History of

Urban Planning
 • Pre-Classical
• Classical and Medieval Europe
History of Urban Planning • Renaissance Europe (1300 – 1600)

History of Urban Planning, a

• Enlightenment Europe
technical and political process • Modern Urban Planning
concerned with the use of land and
design of the urban environment, o Garden City Movement
including air, water, and the o Modernism
infrastructure passing into and out of
urban areas such as transportation and o New Towns
distribution networks.
• New Urbanism
PRE-CLASSICAL PERIOD
• Designed cities were characteristic of the Minoan, Mesopotamian,
Harrapan, and Egyptian civilizations of the third millennium BC.

• The first recorded description of urban planning is described in the Epic

of Gilgamesh:
"Go up on to the wall of Uruk and walk around. Inspect the
foundation platform and scrutinize the brickwork. Testify that its
bricks are baked bricks, And that the Seven Counsellors must have
laid its foundations. One square mile is city, one square mile is
orchards, one square mile is claypits, as well as the open ground of
Ishtar's temple. Three square miles and the open ground comprise
Uruk. Look for the copper tablet-box, Undo its bronze lock, Open the
door to its secret, Lift out the lapis lazuli tablet and read."
 Indus Valley Civilization
(in modern-day Northwestern India and Pakistan)

• Cities of Harappa, Lothal, and Mohenjo-

daro
• The streets were paved and laid out at right
angles in a grid pattern, with a hierarchy of
streets from major boulevards to residential
alleys.
• They often had drainage systems. The
sewerage and drainage system of Harappan
civilization was more advanced than that of
most western cities before the twentieth
century and even that of many
contemporary urban cities in the
developing world.
View of the Mohenjo-Daro’s Great Bath, showing the • (Harrapan) Town
surrounding urban layout. Planning Features:
1. Citadel and
Lower Town
2. Streets
3. Great Bath
4. Town Hall
5. Drainage System
6. Houses
7. Granaries
MESOPOTAMIA
• Hammurabi (17th century BC)
o King of the babylonian empire who
made babylon one of the greatest cities
in antiquity
o Rebuilt babylon, building and restoring temples,
city walls and public buildings, and building
canals for irrigation
o The streets of babylon were wide and straight,
intersected approximately at right angles, and
were paved with bricks and bitumen.
o Babylon was the largest city in the world from
c. 1770 to 1670 B.C.E
 CLASSICAL and
MEDIEVAL PERIOD
 Graeco-Roman Period
• Hippodamus of Miletus
 the first town planner and ‘inventor’ of the orthogonal urban
layout
 ‘the father of city planning’
• Hippodamian plan - orthogonal urban layout with more or less
square street blocks
 Neatly arranged, ordered, organized city, of lined up wide streets
 Public space was to be clustered together in the center of the city.
Shrines, theaters, government buildings, market space, and the agora (a
central space where athletic, political, artistic, and spiritual activity took Hippodamus of
place) were all to be close together in the center of the city, enclosed by
the grid of city streets Miletus
Map of Piraeus, the port of Athens, showing the grid plan of the city
Turin
- Preserve the remains of these schemes, which show
the very logical way the Romans designed their cities
- Streets were laid out at right angles, in the form of a
square grid.
- All roads were equal in width and length, except for
two, which were slightly wider than the others. (One
ran east–west, the other, north–south, and intersected
in the middle to form the centre of the grid).
- Each square marked by four roads was called an
insula, the Roman equivalent of a modern city block.
- Each insula was 80 yards (73 m) square, with the land
within it divided

Turin in the 17th Century

 Middle Ages
• Urban development in the early Middle Ages:
 characteristically focused on a fortress, a
fortified abbey, or a (sometimes abandoned)
Roman nucleus, occurred "like the annular
rings of a tree", whether in an extended
village or the centre of a larger city.
 The ideal of wide streets and orderly cities
was not lost
• Todi in Italy has been called "the world's most
livable city." It is a place where man and nature,
history and tradition come together to create a site
of excellence.
Todi: the ideal city in the heart of Italy
In Umbria, rises the medieval town of Todi, known by
many as the most liveable city in the world for its perfect
balance of natural and historical beauty and high quality
services.
It is located on a hill top overlooking the surrounding
countryside and the Tiber valley.
Elburg in the Netherlands
It clearly appears that it is
impossible to maintain that the
straight street and the symmetrical,
orthogonal town plan were new
inventions from ‘the Renaissance,'
and, therefore, typical of ‘modern
times.'

Plan of Elburg in The Netherlands, based on the cadastral plan of 1830

RENAISSANCE EUROPE
(1300 – 1600)
• The star-shaped fortification had a formative influence on the
patterning of the Renaissance ideal city.

