USP 313 Urban Planning Environmental Issues

Wrap up from last time Historical Perspectives of Urban Development

Agenda
Announcements
Supplemental Readings online EcoDistrict background next Monday Recap from last class meeting
Questions and/or comments about the syllabus?

Concepts
Finish introduction from last time Concept Map
Individual activity

Historical Perspectives
The City in History Social Movements in Urban Development
The City Beautiful The Garden City The Regional City The Radiant City

For next time

Concept Mapping
Diagram showing the relationships between concepts: visual tool to structure ideas
Example: Describing car accidents in a city
What are the factors that affect accidents? How are those factors related?

Concept Mapping Exercise 1

Using a sheet of paper and a pencil/pen: 1.Map your neighborhood within the context of the city in which you live
a. In what ways is your neighborhood connected to the city and/or region? b. Identify characteristics of your neighborhood that impact the city, and ways in which the city impacts your neighborhood.
Be specific in your description, using limited number of phrases, boxes, arrows, and other means for describing the relationship between neighborhood factors.

General Literature on Cities

Functional elements of a city
Transportation, governments, financial markets, employment, housing, environment.others?

Interactions of functional elements

Impact City as a demand system for natural resources Power City as a place to consolidate and increase regional control Metabolism City as a input-output system Culture City as a place for arts and humanity Urban Ecology City as an integration of humans into the ecosystem

Girardet thinks of cities as Metabolic entities

Urban Ecology - Cities are just part of nature Cities as human-dominated landscapes

Cities in History
Where did these models come from? Historical review of urban settlements a western perspective
1880s-1920s
Growing urban problem - Industrialization and migration to cities - Problems included disease, slums, etc.

People moving to cities largely to make a living cities were centers of industrialization
public health concerns as people crowded

Urban Reform Movement

Dystopia to utopia! Responses to rapid urbanization
The first municipal services, such as fire departments, garbage collecting, sewers, etc. These reforms began earlier, but were not systematically implemented until the late 1800s

Early Suburbanization
Late 1880s: Suburban growth begins Driven by transportation innovations (e.g. horse cars, trolleys, cable cars) Also a response to urban growth and its problems
Enter the urban planner!

Sprawl Road networks began to appear

Urban Planning Profession: 1880 - 1900

Progressivism
Progressive Era: 1880-1920 Shift from rural/agrarian to urban/industrial society Period of reform: labor law, womens suffrage, etc. Emphasized rational planning led by expert science, removing waste, corruption, and inefficiency Optimistic

Growth of professions
Our current system of professions emerged at this time in America and Europe

Pre-WWII Urban Planning Movements

1900 - 1940
City Beautiful: 1900 -1940 Garden City Regional City

People were from upper and middle classes Access to schooling, influence

1920-1970
Radiant City

The City Beautiful: Ideas

1900-1940 Thought that city beautification would solve numerous urban problems Mostly in American and in British colonies, later in totalitarian Europe (1930s)

A beautiful city needs beautiful things Emphasizing place only, not people

Premise: a more beautiful city, with lots of monumental architecture, would inspire people, instilling civic pride and loyalty

The City Beautiful: Design

Centered on building monuments and redesigning city centers to with monumental aesthetics Why monument building/style
Stressing urban order and the symbolic importance of the city Way to inspire civic loyalty and moral rectitude, particularly in the poor and immigrants Thought architectural beauty could solve urban problems Attract people to the city center, and to attract businesses to the city by demonstrating its importance

The City Beautiful: United States

Key figure: Daniel Burnham Chicago Plan, 1909 Sought to restore to the city a lost visual and
aesthetic harmony, thereby creating the physical prerequisite for the emergence of a harmonious social order. Burnham (1908)

design to control people

Monumental plan for Chicago, partially completed Straightened streets, redesigned center Bring more order to city that had suffered disastrous race riots in the 1890s

Prospect Park, Brooklyn

Mt. Vernon Square, Baltimore

Boston Public Library

Chicago Worlds Fair, 1893

The City Beautiful: South Asia

New Delhi Capital of British Colonial India Built angular streets and monumental architecture and parks Designed to display imperial power and order Designed for racial exclusion (to spatially separate British civil servants from Indian public)

The City Beautiful: Europe

Berlin Capital of Germany 1930s designs of Albert Speer (never built) Redesigned Berlin was to display the Third Reichs power and grandeur Hitler: Why always the biggest? I do this to
restore to each individual German his self-respect.

Break
5 minutes Questions or comments?

