Planning theory is the body of scientific concepts, definitions, behavioral relationships, and assumptions that define the body of knowledge of urban planning. Urban planning is the strategic process of designing and managing the growth and development of human settlements, from small towns to sprawling metropolitan areas. Various planning theories guide urban development decisions and policies. Over time, different schools of thought have emerged, Evolving in response to shifts in society, economy, and technology. This article explores the key theories and movements that have shaped urban planning.There is no one unified planning theory but various.
Whittemore identifies nine procedural theories that dominated the field between 1959 and 1983: the Rational-Comprehensive approach, the Incremental approach, the Transformative Incremental (TI) approach, the Transactive approach, the Communicative approach, the Advocacy approach, the Equity approach, the Radical approach, and the Humanist or Phenomenological approach.
Background Urban planning can include urban renewal, by adapting urban planning methods to existing cities suffering from decline. Alternatively, it can concern the massive challenges associated with urban growth, particularly in the Global South. All in all, urban planning exists in various forms and addresses many different issues. The modern origins of urban planning lie in the movement for urban reform that arose as a reaction against the disorder of the industrial city in the mid-19th century. The new imagined urban form was meant to go hand-in-hand with a new society, based upon voluntary co-operation within self-governing communities.
In the late 20th century, the term sustainable development has come to represent an ideal outcome in the sum of all planning goals.Wheeler, Stephen (2004). "Planning Sustainable and Livable Cities", Routledge; 3rd edition. Sustainable architecture involves renewable materials and energy sources and is increasing in importance as an environmentally friendly solution.
Blueprint planning
Since at least the Renaissance and the Age of Enlightenment, urban planning had generally been assumed to be the physical planning and design of human communities. Therefore, it was seen as related to architecture and civil engineering, and thereby to be carried out by such experts. This kind of planning was physicalist and design-orientated, and involved the production of masterplans and blueprints which would show precisely what the 'end-state' of land use should be, similar to architectural and engineering plans. Similarly, the theory of urban planning was mainly interested in visionary planning and design which would demonstrate how the ideal city should be organised spatially.
Sanitary movement Although it can be seen as an extension of the sort of civic pragmatism seen in Oglethorpe's plan for Savannah or William Penn's plan for Philadelphia, the roots of the rational planning movement lie in Britain's Sanitary movement (1800–1890). During this period, advocates such as Charles Booth argued for central organized, top-down solutions to the problems of industrializing cities. In keeping with the rising power of industry, the source of the planning authority in The Sanitary Movement arose as a direct response to the appalling living conditions in rapidly industrializing cities, focusing on improving public health through the creation of better sanitation infrastructure, including sewage systems and clean water supplies.
Garden city movement
The Garden city movement was founded by Ebenezer Howard (1850-1928). The Garden City Movement advocated for the development of self-sufficient, planned communities that combined the best aspects of both urban and rural living. These communities would be surrounded by green belts to provide residents with access to nature while maintaining proximity to urban amenities. His ideas were expressed in the book Garden Cities of To-morrow (1898). His influences included Benjamin Walter Richardson, who had published a pamphlet in 1876 calling for low population density, good housing, wide roads, an underground railway and for open space; Thomas Spence who had supported common ownership of land and the sharing of the rents it would produce; Edward Gibbon Wakefield who had pioneered the idea of colonizing planned communities to house the poor in Adelaide (including starting new cities separated by green belts at a certain point); James Silk Buckingham who had designed a model town with a central place, radial avenues and industry in the periphery; as well as Alfred Marshall, Peter Kropotkin and the back-to-the-land movement, which had all called for the moving of masses to the countryside.
Howard aimed to merge urban convenience with rural tranquility to promote healthier communities called Town-Country. To make this happen, a group of individuals would establish a limited-dividend company to buy cheap agricultural land, which would then be developed with investment from manufacturers and housing for the workers. No more than 32,000 people would be housed in a settlement, spread over 1,000 acres. Around it would be a permanent green belt of 5,000 acres, with farms and institutions (such as mental institutions) which would benefit from the location. After reaching the limit, a new settlement would be started, connected by an inter-city rail, with the polycentric settlements together forming the "Social City". The lands of the settlements would be jointly owned by the inhabitants, who would use rents received from it to pay off the mortgage necessary to buy the land and then invest the rest in the community through social security. Actual garden cities were built by Howard in Letchworth, Brentham Garden Suburb, and Welwyn Garden City. The movement would also inspire the later New towns movement.
