Urban planning, design and regulation of the uses of space that focus on the physical

form, economic functions, and social impacts of the urban environment and on the
location of different activities within it. Because urban planning draws upon
engineering, architectural, and social and political concerns, it is variously a technical
profession, an endeavour involving political will and public participation, and an
academic discipline. Urban planning concerns itself with both the development of
open land (“greenfields sites”) and the revitalization of existing parts of the city,
thereby involving goal setting, data collection and analysis, forecasting, design,
strategic thinking, and public consultation. Increasingly, the technology of geographic
information systems (GIS) has been used to map the existing urban system and to
project the consequences of changes. In the late 20th century the term sustainable
development came to represent an ideal outcome in the sum of all planning goals. As
advocated by the United Nations-sponsored World Commission on Environment and
Development in Our Common Future (1987), sustainability refers to “development
that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future
generations to meet their own needs.” While there is widespread consensus on this
general goal, most major planning decisions involve trade-offs between subsidiary
objectives and thus frequently involve conflict.


urban planning: HafenCity HamburgLearn about the German development project known as HafenCity
Hamburg, an example of urban planning.Contunico © ZDF Enterprises GmbH, Mainz
The modern origins of urban planning lie in a social movement for urban reform that
arose in the latter part of the 19th century as a reaction against the disorder of the
industrial city. Many visionaries of the period sought an ideal city, yet practical
considerations of adequate sanitation, movement of goods and people, and provision
of amenities also drove the desire for planning. Contemporary planners seek to
balance the conflicting demands of social equity, economic growth, environmental
sensitivity, and aesthetic appeal. The result of the planning process may be a formal
master plan for an entire city or metropolitan area, a neighbourhood plan, a project
plan, or a set of policy alternatives. Successful implementation of a plan usually
requires entrepreneurship and political astuteness on the part of planners and their
sponsors, despite efforts to insulate planning from politics. While based in
government, planning increasingly involves private-sector participation in “public-
private partnerships.”
Urban planning emerged as a scholarly discipline in the 1900s. In Great Britain the
first academic planning program began at the University of Liverpool in 1909, and the
first North American program was established at Harvard University in 1924. It is
primarily taught at the postgraduate level, and its curriculum varies widely from one
university to another. Some programs maintain the traditional emphasis on physical
design and land use; others, especially those that grant doctoral degrees, are oriented
toward the social sciences. The discipline’s theoretical core, being somewhat
amorphous, is better defined by the issues it addresses than by any dominant paradigm
or prescriptive approach. Representative issues especially concern the recognition of a
public interest and how it should be determined, the physical and social character of
the ideal city, the possibility of achieving change in accordance with consciously
determined goals, the extent to which consensus on goals is attainable through
communication, the role of citizens versus public officials and private investors in
shaping the city, and, on a methodological level, the appropriateness of quantitative
analysis and the “rational model” of decision making (discussed below). Most degree
programs in urban planning consist principally of applied courses on topics ranging
from environmental policy to transportation planning to housing and community
economic development.

The development of urban planning

Early history
Evidence of planning has been unearthed in the ruins of cities in China, India, Egypt,
Asia Minor, the Mediterranean world, and South and Central America. Early
examples of efforts toward planned urban development include orderly street systems
that are rectilinear and sometimes radial; division of a city into specialized functional
quarters; development of commanding central sites for palaces, temples, and civic
buildings; and advanced systems of fortification, water supply, and drainage. Most of
the evidence is in smaller cities that were built in comparatively short periods as
colonies. Often the central cities of ancient states grew to substantial size before they
achieved governments capable of imposing controls.
For several centuries during the Middle Ages, there was little building of cities in
Europe. Eventually towns grew up as centres of church or feudal authority, of
marketing or trade. As the urban population grew, the constriction caused by walls
and fortifications led to overcrowding, the blocking out of air and light, and very poor
sanitation. Certain quarters of the cities, either by custom or fiat, were restricted to
different nationalities, classes, or trades, as still occurs in many contemporary cities of
the developing world.
 The Roman settlement of Londinium, c. AD 200, which developed into the modern metropolis of
London.Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

