan and
the means of attaining them.
• The principal objective of traditional planners of the orderly development of the
urban environment, and the proximate goals of the plan are derived from
standards that supposedly measure desirable physical arrangements.
• The conception of scientific planning assumes that the planners’ special
qualifications free them from class or special-interest biases when they are
formulating the contents of the plan.
• Gans however, correctly points out that planners have generally advocated
policies that fit the predispositions of the upper classes but not those of the rest of
the population.
INTRODUCTION TO URBAN AND REGIONAL PLANNING

TYPES OF PLANNING
Democratic Planning
• They called for the transformation of planning from a top-down to a participatory
process.
• David R. Godschalk “what is needed is a modus operandi which brings
governmental planners face-to-face with citizens in a continuous cooperative
venture.”
• Democratic planners pointed on the public as the ultimate authority in the
formulation of plans and take a populist view that differentiates between special
interests and the public interest. Generally side with the underdog.
• The democratic planner must contend with the problem of conflicting interests and
must judge the legitimacy of the representatives of various clienteles.
• According to the democratic planning ideal, the public chooses both ends and
means in practice the planner shapes the alternatives that will be considered by
determining the composition of the planning group.
INTRODUCTION TO URBAN AND REGIONAL PLANNING

TYPES OF PLANNING
Equity Planning
• Equity and democratic planning are overlapping types
• Democratic planning emphasizes the participatory process
• Equity planning’s emphasis is on the substance of programs.
• The concept of equity planning contains an explicit recognition of a multitude of
conflicting social interests, some of which may become irreconcilable.
• Equity planner would “promote a wider range of choices for those…residents who
have few”
INTRODUCTION TO URBAN AND REGIONAL PLANNING

TYPES OF PLANNING
Equity Planning
• Equity and advocacy planning are now used more or less interchangeably.
• Advocacy planning- referred to the defense of excluded interests.
• Advocacy planning- as limited to this approach, was an extension of what
Lindblom calls partisan mutual adjustment
• Advocate planners were simply consultants who acted on behalf of groups that
could afford their services only if offered pro bono or financed by outside sources
like foundations or gov’t programs.
INTRODUCTION TO URBAN AND REGIONAL PLANNING

TYPES OF PLANNING
Equity Planning
• Equity planning differs fundamentally from traditional planning in that particular
planning specifics need not be justified as being in the general public interest
(although equity planners argue that their overall objective of achieving
redistributional goals is in the public interest and if they occupy a public office,
would certainly try to look nonpartisan).
• Equity planners are not always democrats, since they will favor redistributional
goals even in the absence of a supportive public.
• Democratic planner’s ethic is a procedural one of allowing all voices to be heard.
• Equity planners, even when holding office, have a particular responsibility to
advance the interests of the poor and racial or ethnic majorities.
INTRODUCTION TO URBAN AND REGIONAL PLANNING

TYPES OF PLANNING
Incremental Planning
• Policy makers come to a decision by weighing the marginal advantages of a
limited number of alternatives. Rather than working in terms of long-range
objectives, they move ahead through successive approximations.
• Lindblom “that society requires conscious control and manipulation is one
assertion; that an ‘organizing center’ is required is quite another”
INTRODUCTION TO URBAN AND REGIONAL PLANNING

TYPES OF PLANNING
Incremental Planning
• In terms of our definition of planning, incrementalism is not really planning at all.
Lindblom claims that the mechanism of “partisan mutual adjustment”- the working
out of different claims through compromise, adherence to procedural rules. And
the market process- results in rational decision making: “the concern of this study
has been…with partisan mutual adjustment as a method of calculated,
reasonable, and rational intelligent, wise, policy making”
• While incrementalism embodies the opposite of planning in its methods, it
produces the fruits of planning in its results.
INTRODUCTION TO URBAN AND REGIONAL PLANNING

PLANNER
• a person professionally trained to provide planning services
• Practice and Problems:
• Faced with situations where he is both master with his planning prescriptions
and servant to the wishes of stakeholders
• Has attributes of being both a generalist and a specialist at the same time
• Has to reconcile long-term social problems with short-term financial and
political expediency
• Often faced with the challenge of bridging the gulf between the arts and the
sciences
• Often portrayed as articulate or a good communicator, on one hand, an
esoteric theoretician with a penchant for jargons, on the other
INTRODUCTION TO URBAN AND REGIONAL PLANNING

ROLE OF THE PLANNER


Umpire

• Ensure that towns and cities developed logically and conveniently with the
emphasis in zoning

• PLANNING CONTROL- ensured that space is available for the non- profit social
uses, which are essential to the urban population but are not attractive to private
sector as an investment.

