ENCYCLOPEDIA OF URBAN PLANNING

Arnold Whittick, Editor-in-Chief 1974, McGraw-Hill, Inc.

ACTIVITY ANALYSIS. Activity studies are concerned with patterned ways in which households, firms, and various
other institutional entities pursue their affairs in time and space.
ADVOCACY PLANNING. The preparation of plans or planning proposals and their advocacy by professional
planners on behalf of an organization, interest group, or community as an alternative or in opposition to plans or
planning proposals prepared by an official agency. The term originated in the United States,
where it is
particularly used in the context of plural planning: the planning of the same area or project
by more than one
agency.
AMENITY. Originally denoting the idea of pleasantness, the term has a wide application in modern planning
some extension of meaning.

with

AVENUE. In a city an avenue is generally a wide, straight street lined with buildings or trees, and it sometimes leads
to a terminal building or feature at its end. (The word avenue is derived from the Latin advenis, meaning to come
to.) An avenue is also a straight, often tree-lined road leading to a house or mansion. As an element in city planning,
the avenue descends from the ancient processional way.
BIOTECHNIC. This and other similar terms (paleotechnic, neotechnic, and eotechnic; explained under the separate
headings) were coined by Patrick Geddes. All the terms apply to modern technology and its effects on economic and
social life.
BLIGHT. Sometimes called planning blight, but among planners planners often referred to simply as blight. It
stems from depreciation in the value of land or buildings as the result of planning proposals or planned development.
Blight may occur in two ways:
BOULEVARD. The word boulevard originally designated the broad, horizontal surface of the rampart of a city wall.
Later, the term was applied to the wide thoroughfares that took the place of the city walls of Paris. The first such
boulevard was opened in 1670 on the site of the ancient walls extending from Port Saint-Denis to the Bastille. The
term has since been used to typify any broad, handsome avenue.
BUILT-UP AREA. An area, mainly occupied by buildings, where a system of street lighting is required. In modern
usage, the term is broadly synonymous with urban in its physical sense.
BURGESS, ERNEST W. (1886-1966) A luminary of the Chicago School of sociology associated with the empirical
study of the city in the United States as well as with studies of the family and of aging.
Planners will be most
interested in what has come to be known as his Concentric Zone Theory (or hypotheses).
BYPASS. A road which passes by a built-up area, in order to expedite traffic movement and to minimize its nuisance
in a town. Generally it takes the form of a loop joined to a major road in order to skirt a town,
thus avoiding
congestion in a city caused by through traffic.
CARAVANSARY. In the East, an inn consisting of a large quadrangular building enclosing a court to accommodate
caravans.
CARDO. The two main streets of a typical Roman city or town were the central east-west street called the
decumanus and the street crossing it from north to south, usually nearer one end, called the cardo. In some plans
they crossed at the forum. These streets were principal features in a general checkerboard plan.
CATCHMENT AREA. An area of country, often hilly, from which water drains to a river, canal, or reservoir either
naturally or artificially. Ion planning and sociology the term is sometimes used analogously to indicate an area from
which institutions draw their members, and shopping, cultural, social, and
recreational centers draw their
customers.
CELLULAR GROWTH. A conception of urban growth derived from organic cellular growth, where organisms expand
as cells reproduce themselves. In planning, cellular growth means the approximate repetition of existing cells in the
city structure.
CHESSBOARD PLAN. (also called checkerboard and gridiron) An urban plan divided into approximately square
building blocks formed by the street pattern.
COMMUTING. The process of traveling between homes in one district or town and to places of work in another. Most
commuting occurs around big cities and in metropolitan regions where places of work are in or near the city centers
and the homes are in the suburbs and beyond.
COMPLEX. A term often used in planning to denote an aggregation or group of related and interconnected buildings
or installations planned for the same purpose (e.g. industrial complex, school complex, hospital complex).
CONURBATION. A term coined by Patrick Geddes to describe a large concentration of urban communities. Planners
in Britain speak of the London conurbation, the Tyneside conurbation, and so on.

