INTRODUCTION TO

URBAN AND REGIONAL

PLANNING

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EKISTICS: THE SCIENCE OF HUMAN SETTLEMENTS

 The science of human settlements, Greek term meaning “settling down”

* all other science of human settlements conditioned by men and influenced
by economic, social, political, administrative and technical science as well as
disciplines related to the arts.

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EKISTICS: THE SCIENCE OF HUMAN SETTLEMENTS

 A term coined by Constantinos A. Doxiadis, a Greek architect-engineer

 Doxiadis described cities as urban nightmares, irrational structures, clogged
arteries streets, pollution and environmental degradation, lack of sufficient
housing, facilities and services are poor.

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 Human Settlement : by definition, settlements inhabited by Man
 Goal of human settlement should satisfy “Man”
 Human Settlement must contain the following:
 The Content : Man alone or in societies
The Container, or the physical settlement, which consists both
natural and man-made or artificial elements.
The whole content of Human Settlement is the geographic limits of the earth, the
whole cosmos of man.

Human Settlements are no longer satisfactory for their inhabitants.

 Economic Realities

 Social Realities

 Political Realities

 Technical Realities

 Aesthetic realities
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URBANIZATION

 Population and migration

 By 2050, the human population will reached nine billion;

80% of this will be living in the in cities

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Chronologically speaking, the settlement can be presented as follows:
Nature is the container, Man arrives in it, and forms social groups which functions
as a Society. The social group is in need of protection, finally, creates the Shells
and then when it becomes larger and more, compels Networks.

Problems with the Elements

o Man is becoming displaced within his own settlement
o Due to the lack of social cohesion within his group (society) man is becoming
more neurotic and psychotic
o There is a lack of contact with the physical shell of the settlement
o Man becomes displaced
o Man is no longer free to move around him his own habitat
o Man is in greater danger in the center of his cities than in the open countryside
o Noise, odor, and contaminated air force him to find refuge in the depths of
building.
o He no longer participates in the life of the outdoors, the public life of the 20
settlement.
The Natural Habitat:
o The natural habitat is spoilt

o Man is gradually losing those areas which afforded him natural values, and
allowed his sense to enjoy the environment.

Man’s Alienation
o Natural surroundings

o Cultural surroundings

o Social structures

Solution to Man’s unhappiness

o His only desire is to desert the urban settlement, temporarily over the
weekends and holidays or even permanently
o To try to create a utopia on its outskirts and escape there

o Man has made the car his priority rather than the house

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Man has made the car his priority rather than the house
o Man’s desire to travelling rather than arriving.

• Man’s dissatisfaction with his permanent habitat and his desire to escape to a
new type of surrounding
• Man turn into a semi-nomad who finds greater happiness and comfort in his
car rather than his home.
The effects of New Settlements
o An increase in the number of a settlement which is not developing in
accordance with the needs of a community leads to disintegration
o Despite the spread of new settlements into the countryside, the recurring
problems of existing settlements will happen

Decaying and abandoned Settlements

o Millions of settlements are left behind by evolution

o Millions of settlements physical wealth is disintegrating

o New centers are created: transfer of wealth from one area to another
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o The number of communities whose location and structure correspond to an
economy of the past and which are now losing the vitality that kept them intact
and in good shape.
o The expansion of the big urban areas, where residence, industry,
transportation and many other factors are mixed together irrationally so that no
part of the settlement can function properly and assume its appropriate shape
and form
o The centers of our cities become over congested, overbuilt.

o Traffic engineers cut the community into many different pieces without creating
a new community worthy of the old textures.
o New communities are worst of than the old.

