Urban planning, also known as town planning, city planning, regional planning, or rural planning, is a technical and political process that is focused on the development and
design of
land use and the built environment, including air, water, and the
infrastructure
Infrastructure is the set of facilities and systems that serve a country, city, or other area, and encompasses the services and facilities necessary for its economy, households and firms to function. Infrastructure is composed of public and priv ...
passing into and out of
urban areas, such as
transportation,
communications, and
distribution network
Electric power distribution is the final stage in the delivery of electric power; it carries electricity from the transmission system to individual consumers. Distribution substations connect to the transmission system and lower the transmissi ...
s and their
accessibility
Accessibility is the design of products, devices, services, vehicles, or environments so as to be usable by people with disabilities. The concept of accessible design and practice of accessible development ensures both "direct access" (i. ...
.
Traditionally, urban planning followed a top-down approach in master planning the physical layout of human settlements.
The primary concern was the
public welfare,
which included considerations of efficiency,
sanitation, protection and use of the environment,
as well as effects of the master plans on the social and economic activities.
Over time, urban planning has adopted a focus on the social and environmental bottom-lines that focus on planning as a tool to improve the health and well-being of people while maintaining sustainability standards. Sustainable development was added as one of the main goals of all planning endeavors in the late 20th century when the detrimental economic and the environmental impacts of the previous models of planning had become apparent. Similarly, in the early 21st century,
Jane Jacob's writings on legal and political perspectives to emphasize the interests of residents, businesses and communities effectively influenced urban planners to take into broader consideration of resident experiences and needs while planning.
Urban planning answers questions about how people will live, work and play in a given area and thus, guides orderly development in urban,
suburb
A suburb (more broadly suburban area) is an area within a metropolitan area, which may include commercial and mixed-use, that is primarily a residential area. A suburb can exist either as part of a larger city/urban area or as a separate ...
an and
rural areas. Although predominantly concerned with the planning of
settlements and communities, urban planners are also responsible for planning the efficient transportation of goods, resources, people and waste; the distribution of basic necessities such as water and electricity; a sense of inclusion and opportunity for people of all kinds, culture and needs; economic growth or business development; improving health and conserving areas of natural environmental significance that actively contributes to reduction in emissions
as well as protecting heritage structures and built environments. Since most urban planning teams consist of highly educated individuals that work for city governments,
recent debates focus on how to involve more community members in city planning processes.
Urban planning is an interdisciplinary field that includes
civil engineering,
architecture,
human geography,
politics, social science and
design science A concept of design science was introduced in 1957 by R. Buckminster Fuller who defined it as a systematic form of designing. He expanded on this concept in his ''World Design Science Decade'' proposal to the International Union of Architects in 196 ...
s.
Practitioners of urban planning are concerned with research and analysis, strategic thinking, Engineering
architecture, urban design,
public consultation
Public consultation (Commonwealth countries and European Union), public comment (US), or simply consultation, is a regulatory process by which the public's input on matters affecting them is sought. Its main goals are in improving the efficiency, ...
, policy recommendations, implementation and management.
It is closely related to the field of
urban design and some urban planners provide designs for streets, parks, buildings and other urban areas. Urban planners work with the cognate fields of civil engineering,
landscape architecture
Landscape architecture is the design of outdoor areas, landmarks, and structures to achieve environmental, social-behavioural, or aesthetic outcomes. It involves the systematic design and general engineering of various structures for constructio ...
,
architecture, and
public administration to achieve strategic, policy and sustainability goals. Early urban planners were often members of these cognate fields though today, urban planning is a separate, independent professional discipline. The discipline of urban planning is the broader category that includes different sub-fields such as
land-use planning
Land use planning is the process of regulating the use of land by a central authority. Usually, this is done to promote more desirable social and environmental outcomes as well as a more efficient use of resources. More specifically, the goals ...
,
zoning,
economic development,
environmental planning
Environmental planning is the process of facilitating decision making to carry out land development with the consideration given to the natural environment, social, political, economic and governance factors and provides a holistic framework to ...
, and
transportation planning. Creating the plans requires a thorough understanding of penal codes and zonal codes of planning.
Another important aspect of urban planning is that the range of urban planning projects include the large-scale master planning of empty sites or
Greenfield projects as well as small-scale interventions and refurbishments of existing structures, buildings and public spaces.