The physical form of medieval and Renaissance towns and cities followed the pattern
of the village, spreading along a street or a crossroads in circular patterns or in
irregular shapes, though rectangular patterns tended to characterize some of the newer
towns. Most streets were little more than footpaths—more a medium for
communication than for transportation—and even in major European cities paving
was not widely introduced before the 12th century (1184 in Paris, 1235 in Florence,
and 1300 in Lübeck). As the population of the city grew, walls were often expanded,
but few cities at the time exceeded a mile in length. Sometimes sites were changed, as
in Lübeck, and many new cities emerged with increasing population—frequently
about one day’s walk apart. Towns ranged in population from several hundred to
perhaps 40,000 (as in London in the late 14th century, although London’s population
had been as high as 80,000 before the arrival of the Black Death). Paris and Venice
were exceptions, reaching 100,000.
Conscious attempts to plan cities reemerged in Europe during the Renaissance.
Although these efforts partly aimed at improving circulation and providing military
defense, their prime objective was often the glorification of a ruler or a state. From the
16th century to the end of the 18th, many cities were laid out and built with
monumental splendour. The result may have pleased and inspired the citizens, but it
rarely contributed to their health, to the comfort of their homes, or to efficiency in
manufacturing, distribution, and marketing.
The New World absorbed the planning concepts of European absolutism to only a
limited degree. Pierre L’Enfant’s grandiose plan for Washington, D.C. (1791),
exemplified this transference, as did later City Beautiful projects, which aimed for
grandeur in the siting of public buildings but exhibited less concern for the efficiency
of residential, commercial, and industrial development. More influential on the layout
of U.S. cities, however, was the rigid grid plan of Philadelphia, designed by William
Penn (1682). This plan traveled west with the pioneers, since it was the simplest
method of dividing surveyed territory. Although it took no cognizance of topography,
it facilitated the development of land markets by establishing standard-sized lots that
could be easily bought and sold—even sight unseen.
In much of the world, city plans were based on the concept of a centrally located
public space. The plans differed, however, in their prescriptions for residential
development. In the United States the New England town grew around a central
commons; initially a pasture, it provided a focus of community life and a site for a
meetinghouse, tavern, smithy, and shops and was later reproduced in the central
squares of cities and towns throughout the country. Also from the New England town
came the tradition of the freestanding single-family house that became the norm for
most metropolitan areas. The central plaza, place, or square provided a focal point for
European city plans as well. In contrast to American residential development, though,
European domestic architecture was dominated by the attached house, while
elsewhere in the world the marketplace or bazaar rather than an open space acted as
the cynosure of cities. Courtyard-style domiciles characterized the Mediterranean
region, while compounds of small houses fenced off from the street formed many
African and Asian settlements. (See atrium.)

The era of industrialization

In both Europe and the United States, the surge of industry during the mid- and late
19th century was accompanied by rapid population growth, unfettered business
enterprise, great speculative profits, and public failures in managing the unwanted
physical consequences of development. Giant sprawling cities developed during this
era, exhibiting the luxuries of wealth and the meanness of poverty in sharp
juxtaposition. Eventually the corruption and exploitation of the era gave rise to the
Progressive movement, of which city planning formed a part. The slums, congestion,
disorder, ugliness, and threat of disease provoked a reaction in which sanitation
improvement was the first demand. Significant betterment of public health resulted
from engineering improvements in water supply and sewerage, which were essential
to the further growth of urban populations. Later in the century the first housing
reform measures were enacted. The early regulatory laws (such as Great Britain’s
Public Health Act of 1848 and the New York State Tenement House Act of 1879) set
minimal standards for housing construction. Implementation, however, occurred only
slowly, as governments did not provide funding for upgrading existing dwellings, nor
did the minimal rent-paying ability of slum dwellers offer incentives for landlords to
improve their buildings. Nevertheless, housing improvement occurred as new
structures were erected, and new legislation continued to raise standards, often in
response to the exposés of investigators and activists such as Jacob Riis in the United
States and Charles Booth in England.
Shelter for immigrants in a New York City tenement, photograph by Jacob Riis, 1888.Library of Congress, Washington,
D.C. (digital file no. 3a18572)