The effects of an Expanding Settlement

o First, we take more and more valuable land and build on it haphazardly, thus
upsetting the balance of nature which exists.
o Second, we alter the countryside by building many projects such as highways
and dams
o We spoil the aesthetic quality of an area

 open quarries in mountainsides

 Exposed transmission lines of power lines and water towers
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o While spoiling land, water and air in this manner, we are also destroying many
other expressions of natures, such as wild flowers, insects and birds.
“ MAN WILL END BY DESTROYING HIMSELF” – Albert Schweitzer
• Is it reasonable to destroy the natural habitat in order to create an
artificial one? Will we be happier in an artificial habitat?
• There is no question today that crises we face is leading us towards a
disaster.
 Unbearable situation created within human settlements
 Grave dangers created by technology which expands only in a certain
direction without any reasonable interconnection of these expansions
into a better and uniform system
 We have overlooked the necessity of conserving our resources

The causes of problems in Human Settlement

o The unprecedented increase of population

o The tremendous rate of urbanization (the urban population of the world is

increasing by 4 to 5% per year)
o The huge increase of the average per capita income
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o The unexpected, unforeseen and non-systematic technological progress

o The social and political impact that these factor have had on the life of Man
o The increase in recent years has been outstanding
People
Building
Machines
Time: the need for new innovations, before restricted only to the well-to-
do, has accelerated with passage of time.

Failure to Respond
o In the past, changes were slow in taking place.

o During the latest phase of development, however, the rate of change has
increased so much
o Population growth and economic and social evolution speeded up

o Human Settlement have lagged behind in the quantity of urban foods offered
to people.

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Quality of Human Settlement
o What is the quality of Human Settlements?

o How do we define “better quality”? There is a confusion of this idea.

 The confusion is both absolute and relative brought about by:

o Wrong policies
o Acting wrong way
o Utopian attempts to create a better quality of life
o Attempts by people to solve problems in their own individual way by protecting
their own needs as the needs of the community.

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WHAT IS PLANNING?
 Planning as a Basic Human Activity
 Planning as a rationale choice
 Planning as control of Future Action
 Planning as a Special Kind of problem solving
 Planning is what planners do

DEFINING PLANNING:

 Planning is not a purely individual activity

 It is not present-oriented
 Planning cannot be routinized
 Planning has little or nothing in common with trial-and error
approaches to problem solving – has to be a deliberately
conceived strategy
 Planning is not just the imagining of desirable futures. Thinking
about strategies without intending to implement them or without 31
having the power to carry them out is not planning.
 PLANNING – the noun can either mean “a physical representation of
something” – as for instance a drawing or a map; or a ‘method of doing
something; or an ordering arrangement of parts of an objective.
 Planning as a general activity is the making of an orderly sequence of action
that will lead to achievement of a stated goal or goals

THE PLANNING PROCESS

 Rationality
 Standards of rationality
 Aggregation of choices

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WHAT IS TOWN PLANNING AND WHY STUDY IT?
 Towns and cities are not God –given or natural.
 They are the result of centuries of decision – making by
individual owners and developers, and of government
intervention.
 Topography and geography do play a part, they do not determine
development.
 Town planning is to do with property and land, and therefore with
money and power.

RATIONALE OF TOWN AND COUNTRY PLANNING

 It would avoid unnecessary implementation expenditures in terms of
money, effort and time.
 It would enable the area to have a rational and sound basis for
reclassifying land uses that are consistent with legal, environmental,
political and economic considerations that ensure its smooth
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passage and approval by concerned national and local agencies.
  It would serve as the basis for enacting a zoning ordinance
 It allows the introduction of new trends in planning.
 It ensures that development would take a sustainable path.
 The plan will facilitate the sourcing of funds for the implementation
of recommended programs and projects.

RATIONALE OF TOWN PLANNING

 To respond to problems of inequality, deprivation and squalor

caused by the interplay of free market of laissez faire forces.
 To deal with problems arising with regard to the use of spaces or
land occupied by an increasingly mobile population.
 To balance private needs and communal or collective demands.
 To balance the interplay of physical and cultural elements in human
habitations
 To direct and control the nature of the built environment in the
interest of society as a whole.
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Three (3) evils of Development
1. POVERTY
2. INEQUALITY
3. UNEMPLOYMENT

BASIC FEATURES OF MODERN URBAN AND

REGIONAL PLANNING
 It is a deliberate, self-conscious activity that usually involves persons
trained
 It goals and objectives, as well as the means
 Urban and regional planners themselves seldom, lay out major
alternatives and recommendations.
 Urban and regional planners employ a variety of specialized tools
 The result of the most planning activities are discernible only 5 to
20 years after the decision has been made.
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CATEGORIES AND CONCEPTS OF PLANNING
PHYSICAL PLANNING – concerned with the spatial qualities and relationships of
development
ECONOMIC PLANNING – facilities the working of the market
ALLOCATIVE PLANNING – regulatory planning
INNOVATIVE PLANNING – Development planning
INDICATIVE PLANNING – lays down general guidelines; advisory in nature
IMPERATIVE PLANNING – otherwise called command planning, involves specific
directives
NORMATIVE PLANNING – otherwise called utopian planning
BEHAVIORAL PLANNING – otherwise called reformist planning

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WHAT IS TOWN PLANNING?
 Town planning is the art and the science of ordering the land-
use and siting the buildings and communication routes so as to
secure the maximum level of economy, convenience and beauty.