CURTILAGE. The land between a building and the boundary of the plot of the plot of land on which it stands.
Sometimes the term also includes the land on which the building stands.
DECENTRALIZATION AND DISPERSAL. Decentralization is a general term for several types of outward
movement: 1) of persons from homes in inner urban areas to fringes of the same town or conurbation;
2) of
industries and businesses from centers to such fringes; or 3) of both population and industry from inner areas to new
towns or smaller towns, detached and at some distance from the built-up continuum. DECUMANUS. The principal
straight street of a Roman town, generally running east-west and crossed toward one end by the cardo.
DEMOGRAPHY. The collection of vital economic and social statistics and of related matters concerned with the racial
makeup, growth, density, and distribution of a national, regional, or city population.
DENSITY. In planning usage, density means the ration of persons, households, or volume of building or
development to some unit of land area.
DERELICT LAND. The Department of the Environment in the U.K. precisely defines derelict land as land so
damaged by industrial or other development that it is incapable of beneficial use without treatment. By this definition
it is essentially land that has been damaged by mans intervention and not land that has simply been neglected.
DORMITORY AREA. A residential area from which a high percentage of persons travel to work in another locality.
Typical examples are the suburbs of a big city where people live and from which they commute to their offices and
factories in the central areas.
DOWNTOWN. Used in the United States to denote the business or lower part of a city or town. Its use in this sense
is beginning to spread to other countries.
DYNAMETROPOLIS. In the same way in which humanity moved from city to dynapolis, it has moved from metropolis
to dynametropolis.
DYNAPOLIS. The dynamic polis or the dynamic city. All cities up to the 17 th century some of which may have been
dynamic for only a very short period of their life, were static and were often surrounded by walls. Later cities started
growing in a dynamic way, and today they are almost all dynamic.
ECOLOGY. The science of ecology was born at the beginning of the present century and can be defined as the study
of the relations of all living organisms to each other and to their environment.
EKISTICS. The name given by Constantinos A. Doxiadis to the science of human settlements.
The scope of the science can be elucidated as follows: Planners are concerned with all types of human settlements
from the isolated and nomadic hut which is in some way repeated today by people using caravans and trailers to
the organized farmhouse, village, small town, city, metropolis, megalopolis,
and future major urban systems.
EOPOLIS. In the cycle of development and deterioration of cities Lewis Mumford gives six stages, which represent an
amplification of an earlier classification by Patrick Geddes. These stages are: 1) eopolis, 2) polis, 3) metropolis, 4)
megalopolis, 5) tyrannopolis, and 6) nekropolis.
EOTECHNIC. Following the terminology of Patrick Geddes, who coined the term paleotechnic and neotechnic to
signify the early and later periods of the industrial age, Lewis Mumford coined the term eotechnic to define the
important period of preparation when all the key inventions were either introduced or foreshadowed.
EXPROPRIATION. The dispossession of an owner of his property for some public or social development such as
municipal housing or the provision of public services like transport, electricity generation, or the implementation of
planning schemes.
FAMILY UNIT. The family is the smallest and, by tradition, the basic collective unit of society. Its dwelling place
should, therefore, logically form the unit of physical planning.
FLAT. The British name for a dwelling on one floor in a storied building generally containing other such dwellings, it
corresponds to the term apartment in United States and most European countries. An apartment house or block is
called in Great Britain a block of flats. FORUM. In ancient Rome the central open space or square of a city used for
assemblies, public meetings,
ceremonies, business transactions, and as the marketplace
FURNITURE, URBAN AND STREET. The provision of services and their equipment in urban development is a matter
of prime concern to the planner. It involves the economic installation and the best functional location of such
equipment and its effective and harmonious disposition in the urban scene. This street furniture, as it is generally
called, serves the functions performed by the lighting, transport, telephone,
postal, protective, and other services
and includes various forms of lighting equipment such as lighting masts, columns, standards, wall brackets, and other
fittings; the wide variety of traffic signs, telephone kiosks, post- and mailboxes, giuardrails and fences, litter and
storage bins, busshelters, outdoor seats, poster display units, and several others.
Other features in the urban scene, not strictly furniture as their purpose is mainly decorative, are monuments,
sculpture, clock towers, trees, flower tubs, and other such decorative elements.