• PLANNERS are perceived as “oiling the wheels” of capitalism” criticized by the


left.
INTRODUCTION TO URBAN AND REGIONAL PLANNING

ROLE OF THE PLANNER


Technocrat

• Planners are perceived as powerful technocrats who could offer society answers
to all its problems on the basis of what they saw as their advanced knowledge of
the science of town planning.

• The “white heat of technology squeaky clean uncomplicated approach to planning


ignored the variety of untidiness of existence.”
INTRODUCTION TO URBAN AND REGIONAL PLANNING

ROLE OF THE PLANNER


Economic Planner

• economic planning has always been seen particularly by labor gov’t, which favor a
high level of state intervention as essential comparison to realistic town planning.
(Hall)

• town planning involves the allocation of scarce resources that is urban land, goods
& services and is therefore seen as an aspect of economic planning
INTRODUCTION TO URBAN AND REGIONAL PLANNING

ROLE OF THE PLANNER


Environmental Watchdog

• green MOVEMENT- concerned about the natural environment depletion of the


planets’ resources and the greenhouse effect.
• PRINCE CHARLES
• Concerned about civic design and appearance of the built environment,
accompanied by much criticism of modern architecture.
• in drawing up STATUTORY PLANS, the planners have to analyze the physical,
economic & social factors which create and shape the demand for the different
types of land uses and development, taking into account such issues as
population, employment, industry, transportation and housing demand.
INTRODUCTION TO URBAN AND REGIONAL PLANNING

ROLE OF THE PLANNER


Social Engineer

• planners as social engineers


• Environmental determinism- seeking to influence and determine the people’s
behavior through the design and planning of environment.
• planners have often been criticized by the left for seeming naively to often
“salvation by bucks” seeking to solve deep social problems through physical use
planning.
• achieve only superficial change as “tinkering with the superstructure”(BAILEY)
• IDEAL PLANNING SYSTEM- which can solve urgent problems here and how
setting policies and goals for long term change, in cooperation with other policy
making bodies responsible for the wider social and economic aspects of urban life.
INTRODUCTION TO URBAN AND REGIONAL PLANNING

ROLE OF THE PLANNER


Social Engineer

• planners as social engineers


• Environmental determinism- seeking to influence and determine the people’s
behavior through the design and planning of environment.
• planners have often been criticized by the left for seeming naively to often
“salvation by bucks” seeking to solve deep social problems through physical use
planning.
• achieve only superficial change as “tinkering with the superstructure”(BAILEY)
• IDEAL PLANNING SYSTEM- which can solve urgent problems here and how
setting policies and goals for long term change, in cooperation with other policy
making bodies responsible for the wider social and economic aspects of urban life.
ARPLAN 3
PLANNING 3 : INTRODUCTION TO URBAN & REGIONAL PLANNING

MODULE 1b: HISTORY

PREPARED BY: AR./ENP. RACHELLE S. MORALES


HISTORY OF URBAN AND REGIONAL PLANNING

CLASSICAL PLANNING
• Agriculture and other techniques facilitated larger populations than the very small
communities of the Paleolithic, which probably led to the stronger, more coercive
governments emerging at that time.
• The pre-Classical and Classical periods saw a number of cities laid out according to
fixed plans, though many tended to develop organically.
• Designed cities were characteristic of the Mesopotamian, Harrapan, and Egyptian
civilizations of the third millennium BC
• Archaeological evidence suggests that many Harrapan houses were laid out to buffer
against noise and enhance residential privacy; many also had their own water wells,
probably for both sanitary and ritual purposes.
• These ancient cities were unique in that they often had drainage systems, seemingly
tied to a well-developed ideal of urban sanitation
HISTORY OF URBAN AND REGIONAL PLANNING

CLASSICAL PLANNING
• The Greek Hippodamus (c. 407 BC) has been dubbed the "Father of City Planning" for
his design of Miletus;
• Alexander commissioned him to lay out his new city of Alexandria, the grandest
example of idealized urban planning of the ancient Mediterranean world, where the
city's regularity was facilitated by its level site near a mouth of the Nile.
• The Hippodamian, or grid plan, was the basis for subsequent Greek and Roman cities.
• The ancient Romans used a consolidated scheme for city planning, developed for
military defense and civil convenience.
• The basic plan consisted of a central forum with city services, surrounded by a
compact, rectilinear grid of streets, and wrapped in a wall for defense. To reduce travel
times, two diagonal streets crossed the square grid, passing through the central
square.
• A river usually flowed through the city, providing water, transport, and sewage disposal.
HISTORY OF URBAN AND REGIONAL PLANNING