The Garden City Movement

1900-1940 Leader: Ebenezer Howard, English, 18501928 Garden Cities of Tomorrow, 1902

The Garden City: Ideas

A social reform movement (like City Beautiful) Favored voluntary self-governing communities
influenced by European anarchism wanted more de-centralized, community-based democracy

Garden cities were to be the vehicle for reconstructing society

City structure or form could help shape the civic involvement and political life of its inhabitants

Also wanted to combine the best of city and country living

The Garden City: Design

Spreading out Overcrowded cities Channeling future growth into surrounding garden cities When they reach their limit, a new city would be started nearby Each city Parks, woodland, farms Surrounded by greenbelts and appropriate industries Housing would be dense, Close contact with nature Roads built so that little traffic entered neighborhoods Everyone would have the opportunity for home ownership (which would free up money for local self-governance)

satellites around city people would have ownership opportunity

The Garden City: Practice

Few Garden Cities actually built Radburn, New Jersey, is the best U.S. example (very different today) Places that were built with these ideas in mind always watered down the radical ideal

Radburn, New Jersey

Welwyn Garden City

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The Regional City Movement

1900-1940 Similar to Garden City movement Key figure: Patrick Geddes, Scottish, 18541932 Motto: Survey before Plan

major influence on modern planning

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The Regional City: Ideas

Also a social reform movement Followed the anarchist-inspired ideas of Howard Added:
rural ways of life were a critical part of cultural heritage, and must be preserved Remolding metropolitan America in its contact with indigenous America - Brunton MacKay Identified as an important source of democracy

Saw centralized state and industrial life as eroding ties to the land and democratic traditions

The Regional City: Design

Extended Garden City planning to cover entire regions
Geddes motto: The survey before the plan Meant the planner must (1) Survey the natural resources of the region (2) Determine appropriate land use and where to locate new cities

basic origin of land-use planning

Smaller cities radiating out in Garden City fashion

Would promote community-oriented democracy Would improve ties to the land (which they saw as an important cultural achievement)

The Regional City

Lewis Mumford
Key promoter The City in History, The Culture of Cities

Regional American Planning Association Highly influential, but few of their plans actually used at the time

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The Radiant City Movement

1920-1970 Key figure: Le Corbusier, 1887-1965

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The Radiant City: Ideas

Houses are machines for living in
Housing should be efficient, rational

Planning is too important to be left to citizens

Cities should be designed by scientific experts only

It must be carried out by men without remorse

They must do their job scientifically

It must be done on an empty site

Older buildings must be cleared away to make room for the efficiently planned city of the future

Also a social reform movement

Trying to solve social problems via scientific analysis and efficient design

The Radiant City: Design

High rise apartments Large open spaces, plazas Functional zones separating different uses

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The Radiant City Movement: Practice

High rise apartments Large open plazas (similar to City Beautiful) Functional zone separate different land uses Le Corbusiers 1925 plan for Paris
Called for clearing most of its historic buildings Widely criticized

Few Radiant City plans ever built

Two best examples are Brazilia and Chandigarh

Influenced public housing design in Britain and the U.S.

Public Housing in the U.S. & Britain

Britain
Great need for working-class and low income housing after WWI
Many such homes destroyed in the war Population growing

Public housing built on a large scale using Radiant City principles

U.S.
Built less public housing than Britain Also used Radiant City design principles from 1950-1970

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Public Housing in the U.S. & Britain

Widely praised when it was built
Seen as a helping the working-class Seen as embodying the most modern design principles

Widely criticized soon after

Many of these places were unlivable This led to people leaving them whenever possible Vacancy led to deteriorating conditions, as did the design itself

Public Housing in the U.S. & Britain

Main reason for public housings failure:
Design solutions laid down on people without regard to their preferences, ways of life, or plain idiosyncrasies; laid down further, by architects who as the media delight to discover themselves invariably live in charming Victorian villas The main result of this failure was that the middle-class designers had no real feeling for the way working-class families lived.

- Sir Peter Hall

[Jane] Jacobs adds that they [planners] also had no real feeling for how successful neighborhoods actually work

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Pruitt-Igoe Public Housing Failure 101

Group Exercise
Form small groups of 3
Introduce yourselves to your group

Address two questions:

Of the cities you are familiar with, what historical elements (the city in history) are still present? Consider specific buildings, parks, city plans, etc. What does the presence of historical elements suggest about the way we organize our cities?

Have one person report your answers to the class (Monday, 4/4)

For Next Week

Monday
Readings Text: pp. 1-40 Select one media article that examines an environmental issue be prepared to discuss how urban development affects the environmental conditions
World Newspapers website posted on D2L

EcoDistrict discussion on Monday (guest speakers)

Wednesday
Journal Entry
In your understanding what elements of ancient cities are evident in modern cities of the United States? Provide examples?
Draw from the reading (pp. 1 40)?

Maximum of 2 [single spaced] pages 50 Points: Graded on content, organization, and clarity of your writing.

http://www.pruitt-igoe.com/

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