GARDEN CITY. Though the description garden city was claimed by various towns in the past, in pride of their
verdant character or surroundings, its use in the town-planning context dates from the proposal of Ebenezer Howard
in his famous book of 1898 suggesting the creation of new moderate-sized towns in place of the continued growth of
over-large and congested cities.
GEOMETRIC DETERMINISM. The belief that natural phenomena are governed by mathematical laws has existed
since the time of the mathematicians and philosophers of ancient Greece. It has led artists, architects, and others to
seek mathematical principles in organic structures and natural appearances.
GHETTO. Originally that part of a city in which Jews were required to live, the name probably derives from the first
segregation of the Jews in Venice (1517), in the vicinity of the Iron Foundry (getto).
GREENBELTS. Permanently reserved zones of unbuilt-on land around and between cities, to limit the cities
overgrowth and to prevent their merging into each other. Greenbelts were an integral part of Ebenezer Howards
proposal for garden cities. They had many historical foreshadowings;
GREEN WEDGE. A tongue of open land extending from the country into a city or urban area. The land may be used
for agriculture, recreation, cemeteries, or the grounds of institutions. If a system of green wedges is applied to a city,
and approximation to an urban star results.
GRID. A checkerboard network of intersecting streets and avenues forming the basic layout of a city or town. Just as
in architecture a system of proportions, related to a basic dimension or module, has sometimes benn used to facilitate
construction and serve functional needs, so the elements of a town may be
arranged with reference to a set of
related dimensions.
HAUSSMANN, BARON GEORGES-EUGENE (1809-1891). Prefet de la Seine under the Emperor Napoleon III.
What Napoleon I and the Commission of Artists started in making Paris a grand city on a splendid scale as a setting
for imperial power, Mapoleon III and Haussmann completed.
The scale and splendor of Haussmanns achievement is staggering when we see how near he is to our own time. The man had
vision, ruthlessness, conviction in the rightness of the empire he served, and sensibility as well. These qualities he possessed to a
remarkable degree. The Paris of today that is remembered and which people go to see is largely his creation.

LAISSEZ-FAIRE. A term often applied to the habit of letting things evolve in social and economic life in an apparently
natural manner and allowing development to remain in the hands of commercial interests. It
is the reverse of
planning by the state and represents the minimum of interference by government.
Those who justify this policy
contend that it is a natural and inevitable evolution resulting from commercial enterprise; those who oppose it claim
that it represents the sacrifice of the many for the few and encourages the development of social evils like slums. Sir
Patrick Abercrombie began his history of
town and country planning with a significant contrast of the laissezfaire and planning approaches.
LINEAR CITY. A city designed on the principle that transport routes should be the main determinant of the form of plan for the
city and in which the development is arranged in a long, narrow belt on either side of a central spine road. Such a city can be
extended along the spine road without upsetting its balance as a whole, and all its parts have
ready access to the
countryside. The idea was developed by Don Arturo Soria y Mata in 1882 for a Ciudad Lineal near Madrid. One development of
the theory proposed the linking of existing towns by a series of linear towns along routes joining them.

MEGALOPOLIS. In Greek, the big city, Megalopolis is a word coined by the ancient Greeks when they decided to connect
many small cities of Arcadia into a big city which could be used as their major administrative and cultural center. To distinguish it
from the small cities, it was called Megalopolis. It was created in 371 B.C. by Epaminondas of Thebes.
In modern times megalopolis has been used by Jean Gottman, the geographer, to indicate the multiple and complex urban
system which comprises many metropolises on the eastern coast of the United States, from Boston to New York, Philadelphia,
Baltimore, and Washington. Another megalopolis, the Great Lakes megalopolis, is now under study by the Developing Great Lakes
Megalopolis Inc. and by Doxiades Associates. Many more (a total of 14, located all over the world) are now under study by the
Athens Center of Ekistics.

