What forms the history of a city? The history of a city is anything and everything that ever existed and played a vital role in building the city which exists today. While each era (in any city) was devised over a set of needs and issues, the proceeding era looked forward to a higher and more sophisticated society.
This statement is understood by evaluating historical events and movements, social norms, city policies and acts, geography and culture, having taken place over time. Urban planning requires the involvement of designers, architects, and policy-makers like politicians, real-estate developers etc. Some of the renowned examples of city planning in world history are the Roman Town plan, Mohenjo Daro in Harappa, India, Tenochtitlan, the present Mexico City, the Garden city plan of Denmark etc.
“Like a piece of architecture, the city is a construction in space, but one of vast scale, a thing perceived only in the course of long spans of time.” (Lynch, 1990)
Planning as a Discipline | City’s History
It is hard to recognise the role of a city planner under one specified domain. Given the same question for an urban designer, architecture plays a primary role in the field. Urban Planning has a multidisciplinary approach inviting experts of various disciplines while they play their roles individually and independently. An urban planner will be said to have a ‘transdisciplinary approach’, i.e. a holistic approach, having knowledge of research and real-world problems. In convention, planning is conceived as an add-on to domains such as architecture, surveying or engineering. In urban planning, the development scheme is planned for three factors; physical, social and economic security. The goal is to have an economy filled with opportunities while addressing and accommodating upcoming issues. While urban planners assign a function and its abiding laws, urban designers deal with the design of spaces considering the physical physiological needs of the common public.
Evolution of Civilization through the Lenses of Planners
Evolution in cities happens based on the changing needs and demands of a population mass over time. At every point of shift, the emergence of cities was due to the recent agricultural revolution (in the prevailing time) proceeded by newfound professions. Earlier during the prehistoric era, settlements were based on the availability of water resources and natural defensive measures; initially, the settlements grew organically. The transition in settlements occurred when people in groups learned to cultivate crops and became self-reliant for food production and basic needs for a living. While these settlements were planned based on the social ranks of the population and prominent buildings, the transport routes were designed to cater export/ import of goods, water supply and sanitation. Examples include Mesopotamian towns, Egyptian towns, and Roman cities. “Cities were said to have appeared as warehouses and breakpoints in a trade or as fortified centres for war, or as administrative centres for managing complex and centralised public works such as irrigation systems” (Lynch, 2001)
The planning of Roman and Greek cities was based on the system of monarchy and feudalism. Even though the planning strategies improved over the ages, the social strata and their domination as a planning factor affected families belonging to lower ranks by confining their lifestyle options. Renaissance, through the vision of Leonardo Da Vinci, which progressed in its art and architecture, went on to mark a model for a Utopian city in its planning. (Melis, 2019).
The Transition | City’s History
A stark transition could be seen after industrialisation, after which Industrial cities emerged. There was a need to consider the active movement of people within the city and migration from country to town. For this reason, the railways also played a key role in city planning. Planners and architects proposed various theories as an impact of changes brought forth by industrialisation. Impacts may include the scale of public places, housing communities, accessibility to daily needs etc. The period after industrialisation influenced the social strata and the economic situations in a city invariably. While planning principles were concentrated on providing equal opportunities for all economic classes in a city.
Town planning went from planning for communities to migrating masses, from not only ease of access but the active use of technology, and from centralised to decentralised planning. Urban planning in the modern era addresses the issues sensitive to modern humans, such as crowding, road traffic, man-made crimes, natural disasters, and diseases. The need to address these matters arise from failed examples of previous city planning and how it has affected large masses. One such example is the Pruitt-Igoe housing complex over time became poor, increasingly segregated, heavily vandalised, and began to resemble the slums it had once replaced. (Khaitan, n.d.)
Read more about the case at https://www.re-thinkingthefuture.com/rtf-design-inspiration/a1726-pruitt-igoe-housing-development-st-louis-by-minoru-yamasaki/
Some of the successful examples were borrowed in the urban planning of other cities as well. The urban planning of Chennai, India, was inspired by the Finger Plan development of Copenhagen city. The religious idea of the lifestyle preferred by the dominant inhabitants influences the physical environment of cities primarily. Governing bodies and politicians invariably play a huge role, as they authenticate the laws and the sequence of steps to be taken to fulfil the objectives. The goals of a planning committee include setting the land use, transport and communication courses, all executed under a business model analysed by a team of decision-makers. In contemporary times, private organisations have started to participate in the planning committee. The concept of Financial cities, Creative cities and transit-oriented planning emerged during the postmodern era or after the 1980s. These concepts stood out as a result of gentrification and pollution due to a boom in population and employment opportunities.
References:
- Lynch, K. (1990). The image of the city. 20th ed. London, England: MIT Joint Center for Urban Studies Series.
- Lynch, K. (2001). Good city form. Cambridge, Mass.: Mit Press.
- Davoudi, S. (2015). Is planning an academic discipline? [online] RIURBA. Available at: http://www.riurba.review/Revue/is-planning-an-academic-discipline/ [Accessed 10 Dec. 2022].
- RESÉNDEZ, A. (2021). 500 years after Aztec rule, Mexico confronts a complicated anniversary. [online] History. Available at: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/500-years-after-aztec-rule-mexico-confronts-complicated-anniversary [Accessed 10 Dec. 2022].
- Raje, A. (1734). City plan of Jaipur. Delhi Master Plan Revision Monitor. [online] Available at: https://architexturez.net/doc/az-cf-123686 [Accessed 11 Dec. 2022].
- Melis, A. (2019). Leonardo da Vinci designed an ideal city that was centuries ahead of its time. [online] The Conversation. Available at: https://theconversation.com/leonardo-da-vinci-designed-an-ideal-city-that-was-centuries-ahead-of-its-time-111884 .
- Khaitan, R. (n.d.). The Pruitt-Igoe Myth of Public Housing | Smart Cities Dive. [online] www.smartcitiesdive.com. Available at: https://www.smartcitiesdive.com/ex/sustainablecitiescollective/pruitt-igoe-myth-public-housing/235081/.