A Short History of Urban Planning
Drawn from:
Richard LeGates and Frederic Stout, “Modernism and Early Urban Planning, 1870-1940”
Paul Knox, Urbanization
Barry Cullingworth, Planning in the USA
Crisis…response…crisis…
Paul Knox argues that the profession of planning emerges out of series of crises and people’s responses to them
health crises (epidemics)
social crises (riots, strikes)
other crises (fire, flood, etc.)
planning tries to mitigate the adverse elements of capitalism, but also makes capitalism viable over the long term
Marxist inspiration
Friedrich Engels observed the misery of mid-19th c. Manchester & wrote: The Condition of the Working Class in England (1844)
worker oppression
pollution
overcrowding
disease
alienation
display of status symbols in the landscape
The Roots of Urban Planning: Romanticism & Progressivism
these were philosophical, intellectual, and moral stances opposed to the trend in social relations, values, and environmental conditions of the 18th & 19th c., with loose ties to Marxism
Romantics were utopian visionaries
generally attempted to balance city/country opposition
seldom saw their plans actualized
had a major influence on planning profession
Progressives were activists
motivated by desire to reduce poverty or the harmful effects of poverty
Urban Public Health as a Focus of Concern
Physician Benjamin Ward Richardson wrote Hygeia, City of Health (1876) envisioning:
air pollution control
water purification
sewage handling
public laundries
public health inspectors
elimination of alcohol & tobacco
replacement of the gutter with the park as the site of children’s play
such concerns motivated the Parks Movement
The Parks Movement
grew out of landscape archit. & garden design
shifted from private to public settings
naturalistic parks were created in the U.S. by Frederick Law Olmstead, whose career started with Central Park, New York, 1857
goals:
separate transportation modes
support active and passive uses
collect water
promote moral pass-times
Frederick Law Olmsted
1822-1903
advanced quite impressively for a park superintendent without a college degree
with Calvert Vaux (1847) won the competition & went on to design:
Prospect Park (1865-1873),
Chicago's Riverside subdivision
Buffalo's park system (1868-1876),
the park at Niagara Falls (1887)
In later years worked on Boston’s park system, “the Emerald Necklace” and the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago
Olmsted’s parks were not natural but they were “naturalistic” or “organic” in form
This form was seen as uplifting urban dwellers and addressing the social and psychological impacts of crowding
environmental determinism
Olmsted’s Park Design Principles
SCENERY: design spaces in which movement creates constant opening up of new views and “obscurity of detail further away”
SUITABILITY: respect the natural scenery and topography of the site
STYLE:
“Pastoral” = open greensward with small bodies of water and scattered trees and groves create a soothing, restorative atmosphere
“Picturesque = profuse planting, especially with shrubs, creepers and ground cover, on steep and broken terrain create a sense of the richness and bounteousness of nature, produce a sense of mystery with light and shade
SUBORDINATION: subordinate all elements to the overall design and the effect it is intended to achieve: “Art to conceal Art”
SEPARATION:
of areas designed in different styles
of ways, in order to insure safety of use and reduce distractions
of conflicting or incompatible uses
SANITATION: promote both the physical and mental health of users
SERVICE: meet fundamental social and psychological needs
Source: National Association of Olmsted Parks: http://www.olmsted.org/pages/philosophy.htm
Riverside, Illinois
designed by Olmsted, 1869
a prototype suburb
9 mi. from Chicago
fashionable location for the wealthy to live
often copied
Settlement House Movement
Jane Addams founded Hull House (Chicago) 1889
soon over 100 others are founded in American cities
goals: educating, elevating and saving the poor (condescending attitude) gradually evolved into something more responsive and scientific
residents surveyed slum populations, organized housing studies
the gathering of information from such surveys and studies became central to urban planning
famous tenement studies around 1901: Lawrence Veiller (NY) and Robert Hunter (Chicago)
Garden Cities (a British innovation)
Ebenezer Howard: Garden Cities of To-morrow (1902)
“three magnets”
town (high wages, opportunity, and amusement)
country (natural beauty, low rents, fresh air)
town-country (combination of both)
separated from central city by greenbelt
two actually built in England
Letchworth
Welwyn
Ebenezer Howard
no training in urban planning or design
1850-1928
opposed urban crowding/density
hoped to create a “magnet” people would want to come to
Garden Cities
would combine the best elements of city and country
would avoid the worst elements of city and country
formed the basis of the earliest suburbs,
separation from the city has been lost virtually every time due to infill
A Utopian Model
an ideal, self-contained community of predetermined area and population surrounded by a greenbelt
was intended to bring together the economic and cultural advantages of both city and country life while at the same time discouraging metropolitan sprawl and industrial centralization
land ownership would be vested in the community (socialist element)
The garden city was foreshadowed in the writings of Robert Owen, Charles Fourier, and James Silk Buckingham, and in the planned industrial communities of Saltaire (1851), Bournville (1879), and Port Sunlight (1887) in England
Howard organized the Garden-City Association (1899) in England and secured backing for the establishment of Letchworth and Welwyn
Neither community was an entirely self-contained garden city
Actual Garden Cities
Letchworth, England
Founded 1903
Barry Parker and Raymond Unwin, planners
Welwyn, England
Founded 1920 by E. Howard
designed by Louis de Soissons
most of the population now commutes to London
More Welwyn photos
Garden City Legacy in the U.S.