CLASSICAL PLANNING
• Many European towns, such as Turin, preserved the remains of these schemes, which
show the very logical way the Romans designed their cities.
• They would lay out the streets at right angles, in the form of a square grid. All roads
were equal in width and length, except for two, which were slightly wider than the
others.
• One of these ran east–west, the other, north–south, and intersected in the middle to
form the center of the grid.
• All roads were made of carefully fitted flag stones and filled in with smaller, hard-
packed rocks and pebbles.
• Bridges were constructed where needed. Each square marked by four roads was
called an insula, the Roman equivalent of a modern city block.
HISTORY OF URBAN AND REGIONAL PLANNING

CLASSICAL PLANNING
• The collapse of Roman civilization saw the end of Roman urban planning, among other arts.
• Urban development in the Middle Ages, characteristically focused on a fortress, a fortified
abbey, or a (sometimes abandoned) Roman nucleus, occurred "like the annular rings of a
tree", whether in an extended village or the center of a larger city.
• Since the new center was often on high, defensible ground, the city plan took on an organic
character, following the irregularities of elevation contours like the shapes that result from
agricultural terracing.
• The ideal of wide streets and orderly cities was not lost, however.
• A few medieval cities were admired for their wide thoroughfares and orderly arrangements,
but the juridical chaos of medieval cities and the characteristic tenacity of medieval
Europeans in legal matters prevented frequent or large-scale urban planning until the
Renaissance and the early-modern strengthening of central government administration
• European (and soon after, North American) society transitioned from city-states to what we
would recognize as a more modern concept of a nation-state.
HISTORY OF URBAN AND REGIONAL PLANNING

ANGLO-AMERICAN PLANNING
EBENEZER HOWARD (1850-1928)
• “Garden Cities of Tomorrow”- one of the most important books in the history of urban
planning. From it stemmed garden cities or new towns movement, which has been so
influential in British urban planning theory & practice.
ROBERT OWEN
• experimental settlement at New Lanark in Scotland. Built factories in rural lands and housed
the labor force outside the city.

OTHER PLANNERS INFLUENCED BY HOWARD:


• EDWARD GIBBON WAKEFIELD - had advocated the planned movement of population
• JAMES SICK BUCKINGHAM- developed the idea of a model city
• ALFRED MARSHALL- invented the idea of the new town as an answer to the problems of
the city
HISTORY OF URBAN AND REGIONAL PLANNING

ANGLO-AMERICAN PLANNING
EXAMPLES OF GARDEN CITIES
BOURNVILLE, outside Birmingham built by chocolate manufacturer George Cadbury.
Port Sunlight in the Mersey built by William Lever.

IDEA OF HOWARD:
• all of the industry was decentralized deliberately from the city or at least from
its inner sectors.
• new town was built around the decentralized plant
• combining working and living in a healthy environment
HISTORY OF URBAN AND REGIONAL PLANNING

ANGLO-AMERICAN PLANNING
• HOWARD’S THREE MAGNETS - diagram setting out the advantages & disadvantages of
town and country life. A hybrid form for the future, the planned TOWN COUNTRY OR
GARDEN CITY - combined the advantages of both with none of the disadvantages.
• Combine all the advantages of the town by way of accessibility.
• All the advantages of the country by way of environment
• Without any disadvantages of either.
• This could be achieved by planned decentralization of workers and then places of
employment thus transferring the advantages of urban agglomeration en-bloc to the new
settlement.
• Howard divided towns into wards of 5,000 people each of which would contain local shops,
schools & other services.
• This is the embryo of NEIGHBORHOOD UNIT AREA certain services which are provided
everyday for groups of population who can’t or do not travel far, should be provided at an
accessible central place for a small community w/in walking distance.
HISTORY OF URBAN AND REGIONAL PLANNING

