Comprehensive City Planning

Introduction & Explanation

Melville Branch

• Editorial: Routledge
• Año: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351177269
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Architecture
• Categoría: Aménagement urbain et paysager

The author's classic text focuses on the development of cities and how they have been planned and managed through the ages. The tie between land use and municipal administration is explored throughout. Topics include the roots of city management and planning; physical and socioeconomic views of cities; how city planning works within city government; the ties between planning and city politics; zoning and urban design; new towns; and regional planning. This work is the culmination of the author's long career in planning practice. His involvement in government, business, and academics means this book relates to a wide variety of fields. And the author writes in a clear, nontechnical style. Whether you're a city official, a professional, or a concerned citizen, you'll find this a cohesive, readable, and authoritative introduction to the field of planning.

CHAPTER 1

UNDERLYING ASSUMPTIONS

Urban and regional planning, municipal operating planning, management planning, and public administration planning should be treated as comparable activities.

THE ADJECTIVE comprehensive signifies that this highest, most complex, and most difficult form of city planning encompasses conceptually and analytically the principal elements of the city that determine its current activities and future development. It is planning for the city as a whole, rather than for one or several of its constituent functions such as water supply and distribution, police and fire protection, vehicular and pedestrian traffic, or any one of the many particular activities of local government. Engineers and scientists call it system planning because it is broader and more inclusive than subsystem planning which integrates several municipal functions that are closely interrelated. For example: those that protect persons and property from the different dangers to which they are subjected, dispose of different kinds of liquid and solid waste, or supply the city with energy generated in different ways at separate locations.

Because normally no distinction is made between the terms city planning and urban planning, either in the literature of planning or in everyday use, they are considered synonymous in this book. Strictly speaking, however, city means a municipality legally established in the United States by a state government which designates its spatial jurisdiction and legal powers. “Cities are creatures of the state.” In this book cities refer to any settlement of several thousand people or more. Urban refers to areas built up with structures and streets to a density of concentrated settlement requiring more extensive utility and other supportive services than are needed in rural areas.

Metropolitan areas around the world indude a number of separate municipalities or districts, each legally, institutionally, culturally, or historically distinct. As cities have grown, extending farther and farther into the surrounding countryside, metropolitan urban areas have been built up that encompass many municipal jurisdictions or distinct districts with boundaries difficult or impossible to discern on the ground. Large metropolises may include 40 or more such communities, making it difficult to achieve the coordination necessary for comprehensive metropolitan planning.

There are basic requirements for the successful management and planning of all urban places. City planning is most similar in communities at comparable stages of development, whether they are primitive settlements or large cities incorporating the latest knowledge and technology. Individual characteristics and important differences between cities, discussed in the next chapter, are identified and taken into account since they shape the precise nature and form of city planning.

This book focuses on city planning in the United States, with emphasis on the California experience. It is the state most active and influential in the practice and procedural advancement of urban planning in the United States. In part this is because the people who have moved to California and made it the most populous state in the union are adventurous, less inhibited in their new home, willing to experiment and innovate. As a consequence, what happens in California often foreshadows what happens elsewhere in the nation. Total treatment of the diversity of city planning experience and practice among the full 50 states would require several lengthy volumes and would likely be more confusing than revealing of fundamental facts and considerations.

Because the concept and practice of city planning in the United States are undergoing fundamental change, more than the presently existing situation must be covered. The administrative, managerial, and physical planning roots of municipal planning are converging. The consequences of their merger should be considered part of the forthcoming substantive content of city planning.

Since earliest times, communities have required the municipal services that make possible these concentrations of people within relatively small areas on the ground. Potable water must be available at the site or imported. Food and supplies produced elsewhere must be brought in and distributed. Sufficient waste disposal and sanitation must be provided to keep sickness, disease, and potential plague within tolerable limits. Police and fire protection must allow the urban activity and intercommunication that make possible the urban concentrations that constitute cities.

Throughout the 7,000 or more years of urban history these essential conditions have been provided by officials designated by the ruling authority. They were the predecessors of the city managers, public administrators, and other local government officials who conduct the day-to-day operational affairs of municipalities throughout the world today. The activities of these officials are represented substantively and professionally by the educational fields of public administration, business management, medicine, engineering, law; the many specific programs concerned with public finance and taxation, health and safety, local legislation and regulation, environmental quality; and the almost limitless range of knowledge and activity involved in municipal operations, management, and planning.

