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Urban planning (also called city planning in some contexts) is the process of developing and land use and the built environment, including air, water, and the infrastructure passing into and out of , such as transportation, , and distribution networks, and their accessibility. Traditionally, urban planning followed a top-down approach in the physical layout of human settlements. The primary concern was the public welfare, which included considerations of efficiency, sanitation, protection and use of the environment, as well as taking account of effects of the master plans on the social and economic activities. Over time, urban planning has adopted a focus on the social and environmental "" that focuses on using planning as a tool to improve the health and well-being of people and maintain sustainability standards. In the early 21st century, urban planning experts such as Jane Jacobs called on urban planners to take resident experiences and needs more into consideration.
Urban planning answers questions about how people will live, work, and play in a given area and thus, guides orderly development in urban, and . Although predominantly concerned with the planning of settlements and communities, urban planners are also responsible for planning the efficient transportation of goods, resources, people, and waste; the distribution of basic necessities such as water and electricity; a sense of Social exclusion and opportunity for people of all kinds, culture and needs; economic growth or business development; improving health and conserving areas of natural environmental significance that actively contributes to reduction in emissions as well as protecting heritage structures and built environments. Since most urban planning teams consist of highly educated individuals that work for city governments, recent debates focus on how to involve more community members in city planning processes.
Urban planning is an interdisciplinary field that includes civil engineering, architecture, human geography, social science and . Urban planner use research and analysis, strategic thinking, engineering architecture, urban design, public consultation, policy recommendations, implementation and management. It is closely related to the field of urban design and some urban planners provide designs for streets, parks, buildings and other urban areas.Van Assche, K.; Beunen, R.; Duineveld, M.; & de Jong, H. (2013). "Co-evolutions of planning and design: Risks and benefits of design perspectives in planning systems". Planning Theory, 12(2), 177–198. Urban planners work with the cognate fields of civil engineering, landscape architecture, architecture, and public administration to achieve strategic, policy and sustainability goals. Early urban planners were often members of these cognate fields though in the 21st century, urban planning is a separate, independent professional discipline. The discipline of urban planning is the broader category that includes different sub-fields such as land-use planning, zoning, economic development, environmental planning, and transportation planning. Creating the plans requires a thorough understanding of penal codes and zonal codes of planning.
Another important aspect of urban planning is that the range of urban planning projects include the large-scale master planning of empty sites or Greenfield projects as well as small-scale interventions and refurbishments of existing structures, buildings and public spaces. Pierre Charles L'Enfant in Washington, D.C., Daniel Burnham in Chicago, Lúcio Costa in Brasília and Georges-Eugene Haussmann in Paris planned cities from scratch, and Robert Moses and Le Corbusier refurbished and transformed cities and neighborhoods to meet their ideas of urban planning.
The ancient Rome also used orthogonal plans for their cities. City planning in the Roman world was developed for military defense and public convenience. The spread of the Roman Empire subsequently spread the ideas of urban planning. As the Roman Empire declined, these ideas slowly disappeared. However, many cities in Europe still held onto the planned Roman city center. Cities in Europe from the 9th to 14th centuries, often grew organically and sometimes chaotically. But in the following centuries with the coming of the Renaissance many new cities were enlarged with newly planned extensions. From the 15th century on, much more is recorded of urban design and the people that were involved. In this period, theoretical treatises on architecture and urban planning start to appear in which theoretical questions around planning the main lines, ensuring plans meet the needs of the given population and so forth are addressed and designs of towns and cities are described and depicted. During the Enlightenment period, several European rulers ambitiously attempted to redesign capital cities. During the Second French Empire, Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann, under the direction of Napoleon III, redesigned the city of Paris into a more modern capital, with long, straight, wide boulevards.
Planning and architecture went through a paradigm shift at the turn of the 20th century. The industrialized cities of the 19th century grew at a tremendous rate. The evils of urban life for the working poor were becoming increasingly evident as a matter of public concern. The laissez-faire style of government management of the economy, in fashion for most of the Victorian era, was starting to give way to a New Liberalism that championed intervention on the part of the poor and disadvantaged. Around 1900, theorists began developing urban planning models to mitigate the consequences of the industrial age, by providing citizens, especially factory workers, with healthier environments. The following century would therefore be globally dominated by a central planning approach to urban planning, not representing an increment in the overall quality of the urban realm.
