All you’ve ever wanted to know about … Urban planning

 

Here, Michelle Manning-Wareham takes a walk through the world of urban planning.

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Room for ideals

Urban planning could help solve some of the greater problems of society: traffic, crime, health, the environment and much more. Good planning enhances people’s lives, not only in the short term but also into the far future as it must take into account today’s problems as well as those that threaten the future.

The traffic-ridden and run-down parts of city centres in the UK can make people feel repressed, alienated, downtrodden. But when plans are set in motion for ‘regeneration,’ therein lies an opportunity for an area to be filled with vibrant public spaces. In a new redeveloped segment of town, the goal is to make an area where people will feel safe, healthy and secure and which will also encourage a sense of human interaction and community.
 
But public spaces are not the only concern for an urban planner. Transport infrastructure – getting people from A to B – also requires some thought as public transport nowadays demands a smooth, safe and environmentally-friendly journey, and cyclists and pedestrians can benefit too: walkways and cycle lanes must be bright, accessible, safe and protected.

And there’s more…

More urban concerns

Urban planners (sometimes known as Spatial Planners or City Planners) have many issues at the top of their mind as they plan a town, and we will discuss here: sustainability, aesthetics, urban decay, renewal and transport.

Sustainability: A buzzword of contemporary urban development, sustainability involves planning houses and cities that use energy as efficiently as possible. 

Aesthetics: Some towns and cities are planned with beauty in mind – think Bath. Aesthetics are important to urban planners who consider the character and heritage, as well as the infrastructure and other practicalities of towns, in forming their identity.

Crime and safety:  Historic European cities, such as the medieval walled city of Carcasonne in France, illustrate how important safety has been to humankind since towns and cities were planned. In those days, homes had to be high on the ground to provide the maximum level of protection from attacks, but today, extreme weather and other natural disasters, as well as criminality, can be controlled with savvy protective planning.  Theories such as socio-architecture or environmental determinism suggest how an individual’s criminal behaviour is often in reaction to his or her surroundings. An antidote can be the creation of a space that is more beautiful as well as functional.

Urban decay: When a city suffers urban decay it means that the city or a part of it has fallen into a state of disrepair. Urban decay can be caused by a number of bad planning decisions such as the unrestricted development of freeways or suburbanisation.

Regeneration: To rectify this, a regeneration plan may be carried out in league with government agencies - as well as private interest groups - to develop a solution to the decay. This should result in a more rounded and happier society that may even be more financially prosperous.

Transport: Densely populated cities require a high capacity urban transit. In highly urbanised areas, traffic, reliable transport, as well as parking spaces and train station location, are all part of a complex relationship of factors that concern the urban planner.

Good transport planning attempts to place the higher densities of residents or workers near high-volume transportation i.e. high-rise apartment blocks and office buildings would be located very close to a train station.

Right tools

There are a range of factors to consider in realising the potential of urban development – physical, social, commercial, ecological, environmental – and fortunately there are some tools available to help planners, most of who specialise in specific areas, identify and analyse how these factors impact a society.

Understanding community behaviour and other invisible aspects of the landscape, require hypothetical imaginings and abstractions. For this, planners use modelling and mapping software to analysis current and future situations. They also use visualisations, either computer generated or hand sketches, to depict planned developments, detail of transport arrangements, land use patterns and how people move through and interact with the built environment. By using digital modelling and visualisation software, a planner can communicate their ideas to people, and fine tune those particulars of design and see its impact. 

London: a case study

To understand how urban planning was applied to London in the Victorian era is a thorough way of getting a grip on how important a planner can be. London endured at the time the ‘Great Stink’ of the Thames and Cholera epidemics led to a death rate not since seen since the Black Death in 1665.
 
It was not called Urban Planning at the time, but the government was forced to step up and change Victorian England’s living conditions with a stringent and dramatic action that is akin to an urban planning policy today.

The streets were filthy, unhealthy, dangerous and filled with the hungry homeless in those days. It wasn’t until the end of the 19th century when attitudes changed and no longer did residents look upon their living standards with resignation, instead they considered where they lived to be intolerable and realised money should be spent.

The first half of the 19th century saw an ever-growing population and housing shortage, which led to a densely packed and overcrowded city; the second half saw the need for observation and ventilation which meant opening up London. To do this meant demolishing the slums of Soho, extending railways to the newly built stations and new roads for traffic. All these plans led to paving through the slums of Soho to build Shaftesbury Avenue.

The avenue led to more urban planning milestones. Those from the slums became homeless as no re-housing plan existed for them then. However, by the end of the 19th century, some local authorities began to build council housing, which offered an answer to the problems the great numbers of homeless poised.

From the 1870s on, healthier housing was built, and incomes for the working class started to rise as food prices declined: this led to a higher spend in housing. By the last quarter of the 19th century, masses of new bye-law houses were built in English cities with long rows of terrace houses appearing in a grid of streets.

Metamorphosis to today

The past few decades has seen the biggest rise in the need of urban planners and their role has adapted to meet the needs of development organisations in the planning process.

The planning process generally involves government agencies, council departments, community organisations, investors, commercial groups and perhaps consultants. Developers too have recently needed urban planers, particularly in projects that involve project-based planning, such as London Olympics 2012.

From the smallest towns to its largest cities, urban planners are involved in a very broad range of activities in environments all over the world. And with the new issues affecting the world all the time, urban planners need to be aware of future concerns as well.

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