NEIGHBORHOOD UNIT. An integrated, planned, urban area related to the larger community of which it is a part and
consisting of residential districts, a school or schools, shopping facilities, religious building, open spaces, and perhaps
a degree of service industry. An early exponent of the neighborhood theory was Clarence Arthur Perry, who
contributed a memorandum on the neighborhood unit to volume VII of the Regional Survey of New York and its
Environs (New York, 1929). Among the features of this scheme was the provision of an elementary school and other
institutions required by the residents; the provision of one or more shopping districts on the periphery of the unit,
preferably near traffic junctions and adjacent to shops in other neighborhoods; a street system designed to facilitate
circulations within
the unit but to discourage through traffic; and arterial roads at the boundaries to facilitate
bypassing of the unit.
These principles influenced the preparation of plans for cities and towns during and immediately after the Second World War. Sir
Patrick Abercrombie and J. H. Forshaw, in their County of London Plan, 1943,
advocated the neighborhood as a valuable unit in
the planning of communities, and they decided that: The elementary school should be the determining factor in the size and
organization of the subsidiary or neighborhood units and those communities in which large-scale reconstruction is proposed.
The neighborhood unit has formed the basis of the planning and building of most of the first generation of

British New Towns (1946-1950). With the plan for Cumbernauld in Scotland (1958), the neighborhood system was abandoned, but
with the second generation of New Towns (1961-1967) there was a general return to the principle of neighborhood planning,
although there seemed to be a general anxiety among the planners to call the units anything but neighborhoods. Such terms as
residential communities (Runcorn), districts (Redditch), or villages (Washington) were preferred. It will be seen that the
neighborhood unit is a persistent theme of modern urban planning a theme subject to many variations
that provide a
rewarding field of study.

NEOTECHNIC. A term coined by Patrick Geddes, following Lubbocks typification of the epochs of prehistoric
archaeology, to describe the later and more highly developed stage of the industrial age.
OLMSTED, FREDERICK LAW (1822-1903). Born in Connecticut but debarred from entering Yale Colleg in 1837 by
an eye affliction, Olmsteds chief education came from extensive travels by carriage with his family. At 16, he had
made four journeys of a thousand miles, and he continued these travels for the next 30 years, voyaging to China in
1843, making exploratory journeys to England and the Continent, to the southern states on horseback as far as Texas
and Louisiana, and to California in 1854.
This direct, firsthand experience of landscapes and cities was the foundation of Olmsteds many important innovations in
landscape architecture, park design, and city planning. His first professional job came, in partnership with Calvert Vaux, through
their collaboration on a prizewinning design for New York Citys
Central Park. This was followed by a series of similar
commissions, from Fairmount Park in Philadelphia to the Golden Gate Park in California.
After 1870 Olmsted dominated the planning scene. From 1875 on, when office records were kept, he laid out 37 public pleasure
grounds, 12 suburban developments, the grounds of 11 public buildings and hospitals, 13 colleges, 4 large schools, 4 railroad
stations, and 12 considerable private estates.

PALEOTECHNIC. A term coined by Patrick Geddes, following Lubbocks designation of the epochs of prehistoric
archaeology, to describe the earlier and ruder elements of the industrial age. The paleotechnic era is the age of the
collieries, of steam engines, of the early railways, and of the
expanding and crowded industrial towns.
PARKWAY. Definition in the United States Manual 41-6454 is A scenic highway for non-commercial traffic with full or
partial control of access and usually within a park or ribbon of parklike development. The term parkway originated
in the United States with Frederick Law Olmsteds designs.
PAXTON, Sir JOSEPH (1801-1865). British horticulturist, landscape architect, and engineer; the son of a farmer. At
15 he became a gardener, and in 1826 the sixth Duke of Devonshire asked him to become head gardener at
Chatsworth in his home in Derbyshire. There he created a garden so full of
interesting features it became the
most celebrated in England.
With the Lily House at Chatsworth, Paxton achieved technical competence in working with a prefabricated system of construction
using glass and iron. He made use of this experience in designing his most famous work, the building for the Great Exhibition of
1851 in Hyde Park. The efficiency and well-ordered, detailed design of the building were unequaled for architectural originality. It
was disassembled and re-erected with some alterations at Sydenham in 1853, made possible by its standardized, prefabricated
method of
construction. It became famous as the Crystal Palace.
Paxton was influenced by the technical skill of the railway age, particularly by the use of iron to facilitate the design of elegant
structures.

