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PLANNING THEORY SINCE1945
Pwk Pmd ft ub planning theory
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Early post war planning theory Conception of planning:
1. Town planning as physical planning.
2. Design as central to town planning.
3. The assumption that town planning necessarily involved
the production of 'master' plans or 'blueprint' plans
showing the same degree of precision in the spatial
configuration of land uses and urban form as the 'end-
state blueprint plans produced by architects orengineers when designing buildings and other human-
made structures.
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Town planning as physical planning Physical planning as opposed to 'social' and 'economic'
planning. Keeble (1952, p. 1) put it on the first page of hisbook: Town and Country Planning might be described as theart and science of ordering the use of landand the characterand siting of buildings and communicative routes . . .
Keeble suggested that town planning may greatly assist inthe realisation of the aims of these other kinds of planning'.Then implicit in this statement is an assumption that socialand economic ends could be advanced by physical means
This thesis was appropriately termed physical, architecturalor environmental determinism (see Broady, 1 968, Chap. I)
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Town planning as physical planning The third point concerns Keeble's assertion that town
and country planning is not 'political' planning ?. Assuming that town and country planning was
conceived of as physical planning, the question
naturally arises as to what technical skills werethought relevant, which brings us to the second
component of the post-war conception of planning.
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Town planning as urban design The term 'civic' design was also much used
Town planning was regarded as an 'extension' ofarchitectural design (or to a lesser extent civil
engineering) in the literal sense of being concerned
with the design of whole groups of buildings andspaces - with 'townscape rather than the design of
individual buildings and their immediate sites, and
also in the sense that architecture too was seen tobe an exercise in the physical design of built forms.
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Town planning as urban design Architects who worked as town planner:
GB: Patrick Abercrombie, Frederick Gibberd andThomas Sharp
Netherland: H.P. Berlage
Europe: Le Cor busier
Books written specifically about urban design, such
as Frederick Gibberd's Town Design ( published
in1953) , were regarded as standard texts on town
planning
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Town planning as urban design
Theoretical new townSource: Keeble, 1952 (1969), Figure 30
Shops
Offices
Government
EntertainmentEducation
Dwellings
Centres and sub-centres
Industry
Open space
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Town planning as urban design Raymond Unwin - a leading exponent of this
concern with aesthetics - stressed the need forbeauty in urban life: 'Not even the poor can live by
bread alone' (cited in Creese, 1967, p. 71).
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Town planning as urban design
A design for the centre of a theoretical new town
Source: Keeble, 1952, Figure 78
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Town planning as urban design
A plan for an urban region
Source: Keeble, 1 952, Figure 1 1
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Town plans as detailed blueprints or
'master' plans Plans were seen as 'blueprints' for the future form of
towns - as statements of 'end-states' that would one daybe reached.
The first generation of development plans localauthorities were required to produce under the Town
and Country Planning Act 1947 also adopted thisapproach.
Detailed zoning plans specified how particular siteswere to be used and developed
'programming' plans that showed the stages at whichthe envisaged development of different parts of theplans would be carried out to 'complete' the plans.
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Town plans as detailed blueprints or
'master' plans
Example:
Soria y Mata's nineteenth-century plans for linear cities
Le Corbusier's plans for the
'contemporary city' (and later
the 'radiant city')
Frank Lloyd Wright's plans for
'Broadacre City
Ebenezer Howard's 'Garden
City'
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conclusion The plan was not just an approach to town planning
as an exercise in physical planning and urbandesign but also a normative concept of the ideal
urban environment. In other words, the tracts and
textbooks published at the time not only advancedan extended definition of planning but they also
embodied certain values about the kinds of
environment which, it was believed, should berealised through town planning.
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The values of post-war planning theory
The normative context: a culture of social reform andconservative sentiments.
A 'formal or 'definitional' theory of planning: Townplanning as an exercise in physical planning and designrepresented a particular theory of what kind of an
activity town planning is. Post-war planning was also driven by a distinct set of
values: They reflected the responses of social reformersand middle-class intellectuals to the dreary industrial
cities which had grown up in the Victorian age, andwere a curious mixture of radicalism andconservativism.
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radical Utopianism:
Robert Owen the creator of the famous modelsettlement of New Lanark - was both a pioneer of themodel village movement, which aimed to improve theliving and working conditions of working-class people,
and an early socialist. Ebenezer Howard's ideas for the creation of completely
new 'garden cities', in which land would be collectively
owned, came to represent at the end of the century thedistillation and most complete expression of this radicalUtopian socialism
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Howard combined radical socialist proposals for the
collective ownership of land in his garden cities withvery traditional and, in this respect conservative,
notions of urban size and form (the socalled 'social
democratic)
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THE NORMATIVE THEORY UNDERLYING (BRITISH) POST-WAR
PLANNING
A normative theory of town planning:
a theory of how town planning should be approached a theory of the kinds of urban environments town planning
should seek to create
The deep values we hold often take the form of taken-
for-granted assumptions and norms and, because ofthis, our values are often not explicitly articulated oranalysed.
These values become apparent when we examine thekind of urban environments that were judged byplanners at the time to be of high quality or 'ideal'.
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THE NORMATIVE THEORY UNDERLYING (BRITISH) POST-WAR
PLANNING
Four broad planning principles of post war planning:
the general approach to creating better cities. Thisapproach can be described as 'Utopian comprehensiveness.
the general aesthetic values which informed (British) post-war planning.
the view most town planning theorists took of the idealurban structure, namely, a highly ordered view of urbanstructure.
a general assumption that all these principles were self-
evident and thus 'commonsense' principles in themselves,commanding a consensus amongst all sections of thepopulation (assumed consensus over the aims of planning.)
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Utopian comprehensiveness
Three aspects of the post-war 'Utopian
comprehensive' approach to planning: typical expressions of modernist 'functional' design
and aesthetics (e.g. Antonio Sant'Elia's La Citta
Nuova, Tony Garnier's La Cite Industrielle and LeCorbusier's Ville Radieuse). In appearance, the form
of the modern city was one of plain, geometrical,
'functional buildings standing at regular intervals ina sea of 'free-flowing' space.
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Antonio Sant'Elia's sketch for La Citta Nuova, 1914
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To be continued