ANGLO-AMERICAN PLANNING
• HOWARD’S THREE MAGNETS GARDEN CITY DIAGRAMS
HISTORY OF URBAN AND REGIONAL PLANNING

ANGLO-AMERICAN PLANNING
FOLLOWERS OF HOWARD:
RAYMON UNWIN
• LETCHWORTH
• With Barry Parker, built Hampstead Garden suburb
• a dormitory suburb in 1907
• creation of socially mixed community with every type of house from the big
mansion to small cottage & its creation of a range of houses which were
skillfully designed
BARRY PARKER
• Wythenshawe called the 3rd garden city, with surrounding green belt, mixture
of industrial & residential areas, emphasis on single family housing of good
design.
HISTORY OF URBAN AND REGIONAL PLANNING

ANGLO-AMERICAN PLANNING
FOLLOWERS OF HOWARD:
RAYMON UNWIN
• LETCHWORTH
• With Barry Parker, built Hampstead Garden suburb
• a dormitory suburb in 1907
• creation of socially mixed community with every type of house from the big
mansion to small cottage & its creation of a range of houses which were
skillfully designed
BARRY PARKER
• Wythenshawe called the 3rd garden city, with surrounding green belt, mixture
of industrial & residential areas, emphasis on single family housing of good
design.
HISTORY OF URBAN AND REGIONAL PLANNING

ANGLO-AMERICAN PLANNING
• PARKER’s modifications on Howard’s Principles:
• background of open space instead of greenbelts
• Adaptation of entry urban railway in the motor age.
• dividing the town into clearly articulated neighborhood units.
• NEW YORK REGIONAL PLAN (1920) great multi- volume plan, prepared wholly by a
voluntary organization is one of the milestone of 20th century planning
• CLARENCE PERRY
• contributor, there developed the idea of neighborhood unit, with merely a pragmatic
device but as a deliberate piece of social engineering which would help people achieve
its sense of identity with the community & with the place.
• putting shops at the corners of the units where functions of traffic were
• about 5,000 people
• bounded by main traffic
• CHRISTOPHER ALEXANDER - “a city is not a tree”, suggested that sociologically,
different people had varied needs for local services & the privilege of choice was
paramount.
HISTORY OF URBAN AND REGIONAL PLANNING

ANGLO-AMERICAN PLANNING
• CLARENCE STEIN
• architect planner working in NY
region.
• faced fully the implications of the
age of mass ownership of the
private car.
• the principle that in local residential
areas the need above all was to
segregate the pedestrian ways
used for local journeys- especially
by the routes used by car traffic.
(RADBURN, NJ)
HISTORY OF URBAN AND REGIONAL PLANNING

ANGLO-AMERICAN PLANNING
• ALKER TRIPP
• a senior British police official who served as an Assistant Commissioner of the
London Metropolitan Police from 1932 to 1947
• In 1938 he published Road Traffic and Its Control
• In September 1942, Tripp published a second book, Town Planning and Road
Traffic, which looked ahead to postwar reconstruction wherein he pioneered
the idea of motorways in Britain.
• idea that after the war, cities should be reconstructed in the basis of
PRECINCTS.
• hierarchy of roads in which main arterial or sub arterial roads were sharply
segregated from the local streets with only occasional access and also were
free of direct frontage development
• influenced Patrick Abercrombie and Foreshaw(called application of the
PRECINCTUAL PRINCIPLE to London.)
HISTORY OF URBAN AND REGIONAL PLANNING

ANGLO-AMERICAN PLANNING
• SIR LESLIE PATRICK ABERCROMBIE
• a senior British police official who served as an Assistant Commissioner of the London
Metropolitan Police from 1932 to 1947
• most notable professional planner in Britain in the Anglo American period
• most notable contribution to planning to a wider scale: the scale which region around it
is a single planning exercise
• did the Greater London Plan 1944
• PATRICK GEDDES
• Scottish biologist.
• recognized human ecology- the relationship between man and his environment.
• CITIES IN EVOLUTION- (a book) systematic study of the forces that were shaping
growth and change in modern cities
• based on the study of reality - the close analysis of settlement patterns and local
economic environment
• Together with PGF Le Play stressed the intimate and subtle relationship between
human settlement and the land through the nature of local economy.
HISTORY OF URBAN AND REGIONAL PLANNING

ANGLO-AMERICAN PLANNING
• PLACE-WORK-FOLK
• Le Play’s famous triad- was the fundamental study of men living and working on their
land.
• he gave planning a logical structure
• regional idea
• human geography to provide the basis of planning.
• WORKING METHODS (basis of plans)
• survey of the region - its character and trends.
• analysis of the survey
• actual plan
• he demonstrated that these suburban growth was causing a tendency for the towns to form
into grand urban agglomerations or CONURBATIONS
• town planning must be subsumed* under town and country planning, or planning of whole
urban regions encompassing a number of town and the* surrounding spheres of influence.
HISTORY OF URBAN AND REGIONAL PLANNING

