Subject: CEEL2: URBAN PLANNING 2nd Sem.

SY 2019-2020
Class: 5CEA URS-M CoE Instructor: Ar. Lyndon Sheridan P. Trinidad

Lecture No. 1

URBAN PLANNING
It involves planning for region, cities/ municipalities, villages and communities. Mcgill
University School of Urban Planning described it as:
o Technical process
o Political process
Concerned with:
o Welfare of people,
o Control of the use of land,
o Design of the urban environment;
 Transportation networks
 Communication networks
o Protection and enhancement of the natural environment
[Link]

As an organized profession, urban planning started only in 1900s when theorist

Urban design is the process of planning, designing and shaping of a community,

HUMAN SETTLEMENT is a community in which people live. A settlement can range in

HISTORY. In choosing their place to live, certain factors were considered, to some extent,
still apply to the development of present-day settlements.
A. Natural factors
1. Potential for natural calamities (fire, flood, volcano eruption, etc.)
2. Precence of fertile soil, bidies of water, and other natural resources.
3. Slope and terrain and other froms of natural defences.
4. Climate
B. Innovations
1. The plow
2. Rectilinear town planning
3. Circular and radiocentric plans

Early history
Evidence of planning has been unearthed in the ruins of cities
in China, India, Egypt,Asia Minor, the Mediterranean world, and South and Central
America. Early examples of efforts toward planned urban development include orderly
street systems that are rectilinear and sometimes radial; division of a city into specialized
functional quarters; development of commanding central sites for palaces, temples, and
civic buildings; and advanced systems of fortification, water supply, and drainage. Most
of the evidence is in smaller cities that were built in comparatively short periods as
colonies. Often the central cities of ancient states grew to substantial size before they
achieved governments capable of imposing controls.
For several centuries during the Middle Ages, there was little building of cities
in Europe. Eventually towns grew up as centres of church or feudal authority, of
marketing or trade. As the urban population grew, the constriction caused by walls and
fortifications led to overcrowding, the blocking out of air and light, and very poor sanitation.
Certain quarters of the cities, either by custom or fiat, were restricted to different
nationalities, classes, or trades, as still occurs in many contemporary cities of the
developing world.
The physical form of medieval and Renaissance towns and cities followed the pattern of
the village, spreading along a street or a crossroads in circular patterns or in irregular
shapes, though rectangular patterns tended to characterize some of the newer towns.
Most streets were little more than footpaths—more a medium for communication than for
transportation—and even in major European cities paving was not widely introduced
before the 12th century (1184 in Paris, 1235 in Florence, and 1300 in Lübeck). As the
population of the city grew, walls were often expanded, but few cities at the time exceeded
a mile in length. Sometimes sites were changed, as in Lübeck, and many new cities
emerged with increasing population—frequently about one day’s walk apart. Towns
ranged in population from several hundred to perhaps 40,000 (as in London in the late
14th century, although London’s population had been as high as 80,000 before the arrival
of the Black Death). Paris and Venice were exceptions, reaching 100,000.
Conscious attempts to plan cities reemerged in Europe during the Renaissance. Although
these efforts partly aimed at improving circulation and providing military defense, their
prime objective was often the glorification of a ruler or a state. From the 16th century to
the end of the 18th, many cities were laid out and built with monumental splendour. The
result may have pleased and inspired the citizens, but it rarely contributed to their health,
to the comfort of their homes, or to efficiency in manufacturing, distribution, and
marketing.
The New World absorbed the planning concepts of European absolutism to only a limited
degree. Pierre L’Enfant’s grandiose plan for Washington, D.C. (1791), exemplified this
transference, as did later City Beautiful projects, which aimed for grandeur in the siting of
public buildings but exhibited less concern for the efficiency of residential, commercial,
and industrial development. More influential on the layout of U.S. cities, however, was the
rigid grid plan of Philadelphia, designed byWilliam Penn (1682). This plan traveled west
with the pioneers, since it was the simplest method of dividing surveyed territory. Although
it took no cognizance of topography, it facilitated the development of land markets by
establishing standard-sized lots that could be easily bought and sold—even sight unseen.
In much of the world, city plans were based on the concept of a centrally located public
space. The plans differed, however, in their prescriptions for residential development. In
the United States the New England town grew around a centralcommons; initially a
pasture, it provided a focus of community life and a site for a meetinghouse, tavern,
smithy, and shops and was later reproduced in the central squares of cities and towns
throughout the country. Also from the New England town came the tradition of the
freestanding single-family house that became the norm for most metropolitan areas. The
central plaza, place, or square provided a focal point for European city plans as well. In
contrast to American residential development, though, European
domestic architecture was dominated by the attached house, while elsewhere in the world
the marketplace or bazaar rather than an open space acted as the cynosure of cities.
Courtyard-style domiciles characterized the Mediterranean region, while compounds of
small houses fenced off from the street formed many African and Asian settlements.
(See atrium.)
The era of industrialization
In both Europe and the United States, the surge of industry during the mid- and late 19th
century was accompanied by rapid population growth, unfettered business enterprise,
great speculative profits, and public failures in managing the unwanted physical
consequences of development. Giant sprawling cities developed during this era,
exhibiting the luxuries of wealth and the meanness of poverty in sharp juxtaposition.
Eventually the corruption and exploitation of the era gave rise to the Progressive
movement, of which city planning formed a part. The slums, congestion, disorder,
ugliness, and threat of disease provoked a reaction in which sanitation improvement was
the first demand. Significant betterment of public health resulted from engineering
improvements inwater supply and sewerage, which were essential to the further growth
of urban populations. Later in the century the first housing reform measures were
enacted. The early regulatory laws (such as Great Britain’s Public Health Act of 1848 and
the New York State Tenement House Act of 1879) set minimal standards for
housingconstruction. Implementation, however, occurred only slowly, as governments did
not provide funding for upgrading existing dwellings, nor did the minimal rent-paying
ability of slum dwellers offer incentives for landlords to improve their buildings.
Nevertheless, housing improvement occurred as new structures were erected, and new
legislation continued to raise standards, often in response to the exposés of investigators
and activists such as Jacob Riis in the United States andCharles Booth in England.

