LOCATION THEORY

Early in the 19th century Count von Thnen developed a

theoretical model that describes how market processes determine
local land-use patterns. Johann Heinrich von Thnen (1783-1850)
was a skilled farmer who was knowledgeable in economics. His
model was created before the first large-scale industrialization and
is simplest explained in terms of agricultural land use around a
central market city. His findings are however not restricted to
agriculture alone, as will be discussed later. Central in his model
are the following assumptions:

The central city is located centrally within an "Isolated State"

which is self-sufficient and has no external influences.
The Isolated State is surrounded by an unoccupied wilderness.
The land of the State is completely flat and has no rivers or mountains to interrupt the
terrain.
The soil quality and climate are consistent throughout the State.
Farmers in the Isolated State transport their own goods to market via oxcart, across land,
directly to the central city. Transport costs thus rise linearly with distance.
The selling price for the agricultural products is determined at the market by supply and
demand.
Farmers act to maximize profits.

In an Isolated State with the foregoing statements being true, Von Thnen hypothesized that
the following pattern would develop:

There are four rings of agricultural activity surrounding the city. Dairying and intensive
farming occur in the ring closest to the city. The related products (vegetables, fruit, milk and other
dairy products) have the highest profits, but also the highest transportation costs because they are
vulnerable and perishable. Timber and firewood will be produced for fuel and building materials
in the second zone. Before industrialization (and coal power), wood was a very important fuel for
heating and cooking. Wood is very heavy and therefore difficult and costly to transport. The third
zone consists of extensive field crops such as grain for bread. Since grain lasts longer than dairy
products and is much lighter than wood transport costs are considered to be lower, allowing a
location further from the city. Ranching is located in the final ring surrounding the central city.
Animals can be raised far from the city because they are self-transporting and thus have low
transport costs. Beyond the fourth ring lies the unoccupied wilderness, which is too great a distance
from the central city for any type of agricultural product.

However, the original

simplifying assumption of a
homogeneous
featureless
plane in which the central city is
located received a lot of
criticism. Many deemed the
resulting concentric land-use
patterns as being much too
simple. The model can however
easily be adopted to include
roads and rivers that might
decrease transportation costs to
some locations.

One of the unique aspects of

Finger Plan 2007 compared to
former plans is that it hasn't drawn
a concrete development plan but
gave discretion to municipalities
instead. At the same time, the plan
is distinctive of promoting
concentrated location of large
office buildings and commercial
facilities within 600m radius from
train stations and this is based on
the understanding that more effort
is necessary to reduce traffic
congestion. It is also mentioned in
the plan that in broader area
integration in Oresund Region
may progress further.

GARDEN CITIES MOVEMENT

The Garden City movement had its origins in 19th Century
England where movement of people from the country to the cities
placed pressure on the urban environment particularly in the industrial
areas where living conditions were bleak and unhealthy. At the time
Ebenezer Howard, English town planner and figurehead of the
Garden City movement, started to formulate his Garden City ideal.
The Garden City ideal sought to raise the standard of health and
comfort for factory workers, through providing a living environment
that combined the best elements of town and country life. In The Three
Magnets diagram Howard identified the beneficial elements of both
country and town lifestyles and sought to replicate them in his Garden
City ideal.

The chief objects are these: To find for

our industrial population work at wages of
higher purchasing power, and to secure
healthier surroundings and more regular
employment. To enterprising manufacturers,
co-operative societies, architects, engineers,
builders, and technicians of all kinds, as well
as to many engaged in various professions, it
is intended to offer a means of securing new
and better employment for their capital and
talents, while to the agriculturists present on
the estate as well as to those who may migrate
thither, it is designed to open a new market for
their produce close to their doors.
The key values underpinning the Garden
City ideal can be summarized as follows:

Country lifestyle
Appreciation of the beauty of nature and a high level of residential amenity.

Commerce and trade

Access to services, facilities and commerce.

Town lifestyle
Access to safe, pleasant housing as well as the opportunity for social interaction and the
opportunity to participate in the community

.
Garden City, which is to be built near the center of the 6,000 acres, covers an area of 1,000
acres, or a sixth part of the 6,000 acres, and might be of circular form, 1,240 yards (or nearly threequarters of a mile) from center to circumference.

Diagram 1

Diagram 1 shows a ground plan of the whole municipal area, showing the town in
the center, while Diagram 2 represents one section or ward of the town, will be useful in
following the description of the town itself.

