Urban Planning innovations in the

second half of the 20° century

Module: BSc Urban & Regional Planning

Course: History of Urban Planning
Course Leader: Andrea Raffaele Neri

Tel 0937025660
Email litio.a@gmail.com
 Rise and fall of a modernist and
technicist perspective on planning (1)
 After the World War 2 the modernist system of urban planning
based
on functional zoning and still radical top-down approach
imposed
itself in virtually every country in the world.
 Still, these planning practices experienced important innovations.
The planning practice pretended to be seen as a science and new
sophisticated techniques were put in place to claim its decisions to
be
less dependant on subjective opinions.
 The decisions of land planning then onwards had to be backed by
geographically defined information coming from a wide range
of
 Rise and fall of a modernist and
technicist perspective on planning (2)
 This embedding into the planning documents information coming
from
different fields was the centre point of the Multicriteria analysis
method, which aimed to support strategic decisions through the
mathematical processing of information. This has importantly
influenced
the land planning practices since the early 1970s with the creation
of
models and patterns later highly criticized.
 The Multicriteria analysis applied to land planning, together with
the work
of Ian McHarg, set forth the basic concepts that were to develop
later in
AutoCAD and Geographic Information Systems (GIS).
 Rise and fall of a modernist and
technicist perspective on planning (3)
 Moreover, the Rio conference of the United Nations in1991
acknowledged the supreme role of the communities over technical
experts in the planning and management of their territories and set
sustainability as new goal for planners.
 The process that followed was the result of the acknowledgement
of the
failure of the technical approach in the field of urban planning
but
also in handling the environment and most often the economy.
 More flexible and participated forms of urban planning and
community
management mitigated and often replaced the traditional top-down
ones.
 Ian McHarg
 Ian McHarg is a Scottish landscape architect (1920 –
2001) and renowned regional planner.
 His most famous book Design with Nature (1969) was
incredibly influential particularly in three areas:
1. ecological planning. He pioneered the idea that
planners and designers must be familiar with
environmental analysis (soil, climate, hydrology).
2. regional planning, with a main focus on the
environmental risks connected with the urban
pressure on the surroundings of big cities.
3. setting a methodology for development based on prescribing
compatible
solutions of land use (= individuating the most and least
suitable uses for the study area from the overlap analysis
of different maps each describing the degree of
 Ian McHarg

1. ecological planning.
Ian McHarg
2. regional planning

Right and page before:

Baltimore County (USA),
Plan for the Valleys (1963).
 Ian McHarg

3. setting a methodology
Ian McHarg’s influence
Ian McHarg’s influence
Ian McHarg’s influence
 AutoCAD’s system of layers

 Created in 1982, is the most

ubiquitous computer design
program worldwide.
 It is a computerized version of
McHarg planning by layers,
where the overall image is the
sum of the different visual
analyses.
 Geographical Information Systems
(GIS)
 GIS is a system designed to capture, store, manipulate, analyze,
manage,
and present all types of geographical data. The ‘father’ of this form
of
modern computerized system is the English geographer Roger
Tomlinson,
who coined it in 1968.
 It is designed, particularly combined with multi criteria analysis,
to help
decision making processes which relate with the territories, it is the
combination of maps + geographically related data.
 A GIS is typically composed of:
1. an ortho-rectified aerial/satellite imagery
2. a series of digitalized thematic maps superimposed
 Incrementalism
 Incrementalism, firstly theorized in the 50s and 60s, is a method of
working
by adding to a project using many small (often unplanned),
incremental
changes instead of a few (extensively planned) large jumps.
This perspective on planning starts from the critique to the
contemporary urban design obsessed with the physical form dominated
by issues of
aesthetics, so to make ‘planning’ an extension of ‘architecture’.
With
incrementalism planning becomes a process, not just a product.
The place-making approach becomes inductive, how become as
important as what. The role of the planner becomes to ‘simply’
steer the
 Christopher Alexander
Christopher Alexander (born 1936) is the
Austrian architect who structured a method of
describing good design practices in PATTERNS.

(Alexander C., Ishikawa, S. and Silverstein,

M., A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings,
Construction, Oxford University Press, 1977).

 Each Pattern is described in terms of problem-solution.

 Each Pattern is designed to answer the problems at different scales.
 The claim is that there is a “timeless way of building”, and modern
needs can fit in it.
 Incremental approach in believing that the most efficient scale for
good planning is the neighbourhood, the masterplan should only be
gradually and organically emerge in accord of the local patterns.
 Christopher Alexander:
A Pattern example – Pattern 42 ‘Industrial
development in urban areas’. (1)

PROBLEMS:

• Industry can’t be completely separated fromthe rest of the urban life.

• The shape of the industrial park should be contained enough not to sharply
segregate the surroundings.

• It must be accessible.

• Green areas can’t be only for show, they must be placed so that they can
be used.
 Christopher Alexander:
A Pattern example – Pattern 42 ‘Industrial
development in urban areas’. (2)

SOLUTIONS:

Ribbon shapes (blocks between

50-200 x 50-600 m) are the
best solution to guarantee
urban connections.
Locate the truck roads (and rails
spurs) in the centre of the ribbon, so that the edge of the ribbon remain
open to the community. Also, the trucks traffic is generated outside the
neighbourhoods. Ideally Ring Roads are located in the centre.
Place the most important buildings, green areas and the facilities at the edg
of the ribbons to form usable and connected edge streets and usable spaces
 Friend and Jessop’s Strategic Choice

n 1969 John Friend and Neil Jessop published Local Government

nd Strategic Choice: an Operational Research Approach to the Processes
f Public Planning, a book that was incredibly influencing in pushing
orward the idea that decisions making processes connected with
rban planning and local government in general should be steered
with an incremental system of proposal-feedback-change between the
ublic sector and the communities.
The planning options are all weighted and voted by the different
stakeholders and the strategic choice is the one that maximize everyone’s
satisfaction and minimizes everyone dissatisfaction.
A contemporary use of this approach is embedded in STAN (Strategic
nalysis) software for decision making support developed by Paolo Scattoni,
niversita’ La Sapienza, Rome, Italy.
Friend and Jessop’s Strategic Choice
STAN
Grazie per la vostra attenzione.

(Thanks for your attention!)