The other historical root of city planning as it is practiced today in the United States and parts of Europe and Asia has had to do with the use of land within the municipality, primary transportation routes, and various large-scale projects. From earliest times, the use of land in cities has been restricted by rudimentary forms of zoning separating different classes of people or types of activity. Urban projects were the product of the desires and intervention of the highest authority: tribal chiefs in primitive settlements, legislative bodies in republican Athens and ancient Rome, emperors in imperial Rome and until the present century in imperial China, kings and lesser royalty in Renaissance France, or czars in Russia. Many of their personal projects—palaces with extensive gardens, boulevards and esplanades, temples and churches, parks, city squares, civic centers—took years to complete because of their size, grand design, and cost.

This second type of city planning was conducted by architects, landscape architects, and engineers carrying out the wishes of the ruling authority. They are the predecessors of those engaged in urban and regional planning today, many of whom received their advanced education in one of the colleges and universities giving graduate degrees in this field. Others are graduates in disciplines integrally involved in the broadening scope of city planning, such as engineering, one of the social sciences, geography, law. Some come from arts and letters. Most are members of national and international associations of practicing urban and regional planners.

In both of these historical roots of city planning economic and social concerns were unimportant. The populace was subservient to royal or ecclesiastical control. Religious beliefs supported unquestioned acceptance of higher authority. Personal armies not only ensured civil order but could be used to acquire additional wealth by conquering additional territory. Over the years, however, the municipal administrators representing one path of historical development incorporated in their operational planning those socioeconomic considerations that have to be taken into account in providing essential urban services.

Urban and regional planners, representing the second path of historical development, did not follow suit. Only recently have they become concerned with socioeconomic factors. In addition, the limited physical city planning they practice has remained distinct from the continuous operational planning of the regular municipal departments. Separate city planning commissions with part-time citizen members, supported by a planning staff or department, conduct urban and regional planning by recommending to the city council legislative actions concerned mainly with land use.

This separation of planning activities is not present to the same degree in cities abroad. And it will gradually disappear in the United States as it becomes increasingly clear that city planning cannot be effective as long as administrative-operational and land use-project planning are conducted separately. The artificial distinction between the two that has existed since the turn of the century is no longer feasible.

For these reasons urban and regional land use planning, municipal operational planning, management planning, and public administrative planning should be treated as comparable activities. They constitute in fact one combinational endeavor because longer range plans emerge from and affect day-to-day operations, and an operating need or crisis may require immediate modification or complete revision of longer range plans, policies, or objectives. This book may be the first treatment of these different participants as parts of what is in fact a common endeavor.

… most people do not appreciate just how ill-equipped our government is to perform long-range planning. The most able officials are constantly involved in the meeting of day-to-day crises … investigations, budgetary problems, and administrative detail, with little time to devote to the long-range problems…. (Kahn, 1962)

Nor is it widely recognized that legislators avoid longer range planning because it necessarily involves commitments with respect to the future that can operate to their disadvantage at reelection time, when public attitudes and desires may have changed. It is also a difficult and demanding responsibility. In large part this is why comprehensive planning has not yet been achieved at any of the three levels of government in the United States.

However, certain developments are forcing cities to plan more effectively if they are to continue to function successfully and avoid a form of urbanwide managerial “gridlock.” These include rapid growth, higher urban densities, increasing operational complexity, technological advances requiring a high order of functional planning, and worsening environmental pollution. Comprehensive planning in the future will include a city planning center containing relevant information, closely integrated planning by all municipal agencies, reflecting continuous concern by legislators with city planning as one of their primary responsibilities, and their active participation in its successful effectuation.

Reference materials relevant to comprehensive city planning are associated with public administration, urban and regional planning, business management, engineering, and most of the technical and social sciences. Because of this diversity, explanatory references are most useful for the decision makers and staff directly responsible for city planning. It would be impossible for them to read, comprehend, and apply in their urban analysis corroborative material supporting the multitude of facts and opinions involved in comprehensive planning. They must rely on others for most specialized knowledge. In keeping with the fundamental nature of the planning process as an inherent aspect of human activity operating continuously over time, useful references may date from any period of time.

The most valuable substantive material relates to those elements and aspects of city planning that are universal in nature rather than immediate and temporary concerns, although the latter may be all-important at times. It is these fundamental concerns and issues underlying transient developments that are of lasting value and continuing relevance as advancements are made.

There can be no doubt that the subject of cities is important. They are, of course, the dwelling and work places for larger and larger percentages of the world population, providing opportunities or hope for personal betterment which have attracted people from the countryside throughout the ages (Wilsher, 1975). Seventy-five percent of the world population may be living in urban communities within the next century. Even if rural migration to cities is reversed at some future time, the societal functions now performed by larger cities will be transferred to smaller but more numerous communities in the countryside (Herbers, 1983). Urban places have always been centers of intellectual, cultural, and commercial activity. Concentrations of people stimulate ideas in art, science, commerce, government, and every other human interest and endeavor. Spatial proximity and easy intercommunication promote creative energy.