Also during the Progressive era, which extended through the early 20th century,
efforts to improve the urban environment emerged from recognition of the need for
recreation. Parks were developed to provide visual relief and places for healthful play
or relaxation. Later, playgrounds were carved out in congested areas, and facilities for
games and sports were established not only for children but also for adults, whose
workdays gradually shortened. Supporters of the parks movement believed that the
opportunity for outdoor recreation would have a civilizing effect on the working
classes, who were otherwise consigned to overcrowded housing and unhealthful
workplaces. New York’s Central Park, envisioned in the 1850s and designed by
architects Calvert Vaux and Frederick Law Olmsted, became a widely imitated model.
Among its contributions were the separation of pedestrian and vehicular traffic, the
creation of a romantic landscape within the heart of the city, and a demonstration that
the creation of parks could greatly enhance real-estate values in their surroundings.
(See landscape architecture.)

The Mall at Central Park, New York City, in 1902.Library of Congress, Washington D.C. (neg. no. LC-USZ62-121334 DLC)
Concern for the appearance of the city had long been manifest in Europe, in the
imperial tradition of court and palace and in the central plazas and great buildings of
church and state. In Paris during the Second Empire (1852–70), Georges-Eugène,
Baron Haussmann, became the greatest of the planners on a grand scale, advocating
straight arterial boulevards, advantageous vistas, and a symmetry of squares and
radiating roads. The resulting urban form was widely emulated throughout the rest of
continental Europe. Haussmann’s efforts went well beyond beautification, however;
essentially they broke down the barriers to commerce presented by medieval Paris,
modernizing the city so as to enable the efficient transportation of goods as well as the
rapid mobilization of military troops. His designs involved the demolition of
antiquated tenement structures and their replacement by new apartment houses
intended for a wealthier clientele, the construction of transportation corridors and
commercial space that broke up residential neighbourhoods, and the displacement of
poor people from centrally located areas. Haussmann’s methods provided a template
by which urban redevelopment programs would operate in Europe and the United
States until nearly the end of the 20th century, and they would extend their influence
in much of the developing world after that.
As the grandeur of the European vision took root in the United States through the City
Beautiful movement, its showpiece became the World’s Columbian Exposition of
1893, developed in Chicago according to principles set out by American architect
Daniel Burnham. The architectural style of the exposition established an ideal that
many cities imitated. Thus, the archetype of the City Beautiful—characterized by
grand malls and majestically sited civic buildings in Greco-Roman architecture—was
replicated in civic centres and boulevards throughout the country, contrasting with
and in protest against the surrounding disorder and ugliness. However, diffusion of
the model in the United States was limited by the much more restricted power of the
state (in contrast to European counterparts) and by the City Beautiful model’s weak
potential for enhancing businesses’ profitability.
Whereas Haussmann’s approach was especially influential on the European continent
and in the design of American civic centres, it was the utopian concept of the garden
city, first described by British social reformer Ebenezer Howard in his book Garden
Cities of To-Morrow (1902), that shaped the appearance of residential areas in the
United States and Great Britain. Essentially a suburban form, Howard’s garden city
incorporated low-rise homes on winding streets and culs-de-sac, the separation of
commerce from residences, and plentiful open space lush with greenery. Howard
called for a “cooperative commonwealth” in which rises in property values would be
shared by the community, open land would be communally held, and manufacturing
and retail establishments would be clustered within a short distance of residences.
Successors abandoned Howard’s socialist ideals but held on to the residential design
form established in the two new towns built during Howard’s lifetime (Letchworth
and Welwyn Garden City), ultimately imitating the garden city model of winding
roads and ample greenery in the forming of the modern suburban subdivision.
Perhaps the single most influential factor in shaping the physical form of the
contemporary city was transportation technology. The evolution of transport modes
from foot and horse to mechanized vehicles facilitated tremendous urban territorial
expansion. Workers were able to live far from their jobs, and goods could move
quickly from point of production to market. However, automobiles and buses rapidly
congested the streets in the older parts of cities. By threatening strangulation of traffic,
they dramatized the need to establish new kinds of orderly circulation systems.
Increasingly, transportation networks became the focus of planning activities,
especially as subway systems were constructed in New York, London, and Paris at the
beginning of the 20th century. To accommodate increased traffic, municipalities
invested heavily in widening and extending roads. (See also traffic control.)