Diagram 2

Six magnificent boulevards--each 120 feet wide--traverse the city from center to
circumference, dividing it into six equal parts or wards. In the center is beautiful and well- watered
garden. Surrounding this garden are the larger public buildings. The rest of the large space
encircled by the 'Crystal Palace' is a public park.
Passing out of the Crystal Palace, we find a ring of very excellently built houses, each
standing in its own ample grounds. Noticing the very varied architecture and design which the
houses and groups of houses display--some having common gardens.
Towards the outskirts of the town, is the 'Grand Avenue'. In the avenue six sites, each of
four acres, are occupied by public schools and their surrounding playgrounds and gardens, while
other sites are reserved for churches.
On the outer ring of the town are factories, warehouses, dairies, markets, coal yards, timber
yards, etc., all fronting on the circle railway, which encompasses the whole town, and which has
sidings connecting it with a main line of railway which passes through the estate. The smoke fiend
is kept well within bounds in Garden City; for all machinery is driven by electric energy, with the
result that the cost of electricity for lighting and other purposes is greatly reduced.
Dotted about the estate are seen various charitable and philanthropic institutions. These are
not under the control of the municipality.

The values that underpinned Ebenezer Howards Garden City model are still as relevant to
our community as they were over 100 years ago. Access to light and fresh air, to land for growing
plants, keeping animals and for recreation are still significant. Similarly, it is still important in our
contemporary society, that individuals can enjoy a level of prosperity, have access to healthy, safe
housing, to services and employment and have a variety of opportunities for socializing and
participating in the community.
Letchworth was developed and owned
by a company called First Garden City, Ltd
which was formed in 1903, based on the ideas
of Howard. After Howard's book was published
he worked to gain financial support to bring his
ideas into reality, Howard ran lectures on
Garden Cities and began the Garden City
Association.
The Letchworth garden city was to
sustain a population of between 30,000 and
35,000 people, and would be laid out as
Howard explained in his book. There would be
a central town, agricultural belt, shops,
factories, residences, civic centres and open
spaces, this division of land for specific
purposes is now referred to as zoning and is an
important practice within town planning.
Howard constructed Letchworth as an example of how the Garden City could be achieved,
and hoped that in its success many other towns would be built emulating the same ideals. Some
criticisms of Letchworth exist, claims it to too spacious and there are few architecturally
impressive designs. However, it can be argued the space is what makes Letchworth pleasant, and
the architecture, while not highly impressive and uniform, has consistency of colour and is
satisfying to the needs of the people.

CONCENTRIC ZONE THEORY

Ernest Watson Burgess developed the concentric zone
theory of urban land use in the mid-1920s based on an examination
of the historical development of Chicago through the 1890s. It
contrasts from the von Thunen approach in being descriptive rather
than analytical (Harvey, 1996). The concentric zone theory of urban
land use is based on the assumption that a city grows by expanding
outwards from a central area, radially, in concentric rings of
development.
Burgess classified the city into five broad zones:

1. The central business district (CBD): the focus for urban activity and the confluence of
the citys transportation infrastructures.
2. The zone of transition: generally a manufacturing district with some residential
dwellings.
3. The zone of factories and working mens homes: this zone was characterized by a
predominantly working class population living in older houses and areas that were
generally lacking in amenities.
4. The residential zone: this band comprised newer and more spacious housing for the
middle classes.
5. The outer commuter zone: this land use ring was dominated by better quality housing
for upper class residents and boasted an environment of higher amenity.

The Burgess model of Chicago (after EW Burgess, 1925; Carter, 1981).

Burgess often observed that there was a correlation between the distance from the CBD
and the wealth of the inhabited area; wealthier families tended to live much further away from the
Central Business District. As the city grew, Burgess also observed that the CBD would cause it to
expand outwards; this in turn forced the other rings to expand outwards as well. The model is more
detailed than the traditional down-mid-uptown divide by which downtown is the CBD, uptown the
affluent residential outer ring, and midtown in between.

Cities grow and develop outwardly in concentric circles, i.e. continuous outward process
of invasion/succession.

The jobs, industry, entertainment, administrative offices, etc. were located at the center in
the CBD.

Felt that zone development resulted from competitive processes, i.e. competition for best
location in the city.

While useful in a descriptive sense for explaining the location of land uses in a monocentric
city, both the work of Burgess and von Thunen has (by extrapolation to urban cases), not
surprisingly, come under heavy criticism. Amongst the complaints levelled have been accusations
that the models are too rigid to ever accurately represent actual land patterns (the monocentric city
assumption is perhaps the largest flaw). They have also been accused of overlooking the important
influence of topography and transport systems on urban spatial structure and have been criticized
for failing to accommodate the notion of special accessibility and ignoring the dynamic nature of
the urban land use pattern (Harvey, 1996).

Orange areas represent census tracks

with the lowest median incomes compared
with the overall Chicago median income.
Dark green represents the wealthiest median
incomes, with gray areas being about even
with the Chicago median. Comparing the
1970 map with the 2012 map, we see a huge
erosion of the gray areas approximating the
median, along with a dramatic growth of
both the poorest and richest sections in the
city.

