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Principles of Planology - Grondslagen der Planologie: J.M. de Casseres
Get PDFBetween the World Wars, the talent of Dutch town planner J. M. de Casseres (1902—1990) found expression in two visionary books and a clutch of influential articles.
In an in-depth article published in February 1929 in the magazine De Gids under the title ‘Grondslagen der planologie’ (‘Principles of planology’) he invented a term for the new social-scientific discipline that would eventually enter the Dutch language.
De Casseres made it his life’s work to elevate the art and craft of town planning to academic status, classifying the international planning body of knowledge and making it accessible and applicable. The results of this internationally supported body of knowledge are reflected not only in De Casseres’ publications but also in a string of urban design proposals for towns across the Netherlands.
This re-publication of the De Gids article, alongside five other influential De Casseres articles in translation and their original Dutch language form, brings this key thinker within reach of a wider research audience
Moscow in the Making: Sir E.D. Simon, Lady Simon, W.A. Robson and J. Jewkes
Get PDFThis book, published in 1937, reported on a four-week visit to Moscow in 1936 to study the making of Moscow as a showpiece Soviet capital. At its core was the 1935 General Plan for the Reconstruction of Moscow but the book was a study of planning in the Soviet rather than the Western sense. Thus it covered many aspects of the city’s social and economic life including industry and finance, education and housing production as well as governance and town planning. Much first-hand detail is included, based on the visit and the authors’ meetings with Soviet officials and citizens that illustrate various points, usually in praise.
The book made a significant contribution towards the growing arguments in 1930s Britain and other parts of the Anglophone world for a bolder, more comprehensive and more state-led approach to planning. In turn these arguments had an important impact in shaping the policies adopted in the 1940s
The Garden City Movement Up-to-Date: Ewart Gladstone Culpin
Get PDFThis work was written and compiled by the then Secretary of the Garden Cities and Town Planning Association in 1913. It shows just how much the conception of the garden city had been broadened from Howard’s original texts. Indeed the Association’s own name had been broadened to add the newly emergent practice and theory of town planning to the original focus.
Alongside the garden city, recognition is now given to the burgeoning numbers of garden suburbs and garden villages. Many examples of these are identified and briefly described, including many which are small and now little known, greatly adding to the interest of the publication. Even the underlying arguments for such developments differ. Alongside the more altruistic arguments in favour of reform, there are now those which explicitly emphasise the need to ensure a healthy race to maintain the Empire
The Story of the Bucky Lab
Get PDFA book about a university docent and one of his courses — why would you do that? And what is the academic impact?
The question of impact, especially as it relates to the rapidly developing culture of publications in scientific journals, should be the topic of a separate discussion. With all of the related advantages and disadvantages it could fill an entire book — however, not this one. And yes, buildings do impact the user, the environment and the planner — those already active in the field, as well as the next generation that learns from the results and will enter their own discussion for future developments. A friend of Marcel Bilow’s and mine, Thomas Auer, known for his exceptional work as climate engineer with the company Transsolar in Stuttgart, Germany, has, for example, certainly made an impact, influencing and inspiring generations of architects and engineers. Faced with the decision of whether or not to continue spending the majority of his time with projects rather than as a teacher and researcher at TU Munich he based his decision on the premise: you can best multiply impact by affecting the next generation, buildings alone cannot achieve it.
And affecting the next generation is the motivation for this book because it is the motivation for Marcel Bilow’s work and his approach to teaching, be it about a concrete product to be developed or an individual’s experience. It is about teaching students to physically exercise practical application rather than merely thinking about it: we can contemplate a hole in a wooden plank; however, actually creating it, experiencing the consequences and identifying limits and failures is the most valuable aspect. Any and all construction is based hereupon, a combination of both: the activity of constructing itself but also constructive thinking, thoroughly understanding a solution — essential skills that any architect needs to experience.
And the tool to accomplish this is, of course, a practical, hands-on course. Going conform with the generally established tradition in construction-related university subjects at TU Delft of having students build small projects, the faculty at TU Delft has a history of conducting hands-on courses. But Marcel Bilow certainly breathed new life into these courses that are part of the Master’s program at the Faculty of Architecture at TU Delft: by setting up the Bucky Lab. Buckminster Fuller, constructor and inventor served as inspiration, for the name as well as for the program: to be able to think, conceive and realize sensible and practical solutions. It is, therefore, no surprise that Marcel became known as Dr. Bucky Lab.
