Lecture 04. History of Town Planning.ppt

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Learning objectives : › To familiarize the historical progress of planning › To review old concepts of spatial planning

› How planning reached its present stage.

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Major contents: A. B. C. D.

Elements of Urban Structure Evolution of urban forms / cities Planning Procedure Planning Today

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The physical elements of the city can be divided into three categories: › networks,

› buildings, and › open spaces

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First true urban settlements appeared around 3,000 B.C. in ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, and the Moen-JoDaro, Indus Valley.  Ancient cities displayed both "organic" and "planned" types of urban form.  These societies had elaborate religious, political, and military hierarchies. 

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Features of the ancient city: Two typical features of the ancient city are the wall and the citadel: › the wall for defense in regions periodically

swept by conquering armies, and › the citadel -- a large, elevated precinct within the city -- devoted to religious and state functions.

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Jerusalem, Israel - 3000 B.C

Kirkuk, Iraq - 3000 B.C.

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Luxuor, Egypt 2160 BC

Moen-Jo-Daro, Sindh, Pakistan 2600 BC 8

Greek cities did not follow a single pattern.  Cities growing slowly from old villages often had an irregular, organic form, adapting gradually to the accidents of topography and history.  Colonial cities, however, were planned prior to settlement using the grid system. 

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Heraklion, Greece – Founded by the Arabs in 824 AD 10

Athens, Greece -1400 BC

Acropolis of Athens 11

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The Romans engaged in extensive city-building activities as they consolidated their empire. Rome itself displayed the informal complexity created by centuries of organic growth, although particular temple and public districts were highly planned. In contrast, the Roman military and colonial towns were laid out in a variation of the grid. › Many European cities, like London and Paris, sprang

from these Roman origins. (grid-iron pattern)

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According to Roman tradition, the city of Rome was founded by Romulus on 21 April 753 BC 13

The medieval times also known as the middle ages started after the fall of the western Roman Empire (5th Century)

Features Of The medieval Cities

Narrow winding streets converging on a market square with a cathedral and city hall.  Many cities of this period display this pattern, the product of thousands of incremental additions to the urban fabric.  However, new towns seeded throughout undeveloped regions of Europe were based upon the familiar grid.  In either case, large encircling walls were built for defense against marauding armies; new walls enclosing more land were built as the city expanded and outgrew its former container. 

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View of Marrakesh and El Badi Palace - 1640

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During the Renaissance, architects began to systematically study the shaping of urban space, as though the city itself were a piece of architecture that could be given an aesthetically pleasing and functional order.

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Features of Renaissance Cities Parts of old cities were rebuilt to create elegant squares, long street vistas, and symmetrical building arrangements. Responding to advances in firearms during the fifteenth century, new city walls were designed with large earthworks to deflect artillery, and starshaped points to provide defenders with sweeping lines of fire. Spanish colonial cities in the New World were built according to rules codified in the Laws of the Indies of 1573, specifying an orderly grid of streets with a central plaza, defensive wall, and uniform building style 17

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(i) The Grand Manner or Baroque Style The first notable trend in urban planning arises with renaissance era political authorities, most notably absolutist-minded princes of Europe, seeking to fortify or to „perfect‟ their capitol cities. Main features: The spooked wheel was deemed to be the most perfect city shape for the purpose of military and civil defense - to allow easy routes for the movement of troops to quell riots in the center of the city - or to move rapidly to defend the walls against external enemies. 18

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The city of Palmanova in Italy (built 15931623) is an almost perfectly preserved example of this type of radial starburst design with extensive fortifications and outworks.

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(ii) Transition to the Industrial City 

Cities have changed more since the Industrial Revolution (Nineteenth century) than in all the previous centuries of their existence.

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New York had a population of about 313,000 in 1840 but had reached 4,767,000 in 1910. Chicago exploded from 4.000 to 2,185,000 during the same period.

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Millions of rural dwellers no longer needed on farms flocked to the cities, where new factories churned out products for the new markets made accessible by railroads and steamships. In the United States, millions of immigrants from Europe swelled the urban populations.

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Increasingly, urban economies were being woven more rightly into the national and international economies. 20

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Technological innovations poured forth, many with profound impacts on urban form. Railroad tracks were driven into the heart of the city. Internal rail transportation systems greatly expanded the radius of urban settlement: horse-cars beginning in the 1830s, cable cars in the 1870s, and electric trolleys in the 1880s. In the 1880s, the first central power plants began providing electrical power to urban areas. The rapid communication provided by the telegraph and the telephone allowed formerly concentrated urban activities to disperse across a wider field. 21

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The increasing crowding, pollution, and disease in the central city produced a growing desire to escape to a healthier environment in the suburbs.