Also during the Progressive era, which extended through the early 20th century, efforts
to improve the urban environment emerged from recognition of the need
for recreation. Parks were developed to provide visual relief and places for
healthful play or relaxation. Later, playgrounds were carved out in congested areas, and
facilities for games and sports were established not only for children but also for adults,
whose workdays gradually shortened. Supporters of the parks movement believed that
the opportunity for outdoor recreation would have a civilizing effect on the working
classes, who were otherwise consigned to overcrowded housing and unhealthful
workplaces. New York’s Central Park, envisioned in the 1850s and designed by
architects Calvert Vaux and Frederick Law Olmsted, became a widely imitated model.
Among its contributions were the separation of pedestrian and vehicular traffic, the
creation of a romantic landscape within the heart of the city, and a demonstration that the
creation of parks could greatly enhance real-estate values in their surroundings.
(See landscape architecture.)
Concern for the appearance of the city had long been manifest in Europe, in the imperial
tradition of court and palace and in the central plazas and great buildings of church and
state. In Paris during the Second Empire (1852–70), Georges-Eugène, Baron
Haussmann, became the greatest of the planners on a grand scale, advocating straight
arterial boulevards, advantageous vistas, and a symmetry of squares and radiating roads.
The resulting urban form was widely emulated throughout the rest of continental Europe.
Haussmann’s efforts went well beyond beautification, however; essentially they broke
down the barriers to commerce presented by medieval Paris, modernizing the city so as
to enable the efficient transportation of goods as well as the rapid mobilization of military
troops. His designs involved the demolition of antiquated tenement structures and their
replacement by new apartment houses intended for a wealthier clientele, the construction
of transportation corridors and commercial space that broke up residential
neighbourhoods, and the displacement of poor people from centrally located areas.
Haussmann’s methods provided a template by which urban redevelopment programs
would operate in Europe and the United States until nearly the end of the 20th century,
and they would extend their influence in much of the developing world after that.
As the grandeur of the European vision took root in the United States through theCity
Beautiful movement, its showpiece became the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893,
developed in Chicago according to principles set out by American architectDaniel
Burnham. The architectural style of the exposition established an ideal that many cities
imitated. Thus, the archetype of the City Beautiful—characterized by grand malls and
majestically sited civic buildings in Greco-Roman architecture—was replicated in civic
centres and boulevards throughout the country, contrasting with and in protest against
the surrounding disorder and ugliness. However, diffusion of the model in the United
States was limited by the much more restricted power of the state (in contrast to European
counterparts) and by the City Beautiful model’s weak potential for enhancing businesses’
profitability.
Whereas Haussmann’s approach was especially influential on the European continent
and in the design of American civic centres, it was the utopian concept of the garden city,
first described by British social reformer Ebenezer Howard in his book Garden Cities of
To-Morrow (1902), that shaped the appearance of residential areas in the United States
and Great Britain. Essentially a suburban form, Howard’sgarden city incorporated low-
rise homes on winding streets and culs-de-sac, the separation of commerce from
residences, and plentiful open space lush with greenery. Howard called for a “cooperative
commonwealth” in which rises in property values would be shared by the community,
open land would be communally held, and manufacturing and retail establishments would
be clustered within a short distance of residences. Successors abandoned Howard’s
socialist ideals but held on to the residential design form established in the two new towns
built during Howard’s lifetime (Letchworth and Welwyn Garden City), ultimately imitating
the garden city model of winding roads and ample greenery in the forming of the modern
suburban subdivision.
Perhaps the single most influential factor in shaping the physical form of the contemporary
city was transportation technology. The evolution of transport modes from foot and horse
to mechanized vehicles facilitated tremendous urban territorial expansion. Workers were
able to live far from their jobs, and goods could move quickly from point of production to
market. However, automobiles and buses rapidly congested the streets in the older parts
of cities. By threatening strangulation of traffic, they dramatized the need to establish new
kinds of orderly circulation systems. Increasingly, transportation networks became the
focus of planning activities, especially as subway systems were constructed in New
York, London, and Paris at the beginning of the 20th century. To accommodate increased
traffic, municipalities invested heavily in widening and extending roads. (See also traffic
control.)
Many city governments established planning departments during the first third of the 20th
century. The year 1909 was a milestone in the establishment of urban planning as a
modern governmental function: it saw the passage of Britain’s first town-planning act and,
in the United States, the first national conference on city planning, the publication
of Burnham’s plan for Chicago, and the appointment of Chicago’s Plan Commission (the
first recognized planning agency in the United States, however, was created in Hartford,
Connecticut, in 1907). Germany, Sweden, and other European countries also developed
planning administration and law at this time.