NEIGHBORHOOD UNIT
In the 1920s, Clarence Perry introduced a concept that he
referred to as The Neighborhood Unit. It illustrates the
relationships between the residential components of a neighborhood
and the uses that could easily be traversed to and from by foot. Perry
utilized the 5-minute walk to define walking distances from
residential to non-residential components, in particular Perry was
very concerned about the walkability to and from schools.

About 10 percent of the

area would be allocated to
recreation, and through traffic
arteries would be confined to the
surrounding streets, internal
streets being limited to service
access for residents of the
neighborhood. The unit would be
served by shopping facilities,
churches, and a library, and a
community center, the latter
being located in conjunction with
the school.
The
Neighborhood
Unit has since laid the
foundation for modern-day
planning movements including
the new urbanism movement
of
the
80s,
90s
and
today.
Unfortunately, the
neighborhood unit concept has
also
provided
fuel
for
todays suburbanization and road
classification system. False interpretations of Perrys concept have conceived segregation of land
uses, further validating the modern-day road classification system and unfortunately created an
auto-centric society in todays first ring and outward suburban communities.

Perry outlined six basic principles of good neighborhood design. As may be understood,
these core principles were organized around several institutional, social and physical design ideals.
Major arterials and through traffic routes should not pass through residential
neighborhoods. Instead these streets should provide boundaries of the
neighborhood;

Interior street patterns should be designed and constructed through use of cul-desacs, curved layout and light duty surfacing so as to encourage a quiet, safe and low
volume traffic movement and preservation of the residential atmosphere;

The population of the neighborhood should be that which is required to support its
elementary school;

The neighborhood focal point should be the elementary school centrally located on
a common or green, along with other institutions that have service areas coincident
with the neighborhood boundaries;

The radius of the neighborhood should be a maximum of one quarter mile thus
precluding a walk of more than that distance for any elementary school child; and

Shopping districts should be sited at the edge of neighborhoods preferably at major

street intersections.

However, several major criticisms of neighborhood unit have been mentioned in the
planning literature. In the end, Perrys ideas came from sound desire to create new communities,
but failed to meet some of todays planning challenges like sustainability, transportation, and social
justice. However, the concepts can be adjusted and applied towards older urban neighborhoods,
with transportation options, and an active center. And maybe, we will be one step closer to creating
social utopia.

PRINCIPLES OF TOWN PLANNING

Between 1915 and 1919 Geddes wrote a series of "exhaustive
town planning reports" on at least eighteen Indian cities. Sir Patrick
Geddes principles for town planning in Bombay demonstrate his
views on the relationship between social processes and spatial form,
and the intimate and causal connections between the social
development of the individual and the cultural and physical
environment. They included: (Bombay Town Planning Act of 1915")

Preservation of human life and energy, rather than superficial beautification.

Conformity to an orderly development plan carried out in stages.
Purchasing land suitable for building.
Promoting trade and commerce.
Preserving historic buildings and buildings of religious significance.
Developing a city worthy of civic pride, not an imitation of European cities.
Promoting the happiness, health and comfort of all residents, rather than focusing on roads and
parks available only to the rich.
Control over future growth with adequate provision for future requirements

From Le Play, Geddes took the triad of Lieu,

Travaille et Famille (place, work and family folk
in his version) and produced one of his simplest
thinking machines.

From this, on pieces of paper folded in

complex ways came various 'thinking
machines' for rendering, as he put it, 'The City
Completed'.

Patrick Geddes explained an organisms relationship to its environment as follows:

The environment acts, through function, upon the organism and conversely the organism
acts, through function, upon the environment. (Cities in Evolution, 1915)
In human terms this can be understood as a place acting through climatic and geographic
processes upon people and thus shaping them. At the same time people act, through economic
processes such as farming and construction, on a place and thus shape it. Thus both place and folk
are linked and through work are in constant transition.

WORK
.
FOLK

PLACE

Geddian Trio Representation

To put it in another way, Geddes said that it takes a whole region to make a city. The
valley section illustrated the application of Geddes's trilogy of 'folk/work/place' to analysis of the
region.
The valley section is a complex model, which combines physical condition- geology and
geomorphology and their biological associations - with so-called natural or basic occupations such
as miner, hunter, shepherd or fisher, and with the human settlements that arise from them.

In 1925, the Scottish biologist, sociologist,

philanthropist and pioneering town planner Patrick
Geddes drew up a master plan for Tel Aviv which was
adopted by the city council led by Meir Dizengoff. Geddes's
plan for developing the northern part of the district was based
on Ebenezer Howard's garden city movement. The plan
consisted of four main features: a hierarchical system of
streets laid out in a grid, large blocks consisting of small-scale
domestic dwellings, the organization of these blocks around
central open spaces, and the concentration of cultural
institutions to form a civic center. While most of the northern
area of Tel Aviv was built according to this plan, the influx of
European refugees in the 1930s necessitated the construction
of taller apartment buildings on a larger footprint in the city.

