PLANNING THEORY SINCE 1945

Pwk Pmd ft ub planning theory

Early post war planning theory

1. 2. 3.

Conception of planning: Town planning as physical planning. Design as central to town planning. 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 'endstate blueprint plans produced by architects or engineers when designing buildings and other humanmade structures.

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 his book: Town and Country Planning might be described as the art and science of ordering the use of land and the character and siting of buildings and communicative routes . . . Keeble suggested that town planning may greatly assist in the realisation of the aims of these other kinds of planning'. Then implicit in this statement is an assumption that social and economic ends could be advanced by physical means This thesis was appropriately termed physical, architectural or environmental determinism (see Broady, 1 968, Chap. I)

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 were thought relevant, which brings us to the second component of the post-war conception of planning.

Town planning as urban design

The term 'civic' design was also much used Town planning was regarded as an 'extension' of architectural design (or to a lesser extent civil engineering) in the literal sense of being concerned with the design of whole groups of buildings and spaces - with 'townscape rather than the design of individual buildings and their immediate sites, and also in the sense that architecture too was seen to be an exercise in the physical design of built forms.

Town planning as urban design

Architects who worked as town planner:
GB: Patrick Abercrombie, Frederick Gibberd and Thomas 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

Town planning as urban design

Shops Offices Government Entertainment Education Dwellings Centres and sub-centres Industry Open space

Theoretical new town Source: Keeble, 1952 (1969), Figure 30

Town planning as urban design

Raymond Unwin - a leading exponent of this concern with aesthetics - stressed the need for beauty in urban life: 'Not even the poor can live by bread alone' (cited in Creese, 1967, p. 71).

Town planning as urban design

A design for the centre of a theoretical new town Source: Keeble, 1952, Figure 78

Town planning as urban design

A plan for an urban region Source: Keeble, 1 952, Figure 1 1

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 day be reached. The first generation of development plans local authorities were required to produce under the Town and Country Planning Act 1947 also adopted this approach. Detailed zoning plans specified how particular sites were to be used and developed 'programming' plans that showed the stages at which the envisaged development of different parts of the plans would be carried out to 'complete' the plans.

Town plans as detailed blueprints or 'master' plans

Example: Soria y Mata's nineteenthcentury 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'

conclusion
The plan was not just an approach to town planning as an exercise in physical planning and urban design but also a normative concept of the ideal urban environment. In other words, the tracts and textbooks published at the time not only advanced an extended definition of planning but they also embodied certain values about the kinds of environment which, it was believed, should be realised through town planning.

The values of post-war planning theory

The normative context: a culture of social reform and conservative sentiments. A 'formal or 'definitional' theory of planning: Town planning as an exercise in physical planning and design represented 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 reformers and middle-class intellectuals to the dreary industrial cities which had grown up in the Victorian age, and were a curious mixture of radicalism and conservativism.

radical Utopianism:
Robert Owen the creator of the famous model settlement of New Lanark - was both a pioneer of the model village movement, which aimed to improve the living 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 the distillation and most complete expression of this radical Utopian socialism

Howard combined radical socialist proposals for the collective ownership of land in his garden cities with very traditional and, in this respect conservative, notions of urban size and form (the socalled 'social
democratic)

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 takenfor-granted assumptions and norms and, because of this, our values are often not explicitly articulated or analysed. These values become apparent when we examine the kind of urban environments that were judged by planners at the time to be of high quality or 'ideal'.

THE NORMATIVE THEORY UNDERLYING (BRITISH) POST-WAR PLANNING

Four broad planning principles of post war planning:

the general approach to creating better cities. This approach can be described as 'Utopian comprehensiveness. the general aesthetic values which informed (British) postwar planning. the view most town planning theorists took of the ideal urban structure, namely, a highly ordered view of urban structure. a general assumption that all these principles were selfevident and thus 'commonsense' principles in themselves, commanding a consensus amongst all sections of the population (assumed consensus over the aims of planning.)

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 Le Corbusier's Ville Radieuse). In appearance, the form of the modern city was one of plain, geometrical, 'functional buildings standing at regular intervals in a sea of 'free-flowing' space.

Antonio Sant'Elia's sketch for La Citta Nuova, 1914

To be continued