Many city governments established planning departments during the first third of the
20th century. The year 1909 was a milestone in the establishment of urban planning as
a modern governmental function: it saw the passage of Britain’s first town-planning
act and, in the United States, the first national conference on city planning, the
publication of Burnham’s plan for Chicago, and the appointment of Chicago’s Plan
Commission (the first recognized planning agency in the United States, however, was
created in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1907). Germany, Sweden, and other European
countries also developed planning administration and law at this time.
The colonial powers transported European concepts of city planning to the cities of
the developing world. The result was often a new city planned according to Western
principles of beauty and separation of uses, adjacent to unplanned settlements both
new and old, subject to all the ills of the medieval European city. New Delhi, India,
epitomizes this form of development. Built according to the scheme devised by the
British planners Edwin Lutyens and Herbert Baker, it grew up cheek by jowl with the
tangled streets of Old Delhi. At the same time, the old city, while less salubrious,
offered its inhabitants a sense of community, historical continuity, and a functionality
more suited to their way of life. The same pattern repeated itself throughout the
British-ruled territories, where African capitals such as Nairobi, Kenya, and Salisbury,
Southern Rhodesia (now Harare, Zimbabwe), were similarly designed to
accommodate their white colonial rulers. Although the decorative motifs imposed by
France in its colonial capitals reflected a somewhat different aesthetic sensibility,
French planners likewise implanted broad boulevards and European-style housing in
their colonial outposts.
 The Presidential House (Rashtrapati Bhavan), formerly the Viceroy's House, New Delhi, India, designed by Sir
Edwin Lutyens, constructed 1913–30.

Urban form
Zoning and subdivision controls
As Western industrial cities rapidly expanded during the first part of the 20th century,
factories encroached upon residential areas, tenements crowded in among small
houses, and skyscrapers overshadowed other buildings. To preserve property values
and achieve economy and efficiency in the structure and arrangement of the city,
policy makers perceived a need to sort out incompatible activities, set some limits
upon building size, and protect established areas from despoilment. Master plans
prescribed the desired patterns of traffic circulation, bulk and density levels, and
necessary public improvements. Zoning regulations, first instituted in the early
decades of the 20th century, were the principal means for achieving these goals. They
set maximums for building breadth and height and designated acceptable
configurations of structures within demarcated areas (zones); most important in terms
of their effect on urban development, zoning codes segregated particular uses of urban
space. Thus, housing, manufacturing, and retail activities, which formerly intermixed,
now took place in different parts of the city. Although zoning protected residents from
adjacent noxious uses, it had the less-desirable further effect of forcing long trips to
work and increasing routine travel, thereby contributing to traffic congestion and
limiting activity in each part of the city to different times of the day. Some zoning
codes provoked disputes. Court cases in the United States challenged zoning
ordinances that, by requiring large single-residence dwellings on large lots, restricted
the construction of affordable homes for low-income households. In some states
courts struck down exclusionary zoning, and some remedial legislation was passed.
Parallel to the evolution of zoning in the United States was the development of
subdivision controls, which subjected the initial laying out of vacant land to public
regulation. These regulations affected the design of new developments and specified
that new streets had to conform to the overall city plan. Some subdivision ordinances
required property developers to provide the land needed for streets, playgrounds, and
school sites and to pay all or most of the cost of building these facilities.
New towns
After World War II a number of European countries, especially France, the
Netherlands, Germany, and the Soviet Union, undertook the building of new towns
(comprehensive new developments outside city centres) as governmental enterprises.
Concerned with what they regarded as too much density within urban areas,
governments constructed these new towns as a means of capturing the overspill from
cities within planned developments rather than allowing haphazard exurban growth.
Most of them, except in the Soviet Union, were primarily residential suburbs,
although some British towns such as Milton Keynes did succeed in attracting both
industry and population within low-rise conurbations. In Sweden the government
successfully constructed accessible high-rise residential suburbs with mixed-income
occupancy. Tapiola, in metropolitan Helsinki, Finland, was a low-rise ensemble
embodying many of Howard’s original ideas and incorporating architecture of the
highest order. New town development in France, Italy, Spain, and Belgium, however,
mostly resulted in large, uninviting high-rise residential projects for the working class
on the urban periphery.