LINEAR CITY
The linear city design was first developed by Arturo Soria y Mata
in Madrid, Spain during the 19th century, but was promoted by the
Soviet planner Nikolai Alexander Milyutin in the late 1920s.
The linear city was an urban plan for an elongated urban formation.
The city would consist of a series of functionally specialized parallel
sectors. Generally, the city would run parallel to a river and be built so
that the dominant wind would blow from the residential areas to the
industrial strip. The sectors of a linear city would be:
1. A purely segregated zone for railway lines,
2. A zone of production and communal enterprises, with related
scientific, technical and educational institutions,
3. A green belt or buffer zone with major highway,
4. A residential zone, including a band of social institutions, a band of residential
buildings and a "children's band",
5. A park zone, and
6. An agricultural zone with gardens and state-run farms (sovkhozy in the Soviet
Union).

As the city expanded, additional sectors would be added to the end of each band, so
that the city would become ever longer, without
growing wider.
Ernst May, a famous German
functionalist architect, formulated his initial plan
for Magnitogorsk, a new city in the Soviet Union,
primarily following the model that he had
established with his Frankfurt settlements:
identical, equidistant five-story communal
apartment buildings and an extensive network of
dining halls and other public services.

Oddly enough, the part of Madrid that

actually bears the name of Ciudad Lineal, is not,
because of reasons of topography, built to his
original plan, but more along those of Cerd in
Barcelona. But if you take the metro on line five
to the Ciudad Lineal station, you will be where
Arturo Soria stood when the first stone was laid to
put his ideas into concrete and brick reality.
His tram company, like urban public
transport systems in other European towns, gave
people the opportunity to live away from the grime
of the inner city. Taking full advantage of this and
in an area some five kilometres east of the city
centre, work began on his linear city in 1894.

CONTEMPORARY CITY
Le Corbusier segregated the pedestrian circulation paths
from the roadways, and glorified the use of the automobile as a means
of transportation. As one moved out from the central skyscrapers,
smaller multi-story zigzag blocks set in green space and set far back
from the street housed the proletarian workers. In all those places
where traffic becomes over-intensified the level site gives a chance of
a normal solution to the problem. Where there is less traffic, differences
in level matter less.
This consists of the citizens proper; of suburban dwellers;
and of those of a mixed kind.
(a) Citizens are of the city: those who work and live in it.
(b) Suburban dwellers are those who work in the outer industrial zone and who do not come
into the city: they live in garden cities.
(c) The mixed sort are those who work in the business parts of the city but bring up their
families in garden cities.
To classify these divisions (and so make possible the transmutation of these
recognized types) is to attack the most important problem in town planning, for such a
classification would define the areas to be allotted to these three sections and the delimitation of
their boundaries. This would enable us to formulate and resolve the following problems:
1. The City, as a business and residential centre.
2. The Industrial City in relation to the Garden Cities (i.e. the question of transport).
3. The Garden Cities and the daily transport of the workers.

The street of today is still the old bare ground which has been paved over, and under
which a few tube railways have been run. The modern street should be a masterpiece of civil
engineering and no longer a job for navies. The corridor-street should be tolerated no longer, for
it poisons the houses that border it and leads to the construction of small internal courts or wells.

The basic principles we must follow are these:

1.
2.
3.
4.

We must decongest the centers of our cities.

We must augment their density.
We must increase the means for getting about.
We must increase parks and open spaces.

The residential blocks, of the two main types already mentioned, account for a further 600,000
inhabitants. The garden cities give us a further 2,000,000 inhabitants, or more.The the great central
open space are the cafes, restaurants, luxury shops, halls of various kinds, a magnificent forum
descending by stages down to the immense parks surrounding it, the whole arrangement providing
a spectacle of order and vitality.
Density of population
.
(a) The skyscraper: 1,200 inhabitants to the
acre.
(b) The residential blocks with setbacks: 120
inhabitants to the acre. These are the
luxury dwellings.
(c) The residential blocks on the cellular
system, with a similar number of inhabitants.

SECTOR THEORY
Development of the wedge or radial sector theory of urban
land use is generally attributed to the work of Homer Hoyt (1939).
Hoyts model concerns itself primarily with the location of residential
uses across urban areas; it refers to business location only in an
indirect fashion. The model seeks to explain the tendency for various
socio-economic groups to segregate in terms of their residential
location decisions. In appearance, Hoyts model owes a great deal to
Burgesss concentric zone model: Hoyt presents wedge-like sectors
of dominant urban land use, within which he identifies concentric
zones of differential rent.
The model suggests that, over time, high quality housing
tends to expand outward from an urban center along the fastest travel routes. In this way, Hoyt
transforms Burgesss concentric zones into radial or sectorial wedges of land use.