Garden City idea spread rapidly to Europe and the United States
Under the auspices of the Regional Planning Association of America, the garden-city idea inspired a “New Town,” Radburn, N.J. (1928–32) outside New York City
The congestion and destruction accompanying World War II greatly stimulated the garden-city movement, especially in Great Britain
Britain’s New Towns Act (1946) led to the development of over a dozen new communities based on Howard's idea
The open layout of garden cities also had a great influence on the development of modern city planning
Most satellite towns fail to attain Howard's ideal
residential suburbs of individually owned homes
local industries are unable to provide enough employment for the inhabitants, many of whom commute to work in larger centers
A New Town in the U.S.
Radburn, VA
Origins of the Planning Profession in the U.S.
emerges during the first third of the 20th c.
adopts less critical stance relative to modernity
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
patriarchal attitude
naïve faith in social engineering
left-leaning political bias almost disappears, esp. with role of zoning
The City Beautiful Movement
main emphasis: showy urban landscapes
drew on “beaux arts” tradition (France)
aped classical architecture
iconography of and for the urban elites
moral diagnosis: people need to be civilized
Daniel Burnham: 1893 Chicago World’s Fair
orderly and clean
aesthetic rather than social sensibility
grandiose and ambitious
images that follow are thanks to the Illinois Institute of Technology: http://columbus.gl.iit.edu/
The Birth of Land use Zoning
1886 statute: San Fran. Chinese laundries shut down
Fed. court case: Yick Wo v. Hopkins, Sheriff struck down statute, so city imposed no-laundry zone
other CA cities zoned against laundries, brothels, pool halls, dance halls, livery stables, slaughterhouses
How? municipality’s trad. responsibility for protecting “health, safety, morals and general welfare” of citizens
1st NY zoning law (1916) protected Fifth Ave. luxury store owners from expansion of Jewish garment factories
protected property values and expressed chauvinism
idea spread to 100s of cities in decade after the NY law was passed, promoting property values and special interests of the upper class, white majority
Giants of Planning in the U.S.
concept of the “master plan”: Edward Bassett, 1935, included:
infrastructure layout
zoning
Patrick Geddes (1904, 1915) called for urban planning to take into account the ecosystem and history of a region, called for social surveys
a protégé of Geddes, Lewis Mumford (1895-1990) was the first notable critic of sprawl and the main figure in the Regional Plan Association of America, which built new towns in NJ & NY
A New Generation of Dreamers
Le Corbusier (1920s): skyscrapers in parks
apartment tower idea caught on, but not the park setting
bland concrete apartment building is everywhere, and is hated everywhere
Frank Lloyd Wright (1930s): “Broadacre City”
his small house with carport became more or less the American standard in the 1950s
his dream of a decentralized, automobile-dependent society materialized
Wright’s vision, with 1-acre lots, would have created even worse traffic nightmares
Le Corbusier
originally Charles-Edouard Jeanneret
1887-1965
a founding father of the modernist movement
“social engineering”
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
Elements of Le Corbusier’s Plan
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
The logic of increasing urban density
“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
“The moral, therefore, is that we must increase the density of the centres of our cities, where business affairs are carried on.”
Frank Lloyd Wright
1867-1959
532 architectural designs built
(twice as many drawn)
designed houses, office buildings and a kind of suburban layout he called “Broadacre City”
Broadacre City
low-density
car-oriented
freeways +feeder roads
multinucleated
Planning Today
main tool: zoning
19,000 different systems
tends to actually do little in the way of planning
imposes a rigidity to existing land uses
encourages separation by class
encourages retail strip development
discourages mixed use, pedestrian areas
in practice, it promotes satellite bedroom communities and suburbs superficially like Garden cities or Broadacre City
Relationship between Planning and the Crises that Created It?
Water quality and sanitation is controlled
Most people have adequate light and air
Fire danger is controlled
Disease is controlled
Current planning practice has even more to do with protecting property values
Urban growth continues to create unhealthy and dehumanizing environments (air pollution, stress, isolation, lack of community, etc.)
genuine planning is desperately needed
Is there Hope?
Precedents:
Cluster zoning & PUDs (dates back to Radburn, NJ, designed by Regional Planning Association of America in 1923)
New Urbanism & Neo-Traditional Planning
Peter Calthorpe
Leon Krier
Congress for the New Urbanism
Participatory Planning
What else could planning involve?