Urban Design & Planning Tom Turner University of Greenwich School of Architecture and Construction 0208 331 9100 Email [email protected]@gre.ac.uk.

Urban Design & Planning

Tom TurnerUniversity of Greenwich

School of Architecture and Construction

0208 331 9100Email [email protected]

Website www.landscapeplanning.gre.ac.uk

Questions

IS TOWN DESIGN = URBAN DESIGN?

ARE THEY = TOWN PLANNING?

Origins

• ‘Town’ is a noun and ‘town design’ would be the art of designing a physical object. One of the UK’s modernist architect-planner-landscape architects (Sir Frederick Gibberd) wrote a book on Town Design

• A ‘City’ is a place where people, and buildings, behave in ‘civil’, ‘polite’ or ‘considerate’ manner to each other

• ‘Urban’ (from the Latin urbs, meaning city), is an adjective so that ‘urban design’ is the art of making a place more ‘city-like’

• ‘Urban Design’ is more process than product• Therefore URBAN DESIGN is not = TOWN DESIGN

Town Planning

Even if not ‘designed’ in advance, all towns have a plan. Lets look at some historic examples and see what influenced their ‘plans’ .

• Catal Huyuk, 6,000 BCE• Iron Age Hut, 600 BCE• Greek-Roman Town, 79 CE• Medieval City, c1300 CE• Baroque City, c1750 CE

[BCE=Before Common Era CE=Common Era]

A City c6000BCE

The world’s oldest city is said to be Catal Huyuk (pronounced ‘chatal hooyook’) in Central Turkey. Access to the dwellings was from roof level. Living here, you had to behave in a much more ‘civic’ manner than living in a rough hut on a bare hill.

Iron Age Camp c 500BCThis is how people who did not live in ‘cities’ lived, all over Europe, until the Roman conquest. The only ‘planning’ principle was a ring of defences, to make a Hill Fort

The City in 79 AD: Pompeii

Pompeii was buried by Vesuvius and can represent most of the ‘planned’ cities in Europe from 500 BC to 500 AD, as well as most of the colonial cities (eg in South America) from 1452-1700 AD). It was a walled city, designed to be able to defend itself.

Photographs of PompeiiThe main features of

Pompeii are exactly as described by Vitruvius

• A grid of streets• Pavements +

stepping stones• Water supply• Drainage system• Public buildings at

important positions• No windows• Internal courts

The Medieval City (c1300)The main consideration was defense, provided by a high wall and narrow streets.

Nuremberg in 1516 (below, from Benevolo) The city was founded in 1040 AD.

Planning: origins• Now let us consider the word planning• It comes from the activity of drawing a ‘plan’ in 2 dimensions on

a flat surface• Maps and Plans have a very important place in human history.• They enable the organisation of land, and travel, and the creation

of empires.• This type of ‘Planning’ produced the Baroque City

The Baroque City c 1750Baroque cities were dominated by stars of avenues, designed to glorify the autocrat and facilitate the movement of soldiers and the firing of canon at revolting peasants,

Industrial City (c1900)(=baroque city+more blds+railways+parks+sewers

Organising Principles: mostly single–objective

• Catal Huyuk, 6,000 BCE: Defense against nomadic herders

• Iron Age Hut, 600 BCE: Defense against other agriculturalists

• Greek-Roman Town, 79 CE: Defense against armies• Medieval City, c1300 CE: Defense against knights• Baroque City, c1750 CE: Defense against revolutionaries• Industrial City, c1900: Defense against cholera• 21st Century City, c2000: One could argue that the new

organising principle will be Defense against crime

Interim Conclusions

• City planning has been dominated by considerations of Engineering + Security

• When this fact was appreciated (eg by the Viennese architect Camillo Sitte The art of building cities, 1889) it led to a campaign for architects to take responsibility for ‘Town Design’, ‘Civic Design’ and the ‘City Beautiful Movement’.

• Architects tended to see cities as ‘architecture writ large’, with buildings instead of rooms and streets instead of corridors. It was a bit like arguing that a Beautiful Body is the main thing in life

‘Town design’

Planning: Modern & Post-Modern

• Marx and Lenin believed that all economic and social activity could and should be planned.

• It did not work. • But it does not follow that ‘planning’ is

impossible.• Rather, planning is something to be done by many

organisations in many ways for many reasons.• It has changed from a Modernist Activity to a

Post-Modernist Activity.

There was also a tendency to draw plans on white paper

‘Existing Site’ Drawing

City as landscape

I wrote that (p.103) “Too often, architects have seen the land on which they build as sheets of white parchment on which to write new projects. In reality, every work of architecture is a conversion of the existing environment. When writing on the parchments of history, new buildings should converse with the stones, listen to the wind and speak to the flowers. The languages of the post-modern environment are of prime importance”.