Pierre Charles L'Enfant in Washington DC,
Daniel Burnham in Chicago,
Lucio Costa in
Brasilia and
Georges-Eugene Haussmann in Paris planned cities from scratch, and
Robert Moses
Robert Moses (December 18, 1888 – July 29, 1981) was an American urban planner and public official who worked in the New York metropolitan area during the early to mid 20th century. Despite never being elected to any office, Moses is regarded ...
and
Le Corbusier
Charles-Édouard Jeanneret (6 October 188727 August 1965), known as Le Corbusier ( , , ), was a Swiss-French architect, designer, painter, urban planner, writer, and one of the pioneers of what is now regarded as modern architecture. He was ...
refurbished and transformed cities and neighborhoods to meet their ideas of urban planning.
History
There is evidence of urban planning and designed communities dating back to the
Mesopotamian,
Indus Valley
The Indus ( ) is a transboundary river of Asia and a trans-Himalayan river of South and Central Asia. The river rises in mountain springs northeast of Mount Kailash in Western Tibet, flows northwest through the disputed region of Kashmir, ...
,
Minoan, and
Egyptian civilizations in the
third millennium BCE. Archaeologists studying the ruins of cities in these areas find paved streets that were laid out at right angles in a grid pattern.
[Davreu, Robert (1978). "Cities of Mystery: The Lost Empire of the Indus Valley". ''The World's Last Mysteries''. (second edition). Sydney: Reader's Digest. pp. 121–129. .] The idea of a planned out urban area evolved as different civilizations adopted it. Beginning in the 8th century BCE, Greek city states primarily used orthogonal (or grid-like) plans.
Hippodamus of Miletus (498–408 BC), the ancient Greek architect and urban planner, is considered to be "the father of European urban planning", and the namesake of the "Hippodamian plan" (grid plan) of city layout.
The
ancient Romans, inspired by the Greeks, also used orthogonal plans for their cities. City planning in the Roman world was developed for military defense and public convenience. The spread of the
Roman Empire subsequently spread the ideas of urban planning. As the Roman Empire declined, these ideas slowly disappeared. However, many cities in Europe still held onto the planned Roman city center. Cities in Europe from the 9th to 14th centuries, often grew organically and sometimes chaotically. But in the following centuries with the coming of the
Renaissance many new cities were enlarged with newly planned extensions. From the 15th century on, much more is recorded of urban design and the people that were involved. In this period, theoretical treatises on architecture and urban planning start to appear in which theoretical questions around planning the main lines, ensuring plans meet the needs of the given population and so forth are addressed and designs of towns and cities are described and depicted. During the
Enlightenment period
The Age of Enlightenment or the Enlightenment; german: Aufklärung, "Enlightenment"; it, L'Illuminismo, "Enlightenment"; pl, Oświecenie, "Enlightenment"; pt, Iluminismo, "Enlightenment"; es, La Ilustración, "Enlightenment" was an intel ...
, several European rulers ambitiously attempted to redesign capital cities. During the
Second French Empire,
Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann, under the direction of
Napoleon III,
redesigned the city of Paris into a more modern capital, with long, straight, wide boulevards.
Planning and architecture went through a paradigm shift at the turn of the 20th century. The industrialized cities of the 19th century grew at a tremendous rate. The evils of urban life for the
working poor were becoming increasingly evident as a matter of public concern. The
laissez-faire style of government management of the economy, in fashion for most of the
Victorian era, was starting to give way to a
New Liberalism that championed intervention on the part of the poor and disadvantaged. Around 1900, theorists began developing urban planning models to mitigate the consequences of the
industrial age, by providing citizens, especially factory workers, with healthier environments. The following century would therefore be globally dominated by a
central planning approach to urban planning, not necessarily representing an increment in the overall quality of the urban realm.
At the beginning of the 20th century, urban planning began to be recognized as a separate profession. The
Town and Country Planning Association was founded in 1899 and the first academic course in Great Britain on urban planning was offered by the
University of Liverpool in 1909. In the 1920s, the ideas of
modernism and uniformity began to surface in urban planning, and lasted until the 1970s. In 1933, Le Corbusier presented the Radiant City, a city that grows up in the form of towers, as a solution to the problem of pollution and over-crowding. But many planners started to believe that the ideas of modernism in urban planning led to higher crime rates and social problems.
In the second half of the 20th century, urban planners gradually shifted their focus to individualism and diversity in urban centers.
21st century practices
Urban planners studying the effects of increasing congestion in urban areas began to address the externalities, the negative impacts caused by
induced demand from larger highway systems in western countries such as in the United States. The
United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs predicted in 2018 that around 2.5 billion more people occupy urban areas by 2050 according to population elements of global migration. New planning theories have adopted non-traditional concepts such as
Blue Zones and
Innovation Districts to incorporate geographic areas within the city that allow for novel business development and the prioritization of infrastructure that would assist with improving the quality of life of citizens by extending their potential lifespan.