WHY IS THERE A NEED TO STUDY TOWN PLANNING?

 Town planning basically concerned with ‘spatial’ (physical) land
use and design issues. As has often been said, “You can’t plan
for something unless you understanding it first.
SCOPE OF TOWN PLANNING
 Planning law and its enforcement through what is known as
development control are major aspects of town planning.
 Much of the planners work consists of dealing with already
developed older sites where the objective may be to incorporate
existing buildings into the proposed new scheme. The planner’s job
is to get the best solution possible within a difficult situation.
 Much of town planning from the developer’s perspective appear to 69
be to do with planning law and details of site development .
 Development plans cover all types and aspect of land use and development
both rural and urban
 One of the main aspects of town planner’s work is the production of city
development plans that determine which sites can be built in the first place.
 When deciding on the merits of a particular scheme, town planners look at the
wider context and consider the social, economic, environment and political
aspects, because their ‘client’ is society.
 Often they are more concerned with the details of site layout than with the city-
wide, macro-level implications of their proposals; yet the macro citywide level is
linked to the ‘micro’ site level of town planning
THE ROLE OF THE PLANNER
A. UMPIRE
 The traditional role of the town planner was seen as similar to that of a referee,
or umpire, who set out the pitch, resolved conflict between opposing teams and
enforced the group rules, the framework of fair play, which the game of property
development was played out.
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 The planners brief was to ensure that towns and cities developed logically and
conveniently with the emphasis in zoning.
 Planning control ensured that space was available for the non-profit social uses,
which were essential to the urban population but were not attractive to private
sector as an investment.
 The planner as “oiling the wheels of capitalism” criticized by the ‘left’
(socialists), is enabling business to function more efficiently by organizing the
urban physical framework within which it operates.
B. TECHNOCRAT
 Planners saw themselves as powerful technocrats who could offer society
answer to all its problems on the basis of what they saw as their advanced
knowledge of the science of town planning.
 The “white heat of technology squeaky clean uncomplicated approach to
planning ignored the variety of untidiness of existence”

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C. ECONOMIC PLANNER
 Economic planning has always been seen, particularly by Labour gov’t, which
favors a high level of state intervention as essential comparison to realistic town
planning.
 Town Planning involves the allocation of scarce resources that is urban land,
goods & services and is therefore seen as an aspect of economic palnning.
D. ENVIRONMENTAL WATCHDOG
 GREEN MOVEMENT – concern about the natural environment depletion of the
planets resources and the greenhouse effect.
 PRINCE CHARLES – concern about civic design and appearance of the built
environment, accompanied by much criticism of modern architecture.
 In drawing up STATUTORY PLANS, the planners have to analyze the physical:
economic & social factors which create and shape the demand for the different
types of land use and development, taking into account such as population,
employment, industry, transportation and housing demand.

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E. SOCIAL ENGINEER
 Environment determinism– seeking to influence and determine the people’s
behavior through the design and planning of environment.
 Planners have often been criticized for naively seeking to solve deep social
problems through physical use planning.
 Achieve only superficial change as “tinkering with the superstructure”

 Ideal Planning System – which can solve urgent problems here and how setting
policies and goals for long term change, in cooperation with other policy making
bodies responsible for the wider social and economic aspects of urban life.
F. CORPORATE MANAGER
 The view of the planners as coordinator with a generalized overview of a
complex urban system.
 In the private sectors, planners have emerged as team leaders coordinating
specialist experts such as ecologists, high ways engineers and landscape
architects.
 AUSTRALIA – there is a stronger link between the town planning and landscape
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architecture profession
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END OF PRESENTATION
THANK YOU . . .