Hoyts sector model (after H. Hoyt, 1939; Carter, 1981). The innovative element in Hoyts
model was in considering direction, as well as distance, as a factor shaping the spatial distribution
of urban activity. Hoyts model also goes further than its predecessors in recognizing that the CBD
is not the sole focus of urban activity (Kivell, 1993). One major criticism, however, is that the
model overlooks the location of employment, which itself is the major determinant of residential
location (Harvey, 1996).
Strengths
The people that settle in a city would settle in an area
near transportation so that they can have easy access to
many different place
Weaknesses
The theory is based on railroads and does not take into
account cars
Physical Features may divert the growth in some areas

Hoyts model has been

applied, with some success, to
the English city of Sunderland
by Robson in 1963, as shown in
the diagram below. The model
had to be modified to take into
account unique physical factors,
such as the coastal position and
the River Wear running through
the city and it was found that a
more or less equal emphasis on
sectors and concentric zones
best fitted Sunderland. Note that
this was applied to Sunderland
as it was in 1963-1975 and note
the dominance of heavy
industry such as shipbuilding
and engineering and the
dominance of low and medium
income housing. This example
illustrates how models can apply well to specific cases, but typically require some modification.
Another point to note, is that in contrast to North American cities, in British cities there are often
found large council housing estates on the periphery of a city. This housing, though not middleclass is sometimes of near middle-class quality (though sometimes it is low quality high rise flats).

MULTIPLE NUCLEI THEORY

The work of Chauncy Harris and Edward
Ullman (1945) in developing a multiple-nuclei
theory of urban land use is amongst the most
innovative descriptive or analytical urban models.
Their model is based on the premise that large
cities have a spatial structure that is predominantly
cellular. This, they explain, is a consequence of
cities tendencies to develop as a myriad of nuclei
that serve as the focal point for agglomerative
tendencies. Harris and Ullman propose that around
these cellular nuclei, dominant land uses and
specialized centers may develop over time.
The novelty in multiple-nuclei theory lies in its acknowledgement of several factors that
strongly influence the spatial distribution of urban activity: factors such as topography, historical
influences, and special accessibility. The theory is also innovative in its recognition of the city as
polycentric. In this sense, it moves closer to explaining why urban spatial patterns emerge.
Our attentions will now switch to land-usetransportation modelsa class of predictive
mathematical simulations that take many of the theoretical concepts introduced by descriptive and
analytical models and operationalize them by infusing them with empirical data and testing them
in practice.

The theory was formed based on the idea that people have greater movement due to
increased car ownership. This increase of movement allows for the specialization of regional
centers (e.g. heavy industry, business parks, and retail areas). The model is suitable for the large,
expanding cities. The number of nuclei around which the city expands depends upon situational
as well as historical factors. Multiple nuclei develop because:
1. Certain industrial activities require transportation facilities e.g. ports, railway stations,
etc. to lower transportation costs.
2. Various combinations of activities tend to be kept apart e.g. residential areas and
airports, factories and parks, etc.
3. Other activities are found together to their mutual advantage e.g. universities,
bookstores and coffee shops, etc.

4. Some facilities need to be set in specific areas in a city - for example the CBD requires
convenient traffic systems, and many factories need an abundant source of water
5. Certain events benefit from the adjacent distance like the positions of factories and
residence.
6. In some cases, some constructions are located in less-than-ideal locations, often due to
outside factors such as rent.

London has concentric rings, with older and poorer inner city areas and more affluent suburbs.
London also exhibits sectors, such as the zone of worker's dwellings that developed in the
industrial revolution and extended from the East End to Dagenham and beyond. An affluent
residential sector developed in the north and west, from Mayfair to the Chiltern Hills. London
also contains multiple nuclei, such as the financial centre or the centre of medical services around
Harley Street (similarly banks and media institutions tend to be clustered).

BROADACRE CITY
Frank Lloyd Wrights discontent with the city arose in the years
of the Great Depression which occurred some years after the Great War
(1914-1918) as a result of the Stock Market Crash of 1929. He viewed the
centralization of cities as overbuilt. He mocked the idea that a man in
his right mind would leave the opportunities granted in the countryside to
live in the confines of the overcrowded city.
He believed that a mans true success lay in a greater freedom of
movement which he suggested would be possible with the improvements
in technology which brought about the automobile, electrification and
improvements in communication. True democracy would be achieved by
reclaiming ones individuality and engaging in natural architecture
rather than communal living of the cities. His aim was to develop a truly American, and or as he
later renamed Usonian, way of life which was not an imitation of European counterparts to foster
creation.
Broadacre was to accommodate at least one acre per individual (adult or child) since
at that time there was fifty-seven green acres available per person in the United States. The models
proposed a new space concept in social usage for individual and community building. But the
whole establishment was laid out in accordance with the conditions of land tenure already in effect.
Though the centers were kept, a new system of subdivision was proposed.

In Wrights mind, Broadacre City promised its denizens maximum autonomy and selfreliance. In an age of official data mining, drone patrols, and the corporatization of everything, the
decentralization of daily life has its appeals. The contradiction is that Wright never recognized that
his plan to effectively destroy cities would have required the unprecedented public authority he
warned against.

