DAUP-MUPD-UPL-2015-Lecture 3

Qatar University College of Engineering Department of Architecture and Urban Planning-DAUP

Urban Planning Legislation MUPD 610 Dr. Yasser Mahgoub ymahgoub@qu.edu.qa

Urban Planning • Evidence of urban planning can be found in the ruins of ancient cities, including orderly street systems and conduits for water and sewage.

Plan of Miletus around 470 BC

Plan of Miletus around 470 BC

Alexander laying out the city of Alexandria

Map of Piraeus, the port of Athens, showing the grid plan of the city.

Urban Planning History • During the Renaissance, European city areas were consciously planned to achieve circulation of the populace and provide fortification against invasion.

• Such concepts were exported to the New World, where William Penn, in founding the city of Philadelphia, developed the standard gridiron plan — the laying out of streets and plots of land adaptable to rapid change in land use.

The fortified city of Palmanova, Italy

Urban Planning History 1900-1930s: • Industrial hyper-development presented new challenges eliciting a diversity of complex responses.

• Economic depression (1929-39) stimulated “New Deal” action ranging from environmental planning, to urban and industrial/labor as well as social reform.

The Automobile Shapes The city (from article by M. V. Melosi) Ford Model T-automobile 1920s

The Planning Responses Reflected differing perspectives/philosophies and differing outcomes.

Pragmatists

Utopians

The solutions • • • •

Realistic City Efficient – Regulate and Redevelop Utopian New Communities – Reject, Recreate, and Relocate

City Efficient: Pragmatic professionals Who were they: -Architects: Daniel Burnham (master planner and “father of American architecture�)

- Lawyers (Alfred Bettman and Edward Bassett - Engineers (Robert Moses) - Social Critics (Jane Jacobs) - Publicists/strategists (Walter Moody)

The Pragmatic Planners

Walter Moody

Jane Jacobs

Pragmatic ideology Their perspective: • Improve city form for better functioning • Engage in new construction to improve infrastructure • Adopt policies (control approach) to achieve desired goals Their vision • Maintenance of capitalist order • Support for democracy and individualism

Idealists (utopian) planners Their Perspective: The city needed to be revamped and people relocated.

Their vision: • Anti-urban • Embraced semi-rural landscapes with green belt areas • Implementation of mixed use landscape for self sufficiency • Urban design - blend of country and city • Ideal size of city - 30-40,000 population

Social order • Prescriptive (at the cost of some laissez faire individualism)

Who were labeled the idealists?

Best known:

Robert Owen (1771-1858)

Patrick Geddes (1854-1932)

Ebenezer Howard (1850-1929)

Best known idealists‌

Edouard de Jeanneret aka LeCorbusier (18871990)

Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959)

Lewis Mumford (1895-1979)

Modern Urban Planning • Modern urban planning and redevelopment arose in response to the disorder and squalor of the slums created by the Industrial Revolution. The urban planner best known for his transformation of Paris was GeorgesEugène Haussmann.

Urban Planning Background • 1800’s • 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.)

Urban Planning Background – 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

Urban Planning Background – 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 Planning Background 1900-1930s • Persistent and expanded urban problems and a diversity of (inadequate?) responses.

• Industrial hyper-development presented new challenges eliciting a diversity of complex responses.

• Economic depression (1929-39) stimulated “New Deal” action ranging from environmental planning, to urban and industrial/labor as well as social reform.

The Parks Movement – grew out of landscape architecture & 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 Olmstead 1822-1903

Riverside, Illinois • designed by Olmsted, 1869 • a prototype suburb • 9 mi. from Chicago • fashionable location for the wealthy to live • often copied

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 1850-1928

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 – 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 low-density car-oriented freeways +feeder roads multinucleated

• • • •

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

Ancient Cities • Evidence of urban planning can be found in the ruins of ancient cities, including orderly street systems and conduits for water and sewage.

Renaissance • During the Renaissance, European city areas were consciously planned to achieve circulation of the populace and provide fortification against invasion.

Renaissance • Such concepts were exported to the New World, where William Penn, in founding the city of Philadelphia, developed the standard gridiron plan — the laying out of streets and plots of land adaptable to rapid change in land use.

The Roots of Urban Planning: 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.

The Roots of Urban Planning: 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

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

The Use and value of Urban Planning • 1. Why do we need urban planners?

• 2. Performances in planning cities: success and failures • 3. An urban planning methodology which: – Uses a cross sectoral approach – Takes impact on markets into account when developing strategies – Increases the chances of successful implementation

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?

To which of these camps do you belong?

• Idealist?

• Pragmatist?

End