At the beginning of the 20th century, urban planning began to be recognized as a separate profession. The Town and Country Planning Association was founded in 1899 and the first academic course in Great Britain on urban planning was offered by the University of Liverpool in 1909.Fainstein, Susan S. In the 1920s, the ideas of modernism and uniformity began to surface in urban planning, and lasted until the 1970s. The architect Le Corbusier presented the Ville radieuse in 1933 as a city that grows up in the form of towers which offered a solution to the problem of pollution and over-crowding. But many planners started to believe that the ideas of modernism in urban planning led to higher crime rates and social problems. In 1961 Jane Jacobs published The Death and Life of Great American Cities establishing the concept of livable streets, infusing urban renewal planners with a livable urban area perspective. (2025). 9781135078904, Taylor & Francis. ISBN 9781135078904 In the second half of the 20th century, urban planners gradually shifted their focus to individualism and diversity in urban centers.
Planning practices have incorporated policy changes to help address anthropogenic (human caused) climate change. London began to charge a congestion charge for cars trying to access already crowded places in the city. Cities nowadays stress the importance of public transit and cycling by adopting such policies.
In order to predict how cities will develop and estimate the effects of their interventions, planners use various models. These models can be used to indicate relationships and patterns in demographic, geographic, and economic data. They might deal with short-term issues such as how people move through cities, or long-term issues such as land use and growth. One such model is the Geographic Information System (GIS) that is used to create a model of the existing planning and then to project future impacts on the society, economy and environment.
and other regulations dovetail with urban planning by governing how cities are constructed and used from the individual level. Codes, rules, and standards are part of a matrix of relations that influence the practice of urban planning and design. These forms of regulation provide an important and inescapable framework for development, from the laying out of subdivisions to the control of stormwater runoff. The subject of regulations leads to the source of how communities are designed and constructed—defining how they can and can't be built—and how codes, rules, and standards continue to shape the physical space where we live and work. Enforcement methodologies include governmental zoning, planning permissions, and , as well as private easements and restrictive covenants. (2025). 9780774829311, University of British Columbia Press. ISBN 9780774829311
Recent advances in urban planning include the use of urban digital twins (UDTs), which leverage artificial intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT) to simulate and predict urban development scenarios. These technologies enable planners to collect real-time data, predict population growth, traffic patterns, and assess the environmental impact of urban interventions. AI and IoT are also employed to optimize resource allocation and improve sustainability by offering data-driven insights for long-term urban development planning
With recent advances in information and communication technologies and the Internet of Things, an increasing number of cities are adopting technologies such as crowdsourcing mobile phone sensing and machine learning to collect data and extract useful information to help make informed urban planning decisions.
The importance of the urban planner is increasing in the 21st century, as modern society begins to face issues of increased population growth, climate change and unsustainable development. An urban planner could be considered a green collar professional.
Some researchers suggest that urban planners, globally, work in different "planning cultures", adapted to their cities and cultures. However, professionals have identified skills, abilities, and basic knowledge sets that are common to urban planners across regional and national boundaries.
The widely adopted consensus-building model of planning, which seeks to accommodate different preferences within the community has been criticized for being based upon, rather than challenging, the power structures of the community. Instead, agonism has been proposed as a framework for urban planning decision-making.
Another debate within the urban planning field is about who is included and excluded in the urban planning decision-making process. Most urban planning processes use a top-down approach which fails to include the residents of the places where urban planners and city officials are working. Sherry Arnstein's "ladder of citizen participation" is often used by many urban planners and city governments to determine the degree of inclusivity or exclusivity of their urban planning. One main source of engagement between city officials and residents are city council meetings that are open to the residents and that welcome public comments. Additionally, in US there are some federal requirements for citizen participation in government-funded infrastructure projects.
Participatory urban planning has been criticized for contributing to the housing crisis in parts of the world.
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