Is there more to the course? Yes, there is another, very important part that goes beyond practical application. It's all about stimulating the students’ desire to make things better, to introduce technical developments into construction, and to utilize new methods if they make sense in a given context.
The course is designed to make the students look for traditional as well as non- traditional, out of the box ideas. With his constant questioning, continuously asking "Why?" Marcel Bilow drives his students to question every single step they take in a project, every design decision they make along the way, every choice of material. The course requires them to generate initial concepts that will be revisited, re-evaluated, redefined several times as they learn to focus on the important, justify their decisions and gain knowledge in conceptualizing and ultimately realizing their ideas. The experiences gained in the course are valuable for any project the students work on during their studies or in their later professional lives.
Marcel Bilow has a brilliant mind, he is extremely motivated and motivating, sometimes a little stubborn but always driven by an innate desire to understand and, above all, to share his knowledge and experience. And this is what he does in the Bucky Lab, a course that is coined by his convictions and approach to disseminating knowledge as well as by interdisciplinary work that is embedded in and connected to the overall curriculum
The Plan for Milton Keynes, Volume One: Milton Keynes Development Corporation
No full textThe UK’s largest new town, Milton Keynes, is the product of a transatlantic planning culture and a plan for a relatively low-density motorised city generously endowed with roads, parklands, and the infrastructure of cabling for communications technology. At its heart was the charismatic and infl uential Richard (Lord) Llewelyn-Davies. A Labour peer with various personal and professional interests in the USA, he drew upon the writings of American academics Melvin Webber and Herbert J. Gans, who were also invited to advise on social trends in relation to the urban context in the preparation for the Plan. The Plan for Milton Keynes bristled with an understanding that motorised transport and communications technology would shape the city of the future, and infl uence the nature and reach of ‘community’ and social interactions beyond the localised realm.
Prepared by Llewelyn-Davies, Weeks, Forestier-Walker and Bor, for Milton Keynes Development Corporation, and presented to the Minister for Housing and Local Government in 1970, the Plan for Milton Keynes is a vibrant expression of Sixties’ idealism and forward thinking. In creating the ‘Little Los Angeles in North Buckinghamshire’, a low-density city whose citizens mostly rely upon the private motor car for their mobility, the Plan has become increasingly unfashionable as agendas for sustainability have called motorisation into question. Yet the grid-roads and the gridsquares within them have been very popular with the people of Milton Keynes.
The Plan was in two volumes, but it is Volume 1, the shorter of the two, that encapsulates the key thinking and the principles that informed the planning of the new city. The second volume is more concerned with evidence and implementation, so Volume 1 is reproduced here. The expansive thinking behind the Plan for Milton Keynes has important lessons for the limitations of current urban transport policy, and that cosy notions of neighbourhood and locally-driven community have little resonance for understanding the character of social relations in the twenty-fi rst century. The planning of Milton Keynes was more realistic and nuanced than much urban policy formulation today
The Story of the Bucky Lab
Get PDFA book about a university docent and one of his courses — why would you do that? And what is the academic impact?
The question of impact, especially as it relates to the rapidly developing culture of publications in scientific journals, should be the topic of a separate discussion. With all of the related advantages and disadvantages it could fill an entire book — however, not this one. And yes, buildings do impact the user, the environment and the planner — those already active in the field, as well as the next generation that learns from the results and will enter their own discussion for future developments. A friend of Marcel Bilow’s and mine, Thomas Auer, known for his exceptional work as climate engineer with the company Transsolar in Stuttgart, Germany, has, for example, certainly made an impact, influencing and inspiring generations of architects and engineers. Faced with the decision of whether or not to continue spending the majority of his time with projects rather than as a teacher and researcher at TU Munich he based his decision on the premise: you can best multiply impact by affecting the next generation, buildings alone cannot achieve it.
And affecting the next generation is the motivation for this book because it is the motivation for Marcel Bilow’s work and his approach to teaching, be it about a concrete product to be developed or an individual’s experience. It is about teaching students to physically exercise practical application rather than merely thinking about it: we can contemplate a hole in a wooden plank; however, actually creating it, experiencing the consequences and identifying limits and failures is the most valuable aspect. Any and all construction is based hereupon, a combination of both: the activity of constructing itself but also constructive thinking, thoroughly understanding a solution — essential skills that any architect needs to experience.