The colonial powers transported European concepts of city planning to the cities of the
developing world. The result was often a new city planned according to Western principles
of beauty and separation of uses, adjacent to unplanned settlements both new and old,
subject to all the ills of the medieval European [Link] Delhi, India, epitomizes this form
of development. Built according to the scheme devised by the British planners Edwin
Lutyens and Herbert Baker, it grew up cheek by jowl with the tangled streets of Old Delhi.
At the same time, the old city, while less salubrious, offered its inhabitants a sense of
community, historical continuity, and a functionality more suited to their way of life. The
same pattern repeated itself throughout the British-ruled territories, where African capitals
such as Nairobi, Kenya, and Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia (nowHarare, Zimbabwe),
were similarly designed to accommodate their white colonial rulers. Although the
decorative motifs imposed by France in its colonial capitals reflected a somewhat different
aesthetic sensibility, French planners likewise implanted broad boulevards and
European-style housing in their colonial outposts.

EKISTICS is the science of human settlement. It involves the descriptive study of all kinds
of human settlements and the formulation of general conclusions aimed at achieving
harmony between the inhabitants of a settlement and their physical and sociocultural
environments. It is comprised of two things:
 1. Container that is the physical settlement, composed of natural and human-made
elements

2. Content which are nature, man - alone, society - composition of men, shells –
houses/ structure where man lives and network – utilities and facilities

The examination of settlement content and the physical settlement involves the
investigation of five basic elements of human settlement: nature, including physical
geography, soil resources, water resources, plant and animal life, and climate; human
biological and emotional needs, sensations and perceptions, and moral values; society,
including population characteristics, social stratification, cultural patterns, economic
development, education, health and welfare, and law and administration; shells, or
structures, in which people live and function, such as housing, schools, hospitals,
shopping centres and markets, recreational facilities, civic and business centres, and
industries; and networks, or systems, that facilitate life and day-to-day functions of
inhabitants such as water and power systems, transportation networks, communication
systems, and the settlement’s physical layout.

[Link]

Names of Units and Population Scale (final version, from [Link]' last
book, ACTION for Human Settlements, p. 186, Athens Center of Ekistics, 1976): Note:
The population figures below are for Doxiadis' ideal future ekistic units for the year 2100
at which time he estimated (in 1968) that Earth would achieve zero population growth at
a population of 50,000,000,000 with human civilization being powered by fusion energy.

Konstantinos Apostolos Doxiadis (14 May 1914 – 28 June 1975), the father
of Ekistics (1942) was a Greek architect and town planner. He became known as the
lead architect of Islamabad, the new capital of Pakistan.
 Unit Population Scale
Anthropos 1
Room 2
House 5
House group (hamlet) 40
Small neighbourhood (village) 250
Neighbourhood 1,500
Small polis (town) 10,000
Polis (city) 75,000
Small metropolis 500,000
Metropolis 4,000,000
Small megalopolis 25,000,000
Megalopolis 150,000,000
Small eperopolis 750,000,000
Eperopolis 7,500,000,000
Ecumenopolis 50,000,000,000