ANGLO-AMERICAN PLANNING
• LEWIS MUMFORD
• Geddes Follower
• wrote CULTURE OF CITIES - the Bible of regional planning movement
• WRIGHT, FRANK LLOYD
• it was desirable to preserve the sort of codependent rural life of the
homesteaders.
• that mass car would allow cities to spread widely into countryside.
• developing a completely dispersed though planned low density urban spread
called BROADACRE CITY- where each home would be surrounded by an acre
of land enough to grow crops.
• homes would be connected by super highways.
• Easy and fast travel by car to any direction.
• he anticipated “out- of-town shopping
HISTORY OF URBAN AND REGIONAL PLANNING

ANGLO-AMERICAN PLANNING
• BROADACRE CITY
HISTORY OF URBAN AND REGIONAL PLANNING

EUROPEAN PLANNING
• Reconstruction of Paris under GEORGE EUGENE HAUSMANN- which imposed a
new pattern of broad boulevards and great parks on the previous labyrinth* street
pattern
• ARTURO SORIA Y MATA
• Proposed to develop along an axis of high speed, high intensity transportation
from an existing city
• His argument was that under the new influence of new mass forms of mass
transportation, cities were to assume such a form as they grew.
• it can respond automatically to the need for further growth by simple addition at
far end.
• GARNER & MAY
• the Garden City was soon exported across the Channel. But, curiously, in
France its best known expression seems to have occurred spontaneously by
these two
HISTORY OF URBAN AND REGIONAL PLANNING

EUROPEAN PLANNING
• LINEAR CITY
HISTORY OF URBAN AND REGIONAL PLANNING

EUROPEAN PLANNING
Le Corbusier
• the Swiss- born architect Charles Edouard Jeanneret, who early in his
professional career adopted the pseudonym Le Corbusier (1877-1965)
• one of the creators of the modern movement in architecture.
• His most outstanding contribution as a thinker and writer was urban planning
on the grand scale.
• the most notable of his works are Unite’ d’ Habitation (1946-52) at Marseilles in
France, and his grand project for the capital city of Punjab at Chandigarh
(1950-7), which was finished only long after his death.
• Two important books: The City of Tomorrow (1922) and The Radiant City
HISTORY OF URBAN AND REGIONAL PLANNING

EUROPEAN PLANNING
Propositions of Le Corbusier
• The first was that the traditional city has become functionally obsolete, due to
increasing size and increasing congestion at the centre. As the urban mass
grew through concentric additions, more and more strain was placed on the
communications of the innermost areas, above all the central business district,
which had the greatest accessibility and where all business wanted to be.

• The second was the paradox that the congestion could be cured by increasing
the density. There was a key to this, of course: the density was to be increased
at one scale of analysis, but decreased at another. Locally, there would be very
high densities in the form of massive, tall structures; but around each of these a
very high proportion of the available ground space- Corbusier advocated 95%-
could and should be left open.
HISTORY OF URBAN AND REGIONAL PLANNING

EUROPEAN PLANNING
Propositions of Le Corbusier
• The Radiant City (La Ville radieuse) was developed during the 1920s and
1930s the idea of a city with very high local concentrations of populations in tall
buildings, which would allow most of the ground space to be left open. His
ideas proved very influential for a whole generation of planners after the
Second World War.
• The third proposition concerned the distribution of densities within the city.
• Lastly, Corbusier argued that this new urban form could accommodate a new
and highly efficient urban transportation system, incorporating both rail lines
and completely segregated elevated motorways, running above the ground
level, though, of course, below the levels at which most people lived.
HISTORY OF URBAN AND REGIONAL PLANNING

EUROPEAN PLANNING
Propositions of Le Corbusier
• Nevertheless, in planning cities after the Second World War, Corbusier’s
general influence has been incalculable.

• Corbusier however had another, more subtle, influence. Though many of his
ideas were intuitive rather than scientifically exact, he did teach planners in
general the importance of scale in analysis.

• Equally important was his insistence on the elementary truth that dense local
concentrations of people helped support a viable, frequent mass-
transportations system.
HISTORY OF URBAN AND REGIONAL PLANNING

EUROPEAN PLANNING
HISTORY OF URBAN AND REGIONAL PLANNING

EUROPEAN PLANNING
HISTORY OF URBAN AND REGIONAL PLANNING

EUROPEAN PLANNING

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