LATER APPROACHES TO

URBAN DESIGN
LATER URBAN PLANNING
THEORIES AND PRACTICES
The theoretical literature of western architecture
starts with Vitruvious, the Augustan architect,
and his treatise De Architectura. It was with
Vitruvious that this present search for a
theoretical understanding of urban design
appropriately began. More important for urban
design however, are the works of the
Renaissance scholars, Leone Battista Alberti,
Antonio Averlino Filarete, Serlio and Andrea
Palladio.
Alberti presented a great work called De Re Aedificatoria to Pope
Nicholas V in 1452 in which he established architecture as a learned
discipline based upon principles articulated and structured by
reason. In his text Alberti dealt also with elements of city design,
streets, roads, and piazza.

Filaretes book Libro Architettonico, in which he wrote a treatise
on architecture in a modern language for the first time, a capital city,
Sforzinda and a port city Plousiapolis is described in terms of
planning, design and construction of the city as well as its
institutional organisation.

It was, however with Palladio, who wrote the most influential
architectural treatise of the 16th century. His book covers the
general principles of architectural design, the Classical orders, the
design of palaces, villas, etc. Like Alberti, he also dealt with the
design of streets and piazzas.
These names are of urban designers interest for the
development urban form and the origins of urban
design until the 19th century.
In the development of the urban form from early times to
the 19th century, the urban structure had in common the
fact that the shape of towns and cities was very much
determined by people who had the social, political and
economic power to put their theories into practice.
Also, topography, climate, construction materials and
need for defense were the other urban form and
planning determinants.
However, modern urban structures - and so modern
urban design - are different than the previous examples
because the organization of the society is fundamentally
different.
In rest of the lecture, the most popular urban design
theories (together with the basic principles and ideas
behind) of the 19th and 20th centuries will be introduced
in a chronological order.
Age of Reason - Public Health
Acts

In the 18th century Europe, there were two significant developments in
the society:

(i) expansion of trade leading to growth of a new middle-class,
(ii) development of science.

The new working middle class could not afford to live in the grand
houses and palaces of the old aristocracy and this led to the
development of town houses and grand terraces (e.g. Regents Park,
by John Nash, London). More significantly, the middle class realized
that the old regimes were obstacles to the new capitalist economic
system. This led to revolution in America and in France.
The development of science and rationalism influenced
the taste in architecture.
The architectural forms became more simple, refined
and rational. This was so called neo-classic planning.
This also provided basis for industrial revolution
beginning in England and changed from handcrafts to
mass production in factories - a new building type
located in rapidly growing cities.
New urban settlements started to develop around these
factories and this led to overcrowding in cities.
So the important terms specializing the period are
INDUSTRIALISATION, OVERCROWDING and
URBANISATION.
Garnier La Cite Industrille 1901
French architect Tony Garniers industrial city plan was
based on rigorous zoning. By sitting housing area away
from the industrial area and city center, it removed much of
the richness of traditional city life along with some of its
squalor. Personal transport is still a necessity.
Existing towns were transformed very quickly. Industry
required new building types - factories, offices, railways
and transportation systems, housing, government
administrative buildings, prisons, museums, theatres,
etc. to serve the new society. There was also a big gap
between Capital and Labor and new social problems.
Overcrowding in urban housing led to disease and
death. Urgent action had to be taken to prevent revolt
and the loss of the workforce. In order to improve the
living conditions for the poor urban masses, PUBLIC
HEALTH ACTS were culminated in 1875 in England.
Public Health Acts mainly aimed at improving sanitation
and living conditions in general, for the poor urban
masses and they prescribed minimum standards for urban
housing with respect to the,
- level, width and construction of new streets and
provision for the sewerage thereof;
- structure of walls, foundations, roofs and chimneys for
securing stability and the prevention of fires and for the
purpose of health;
- sufficiency of space about buildings, to secure a free
circulation of air, with respect of ventilation of buildings;
- drainage of buildings.

These regulations affected the form and the design of urban
housing and so urban planning in England. Similar cases
and process of industrialization and urbanization can be
seen in many parts of the world.
Boulevard Planning
Industrial revolution had a similar process in France but
led to different results.
In England the concern was with health and good living
conditions; in France and especially in Paris the concern
was with preventing another revolution. Thus, after the
Revolution in 1848 in France, Napoleon wanted Paris to
be redeveloped in such a way that no barricades would
be able to be built in the streets.
Baron Haussmann brought a straight, pragmatic
solution to a highly practical problem by destroying
many existing buildings and building up wide
boulevards with the intention of focusing visually
and functionally on the great monuments of Paris
which were connected to one another by these
boulevards.
The new railway stations of Paris were also
connected to assure more efficient transport
between them and the city centers. These
boulevards were by no means designed for any
kind of intrinsic beauty. They gave long
perspective views towards the major
monuments, and also afforded the longest
feasible sight lines for Napoleons troops.
Besides, with their round-points in front of or
around corners they also speeded up the flow
of traffic. The trees, which seemed to
humanize the boulevards, together with the
great width of the boulevards themselves,
made barricade-building difficult too.