And the tool to accomplish this is, of course, a practical, hands-on course. Going conform with the generally established tradition in construction-related university subjects at TU Delft of having students build small projects, the faculty at TU Delft has a history of conducting hands-on courses. But Marcel Bilow certainly breathed new life into these courses that are part of the Master’s program at the Faculty of Architecture at TU Delft: by setting up the Bucky Lab. Buckminster Fuller, constructor and inventor served as inspiration, for the name as well as for the program: to be able to think, conceive and realize sensible and practical solutions. It is, therefore, no surprise that Marcel became known as Dr. Bucky Lab.
Is there more to the course? Yes, there is another, very important part that goes beyond practical application. It's all about stimulating the students’ desire to make things better, to introduce technical developments into construction, and to utilize new methods if they make sense in a given context.
The course is designed to make the students look for traditional as well as non- traditional, out of the box ideas. With his constant questioning, continuously asking "Why?" Marcel Bilow drives his students to question every single step they take in a project, every design decision they make along the way, every choice of material. The course requires them to generate initial concepts that will be revisited, re-evaluated, redefined several times as they learn to focus on the important, justify their decisions and gain knowledge in conceptualizing and ultimately realizing their ideas. The experiences gained in the course are valuable for any project the students work on during their studies or in their later professional lives.
Marcel Bilow has a brilliant mind, he is extremely motivated and motivating, sometimes a little stubborn but always driven by an innate desire to understand and, above all, to share his knowledge and experience. And this is what he does in the Bucky Lab, a course that is coined by his convictions and approach to disseminating knowledge as well as by interdisciplinary work that is embedded in and connected to the overall curriculum
Robocar and Urban Space Evolution: City changes in the age of autonomous cars
Get PDFHow can we create more human-centered, resilient, and sustainable cities in the tech age? Can we make use of technology and the opportunities presented rather than resisting its fast-paced evolution? What are the biggest and most likely spatial changes that autonomous vehicles will bring in cities? How can this change in mobility contribute to a better urban environment? To what extent do the spatial opportunities created by automated mobility respond to current urban issues and what is the role of urban design and spatial planning in this debate?
Autonomous cars–Robocars–will dramatically change urban environments and the practice of urbanism, potentially making cities less dependent on and less dominated by cars. Driverless and mainly guided by digital infrastructure, Robocars can open up new opportunities for urban development. If guided by sustainable development goals, the automation of mobility can lead to urban evolution–a shared paradigm shift in mobility and urban design. However, if Robocars are introduced as profit-driven products rather than tools to improve cities, they can cause sprawl, undermine public transport and reduce active mobility, ultimately affecting people’s health and wellbeing. Consequently, it is necessary to explore how the Robocars’ technological capabilities can provide solutions to pressing urban issues, such as growth, climate change, environmental quality, social inequality and the energy transition.
On September 13, 2018, the Section of Urban Design at the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, TU Delft, organised a public debate with international and Dutch experts to discuss the spatial changes that autonomous cars may bring about in cities. Subsequently, this publication gathers illustrated contributions by the key speakers at the symposium, which present ideas and further reflection points on Robocars’ relation to the urban environment. The three thematic sessions of the symposium were video recorded and are available online at robocarevolution.com.
The symposium and the publication aim to raise awareness about the importance of the topic for the field of urban design and other disciplines dealing with various aspects of urban sustainability. To date, the topic of autonomous cars has mainly been addressed by car industries, technology companies and transportation planning groups. The current discourse is predominantly driven by business and marketing goals, potentially leading to cities shaped around technology.
In this context, the symposium and the publication are a step forward to engaging various experts in a debate around Robocars and urban design. They propose a complementary approach to the current tech discourse on automated mobility by emphasising the importance of an urban design and spatial planning perspective, thus exploring Robocars as a spatial project. Automated vehicles can bring a mobility revolution: traffic systems and infrastructure can be reinvented, public and private transport modes can blend, and the logic of mobility in cities can be reformed, as time spent in the car will no longer be lost. Such changes create spatial opportunities and can help cities respond better to sustainable development goals; for instance, the space made available if Robocars could park themselves can be redesigned and, instead of parked cars, streets can accommodate more green space and larger sidewalks, revaluing streets as public spaces.