Milton Keynes, England: water managementLearn about a proposed smartphone application to help residents of
Milton Keynes, England, use water more efficiently. © Open University

American postwar new town development depended largely on private initiative, with
Reston, Virginia; Columbia, Maryland; Irvine, California; and Seaside, Florida,
serving as some of the better-known examples. Preceding these efforts, however, were
a number of small, privately planned suburbs, including Riverside, Illinois, a planned
community outside Chicago that was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted in 1868–
69, and Radburn, New Jersey, built in 1929 according to plans conceived by Clarence
Stein and Henry Wright. There are a few outstanding examples of planned new cities
in such widely scattered places as India (where Le Corbusier designed Chandigarh),
the Middle East, and South America.
In Asia the emerging industrial economies of the post-World War II period produced
large, densely populated, congested metropolises. Some Asian governments addressed
the problems of rapid expansion through massive construction projects that
encompassed skyscraper office buildings, shopping malls, luxury apartments and
hotels, and new airports. In Shanghai, in the span of little more than a decade, the
Chinese government created Pudong New Area—a planned central business district
along with factories and residences in Pudong, across the Huangpu River from
Shanghai’s old downtown core. Many developing countries, however, are still
preoccupied with political and economic problems and have made little progress
toward establishing an environmental planning function capable of avoiding the
insalubrious conditions that characterized Western cities in the 19th century.

The scope of planning

Throughout the first half of the 20th century, the influence of planning broadened
within Europe as various national and local statutes increasingly guided new
development. European governments became directly involved with housing
provision for the working class, and decisions concerning the siting of housing
construction shaped urban growth. In the United States, local planning in the form of
zoning began with the 1916 New York City zoning law, but it was not until the Great
Depression of the 1930s that the federal government intervened in matters of housing
and land use. During World War II, military mobilization and the need to coordinate
defense production caused the development of the most extensive planning
frameworks ever seen in the United States and Britain. Although the wartime agencies
were demobilized after hostilities ended, they set a precedent for national economic
and demographic planning, which, however, was much more extensive in Britain than
in the United States.