• Florence was an early model of the new urban planning, which took on
a star-shaped layout adapted from the new star fort, designed to resist
cannon fire. This model was widely imitated, reflecting the enormous
cultural power of Florence in this age; "the Renaissance was hypnotized
by one city type which for a century and a half— from Filarete to
Scamozzi— was impressed upon utopian schemes: this is the star-
shaped city". Radial streets extend outward from a defined centre of
military, communal or spiritual power
17th century map of the
city of Palmanova, Italy,
an example of
a Venetian star fort
• Filarete's ideal city, building on hints in Leone Battista Alberti's De re
aedificatoria, was named "Sforzinda" in compliment to his patron; its
12-pointed shape, circumscribable by a "perfect" Pythagorean figure,
the circle, takes no heed of its undulating terrain.
Vigevano's famous Piazza Ducale, with the Cathedral façade.
• The design of cities
following
the Renaissance was
generally more to
glorify the city or its
ruler than to improve
the lifestyle of its
citizens.
ENLIGHTENMENT
EUROPE
 The Great Fire of London was a major conflagration that swept
• During this period, rulers often through the central parts of the English city of London from Sunday, 2
September to Wednesday, 5 September 1666
embarked on ambitious
attempts at redesigning their
capital cities as a showpiece
for the grandeur of the
nation.
• Disasters were often a major
catalyst for planned
reconstruction.
• An exception to this was in London after the Great Fire of 1666 when, despite
many radical rebuilding schemes from architects such as John Evelyn and
Christopher Wren, no large-scale redesigning was achieved due the complexities
of rival ownership claims. However, improvements were made in hygiene and fire
safety with wider streets, stone construction and access to the river.
 The Avenue de l'Opéra, one of the new boulevards created by Napoleon III
Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann’s and Haussmann. The new buildings on the boulevards were required to be all
reconstruction in Paris, 1852. of the same height and same basic façade design, and all faced with cream
coloured stone, giving the city center its distinctive harmony.
• was commissioned to remodel the
Medieval street plan of the city by
demolishing swathes of the old quarters
and laying out wide boulevards, extending
outwards beyond the old city limits.
• Haussmann's project encompassed all
aspects of urban planning, both in the
centre of Paris and in the surrounding
districts, with regulations imposed on
building façades, public parks, sewers and
water works, city facilities, and public
monuments.
• Beyond aesthetic and sanitary
considerations, the wide thoroughfares
facilitated troop movement and policing.
Ildefons Cerdà’s concurrent plan to extend Barcelona

- It was drawn up to fill the space beyond the

city walls after they were demolished from
1854.
- He is credited with inventing the term
‘urbanization’ and his approach was codified
in his General Theory of Urbanization (1867).
- Cerdà's Eixample (Catalan for 'extension')
consisted of 550 regular blocks with
chamfered corners to facilitate the movement
of trams, crossed by three wider avenues.
- His objectives were to improve the health of
the inhabitants, towards which the blocks were
built around central gardens and orientated
NW-SE to maximize the sunlight they Aerial view of the Eixample
received, and assist social integration. .
Asia: Forbidden City

- The Chinese imperial palace from the Ming

Dynasty to the end of the Qing Dynasty.
- Located in the middle of Beijing, China, and
now houses the Palace Museum.
- Served as the home of the Emperor and his
household, as well as the ceremonial and
political center of Chinese government for
almost five centuries.
- The palace complex exemplifies
traditional Chinese palatial architecture, and
influenced cultural and architectural
developments in East Asia and elsewhere.
Location of the Forbidden City in the
historic centre of Beijing
• Designed to be the center of the ancient, walled city of Beijing.
• It is enclosed in a larger, walled area called the Imperial City. The Imperial City
is, in turn, enclosed by the Inner City; to its south lies the Outer City.
• The Forbidden City remains important in the civic scheme of Beijing. The
central north-south axis remains the central axis of Beijing. This axis extends to
the south through Tiananmen gate to Tiananmen Square, the ceremonial center
of the People's Republic of China. To the north, it extends through the Bell and
Drum Towers to Yongdingmen. This axis is not exactly aligned north-south, but
is tilted by slightly more than two degrees. Researchers now believe that the axis
was designed in the Yuan Dynasty to be aligned with Xanadu, the other capital
of their empire.
Central and South America
- Also engineered urban planning in their cities including sewage
systems and running water.

MACHU PICCHU
- A pre-Columbian Inca site located 8,000 feet above sea on a
mountain ridge above the Urubamba Valley in Peru.
- "The Lost City of the Incas," one of the most familiar symbols of the
Inca Empire.
- Composed of 140 structures or features, including temples,
sanctuaries, parks, and residences that include houses with thatched
roofs.
According
to archaeologists,
the urban sector of
Machu Picchu was
divided into three
great districts: the
Sacred District,
the Popular
District to the
south, and the
District of the
Priests and the
Nobility
 Influences of
Urban Planning
Influences of urban planning
Urban design can significantly influence the economic, environmental,
social and cultural outcomes of a place:
Urban design can influence the economic success and socio-
economic composition of a locality.
Urban design determines the physical scale, space and establishes
the built and natural forms within which individual buildings and
infrastructure are sited.
Urban design can influence health, social and cultural impacts of a
locality.