The goal of the Robocar and Urban Space Evolution symposium and publication is to start a more inclusive debate about Robocars and their impact on the urban environment and to explore the potential of this new technology beyond market-oriented goals. The experts involved came from multiple disciplines, including spatial planning, urban design, architecture, ecology, psychology, environmental engineering and transportation planning. They discussed why and how we need to engage with the topic, given that mobility automation will dramatically shape the urban environment in different contexts and societies in the coming decades.
The publication includes contributions by Rients Dijkstra and Anca Ioana Ionescu, Dominic Stead, Víctor Muí±oz Sanz, David Hamers, Salvador Rueda, Nico Larco, Emilia Bruck and Mathias Mitteregger
Planning with self-organised initiatives: from fragmentation to resilience
Get PDFOver the last half century, the Global South has faced a strong rise in the rate of urbanisation. Although this process differs from region to region, rapid urbanisation has created many challenges for countries in the Global South. Brazil is no different. The largest country in South America has jumped from an urban population of 44.67% in 1960 to 84.36% in 2010, according to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE, 2018). While urban growth is relatively stable in Brazil today, the challenges that came with the rapid increase will be felt for many years to come. One of the main challenges was created due to this urban growth not being organised. The main growth in the cities was due to an opportunity-led development, which produced an extremely unequal urban fabric with spatial discontinuities and left-over spaces. Planning institutions have attempted to overcome this spatial fragmentation problem, but have faced many difficulties.
This thesis demonstrates that spatial fragmentation in Brazilian metropolises is not only related to spatial discontinuities, but also to socioeconomic inequalities. This means that the physical connection between disconnected spaces does not necessarily create social connections between segregated groups. Walls in Brazil are not only physical but also social. This thesis investigates self-organised initiatives as possible entities to dismantle these invisible walls. Such initiatives help to create social connections between highly diverse groups in the public spaces of cities which have a high level of socioeconomic inequality. The cases of São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Brasília reveal a growth in the integration level from functional to symbolic, and even to community level in areas where these self-organised initiatives have been active. This increase in social connection between highly diverse groups has a positive impact on the resilience capacity of the urban system, improving the capacity for closer cooperation in the face of unexpected change.
The thesis begins by analysing the spatial fragmentation of Brazilian metropolises and how this relates to resilience. Chapter 2 develops the concept of ‘porosity’ as a metaphor for these spatial discontinuities in the Brazilian metropolitan context. Data from IBGE was used to create a porosity index and generate a comparative perspective on all of the Brazilian metropolises. The index reveals that cities have very different factors composing their porosity, which in turn create different threats and opportunities regarding the resilience capacity of each city. Certainly, it is important to recognise the particularities of each context, and in this way the porosity index provides a starting point for understanding the spatial fragmentation occurring within Brazilian metropolises. Chapter 3 focuses on the two metropolises with the highest porosity index, Belí©m and Manaus, to examine how urban policies may affect their spatial fragmentation. The thesis uses the federal government’s Minha Casa, Minha Vida (MCMV) social housing programme to investigate the relationship between such programmes and spatial fragmentation. Using GIS-generated maps, it was possible to visualise the pattern of each case of fragmentation and overlap these with the location of the developments in the MCMV programme. The chapter reveals that despite reducing the housing deficit for the low-income segment, the MCMV programme is having a strong negative impact by raising the level of spatial fragmentation already present in both metropolises.
In Chapters 4 and 5, the relationship between spatial fragmentation and self-organised initiatives is analysed. Using cases from São Paulo, Chapter 4 investigates how spatial fragmentation is influencing the work of such self-organised initiatives. It shows that the spatial fragmentation of São Paulo has a strong polarised structure, with the city centre as the main pole. Fragmentation in São Paulo is based on a dichotomy between centre and periphery that also influences where self-organised initiatives operate. Nevertheless, as Chapter 5 demonstrates, the initiatives studied are able to integrate people from extremely diverse socioeconomic contexts, even when being limited by spatial fragmentation. This social disconnection in contexts of inequality is one of the underlying forces driving spatial fragmentation in Brazil. In this sense, this integration capacity of self-organised initiatives is an important resource to tackle fragmentation in Brazilian metropolises and has been attracting the interest of urban planners.