Planning practices have incorporated policy changes to help address anthropocentric global
climate change. London began to charge a congestion charge for cars trying to access already crowded places in the city. Cities nowadays stress the importance of public transit and cycling by adopting such policies.
Theories
Planning theory is the body of scientific concepts, definitions, behavioral relationships, and assumptions that define the body of knowledge of urban planning. There are eight procedural theories of planning that remain the principal theories of planning procedure today: the rational-comprehensive approach, the incremental approach, the transactive approach, the communicative approach, the advocacy approach, the equity approach, the radical approach, and the humanist or phenomenological approach. Some other conceptual planning theories include
Ebenezer Howard's The Three Magnets theory that he envisioned for the future of British settlement, also his
Garden Cities, the Concentric Model Zone also called the Burgess Model by sociologist
Ernest Burgess, the Radburn Superblock that encourages pedestrian movement, the Sector Model and the Multiple Nuclei Model among others.
Technical aspects
Technical aspects of urban planning involve the application of scientific, technical processes, considerations and features that are involved in planning for
land use,
urban design,
natural resources,
transportation, and
infrastructure
Infrastructure is the set of facilities and systems that serve a country, city, or other area, and encompasses the services and facilities necessary for its economy, households and firms to function. Infrastructure is composed of public and priv ...
. Urban planning includes techniques such as: predicting
population growth
Population growth is the increase in the number of people in a population or dispersed group. Actual global human population growth amounts to around 83 million annually, or 1.1% per year. The global population has grown from 1 billion in 1800 to ...
,
zoning, geographic mapping and analysis, analyzing park space, surveying the
water supply, identifying transportation patterns, recognizing food supply demands, allocating healthcare and social services, and analyzing the impact of land use.
In order to predict how cities will develop and estimate the effects of their interventions, planners use various models. These models can be used to indicate relationships and patterns in demographic, geographic, and economic data. They might deal with short-term issues such as how people move through cities, or long-term issues such as land use and growth. One such model is the
Geographic Information System
A geographic information system (GIS) is a type of database containing Geographic data and information, geographic data (that is, descriptions of phenomena for which location is relevant), combined with Geographic information system software, sof ...
(GIS) that is used to create a model of the existing planning and then to project future impacts on the society, economy and environment.
Building codes and other regulations dovetail with urban planning by governing how cities are constructed and used from the individual level. Enforcement methodologies include governmental
zoning,
planning permissions, and
building codes,
as well as private
easements
An easement is a nonpossessory right to use and/or enter onto the real property of another without possessing it. It is "best typified in the right of way which one landowner, A, may enjoy over the land of another, B". An easement is a property ...
and
restrictive covenant
A covenant, in its most general sense and historical sense, is a solemn promise to engage in or refrain from a specified action. Under historical English common law, a covenant was distinguished from an ordinary contract by the presence of a se ...
s.
Urban planners
An urban planner is a professional who works in the field of urban planning for the purpose of optimizing the effectiveness of a community's land use and infrastructure. They formulate plans for the development and management of urban and suburban areas, typically analyzing land use compatibility as well as economic, environmental and social trends. In developing any plan for a community (whether commercial, residential, agricultural, natural or recreational), urban planners must consider a wide array of issues including
sustainability
Specific definitions of sustainability are difficult to agree on and have varied in the literature and over time. The concept of sustainability can be used to guide decisions at the global, national, and individual levels (e.g. sustainable livi ...
, existing and potential
pollution,
transport including potential
congestion,
crime, land values, economic development, social equity,
zoning codes, and other legislation.
The importance of the urban planner is increasing in the 21st century, as modern society begins to face issues of increased population growth, climate change and unsustainable development. An urban planner could be considered a
green collar
A green-collar worker is a worker who is employed in an environmental sectors of the economy. Environmental green-collar workers (or green jobs) satisfy the demand for green development. Generally, they implement environmentally conscious design, ...
professional.
Some researchers suggest that urban planners around the world work in different "
planning cultures Planning cultures are the differing customs and practices in the profession of Urban planning, urban and regional planning that exist around the world. The discourse, models, and styles of communication in planning are adapted to the various local c ...
", adapted to their local cities and cultures. However, professionals have identified skills, abilities and basic knowledge sets that are common to urban planners across national and regional boundaries.
Criticisms and debates
The school of
neoclassical economics argues that planning is unnecessary, or even harmful, because
market efficiency allows for effective land use.
A
pluralist strain of political thinking argues in a similar vein that the government should not intrude in the political competition between different interest groups which decides how land is used.
The traditional justification for urban planning has in response been that the planner does to the city what the engineer or architect does to the home, that is, make it more amenable to the needs and preferences of its inhabitants.