I also, bravely, wrote a chapter on The Tragedy of Feminine Design

The Tragedy of Feminine DesignThis illustration shows the ‘natural’ roles of men and women

This illustration shows the ‘natural’ roles of men and women on design

projects

Here we see the brilliant results of a ‘male’ (hunter) approach to urban design

Here is the result of arrogant male urbanism (Pruitt-Igoe, July 15, 1972 at 3.32pm)

• ‘Happily, we can date the death of Modern Architecture to a precise moment in time’ (Charles Jencks The Language of Post-Modern Architecture, Part 1, Chapter 1)

Now lets turn to the animal kingdom

• The Male Emperor (left) shows great prowess in puffing out his chest

• The Female Empress looks more thoughtful

Here is a cow - slain by the ‘hunter’

2-dimensional views of the city

• From Modern Town and Country Planning

• (Thomas Adams, 1932, revised by JWR Adams, 1952)

• Thomas Adams did a plan for New York City in the 1930s

2-dimensions ->3-dimensions

Frontispiece to: Modern Town and Country Planning (Thomas Adams, 1932, revised by JWR Adams, 1952)

The trouble with males…..

“….is that they only ever want one thing”

The Tragedy of Feminine Design

• “The tragedy of feminine design is that it receives so little official support” (Turner, T., City as landscape p.132)

• Does anyone agree?

• We need urban design to based on wisdom, pluralism, subtlety, common sense

Levi-Strauss Landscape• The structuralist philosopher was interested in surface structures and deep structures• He believed you must look beneath the surface to understand the world• One then finds all sorts of sophisticated processes: geology, hydrology, ecology, colour,

emotion, ownership, tradition, trust,

Rubber Bands

Overlapping Zones

Venn Diagrams of City Planning 1

Venn Diagrams of City Planning 2

Here is what Modernism did

to rivers

The four stages of scientific ‘river’ planning. Multiple uses are converted to a single use. The fish dies.

Modernist/Scientific Road Planning

Planning with GIS• Just as the political basis for planning has

changed so the technology of planning has changed.

• The 2-dimensional ‘plan’ has been replaced by the multi-dimensional ‘Geographical Information System’

• I have thrown out my rapidographs and given up Autocad

• Perhaps we should speak of ‘Gis-ing’ instead of ‘Planning’

• The chief theorist of this approach is the Scots-American Ian McHarg

McHarg Richmond Parkway (Ch4)The great strength of the method was the use of descriptive

overlays AND evaluative overlays

McHarg Richmond Parkway (Ch4)

• ‘X-Ray’ Overlay Route Determination

McHarg Diagram

This method, apparently to logical, has had a bad influence on GIS-based planning.

Planning by Layers

• Layers are needed for future plans, as well as information about the present

• Layers represent sets of ideas (eg ‘geology’)

• Layers can translate directly into visual images

Hyde Park Montage (Ben Jarrett)

• Historical Layer + Lifestyle Layer

Video Wall (Ben Jarrett)• Historical Layer (Speaker’s Corner) + Futuristic

Layer (‘Internationalism’)

An error• We must not think that GIS, being a more

powerful technology, gives more power to those who use the technology. At best, GIS is a ‘decision support system’. Ian McHarg was wrong to suggest that it can be a ‘decision making system’ and that ‘anyone using the same method will come to the same conclusion’.

• But McHarg is, rightly, recognised as a pioneer by the GIS community and many share the old scientific-modernist dream of (mad!) scientists taking over from politicians as the ultimate decision-makers.

• It was a non-democratic/autocratic procedure

Where? and

What?

What if?

Both the following procedures allow questions land to be planned to protect and create Public Goods

• The Environmental Assessment (EA) System

• The Development Control system (UK)

Landscape Assessment & Design

An opportunity to seize

• Joining the word ‘Landscape’ with a GIS approach to ‘Planning’ gives us a great opportunity.

• We can use GIS to conserve and improve the ‘environment’ with this word used to describe a very wide range of objectives. They relate to:

• NATURAL PROCESSES• SOCIAL PROCESSES• AESTHETIC IDEAS• DESIGN ARCHETYPES

Pattern Analysis Diagrams

PAKILDA

Pattern-Assisted-Knowledge-Intensive-Landscape-Design-Approach

Zone of Visual

Influence ZVI

Skyline Planning

Examples

I will finish by looking at Hydrology as an example of a subject for Pattern Analysis and Design

Hydrological Planning

Planning for the Song Thrush

Water Infiltration (Recharge) Policy(Jessica Read)

Water Detention (Retention) Policy (Jessica Read)

Cities as Concepts

One needs a concept of what a city IS in order to plan its future.

Landscape Planning: BookCover

Statutory & Non-Statutory Planning

• The UK enacted the Town and Country Planning Act in 1947

• Since then every municipality has had a statutory duty to prepare a Local Plan

• This has done no good at all for planning Public Open Space

• Much more has been achieved with Non-Statutory plans

• This is very encouraging!• ‘The pen is mightier than the sword’ & ‘The idea

is mightier than the law’

Conclusions

• ‘Planning’ is an inherently Modernist activity. It suggests: One Authority; One Way; One Plan; One Result [The ‘International Modern’ City]

• ‘Urban Design’ is a more Post-Modern conception. It is multi-cultural, suggesting: Many Authorities; Many Ways; Many Plans; Many Results.

• This requires Many Layers & Many Approaches & Many Professions

• A final question: What should the 21st Century City Symbolise?

Symbolism

• Mumford sees the hieroglyph (left) as a defensive enclosure with a crossroads dividing the city into four quarters and comments that ‘if this is in fact a symbolic plan it would be the best possible symbol for the classic city’

• Osiris tomb chamber (centre), covered by a mound and representing The Creation (an island coming out of the primordial waters)

• The Baroque City was a symbol of the Sun King & autocracy

• What should the twenty-first century city symbolise?