Large cities are the most complex of human organisms. The concentration of people and their myriad activities means a multitude of structures, utilities, services, governmental and market mechanisms. Cities are also places where the inevitable problems of society are intensified and most apparent. The stresses and strains inherent in human activities are exacerbated and highlighted in urban environments. The absolute dependence on food, energy, and critical supplies produced elsewhere makes large cities the most sensitive, vulnerable, and volatile units of society—subject to sudden and extensive disruption.

For these reasons, cities could not exist without the planning required for their operational components to function successfully. But municipal management must do much more if it is not only to conduct operations most effectively, but avoid or ameliorate forthcoming problems, meet anticipated needs, and attain longer range objectives. The development and application of this comprehensive managerial capability will represent a significant achievement in itself, and both confirm and exemplify what can and should be accomplished in planning at the state and federal levels of government. Most such advances occur first at the local level, where needs are most immediately felt, problems are most directly apparent, and the complex of components and considerations to be taken into account is most clearly conceptualized. Cities are the best seedbeds for advances in the art, science, and practice of comprehensive planning.

CITATIONS

[1]  Herbers, John, “Major Cities Ringed by Suburbs Yielding To Sprawl of Small Metropolitan Areas,” The New York Times, 8 July 1983, p. 9. [2]  Kahn, Herman, Thinking About the Unthinkable (Horizon), 1962, p. 32. [3]  Wilsher, Peter, “Everyone, Everywhere, Is Moving To the Cities,” The New York Times, 22 June 1975, p. IX, 3.

SELECTED REFERENCES

[1]  Branch, Melville C., Comprehensive Planning, General Theory and Principles, Pacific Palisades, CA (Palisades Publishers), 1983, 203 pp. [2]  ___________________________ , Continuous City Planning, Integrating Municipal Management and City Planning, New York (Wiley), 1981, 181 pp. [3]  Caiden, Gerald E., Public Administration, Pacific Palisades, CA (Palisades Publishers), Second Edition, 1982, 321 pp. [4]  George, Claude S. History of Management Thought, Englewood Cliffs, NJ (Prentice-Hall), Second Edition, 1972, 223 pp. [5]  Hamilton, John J. Government by Commission, or the Dethronement of the City Boss, New York (Funk & Wagnalls), 1911, 285 pp. [6]  Krueckeberg, Donald A. (Editor), Introduction to Planning History in the United States, New Brunswick, NJ (Rutgers University), 1983, 302 pp. [7]  Lepawsky, Albert, Administration, The Art and Science of Organization and Management, New York (Knopf), 1955, 669 pp. [8]  Pfiffner, John M. and Frank P. Sherwood, Administrative Organization, Englewood Cliffs, NJ (Prentice-Hall), 1960, 481 pp.

Some 2,500 years ago when Greeks were busy fighting Persians at places like Thermopylae and Marathon, Zapotec Indians across the Atlantic began building a great city, possibly the first in the New World. The job called for reshaping Monte Albán, a 1,500-foot hill overlooking the Valley of Oaxaca in central Mexico. Cutting into the hillsides, workers constructed hundreds of terraces, stepped platforms with retaining walls designed mainly for plain and fancy residences. For the seats of the mighty, the palaces and temples and major administrative centers, they leveled the entire hilltop, creating the main plaza on a 55-acre super-terrace perhaps eight times bigger than St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican.

Monte Albán endured for more than a millennium. It housed 20,000 to 30,000 persons at its height, and lost its position as a regional capital some seven to eight centuries before the arrival of invaders from imperial Spain.

John E. Pfeiffer, “The mysterious rise and decline of Monte Albán,” Smithsonian, February, 1980.

CHAPTER 2

CITIES IN HISTORY

A look back in history confirms the two roots of comprehensive city planning. It also reveals how often history repeats itself, achieving a regulatory advance that is often discarded or forgotten, to be replaced years or centuries later by the same type of restriction.

HUMAN SETTLEMENTS have existed for many thousands of years to provide the greater security of numbers, various forms of group support, and familial relationships that perpetuate the species. In earliest times they were temporary places to live, occupied as long as the surrounding countryside provided water and food. As developments in agricultural production and animal husbandry allowed sedentary life to replace nomadic wandering, permanent communities were established. These increased in number and size with the development of selective agricultural cultivation, a written language, and the specialization of labor and leadership that permitted expanded commercial activity, handicrafts, and fabrication.

Physical-Spatial Design

Even the most primitive settlements displayed forethought in their physical-spati...