PERGOLA. A passageway with a roof of trellis work on which climbing plants are trained to grow.
PIECEMEAL DEVELOPMENT. Development that has taken place in a haphazard or sporadic fashion in small,
unrelated areas. Piecemeal development is, in a sense, the opposite of comprehensive development except
that, in addition to being carried out in small quantities, the usage commonly implies that it is visually as well as
physically unrelated to its surroundings.
Although piecemeal development is most often the result of a lack of planning, it can also occur where development plans have
been prepared and there is a system for the control of development but where that control is weak. It can occur in the form of
mixed or single land uses.
The ribbons of service stations, motels, restaurants, and used-car lots on the approach roads to many towns in the U.S. are
examples of piecemeal development in mixed uses. Piecemeal development in single uses is often exemplified by small areas of
housing, on the fringe of a town, jutting out into the surrounding agricultural land and often conforming to the former filed
boundaries.

PLACE. The term is derived from Greek, meaning flat, wide, broad, and came to be applied in France as denoting
any extensive urban space of whatever shape, including a very broad street. The term is also used in Britain, together
with square and circus. In Italy it is called piazza; in Spain, plaza; in Germany, platz; in Sweden, plats; in the
Netherlands, plaats; in Denmark, plads; and in Portugal, praca. Some planners consider that it would be an
advantage if one term were used internationally, and
several planners in the U.S. prefer the Spanish plaza.
PLACE, SENSE OF. The sense of place is a widely shared personal, subjective experience that has become, to
some extent, a minor purpose among some planners. The recollection of a particularly agreeable place in the urban
scene, which is treasured in memory and to which there is a desire to return, partially describes it. The experience
can be likened to the recollection of a passage of music which gives particular pleasure and arouses a wish to hear it
again. The creation of such places can become a
conscious purpose in planning, involving a study of the

elements that compose them; but as these

picturesque, they tend to elude analysis.

elements are so often accidental and mingled with time and the

PRECINCT AND PRECINCT PLANNING. The term precinct means an area enclosed by a boundary either
real, imaginary, or legally defined; it also designates, more vaguely, the immediate surrounding of a religious
or other building. In the U.S., precinct also means a particular area patrolled by police.
The precinct is an important element in modern urban planning. Its purpose is to seclude an area for a particular purpose
such as a shopping, university, or civic precinct, or to protect an area from undesirable intrusions, such as through traffic, with
parts exclusively for pedestrians.
Precinct planning was an important feature of Sir Patrick Abercrombies plan for the County of Londin (1943) which, if not
fully implemented, has had considerable influence on subsequent planning. In this work the precinct system of planning was
adopted to provide quiet areas for all social activity away
from the noise, dust, and danger of the main traffic

roads.
QUASI-SATELLITE. A name given to small communities around London, planned to meet urgent housing needs, which
were built a little beyond the suburban area. They are called quasi because they are not complete towns (with
industrial and commercial employment near the residential area as in a complete satellite) but are rather dormitory
areas, and they have been much criticized as unsatisfactory developments.