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The upper classes had always been able to retreat to homes in the countryside.

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Beginning in the 1830s, commuter railroads enabled the upper middle class to commute in to the city center. Horse-car lines were built in many cities between the 1830s and 1880s, allowing the middle class to move out from the central cities into more spacious suburbs.

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Finally, during the 1890s electric trolleys and elevated rapid transit lines proliferated, providing cheap urban transportation for the majority of the population. 22

› Based on landscape architecture & garden

design › Parks shifted from private to public settings › naturalistic parks were created in the U.S. by Frederick Law Olmstead › goals:  support active and passive uses  collect water

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This form was seen as uplifting urban dwellers and addressing the social and psychological impacts of crowding

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designed by Olmsted, 1869 fashionable location for the wealthy to live often copied

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› Idea of housing studies by

Jane Addams; more responsive and scientific

› Resident‟s survey of slum populations

› goals: educating, elevating and saving the poor › the gathering of information from such surveys and studies became central to urban

planning

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› Ebenezer Howard: Garden › › › ›

Cities of To-morrow (1902) garden city would house 32,000 people on 24 sq. km area Planned in concentric pattern with open spaces Self contained city with gardens separated from central city by greenbelt

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would combine the best elements & would avoid the worst elements of city and country two actually built in England

 Letchworth  Welwyn

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Digswell Viaduct Welwyn Garden City

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› main emphasis: showy urban landscapes › aped classical architecture

› iconography of and for the urban elites

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› emerges during the first third of the 20th c. › first national conference on city planning in

Washington D.C., 1909 › shifts slowly from concern with aesthetics (city beautiful) to concern with efficiency and scientific management

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› A town for the motor age › The separation of pedestrian and vehicular

traffic, Padestrian do not have to cross main roads › Idea of „dead end streets‟ or „cul de sacs‟ › Cars must be given parking place

Further readings: http://www.radburn.org/geninfo/history.html

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Radburn, New Jersey

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access to greenspace › between 48% and 95%

of the surface area is reserved for greenspace     

gardens squares sports fields restaurants theaters

› with no sprawl, access

to the “protected zone” (greenbelt/open space) is quick and easy 34

Elements of Le Corbusier‟s Plan  very high density › 1,200 people per acre in skyscrapers  overcrowded sectors of Paris & London ranged from 169-213 pers./acre at the time  Manhattan has only 81 pers./acre › 120 people per acre in luxury houses  6 to 10 times denser than current luxury housing in the U.S. › multi-level traffic system to manage the

intensity of traffic

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The logic of increasing urban density 

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“The more dense the population of a city is the less are the distances that have to be covered.” traffic is increased by: › the number of people in a city › the degree to which private transportation is more

appealing (clean, fast, convenient, cheap) than public transportation › the average distance people travel per trip › the number of trips people must make each week

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“The moral, therefore, is that we must increase the density of the centers of our cities, where business affairs are carried on.” 36

The modern city should be a combination of the human scale and the mechanical scale.  Smaller units, which can be planned on human dimensions, should be based on the human scale,  While larger areas are based on the mechanical one. 

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Islamabad The Developing Urban Detroit Area Guanabara and Rio de Janeiro Aspra Spitia. A New "Greek" City The University of the Punjab Doxiadis Office Building

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1867-1959 532 architectural designs built (twice as many drawn) designed houses, office buildings and a kind of suburban layout he called “Broadacre City” 38

Each house 1 acre low-density car-oriented train station and a few office and apartment buildings also proposed freeways +feeder roads multinucleated

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Typical urban planning procedure follows a cyclical process: › Data collection, estimates, diagnostics,

› Determination of stakes and objectives, › Definition and choice of strategy, › Drawing up of plans of action,

› Promotion and implementation, › Assessment and check.

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› main tool: zoning › tends to actually do little in the way of

planning rather it manages the development

 imposes a rigidity to existing land uses  discourages mixed use, pedestrian areas  encourages separation by class

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 Drawn from: › Richard LeGates and Frederic Stout,

“Modernism and Early Urban Planning, 1870-1940”

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A Brief History of Urban Planning › http://www.simcitycentral.net/knowl

edge/articles/a-brief-history-ofurban-planning/

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THANKS

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