While there is a lot of potential for self-organised initiatives to be integrated into planning strategies in Brazilian metropolises, this is still not being explored by public authorities in the cities studied. The interaction between self-organised initiatives and public institutions is generally problematic and conflictual, despite the participation of some public servants in these initiatives. Much can be done to improve the relationship between self-organised initiatives and public authorities, and this conclusion led to the key recommendations of this investigation. The thesis also points to the active participation of urban planners in these initiatives, with even those who perform technical functions in public institutions becoming active. The results of Chapter 5 show that planners demonstrate a strong belief in the work of self-organised initiatives and their positive impact. Their engagement calls for further examination of the role of planners in such initiatives and their impact in other areas beyond spatial fragmentation.
Despite being scientifically well grounded and having societal relevance, doctoral theses are frequently forgotten in the repositories of universities. With this in mind, this thesis aimed to not only be scientifically sound but to also have a strong societal impact. In addition to publishing articles as part of the thesis, I also explored other methods to improve its societal impact, making the research available on two open online platforms: the Global Urban Lab and the Rethink the City MOOC. The former aims to synthesise the findings and discussions of research in a manner accessible to the general public, while the latter aims to apply the research in planning education. Education can be an efficient tool to generate societal impact based on doctoral research, especially if connected to a massive educational tool such as a MOOC. The Rethink the City MOOC is presented here as a case study on how to generate societal impact by combining doctoral research and online education. The challenges and process of developing the Rethink the City MOOC are discussed in Chapter 6, which also presents some of the satisfactory results from the course, with 17,278 participants registering for the first two editions. This experience demonstrates how much impact doctoral research can have when aligned with online education
People and Planning: Report of the Committee on Public Participation in Planning (The Skeffington Committee Report)
Get PDFThe Skeffington Committee was appointed in 1968 to look at ways of involving the wider public in the formative stages of local development plans. It was the first concerted effort to encourage a systematic approach to resident participation in planning and the decision-making process, in contrast to the entirely top-down process created by the 1947 Town and Country Planning Act.
The origins of the Skeffington Report lay in the 1965 publication by the Planning Advisory Group of The Future of Development Plans, which recommended changes to the planning system to include much greater public participation. It called for all plans to be publicly debated in full, with the opportunity for representations to be made throughout the entire preparation process. There was also a growing realisation of the impact of the American planning experience and a growth of interest in the concept of participatory democracy as opposed to representative democracy.
However, the immediate impact of the Skeffington Committee was limited. It was criticized as being too ambiguous and as encouraging nothing more than greater publicity and as ‘educating’ residents from the planners’ perspective. ‘Participation’ was inadequately defined and the Report was seen to simply promote a more efficient system by convincing people of the virtues of planning. Local authorities used and undermined the idea of participation to simply speed up the planning process by giving their decisions a seal of legitimacy. Technocrats and local authorities simply subverted the ambiguities of the Report for their own purposes.
Yet this is to underestimate the long-term impact of the underlying principles first expressed in the Skeffington Report. It has been a long and tortuous process and in many respects it remains a difficult ideal to implement in an entirely satisfactory and systematic way. Nevertheless, the concept of participation established by the Report has continued to be a central consideration in planning
The Condition, Improvement and Town Planning of the City of Calcutta and Contiguous Areas - The Richards Report: E.P. Richards
No full textBy 1900 the British had undertaken various types of urban planning in their colonial territories, but the early twentieth century brought new ideas and the birth of the modern planning movement. In India these new planning ideas inspired several specialized reports after 1900, most of which drew explicitly on British, or occasionally German, ideas. The most complete of these studies was the Richards Report on Calcutta, prepared for the Calcutta Improvement Trust and published in 1914.
Its major concerns included the building and widening of roads, slum clearance and improvement, legislation, and suburban planning. As background, it included written and visual documentation of living conditions, through charts, photographs, and maps.
Richards emphasized that conditions in Calcutta differed greatly from those in urban Britain, and made some allowance in that regard. In general, however, his report exemplifies the attempt by British planners, along with Indian elites, to impose their vision on colonial cities.
Richards’ report was well received by leading British planners of the day. A notice in Garden Cities and Town Planning claimed that it was “the most complete report on town conditions and possibilities which has yet been issued”. While the immediate impact of the report in Calcutta is moot — Richards was highly critical of the past practices of local officials, and his views were unpopular with his superiors — the Richards Report remains a crucial insight into both the development of modern town planning and the colonial period in India