Haussmanns Boulevard planning became
very influential in many cities in the world
like Vienna, Barcelona, Ankara, etc.; it
became the norm towards which most great
European cities were developed or
redeveloped in 1870s.
Sittes Artistic Planning
Camillo Sitte, a Viennese architect and the
originator of modern city planning, reacted
against Haussmanns formal and
monumental planning, just as some others.
Therefore he attempted to abstract principles
for the design of plazas, streets and public
squares from the analysis of historic
examples, with particular reference to the
medieval Italian city. In general, he disliked
intensely the boulevard approach which had
been so fundamental to Haussmann-like
planning.
In his book Der Stadbau published in 1889 and
translated into English in 1965 under the name of City
Planning According to Artistic Principles, he
examines the public and aesthetic nature of old
European cities that have lived from the pre-industrial
age without being damaged. He was concerned with city
planning which he considered an art rather than a
scientific object. He restricted his attention and concern
to public squares wherein, he believed, lies the character
of a city.
He appreciated the informal irregularity of the old
squares, their being natural and having picturesque
quality. He mentioned the harmonious effect and the
balance they produce within the overall composition with
the impression of rhythm and peace they have.
The informal freedom of design in classical and
medieval towns was considered by Sitte to be the
leading idea of old city planning (Onal, 1994, p 35).
Many urban theorists since the 1950s
have focused their attention on the general
value of Sittes study and have used his
ideas as a basis for their own urban
design concepts, although Sittes study of
urban space refers specifically to the
European city at the turn of the 19th
century. Sittes ideas were also supported
by Julien Gaudet, the Director of the Ecole
des Beaux Arts in Paris.
The City Beautiful
The next distinguishable movement in city
planning - the American City Beautiful was
opposite in principle to Sittes artistic
planning. It was rather based on
Haussmanns Boulevard Planning and first
seen at Chicago World Fair (Worlds
Colombian Exposition) in 1893.
Chicago had been developing through the 19th
century as a great commercial center; and after
the disastrous fire of 1871, the architects were
concerned with the development of fire-resisting
structures for the office and warehouses, such
as steel-framed high buildings, skyscrapers with
elevators, etc. (1883 by Le Baron Jenney).
However, steel-frame and elevators solved the
technical problems but not the architectural
ones: the whole city was designed for the
Exposition by a group of architects yet the
design looked like reproduction of Baroque. Yet
the exposition was supported by some business
men who, having demonstrated their commercial
skills, now wanted to buy cultural respectability.
They wanted Chicago to be known, not only as
the commercial center of America, but also as
its cultural capital. To achieve this aim, they
wanted to create a uniform and ceremonious
style - a style evolved from the highest
civilization in history - i.e. the Classical
examples, rather than the current medieval or
any other form of romantic or picturesque art.
Designed thus as it was in the Classical
manner, the Exposition, and so the city of
Chicago, naturally encouraged all those who
had been looking for a revival of that grand
approach to city planning.
Looking South across the Grand Plaza towards the Machinery Hall at the
World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago.