Broadacre City Concepts:

Cities should flow over land in 1-acre increments (1-40 acre parcels)
Fits within existing Township and Range land system.
Traffic congestion will be relieved by spreading out across the countryside.
Individual family farms provide for the basic needs of families.
Decentralized government and cultural activities.
City administration through radio contact
The Chief Executive of the decentralized city should be its architect, the person best
equipped to see that buildings and occupants are in harmony.

Broad Acre City Model

Even though the development of Phoenix,

Arizona has been associated with the Broadacre City
concept, due to significant similarities, it must be
realized that though the pattern may be similar, the
growth was not carried out with a respect to the
environment but rather because it was easy to develop
the desert, and the economic forces to promote private
land ownership were not the same, and that the effects
of decentralization that occurred were likened to those
of sprawl (costly, waste of space, etc)

But what became

of Broad Acre City
Concept? Nothing. It was
never carried out.
The concept of
Broadacre, like many other
theories
of
urban
development
addresses
many key issues, and
overlooks others. Many
principles may be adapted
from this theory and
applied, as appropriate, to a
given
landscape
successfully. Additionally,
it may be incorporated with
various other theories to produce optimal results. Wright was simply responding to the notion that
decentralization would occur in some form or fashion, and Broadacre city is his contribution to
organize or formalize the movement. His perspective may be architectural and therefore seen a
limited, but there is yet one person that has yet produced the perfect solution to the problem of
centralization, or decentralization (in the form of sprawl).

RADIANT CITY
Ville Radieuse (The Radiant City) is an unrealized urban
masterplan by Le Corbusier, first presented in 1924 and published in
a book of the same name in 1933. Designed to contain effective means
of transportation, as well as an abundance of green space and sunlight,
Le Corbusiers city of the future would not only provide residents with
a better lifestyle, but would contribute to creating a better society.
Though radical, strict and nearly totalitarian in its order, symmetry and
standardization, Le Corbusiers proposed principles had an extensive
influence on modern urban planning and led to the development of new
high-density housing typologies.
In accordance
with modernist ideals
of progress (which encouraged the annihilation
of tradition), The Radiant City was to emerge
from a tabula rasa: it was to be built on nothing
less than the grounds of demolished vernacular
European cities. The new city would contain
prefabricated and identical high-density
skyscrapers, spread across a vast green area and
arranged in a Cartesian grid, allowing the city to
function as a living machine. Le Corbusier
explains: The city of today is a dying thing
because its planning is not in the proportion of
geometrical one fourth. The result of a true
geometrical lay-out is repetition, the result of
repetition is a standard. The perfect form.
At the core of Le Corbusiers plan stood
the notion of zoning: a strict division of the city
into
segregated
commercial,
business,
entertainment and residential areas. The business
district was located in the center, and contained
monolithic mega-skyscrapers, each reaching a
height of 200 meters and accommodating five to
eight hundred thousand people. Located in the
center of this civic district was the main
transportation deck, from which a vast
underground system of trains would transport
citizens to and from the surrounding housing districts.

The housing districts

would contain pre-fabricated
apartment buildings, known as
Units. Reaching a height of
fifty meters, a single Unit could
accommodate 2,700 inhabitants
and function as a vertical village:
catering and laundry facilities
would be on the ground floor, a
kindergarten and a pool on the
roof. Parks would exist between
the Units, allowing residents
with a maximum of natural
daylight, a minimum of noise and
recreational facilities at their
doorsteps.

Pruitt-Igoe was planned to

accommodate the growth of an industrial
powerhouse city already a shade past its
prime, the project was a Modernist dream
come true: an effort to replace St. Louis
slums with new, clean affordable housing
rising into the sky. It was profoundly
influenced by Le Corbusiers radiant
city vision of Modernism, with
landscaped parks surrounded by towers
of glass and concrete lifting working
people out of dark, near-shantytowns
isolated from running water, electricity,
and civilized urban infrastructure.
Only 20 years after completion, the Pruitt-Igoe housing project was dynamited.

Nevertheless, the idea of proposing order through

careful planning is as relevant now as when Le Corbusier
first published The Radiant City. Issues of healthy living,
traffic, noise, public space and transportation, which Le
Corbusier - unlike any architect before him - addressed
holistically, continue to be a major concern of city planners
today.

CITY BEAUTIFUL MOVEMENT

The City Beautiful Movement occurred in America around
the turn of century (18901910) and it was primarily a stateled
planning movement based on the idea that design and beauty could
be a means of improving the city. In America, the movement was
most associated with Daniel Burnham, the architect and city
planner, most known for his 1909 Chicago Plan, which redesigned
the Central Loop of Chicago into the monumental space that it is
today.