RADIAL PLAN. A development of radiating roads from a city center, with urban accretion along the roads. It is a plan
that results from natural, uncontrolled, haphazard growth, but it often forms the basis of good
planning if
combined with concentric or ring roads, in which case the spider-web plan evolves. Another variation is the starshaped plan with green wedges between the urban areas which diminish outwards.
RIBBON DEVELOPMENT. Urban spread along main roads, especially those leading to a city. The practice of
building on either side of a main transport route has been common since the Middle Ages, and many villages and
towns have arisen in this way. In modern times cities have spread partly in this manner. The provision of houses
along the main artery to a city near principal bus routes is a natural form of
dormitory development, and,
although there are obvious advantages to residents, especially in the
matter of transport, it is attended by many
disadvantages. There is little residential quiet and seclusion for housing facing noisy traffic routes which are
dangerous, especially for children. The houses are often at greater distances from shopping centers and schools than
they would probably be with
concentric planning, there is a stretching of services which is uneconomic, and such
development is usually unsatisfactory aesthetically. The many disadvantages prompted legislation in Great Britain to
control development of this kind. (The Restriction of Ribbon Development Act, 1935)
Building along transport routes is related to one form of the linear city, but if this is well planned, a more satisfactory, less haphazard
relation of the main traffic route and buildings is secured and a degree of seclusion of residential areas is obtained in relation to
nodal points and centers.

ROSSETTI, BIAGIO (1465?-1516) Italian architect and planner notable as the author of the plan for the city of Ferrara, made in
1492 and completed in 1567, probably the first systematic city plan of the Renaissance.

SATELLITE TOWNS. Term first applied (1918) by garden city advocates of New Towns which were thought of as
mainly self-contained and separated by greenbelts from major cities, but economically and culturally related to them.
Subsequently the term was sometimes used for large-scale city fringe developments more intelligibly named
industrial suburbs. The term quasi-satellites was applied by the London County Council about 1930 to some of its
suburban housing projects of a purely dormitory character.
Satellite towns are often planned to implement a policy of decentralization from a large city in preference to suburban
development, the eight satellite towns planned round London in the post Second World War period being a conspicuous example.
They were initially called satellite towns following Abercrombies Greater London Plan of 1944, but they were subsequently
officially called New Towns.

SLUMS. No precise definition is given in dictionaries of the term slum, which is of comparatively modern origin
(1812), possibly as a contraction of slump, meaning to fall or sink in a swap or muddy place. A slum is
usually understood to be an area of overcrowded, squalid, closely built, and unhygienic housing. Urban slums arose
in great numbers during the growth of industrial cities and towns in the 19 th century, so that
few great industrial
cities established for a hundred years or more are without their slum areas.
One of the purposes of urban planning is to clear these slums and replace them with modern hygienic housing. Slum areas usually
have a high-density population, and it is not always possible to rehouse the
existing population in the same area while also
maintaining acceptable living conditions. Therefore slum clearance often involves a policy of decentralization or dispersal.

SUBTOPIA. A compound of suburbia and utopia coined by Ian Nairn to denote or describe the less attractive
characteristics of urban sprawl by means of suburbs especially the lower-density, untidy developments on the
outskirts, with badly designed street furniture, billboards, parking lots, and gas stations.
SUBURBS. Suburbs are the compactly developed and developing areas surrounding the central city in a metropolitan
area. These areas are distinguished from the central city by their more homogeneous
socioeconomic and
physical character. There is normally no identifiable boundary between city and suburb; but whatever the definition, the
city merges gradually into the suburb without an appreciable break in physical aspect.

Suburbs take a number of forms as a function of their age, their location with respect to the central city, the cultural context within
which they developed, and other circumstances. The most typical types can be characterized as old suburbs, :new suburbs,
and former independent communities.
Old suburbs are those built before the widespread use of the automobile and the prosperity which now allows individual home
ownership by a substantial proportion of the population. The new suburbs are a phenomenon of the period following the Second
World War. They are developed at much lower densities
than the transit-oriented communities which grew before that war.
Residents of the new suburbs tend to be younger, with a predominance of working-age adults and school-age children, and far less
diverse in age, income, and cultural background than those in the cities and old suburbs.
Suburban communities which grew as independent towns and then were developed in the suburban spread of a large metropolitan
city tend, like the central cities themselves, to have greater mixture of commercial, industrial, residential, and institutional activities
than those areas which developed as subsidiary parts of a larger urban complex.