The influences of
the City Beautiful
Movement can be
observed in
England, especially
in the City Hall and
Law Courts at
Cardiff, the Civic
Center in
Southampton, and
the Civic Offices in
Portsmouth.
The Garden City
The next great set of planning conventions, those of the
Garden City movement were intended to free the
pressures on such cities by decanting population to new
and much smaller towns, built well outside the city in
virgin countryside.
The chief exponent of this approach was Ebenezer
Howard whose main concern was to stem the drift of
population-limited to 32.000 people-from rural to urban
areas presenting the alternatives as town and country
magnets, each of which has its attractions and
corresponding disadvantages inegration of town and
country.
He characterizes the town as closing out nature
and catalogues many disadvantages such as
the isolation of crowds, distances from work,
high rents and prices, excessive hours of
work, etc.
He then balances these with some advantages,
such as social opportunity, places of
amusement, high wages, fresh air, low rents,
etc.
Howards notional plans, which were first
published in Tomorrow: A Peaceful Path
to Real Reform (1898), and were
republished as Garden Cities of
Tomorrow, are based very firmly on the
idea of a central park/garden of some
five acres about which all of the citys
main functions are grouped
concentrically. Indeed, major
components would all be segregated.
The first ring around the central garden consisted of public
buildings: the town hall, concert and lecture halls,
library, museum, art gallery and hospital.
These were surrounded by a ring of parkland, cut through radically
by the six principal boulevards and surrounded by the Crystal
Palace - a wide glass arcade which, in wet weather, is one of the
favorite resorts of the people.
The next ring was a broad ring of houses each standing in its own
garden. The houses were greatly varied in character, some having
common gardens.
The main ring of housing was surrounded by a Grand Avenue
forming a belt of green, an annual park dividing the main part of the
town into two concentric belts.
The Avenue itself is divided into six radial boulevards occupied by
public schools, their surrounding play-grounds and gardens.
The outer regions of the town would be occupied by factories,
warehouses, markets, coal yards, etc. all with access to circular
railway lines which surrounding the town enabling goods to be
loaded at various points.
Beyond this there would be a full range of uses for agricultural
purposes.
Howards Garden City can be seen as the
beginning of regional planning and
decentralization.
Neighborhood Planning
Clarence Perry developed the idea of the neighborhood
unit by analyzing the things he found good - including
gardening and community participation - about living in
a Long Island suburb named Forest Hills Gardens.
The neighborhood unit was focused on a community
centre, a place for debate and discussion.
Crucial to Perrys concept was the idea of day-to-day
facilities: shops, schools, playgrounds, etc. should be
within walking distance of every house. This in itself the
overall size of a neighborhood, while heavy traffic was
kept out, confined to arterial roads which skirted around
the neighborhood.
Perry estimated the optimum size for a neighborhood to
be around 5000 people; large enough to provide for
most peoples day-to-day needs, yet small enough for a
sense of community to develop.
The general characteristics of the neighborhood
unit were based on the idea of:
- the super block - instead of the narrow, rectangular block
- the specialized roads planned and built - each for one
use instead of for all uses
- complete separation of pedestrians and vehicles
- houses turned around; living and sleeping rooms facing
towards gardens and parks, service rooms towards
access road
- park as backbone of the neighborhood.
In addition to the points above, cul-de-sacs/
dead-end streets were used for vehicular access
to the fronts of the houses
The Modern Movement
The modern movement in architecture
during the early part of this century has
had a strong influence on contemporary
architects, planners and urban designers.
The urban design proposals of Le
Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright
represent the polar attitudes toward
urbanization and urban design.
Le Corbusier: Ville Radieuse
Le Corbusier, being very critical of
traditional cities, attempted to convert
the city into park within which the
actual buildings would occupy only
some %5 of the land. He developed a
contemporary city Ville Radieuse
(Radiant City) for 3 million
inhabitants; this city was to be a city in
a garden instead of being a city with
gardens. The fundamental principles
he put forward were:
- freeing the city from traffic congestion,
- enhancing the overall densities,
- enhancing the means of circulation,
- augmenting the area of planting.
The second work, Plan Voisin for rebuilding Paris
designed in the 1920s but never constructed, illustrates
the contrast between traditional urban density and the
urban design of Modernism.


Although his ideas seem to be opposing to Howards
notion of the small-town Garden City, Le Corbusiers
vision, in fact, had grown out of Howards: he points
out in his study that, nature melts under the invasion
of roads and houses and the promised seclusion
becomes a crowded settlement, and the solution will
be found in the vertical garden city.
His design for a city is linear and nodal on a large
scale grid, proposing two kinds of housing
immediately around the city centre: terraces and
apartment blocks. He also considered the traffic in
the design of a city. According to him, new forms of
street must be designed so that the traffic can flow
freely at optimum speed.
There were 3 important principles behind
Corbusiers influence on modern urban
space:
1. The linear and nodal building as a large
scale urban element a principle applied
physically to define districts or social units
2. The vertical seperation of movement
systems an outcome of Le Corbusiers
fascination with highways and the city of
the future
3. The opening up of urban space to allow for
freeing landscape, sun and light.
Le Corbusiers plans and perspectives
captured the imagination of architects,
urban designers and planners worldwide.
In the 1960s particularly, a remarkable
number of them were enabled to make
their own cities look remarkably like Le
Corbusiers perspectives with their
motorways slashing between their
skyscrapers.
Frank Lloyd Wright:
Broadacre City
As its name emphasizes the proposal of Wright was for a low-
density development of detached buildings. He envisioned a
city of small farms or garden home-steads. His scheme
eliminated roads as much as possible and attempted to bring the
country into the city rather than create parks.
Frank Lloyd Wrights Broadacre City plan gave an acre of land to
every household, but the inhabitants still depended for
communications on a motorway grid and a helicopter for every
family.
Both of these architects have had a great
influence on the architectural profession
and the general public. In a sense, the
both expected and influenced two major
kinds of urban form existing today
especially in American cities: the high-
density urban core and the low density
suburb.