As a movement, the City

Beautiful is significant in that it raised
awareness of planning and in some
way, gave birth to modern American
planning. What is interesting and more
significant about the City Beautiful
movement, is its ties to Haussmann
and his central Paris plan. The City
Beautiful movement brings the grand
plan ideathe ability to demolish the
old and start fresh with good design
to improve the city. However,
implementing such plans was costly.

The idea of starting fresh, with a clean slate, that began in Paris with Haussmann and was
made popular in American by Burnham, will continue to resurface with other planning movements
and planning strategies:

The modernist and Le Corbusiers Radiant City

Urban renewal in the 1940s, 50s, and 60s.

Downtown and waterfront redevelopment

The New Urbanisms

Burnham launched the City Beautiful movement at the 1893 World's Fair. While the
relatively informal lagoon area on the north side of the fairgrounds reflected the picturesque
preferences of Frederick Law Olmstedthe designer of New York City's Central Park and a
participant in the fair's planning from its earliest sessionsthe stately and well-ordered White City
formed the seminal image of the City Beautiful approach.

Washington, D.C., in 1902 became the first city

to carry out a City Beautiful design, the McMillan Plan,
named for Michigans U.S. Sen. James McMillan, who
was chairman of the Senate Committee on the District
of Columbia. It limited building heights and positioned
new structures and monuments throughout the city to
create a balanced aerial composition. Other cities that
benefited from the movement were Cleveland
(1903), San Francisco (1905), and St. Paul, Minnesota
(1906).

Over time, the movements

shortcomings came to the fore, and it
became apparent that improvement of
the physical city without addressing
social and economic issues would not
substantively improve urban life. The
movement, as a whole, began to wane
by World War I and was then succeeded
by a modernist approach to architecture
known as the International style.

CITY EFFICIENT MOVEMENT & HISTORY OF ZONING

With the industrial revolution, cities grew
in size and importance. The Public Health, Garden
City, and City Beautiful movements of the 19th
century raised issues of health and aesthetics in the
city, and profoundly affected the design and
development of cities during the first half of the
20th century.
The City Efficient Movement saw the
passage of new laws and court cases relative to
land use, zoning, subdivision control, and
administrative planning regulation. Civil engineers, attorneys, and public administrators began to
play a larger role in city planning with an increase in demand for public services and facilities such
as highways and sanitary sewers. Perhaps the best known leaders were engineers Frederick
Winslow Taylor, and Frank Bunker Gilbreth, Sr.
There were early efforts to temper
New York's building streak. A landmark
1885 law restricted tenement buildings to
one-and-a-half times the street width (the
Supreme Court ruled that height
restrictions were legal in 1909, when
builders challenged Boston's decision to
restrict buildings around Copley Square to
90 feet). The building that broke the camel's
back was the 42-story Equitable Building.
Built in 1915, the building's height and heft
were unprecedented.
In 1916, the city responded by passing the country's first
comprehensive zoning code. That effort was largely spearheaded by
lawyer Edward Bassett, who went on to invent the freeway and parkway.
Bassett was said to be The Father of American Zoning", and one of the
founding fathers of modern day urban planning.
This, he explains, is why New York's skyscrapers from the
period have such a particular profile. The Heckscher Building on Fifth
Avenue, for example, stacked smaller and smaller boxes on top of one
another, with a crown on top. Other architects experimented
with cascading setbacks and buttresses.

The city's new zoning code did

more than just regulate building design.
It also set up separate residential and
business districts (as well as
unrestricted and undetermined areas).
The first city to experiment with
this was San Francisco. In 1885, the
city banned public laundries from most
areas, a not-so-subtle attempt to zone
the Chinese out. That law was
invalidated by an 1886 Supreme Court
case.
In 1909, Los Angeles experimented with a city-wide regulation that kept heavy industry
and commerce out of certain neighborhoods.
Initially, officials were reluctant to do so, fearing that they'd lose businesses to
neighboring cities. But land-owners were insistent, arguing that their property values had gone
down thanks to brick-makers and smoky glue factories.
It seems unlikely, then, that zoning thus was the product of circumstances in one particular
place. Nor was it the product of planners who had embraced the City Beautiful movement,
progressives who supported scientific management of government or lawyers who argued for an
expansive view of the police power. The roles of planners, progressives and lawyers were supply
responses to a popular demand for zoning. This popular demand did not manifest itself as direct
democracy. It was filtered through housing developers who found that they sell homes for more
profit if the community had zoning.

