Modern Town Planning | World | Human Geography

The Greeks, Romans and ancient Chinese all had strong ideas on modern town planning but they were only able to put them into action when found­ing a new town. Most towns which have grown up gradually, wheth­er in Europe, Asia, Africa, or America have a rather haphazard arrangement of streets which branch off at all angles from one another, and are often very varied in width, some very narrow and others quite broad.

Such a pattern reflects a lack of planning and also sug­gests that the town was at first limited in size by its site or by its defensive walls.

Newer sections of towns of this kind tend to be more spacious and better laid-out, so that there is often a contrast between the town centre and the suburbs. From time to time houses need to be re-built or streets widened and this should provide an opportunity for replanning the town along more rational lines. But the ownership of land in small or irregular plots and the lack of agreement among landowners often mean that the overall layout cannot be altered substantially.

For instance, after the Great Fire of London in 1666, the architect Sir Christopher Wren drew up plans for the reconstruction of the ruined area on a much more spacious and regular pattern, but his ideas were not acceptable to the majority of the landowners and eventually the city was rebuilt basically to the same street pattern as before. Nowadays, however, the need for wider streets, urban motorways, open spaces and parks is much more widely realized and people are more ready to accept urban renewal and replanning.

This does not imply that all old towns and cities were not planned. Moreover many plans were basically concerned with defence, so that towns plan­ned in those days are now often cramped and incon­venient. Even towns laid out on a lavish scale in the past are apt to be congested nowadays because of the much greater traffic, faster transport and the use of motor vehicles, as well as the enormous growth of population in towns.

Ancient plans for ‘ideal towns’ were based on two kinds of pattern, the grid-iron and the radial pattern, and from the seventeenth century onwards, when the invention of printing made classical ideas better known, these patterns were employed in new towns and in rebuilding sections of old towns.

A great oppor­tunity to put such ideas into practice was found in the new colonial lands such as North and South America. New towns built in Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries also employed both ancient and more modern town plans which concentrated on pro­viding impressive ‘vistas’. Long straight streets ended in a monument or palace which enhanced the appear­ance of the streets.

Among the towns which were planned in this way were Karlsruhe in Germany which had a radial pattern, and Versailles in France, the seat of the French king outside Paris. A similar pattern was adopted in Washington, D.C., and in many South American capitals. Brasilia is a modern example of a town planned on the ‘vista’ approach.

In much of the U.S.A. and Canada, the grid-iron pattern was adopted, as it was for rural land, the only difference being that the city ‘block’ was, of course, much smaller than the rural ‘section’. As a result almost all western American cities and towns are arranged in grid pattern, with streets running north to south and east to west and crossing one another at right angles. Grid-iron planning was also used in other colonial lands.

Modern town planning in many regions has rejected both the ‘vista’ and ‘grid-iron’ ideas, partly because much more emphasis is placed today on open space, greenery and trees in the town, rather than a complete dissociation of the town from the surrounding coun­tryside.

As a result a modern town often has curved streets and its broad roads and streets are usually lined with trees. Examples are Welwyn Garden City, the original town built according to the ‘garden city’ ideas, Canberra in Australia and Petaling Jaya in Malaysia.

In the new, planned city of Milton Keynes mid-way between London and Birmingham in Britain great attention has been paid to the long-term develop­ment of parks and open spaces. The city has been planned around a linear park along a river and trees are being planted in parks and roadsides at the rate of a quarter of a million each year.

Another modern de­velopment which is affecting the shape of towns is the shopping precinct, which is thought to be safer and more pleasant for shopping than the busy, traffic- jammed streets of a traditional town. Such develop­ments sometimes include whole sections of towns in which the use of motor vehicles is prohibited or at least strictly limited, especially in the centres of old towns.

Nowadays in Europe and America purpose- built ‘shopping centres’ with covered walks and a wide range of shops are specially built. These may be de­veloped in the centres of old towns, as is the case in many British towns, e.g. Luton or they may be new buildings on the outskirts of cities.

The shopping centres provide large car-parks and shoppers can walk around in a controlled temperature or relax by foun­tains or other decorative features of the buildings. Milton Keynes has such a shopping centre, and many European towns, e.g. Vienna are building them in suburban areas.

Another development which has affected town lay­out is the building of tall skyscraper blocks of flats or offices. Such buildings can house more people in a given area and if they replace older housing can leave substantial areas empty for recreational use, but much modern research in western countries has shown that their social effects are unfortunate.

The flats are close together but do not encourage a community spirit and families feel isolated and eventually distrustful of their neighbours. The use of high-rise housing in American and British cities has been linked with the increase in vandalism among the young and modern town planning has returned to the idea of small groups of houses giving people plenty of opportunity to chat to neighbours at their doorways and giving each house owner a small garden.