Postwar approaches

During the postwar period European governments mounted massive housing and
rebuilding programs within their devastated cities. These programs were guided by
the principles of modernist planning promulgated through the Congrès International
d’Architecture Moderne (CIAM), based on the ideas of art and architectural historian
Siegfried Giedion, Swiss architect Le Corbusier, and the International school rooted in
Germany’s Bauhaus. High-rise structures separated by green spaces prevailed in the
developments built during this period. Their form reflected both the need to produce
large-scale, relatively inexpensive projects and the architects’ preference for models
that exploited new materials and technologies and could be replicated universally.
Government involvement in housing development gave the public sector a more direct
means of controlling the pattern of urban growth through its investments, rather than
relying on regulatory devices as a means of restricting private developers.
Within Britain the Greater London Plan of Leslie Patrick Abercrombie called for
surrounding the metropolitan area with an inviolate greenbelt, construction of new
towns beyond the greenbelt that would allow for lowering of population densities in
the inner city, and the building of circumferential highways to divert traffic from the
core. The concept of the sharp separation of city from country prevailed also
throughout the rest of Britain and was widely adopted in the Scandinavian countries,
Germany, and the Netherlands as well. In the United States the burgeoning demand
for housing stimulated the construction of huge suburban subdivisions. Construction
was privately planned and financed, but the federal government encouraged it through
tax relief for homeowners and government-guaranteed mortgages. Suburban planning
took place at the municipal level in the form of zoning and subdivision approval,
public development of sewerage and water systems, and schools. The lack of
metropolitan-wide planning jurisdictions resulted in largely unplanned growth and
consequent urban sprawl. Within central cities, however, the federal government
subsidized land clearance by local urban renewal authorities and the construction of
public housing (i.e., publicly owned housing for low-income people). Local
government restricted its own reconstruction activities to public facilities such as
schools, police stations, and recreation centres. It relied on private investors for the
bulk of new construction, simply indicating what would be desirable. Consequently,
many cleared sites lay vacant for decades when the private market did not respond.
Planning and government
The place of the city-planning function in the structure of urban government
developed in different ways in different countries. In many countries today, private
developers must obtain governmental permission in order to build. In the United
States, however, they may build “as of right” if their plans conform to the
municipality’s zoning code. On the European continent, where municipal
administration is strongly centralized, city planning occurs within the sphere of an
executive department with substantial authority. In the United Kingdom the local
planning authority is the elected local council, while a planning department acts in an
executive and advisory capacity. Developers denied permission to build can appeal
the verdict to the central government.
Although the mayor and council have final decision-making power in U.S. cities, an
independent planning commission of appointed members usually takes primary
responsibility for routine planning functions. Planning activity primarily consists of
the approval or disapproval of private development proposals. In larger cities the
commission has a staff reporting to it. During the period of a large, federally financed
urban renewal program in place from 1949 to 1974, most American cities had
powerful semi-independent urban renewal authorities that were responsible for
redevelopment planning. Some of these still exist, but in most places they either
became subordinate to the mayor or combined with economic development agencies,
which are often quasi-autonomous corporations. While they are appointed by the
mayor and council, these agencies usually report to an independent board of directors
drawn primarily from the business community. Especially as city government became
preoccupied with economic development planning, the agencies were authorized to
enter into development agreements with private investors (described below).
In some countries, most notably in northern Europe, national governments made city
planning part of their overall effort to deal with issues of growth and social welfare.
Even in the United States—where the initiative remained with local governments and
where metropolitan government never gained a significant foothold—the federal
government became involved with local planning issues through the creation and
execution of national housing and urban renewal legislation and through the
supervisory role of the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development,
established in 1965. As developing countries gained independence from colonial
powers in the 1960s and ’70s, planning structures became highly centralized within
the new national governments, which typically laid down the framework for city
planning.

