Urban Planning
Uploaded by allupinu69 on Oct 31, 2011
This essay discusses some of the problems encountered by urban planners, including clashes with citizens. It uses various writings in support of its ideas about urban planning.
I Introduction
Urban planning is the difficult and often frustrating business of trying to design cities that are livable and safe. When city neighborhoods decay, civic leaders often turn to urban planners with the hope that they can turn the situation around. However, all too often it seems that in making their plans for renewal, urban designers fail to take into account the needs and desires of perhaps the most important people who will be involved in the process: the citizens.
This paper examines the theoretical aspects of urban planning. It also discusses what lessons professional planners can learn during the process, and what the conflicts between planners and citizens may be.
II Theory of Urban Planning
Although we tend to think of it as a recent development, urban planning is not a new concept. Washington, D.C., for example, was laid out according to plan; its wide streets and sweeping vistas were designed to intimidate visiting heads of state. And if we look back into antiquity, we learn from numerous texts that cities were deliberately designed with narrow streets to make it difficult for an enemy to move through them rapidly and easily.
Today, though, urban planning has become increasingly important because of another phenomenon, quite recent in fact: the decline of inner city neighborhoods. The 20th Century saw several things occurring almost at the same time: there was an influx of blacks and minorities into the cities; there was “white flight” from the cities to the new surrounding suburbs, and there was a corresponding relocation of businesses, shops and other establishments from the cities to the suburbs. When businesses left, they took jobs with them, resulting in pockets in the inner cities were unemployment soared, poverty was rampant and (sometimes) crime increased. When these neighborhoods began to go downhill, city governments would usually bemoan the terrible conditions, and bring in urban planners to help redevelop these areas. Unfortunately, all too often the planners didn’t listen, or care, apparently, about what residents had to say. They simply built as they pleased and were then astonished when residents were angry instead of grateful.
Urban planners are fond of the concept of “green space”...