SYSTEMS APPROACH. A process for investigation and problem solving based on the application of scientific
methods of research, experimentation, and logical analysis. Instead of fragmented, compartmentalized analysis,
emphasis is placed on a holistic view of complex organization, focusing on interrelations and interactions among parts
from which emerge the properties of the whole. A system, broadly defined, is a set of elements in mutual interaction.
The systems approach provides a rational means for dealing with problems of choice under uncertainty through explicit procedures
capable of duplication by others and generally modifiable in the light of new information. It involves a variety of techniques and
activities for analyzing, designing, and managing systems. These include operations research, systems analysis, systems
engineering, systems management, and the Planning-Programming-Budgeting System (PPBS). In recent decades the systems
approach has been extensively applied in the American defense and aerospace fields. It is now beginning to be utilized to help
solve social problems and improve urban conditions.

THRESHOLD ANALYSIS. The differentiation of geographical space results in the fact that in the growth of a city or town there
occur at some stages limitations or barriers to expansion. In the theory of threshold analysis these limitations are called thresholds
of development. The thresholds can be classified as physical, technological,
and structural.
The threshold analysis was first developed in Poland by Moleslaw Malisz in 1963.

TOWN. An urban settlement generally with a population of not less than about 3,000 persons, below which, in
England, it is usually termed a village. In the U.S., when a village or town exceeds 5,000 population, it usually
becomes a city. Town is an adjective most commonly used for urban planning in Great Britain, as city is in the
United States. The use of town in this context was established by the first Town Planning Act of 1909, which was
followed by the Town Planning Review founded at Liverpool University in 1910, followed by the Town Planning
Conference in London in the same year, and the foundation of the Town Planning Institute in 1914.
TOWN-COUNTRY MAGNET. The term used by Ebenezer Howard to explain the genesis of his idea of a garden city.
Howard argued that the causes which draw people into cities may all be summed up as attractions and that the
remedy lies in presenting greater attractions elsewhere. Each city, he says, may be regarded as a magnet, and the
remedy is to provide a greater magnet.
But neither the town magnet nor the country magnet represents the full plan and purpose of nature. Human society and the
beauty of nature are meant to be enjoyed together. The two magnets must be made one town and country must be married, and
out of this joyous union will spring a new hope, a new life, a new civilization.
A first step can be taken by the construction of the town-country magnet which Howard adumbrates in his plan for a garden city, an
idea that in principle subsequently materialized in Letchworth (1902), Welwyn Garden City (1920), and the New Towns of Great
Britain (1946-1970).

UTOPIA AND UTOPIAN PLANNING. The name utopia nowhere land comes from the famous book by Sir
Thomas More (1478-1535), first published in Latin in 1516, portraying in fictional form the best state of a
commonwealth. Thomas More acknowledged as a classic predecessor Platos Republic, and his work has had many
imitators with varying ingredients of idealism, satire, and constructive sagacity. Though the adjective utopian, as
commonly used, carries an implication of impossibility or unreality,
the literature of utopias has had much
valuable influence on sociological thought and political policy.
There are two broad types of utopias: 1) those that describe imaginable societies of the future, to be desired or dreaded or simply
predicted; and 2) those that propose immediate practical action by founding new communities of an ideal character.
Notable examples of true utopias, after Platos and Mores, are Christianopolis (J. V. Andreae, 1619), New Atlantis (Francis Bacon,
1624), Oceana (James Harrington, 1656), City of the Sun (T. Campanella, 1637),
Voyage in Icaria (E. Cabet, 1845),
Looking Backward (E. Bellamy, 1888), News from Nowhere (William Morris, 1890), and A Modern Utopia (H. G. Wells, 1905).

****************Nothing follows***************