BALTIMORE NEIGHBORHOOD DESIGN CENTER

Since 1968, the Neighborhood Design Centers in Baltimore and
Prince
George's
County,
MD,
have
helped
residents
revitalize commercial areas, reclaim vacant lots, and provide planning
and design services to more than 1,800 community initiatives. Jennifer
Goold, Executive Director, joined the Neighborhood Design Center in
2012 after more than a decade of work in cultural resources management,
historic preservation, development and planning.
The NDC was developed following a speech by the executive
chairman of the Urban League, Whitney Young, in 1968 issuing a challenge for architects and
designers to participate actively in renewal and transformation in the wake of urban decay during
the Civil Rights Movement.
NDCs priorities are determined by the community and
neighborhoods themselves, according to Laura Wheaton, architect and
program manager for the Baltimore office. Essentially, the community
looks at its own neighborhood and finds ways to enact change, she says.
Wheaton says that many of the projects recently proposed have
involved transportation and greening on a neighborhood scale. She cites a
current example, the streetscaping of a 3-mile corridor, which she says is a
bit of a vacuum between neighborhoods but serves as a major thoroughfare
for Baltimore commuters.
Another popular NDC program helped turn
vacant lots into venues for performing arts in the
Union Square, Franklin Square and Hollins
Roundhouse neighborhoods. Baltimores Adopt-ALot program enables neighborhoods to reclaim and
care for vacant lots for a period. The city will later
assess whether that lot is needed for city projects, and
if not, the residents can transform it to permanent
green space.
A recent Baltimore project designed a sign for
the historic Glen neighborhood to help it rebrand. The
old metal sign was in disrepair, and the volunteer
designers envisioned a sturdier one in brick. They
made use of programs with Baltimores Department
of Public Safety, both using reclaimed bricks from
one of its demolished old prisons and utilizing labor
from inmates who have completed a masonry training
program.
Programs like NDCs were more common in
the late 60s and early 70s, Wheaton says, when
there was a groundswell of community design. Whitney Youngs speech inspired many people.
Unfortunately, a lot of organizations disbanded over the years because they couldnt get funded.
Now there seems to be a new interest, and were excited to see that. There is certainly enough need
for this kind of design.
NDC started as an all-volunteer organization, with designers getting together to work.
When asked how other communities can build similar programs, Wheaton says it comes down to
the work of volunteer designers lending their efforts and talents, and to the support of local
government to help make this kind of urban renewal possible.

NEW URBANIST MODEL SEASIDE FLORIDA

The New Urbanism is a reaction to sprawl. A
growing movement of architects, planners and
developers, the New Urbanism is based on the
belief that a return to traditional neighborhood
patterns is essential to restoring functional,
sustainable communities. The heart of new
urbanism is in the design of the neighborhoods,
and there is no clearer description than the 13
points developed by town planners Andrs
Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk.

The plan for the town of Seaside began in

1978 after Robert Davis was gifted an 80 acre plot
of land in the Florida Panhandle. Following in his
grandfathers footsteps, Robert and his wife
Daryl set out to build a livable resort town in
the Redneck Riviera and create a haven for
those who missed the communities that were
developed when cars were not the dominant form
of transportation. Enter Andrs Duany and
Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, a lauded husband and
wife team from the prestigious architectural firm
Arquitectonica. The four of them, along with
European classicist and town planner Lon Krier,
set out to design the kind of place that had been
overlooked in contemporary American town
planning. The kind of community we all wish we
could be from.
Planning Seaside developed over several
years; first in the offices of Arquitectonica and
later in the firm of Duany Plater-Zyberk and
Company (DPZ). The final plan, the result of many drafts, was completed in about 1985 and is the
result of the efforts of DPZ, contributions by Leon Krier, and numerous tests and charrettes.

The Seaside plan proposes

traditional
patterns

American
as

an

settlement

alternative

to

contemporary methods of real estate

development. To this end, the retail
center was designed as a downtown
commercial district; the conference
facility doubles as a town hall; and a
portion of the recreation budget was
dedicated to the creation of small
civic amenities, including a chapel, a primary school, a fire station, and a post office, all to be
shared by adjacent communities.
A study of towns throughout the American South indicated that a community of genuine
variety and authentic character could not be generated by a single architect. Building was therefore
given over to a multitude of designers. The public buildings have been designed by architects
selected for their known sympathy with the regional vernacular, and the private buildings have
been commissioned by the individual buyers. A master plan and zoning code regulate the buildings
to ensure the creation of an urban environment similar to that of a small Southern town of the
period before 1940.
13 Principles of the New Urbanism by Duany-Zyberk:

The neighborhood has a discernible center. Often a square of a green and sometimes
busy or memorable street corner.

Dwellings are within a five-minute walk of the center.

There is a variety of dwelling types houses, row houses, apartments, etc.

Shops and Offices located at the edge of the neighborhood.

Small ancillary building is permitted within the backyard of each house.

An elementary school is close enough

Small playgrounds near every dwelling

Streets within the neighborhood are a connected network and provision of

pedestrian routes

Streets are relatively narrow and shaded by row of trees.

Buildings in the neighborhood center are placed close to the street, creating a welldefined outdoor room

Parking lots and garage doors rarely front the streets.

Certain prominent sites at the termination of street are reserved for civic buildings.

The neighborhood is organized to be self-governing.

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