Linear city
Arturo Soria y Mata's idea of the Linear city (1882) replaced the traditional idea of the city as a centre and a periphery with the idea of constructing linear sections of infrastructure - roads, railways, gas, water, etc.- along an optimal line and then attaching the other components of the city along the length of this line. As compared to the concentric diagrams of Ebenezer Howard and other in the same period, Soria's linear city creates the infrastructure for a controlled process of expansion that joins one growing city to the next in a rational way, instead of letting them both sprawl. The linear city was meant to ‘ruralize the city and urbanize the countryside’, and to be universally applicable as a ring around existing cities, as a strip connecting two cities, or as an entirely new linear town across an unurbanized region. The idea was later taken up by Nikolay Alexandrovich Milyutin in the planning circles of the 1920s Soviet Union. The Ciudad Lineal was a practical application of the concept.
Regional planning movement
Patrick Geddes (1864-1932) was the founder of regional planning. His main influences were the geographers Élisée Reclus and Paul Vidal de La Blache, as well as the sociologist Pierre Guillaume Frédéric le Play. From these he received the idea of the natural region. According to Geddes, planning must start by surveying such a region by crafting a "Valley Section" which shows the general slope from mountains to the sea that can be identified across scale and place in the world, with the natural environment and the cultural environments produced by it included. This was encapsulated in the motto "Survey before Plan". He saw cities as being changed by technology into more regional settlements, for which he coined the term conurbation. Similar to the garden city movement, he also believed in adding green areas to these urban regions. The Regional Planning Association of America advanced his ideas, coming up with the 'regional city' which would have a variety of urban communities across a green landscape of farms, parks and wilderness with the help of telecommunication and the automobile. This had major influence on the County of London Plan, 1944.
City Beautiful movement
The City Beautiful movement was inspired by 19th century European capital cities such as Georges-Eugène Haussmann's Paris or the Vienna Ring Road. An influential figure was Daniel Burnham (1846-1912), who was the chief of construction of the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893. Urban problems such as the 1886 Haymarket affair in Chicago had created a perceived need to reform the morality of the city among some of the elites. Burnham's greatest achievement was the Chicago plan of 1909. His aim was "to restore to the city a lost visual and aesthetic harmony, thereby creating the physical prerequisite for the emergence of a harmonious social order", essentially creating social reform through new slum clearance and creating public space, which also endeared it the support of the Progressivist movement. This was also believed to be economically advantageous by drawing in tourists and wealthy migrants.
Because of this it has been referred to as "trickle-down urban development" and as "centrocentrist" for focusing only on the core of the city. Other major cities planned according to the movement principles included British colonial capitals in New Delhi, Harare, Lusaka, Nairobi and Kampala, as well as that of Canberra in Australia, and Albert Speer's plan for the Nazi capital Germania.
Towers in the park Le Corbusier (1887–1965) pioneered a new urban form called towers in the park. His approach was based on defining the house as 'a machine to live in'. The Plan Voisin he devised for Paris, which was never fulfilled, would have involved the demolition of much of historic Paris in favour of 18 uniform 700-foot tower blocks. Ville Contemporaine and the Ville Radieuse formulated his basic principles, including decongestion of the city by increased density and open space by building taller on a smaller footprint. Wide avenues should also be built to the city centre by demolishing old structures, which was criticized for lack of environmental awareness. His generic ethos of planning was based on the rule of experts who would "work out their plans in total freedom from partisan pressures and special interests" and that "once their plans are formulated, they must be implemented without opposition". His influence on the Soviet Union helped inspire the 'urbanists' who wanted to build planned cities full of massive apartment blocks in Soviet countryside. The only city which he ever actually helped plan was Chandigarh in India. Brasília, planned by Oscar Niemeyer, also was heavily influenced by his thought. Both cities suffered from the issue of unplanned settlements growing outside them.
Decentralised planning