Competing models

Starting in the 20th century, a number of urban planning theories came into
prominence and, depending on their popularity and longevity, influenced the
appearance and experience of the urban landscape. The primary goal of city planning
in the mid-20th century was comprehensiveness. An increasing recognition of the
interdependence of various aspects of the city led to the realization that land use,
transport, and housing needed to be designed in relation to each other. Developments
in other disciplines, particularly management science and operations research,
influenced academic planners who sought to elaborate a universal method—also
known as “the rational model”—whereby experts would evaluate alternatives in
relation to a specified set of goals and then choose the optimum solution. The rational
model was briefly hegemonic, but this scientific approach to public-policy making
was quickly challenged by critics who argued that the human consequences of
planning decisions could not be neatly quantified and added up.
The modernist model, involving wholesale demolition and reconstruction under the
direction of planning officials isolated from public opinion, came under fierce attack
both intellectually and on the ground. Most important in undermining support for the
modernist approach was urbanologist Jane Jacobs. In her book The Death and Life of
Great American Cities (1961), she sarcastically described redeveloped downtowns
and housing projects as comprising the “radiant garden city”—a sly reference to the
influence of Le Corbusier’s “towers in the park” (from his cité radieuse concept) and
Ebenezer Howard’s antiurban garden city. Jacobs criticized large-scale clearance
operations for destroying the complex social fabric of cities and imposing an inhuman
orderliness. Rather than seeing high population density as an evil, she regarded it as
an important factor in urban vitality. She considered that a lively street life made cities
attractive, and she promoted diversity of uses and population groups as a principal
value in governing urban development. According to Jacobs, urban diversity
contributes to sustainable growth, whereas undifferentiated urban settings tend to
depend upon unsustainable exploitation, exhibited in the extreme form by lumber or
mining towns that collapse after the valuable resources have been removed. Jacobs
was not alone in her criticism. Beginning in the 1960s, urban social movements, at
times amounting to insurrection, opposed the displacements caused by large-scale
modernist planning. In cities throughout the United States and Europe, efforts at
demolishing occupied housing provoked fierce opposition. Within developing
countries, governmental attempts to destroy squatter settlements stimulated similar
counteroffensives.
By the end of the 20th century, planning orthodoxy in the United States and Europe
began to take Jacobs’s arguments into account. New emphasis was placed on the
rehabilitation of existing buildings, historical preservation, adaptive reuse of obsolete
structures, mixed-use development, and the “24-hour city”—i.e., districts where a
variety of functions would create around-the-clock activity. Major new projects, while
still sometimes involving demolition of occupied housing or commercial structures,
increasingly came to be built on vacant or “brownfields” sites such as disused railroad
yards, outmoded port facilities, and abandoned factory districts. Within developing
countries, however, the modernist concepts of the earlier period still retained a
significant hold. Thus, for example, China, in preparation for the Beijing Olympics of
2008, engaged in major displacement of its urban population to construct roads and
sports facilities, and it likewise developed new commercial districts by building high-
rise structures along the functionalist Corbusian model.

Contemporary planning
The ways in which planning operated at the beginning of the 21st century did not
conform to a single model of either a replicable process or a desirable outcome.
Within Europe and the United States, calls for a participatory mode—one that
involved residents most likely to be affected by change in the planning process for
their locales—came to be honoured in some cities but not in others. The concept of
participatory planning has spread to the rest of the world, although it remains limited
in its adoption. Generally, the extent to which planning involves public participation
reflects the degree of democracy enjoyed in each location. Where government is
authoritarian, so is planning. Within a more participatory framework, the role of
planner changes from that of expert to that of mediator between different groups, or
“stakeholders.” This changed role has been endorsed by theorists supporting a concept
of “communicative rationality.” Critics of this viewpoint, however, argue that the
process may suppress innovation or simply promote the wishes of those who have the
most power, resulting in outcomes contrary to the public interest. They are also
concerned that the response of “not in my backyard” (“NIMBYism”) precludes
building affordable housing and needed public facilities if neighborhood residents are
able to veto any construction that they fear will lower their property values.
In sum, the enormous variety of types of projects on which planners work, the lack of
consensus over processes and goals, and the varying approaches taken in different
cities and countries have produced great variation within contemporary urban
planning. Nevertheless, although the original principle of strict segregation of uses
continues to prevail in many places, there is an observable trend toward mixed-use
development—particularly of complementary activities such as retail, entertainment,
and housing—within urban centres.
Changing objectives

