Urban planning
Urban planning is the technique and the politics of deciding in advance how a city grows and changes: which land gets developed, with what uses and densities, where the streets, parks and facilities go. Its instrument is the plan —general, regulating, master— and its academic discipline is urbanism.
It was born with the industrial city to correct it and has swung ever since between the comprehensive plan that decides everything and the one-off project that answers the market. John Friedmann and Patsy Healey rethought it as communicative practice; James Scott warned in Seeing Like a State (1998) against the plan that simplifies until it destroys what it orders.
Videos on this term (16)
- Housing
Jason Corburn and Street Science: Planning with the Neighbourhood
Jason Corburn proposes in Street Science combining technical knowledge with neighbourhood knowledge to plan healthy…
Jason Corburn 3 min read - Public space
Richard Sennett's Open City: Open or Close the Public Space?
Richard Sennett defends the open city, designed for encounters with strangers, against closed enclosures. Ville and…
Richard Sennett 3 min read - Public space
The Participatory Theatre That Deceives Us
When you are invited to participate, are you given power or asked to legitimise? Arnstein's ladder, Spain's Auken…
3 min read - Infrastructure
The 15-Minute City Conspiracy: How Proximity Became a Lockdown
How Carlos Moreno's 15-minute city, a century-old proximity idea, became a conspiracy theory after Oxford's 2023…
3 min read - Urban history
Patrick Geddes: regionalism and cities in evolution
Who Patrick Geddes was and what he gave urban planning: regionalism, environmental planning, the city as an…
Patrick Geddes 2 min read - Urban form
Michael Dear: Postmodernism and Critical Urban Planning
Michael Dear led the Los Angeles School and brought postmodernism into urban planning. What the postmodern city is…
Michael Dear 3 min read - Urban form
John Forester: Dialogue and Mediation for Inclusive Urban Planning
John Forester explains what planners do among conflicting interests and how dialogue and mediation produce fairer…
John Forester 2 min read - Urban history
Peter Hall's Cities of Tomorrow: A History of Urban Planning
Cities of Tomorrow (1988) by Peter Hall traces the twentieth century's planning ideas, from Howard to Le Corbusier,…
Peter Hall 2 min read - Public space
John Friedmann: Transactive Planning and Community Participation
John Friedmann proposed transactive planning: a dialogue between technical and community knowledge.
John Friedmann 3 min read - Urban history
Christine Boyer: Collective Memory and Urban Planning
The City of Collective Memory (1994) by Christine Boyer explains how the city stores memory and how regeneration…
Christine Boyer 3 min read - Public space
Participatory democracy: Arnstein, Forester, Porto Alegre
What participatory democracy means in cities: Arnstein's ladder (1969), Forester's deliberative planning and…
2 min read - Public space
Sharon Sutton: Social Inclusion and Participation in Urban Planning
Sharon Sutton, a pioneering African American architect, argues for designing with marginalised communities and…
Sharon Sutton 3 min read - Urban form
Strategic Urban Planning: Patsy Healey's Collaborative Approach
Strategic urban planning sets a long-term vision for a city with all its stakeholders. What Patsy Healey proposes…
Patsy Healey 3 min read - Urban ecology
Green infrastructure: the city that manages its climate
Parks, green roofs and wetlands are not ornament: they lower temperature, absorb rainfall and replace grey…
2 min read - Public space
Decolonising Urban Space: What It Means and How It Is Done
Decolonising urban space dismantles the hierarchies colonisation left in cities. What Ananya Roy and Jennifer…
3 min read - Urban form
Postmodern Urban Planning: Assemblage, Participation and Critique
What postmodern urban planning is: Sandercock and insurgent planning, Healey, the assemblage theory of Farías and…
2 min read