Then the principles by which architects
and planners were to deal with the
problems of the 20th century were codified
by CIAM (Congres Internationaux
dArchitecture Moderne).
Accordingly the city was divided into four
main functions: housing, work, recreation,
transport. Radical solutions were proposed
for each area.
RECENT URBAN PLANNING
THEORIES AND PRACTICES

RECENT APPROACHES TO
URBAN DESIGN
Two major themes were found in the Post-
modern reaction to the hegemony associated with
modern architecture:

New Rationalism - Neo-Rationalism
New Empiricism Neo-Empiricism
New Rationalism
Neo-Rationalism
TEAM 10 (a young group of second-generation
of European Modernists who moved towrad a
more contextual approach at least in concept
and attempt to re-define the underlying principles
and formal expression of urban space) ---------
REDEFINITION OF PRINCPLES AND FORMAL
EXPRESSION OF URBAN SPACE in 1950s

NEO-RATIONALISTS:
ALDO ROSSI (ITALY)
LEON & ROB KRIER (LUXEMBOURG)
RICARDO BOFILL (SPAIN)

Rationalism promotes a concern for
public open space over a preoccupation
with individual buildings and incorporates
strongly defined geometric spaces as
ordering devices. It looks at historic
models and classical spatial structures to
derive principles for linking old and new,
high and low, and diverse materials,
colors, and textures for inspiration.
Leon Kriess mission was to reconstruct the tradional
urban blocks as definers of streets and squares.
Formal, multidimensional, horizontal pattern of spaces by
highlighting the qualities of public space.
New Empiricism
Neo-Empiricism
HIGHLIGHTING PERCEPTUAL AND
SPATIAL QUALITIES OF THE URBAN
ENVIRONMENT
REPRESENTATIVES:
KEVIN LYNCH
ROBERT VENTURI
GORDON CULLEN
COLIN ROWE
KEVIN LYNCH
URBAN ANALYSER IN EMPRICAL TERMS
PRESENTED HIS PRINCIPLE RULES FOR
DESIGNING CITY SPACES AS:
LEGIBILITY: THE MENTAL PICTURE OF THE CITY
HELD BY THE USERS ON THE STREET
STRUCTURE AND IDENTITY: RECOGNIZABLE
COHERENT PATTERN OF URBAN BLOCKS,
BUILDINGS AND SPACES
IMAGEABILITY: USER PERCEPTION IN MOTION
AND HOW PEOPLE EXPERIENCE THE SPACES
OF THE CITY
ACCORDING TO LYNCH:
SUCCESSFUL URBAN SPACE MEET THESE
REQUIREMENTS
PARTS OF THE CITIES - ELEMENTS OF URBAN
FORM SHOULD BE DESIGNED ACCORDING TO
THESE REQUIREMENTS
ROBERT VENTURI
MOST OF THE OUTDOOR SPACES
CREATED BY MODERN MOVEMENT
ARE LOST SPACES ISOLATED FROM
ITS TOTAL SURROUNDINGS.
GORDON CULLEN
A TOWNSCAPE ARTIST
EXPLORED THE EXPERIENCE OF
SEQUENCE THROUGH URBAN SPACE
UNIQUE SENSE OF PLACE FROM
STREET LEVEL
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE
OBJECT & MOVEMENT
THE EVENT OF ARRIVING AT /
LEAVING CITY SPACES
COLIN ROWE
A LEADING URBAN DESIGN EDUCATOR
DILEMMA OF TEXTURE COMPOSITE URBAN
PATTERN OF STREETS, BUILDINGS, AND OPEN
SPACES THE FABRIC OF THE CITY
The problem: Building as a free-standing object and
its disruptive effects on the continuity of these urban
patterns.
He put forward a pluralist view of urban form, a collage
city that accomodates a range of ideas and visions.
His urban design work is based on cubist geometries
and historic models of Rome and Florence etc. where
buildings as articulated solids are designed to create
positive voids.