Although certain goals of planning, such as protection of the environment, remain

important, emphases among the various objectives have changed. In particular,
economic development planning, especially in old cities that have suffered from the
decline of manufacturing, has come to the fore. Planners responsible for economic
development behave much like business executives engaged in marketing: they
promote their cities to potential investors and evaluate physical development in terms
of its attractiveness to capital and its potential to create jobs, rather than by its
healthfulness or conformity to a master plan. Such planners work to achieve
development agreements with builders and firms that will contribute to local
commerce. Especially in the United States and the United Kingdom, planning
agencies have concerned themselves with promoting economic development and have
become involved in negotiating deals with private developers. In the United Kingdom
these can include the trading of planning permission for “planning gain” or other
community benefits; in other words, developers may be allowed to build in return for
providing funds, facilities, or other benefits to the community. In the United States,
where special permission is not required if the building fits into the zoning ordinance,
deals usually involve some kind of public subsidy. Typical development agreements
involve offering land, tax forgiveness, or regulatory relief to property developers in
return for a commitment to invest in an area or to provide amenities. An agreement
may also be struck between the city and a private firm in which the firm agrees to
move into or remain in an area in return for various concessions. Many such
arrangements generate controversy, especially if a municipality exercises the right of
eminent domain and takes privately owned land for development projects.
A late 20th-century movement in planning, variously called new urbanism, smart
growth, or neotraditionalism, has attracted popular attention through its alternative
views of suburban development. Reflecting considerable revulsion against urban
sprawl, suburban traffic congestion, and long commuting times, this movement has
endorsed new construction that brings home, work, and shopping into proximity,
encourages pedestrian traffic, promotes development around mass-transit nodes, and
mixes types of housing. Within the United Kingdom, Prince Charles became a strong
proponent of neotraditional planning through his sponsorship of Poundbury, a new
town of traditional appearance in Dorset. Similar efforts in the United States, where
growth on the metropolitan periphery continued unabated, chiefly arose as limited
areas of planned development amid ongoing dispersal and sprawl. Although the
movement’s primary influence has been in new suburban development, it has also
been applied to the redevelopment of older areas within the United Kingdom and the
United States. Paternoster Square in London, adjacent to Saint Paul’s Cathedral, and a
number of HOPE VI schemes in the United States (built under a federal program that
demolished public housing projects and replaced them with mixed-income
developments) have been erected in accordance with neotraditional or new urbanist
ideas.
New pluralism

Universal principles regarding appropriate planning have increasingly broken down as

a consequence of several trends. First, intellectual arguments against a “one plan fits
all” approach have gained ascendancy. The original consensus on the form of orderly
development embodying separation of uses and standardized construction along
modernist lines has been replaced by sensitivity to local differences and greater
willingness to accept democratic input. Second, it has become widely recognized that,
even where the imposition of standards might be desirable, many places lack the
resources to attain them. Within the developing world, informal markets and
settlements, formerly condemned by planners, now appear to be inevitable and often
appropriate in serving the needs of poor communities. Planners in these contexts,
influenced by international aid institutions, increasingly endeavour to upgrade
squatter settlements and street markets rather than eliminate them in the name of
progress. Third, political forces espousing the free market have forced planners to
seek market-based solutions to problems such as pollution and the provision of public
services. This has led to privatization of formerly publicly owned facilities and
utilities and to the trading of rights to develop land and to emit pollutants in place of a
purely regulatory approach. (See also environmental engineering; environmental law.)
Planning in its origins had an implicit premise that a well-designed, comprehensively
planned city would be a socially ameliorative one. In other words, it tended toward
environmental determinism. The goals of planning have subsequently become more
modest, and the belief that the physical environment can profoundly affect social
behaviour has diminished. Nevertheless, planning as practice and discipline relies
upon public policy as an instrument for producing a more equitable and attractive
environment that, while not radically altering human behaviour, nonetheless
contributes to improvements in the quality of life for a great number of peopl