The widely adopted consensus-building model of planning, which seeks to accommodate different preferences within the community has been criticized for being based upon, rather than challenging, the power structures of the community.
Instead,
agonism
Agonism (from Greek ἀγών '' agon'', "struggle") is a political and social theory that emphasizes the potentially positive aspects of certain forms of conflict. It accepts a permanent place for such conflict in the political sphere, but seeks ...
has been proposed as a framework for urban planning decision-making.
Another debate within the urban planning field is about who is included and excluded in the urban planning decision-making process. Most urban planning processes use a top-down approach which fails to include the residents of the places where urban planners and city officials are working.
Sherry Arnstein's "ladder of citizen participation" is oftentimes used by many urban planners and city governments to determine the degree of inclusivity or exclusivity of their urban planning. One main source of engagement between city officials and residents are city council meetings that are open to the residents and that welcome public comments. Additionally, there are some federal requirements for citizen participation in government-funded infrastructure projects.
Many urban planners and planning agencies rely on community input for their policies and zoning plans. How effective community engagement is can be determined by how member's voices are heard and implemented.
Participatory urban planning
Participatory planning in the United States emerged during the 1960s and 1970s.
At the same time, participatory planning began to enter the development field, with similar characteristics and agendas
There are many notable urban planners and activists whose work facilitated and shaped participatory planning movements.
Jane Jacobs and her work is one of the most significant contributions to participatory planning because of the influence it had across the entire United States. There has also been a recent emergence in engaging youth in
urban planning education.
See also
*
Air pollution
*
Aire de mise en valeur de l'architecture et du paysage
An aire de mise en valeur de l'architecture et du patrimoine (also AVAP or AMVAP) is a French urban planning regulation built and spatial heritage. The law creating the AMVAP was passed on July 12, 2010 with the Grenelle II law. They replaced th ...
*
Behavioral urbanism
*
Bicycle-friendly
*
Circulation planning
*
Cycling infrastructure
Cycling infrastructure is all infrastructure cyclists are allowed to use. Bikeways include bike paths, bike lanes, cycle tracks, rail trails and, where permitted, sidewalks. Roads used by motorists are also cycling infrastructure, except whe ...
*
Development studies
*
Domestic travel restrictions
*
Elbow roomers
In geography and urban planning, elbow roomers are people who leave a city for the countryside to seek more land and greater freedom from governmental and neighborhood interference.
Some are carrying out activities such as large-scale gardening ...
*
Epidemiology
* Hazard
mitigation
*
Index of urban planning articles
Urban, city, or town planning is the discipline of planning which explores several aspects of the built and social environments of municipalities and communities:
A
Ancient Chinese urban planning
- American Institute of Certified Planners (AIC ...
*
Land recycling
*
List of planned cities
*
List of planning journals
This is a list of notable peer-reviewed academic journals related to urban, regional, land-use, transportation and environmental planning and to urban studies, regional science.
See also
* List of environmental social science journals
* List of ...
*
List of urban planners
*
List of urban plans This is a list of urban plans, which are used by urban planners to direct the future growth of cities.
Historic plans
Australia
Melbourne
* Melbourne Metropolitan Planning Scheme 1954
Perth
* Colonial Town Plans of Perth (1829, 1838)
* ...
*
List of urban theorists
This is a list of urban theorists notable in their field, in alphabetical order:
* Christopher Alexander (1936-2022)
* Donald Appleyard (1928-1982)
* Michael E. Arth
* Christopher Charles Benninger (1942)
* Walter Block (1941)
* Ernest Burgess (1 ...
*
Low emission zone
A low-emission zone (LEZ) is a defined area where access by some polluting vehicles is restricted or deterred with the aim of improving air quality. This may favour vehicles such as bicycles, micromobility vehicles, (certain) alternative fuel veh ...
*
Noise pollution
*
Permeability
*
Planning cultures Planning cultures are the differing customs and practices in the profession of Urban planning, urban and regional planning that exist around the world. The discourse, models, and styles of communication in planning are adapted to the various local c ...
*
Regional planning
*
Road traffic safety
*
Rural development
*
Smart city
*
Universal design
*
Urban design
*
Urban density
*
Urban economics
*
Urban planning education
*
Urban green space
*
Urban history
*
Urban informatics
*
Urban planning in communist countries
*
Urban studies
*
Urban theory
*
Urban vitality
*
Walkability
*
Walking audit
*
Stroad
References
Further reading
*
*Knox, P. L. (2020) Better by Design?: Architecture, Urban Planning, and the Good City. Blacksburg: Virginia Tech Publishing. DOI: https://doi.org/10.21061/better-by-design
*
External links
*
American Planning Association
Library guides for urban planning
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
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