# The flaws of urban planning



## jarbury (Aug 20, 2007)

I think urban planning's great failure in the 20th century was to not limit the influence of the automobile. Many of the best planned cities in the world were largely built in the early 20th century or late 19th century. These cities were built around tram systems that encouraged a strong link between city development and transportation systems.

With the rising popularity of the automobile post WW2, this link was broken, and you have seen the negative effects of that. The population of US cities between 1950 and 2000 increased something like 2 or 3 fold, but the area of those cities increased 50 fold! This dependence on the automobile has been inequitable, unsustainable and socially destructive.

Good urban planning revolves around balancing the needs of all users equally. Not giving priority to the car, but allowing a variety of people to meet each other, to interact, to truly engage with their environment. The wide roads of Dubai, Las Vegas and Shanghai only serve to dislocate, disenfranchise and exclude those not in cars. We will only truly plan great cities if we can remove ourselves from the obsession with the automobile and balance the needs of different users of the city much better.

There's nothing really that new in this argument though. However, most cities around the world still seem to be planned around the car.


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## Manila-X (Jul 28, 2005)

jarbury said:


> I think urban planning's great failure in the 20th century was to not limit the influence of the automobile. Many of the best planned cities in the world were largely built in the early 20th century or late 19th century. These cities were built around tram systems that encouraged a strong link between city development and transportation systems.
> 
> With the rising popularity of the automobile post WW2, this link was broken, and you have seen the negative effects of that. The population of US cities between 1950 and 2000 increased something like 2 or 3 fold, but the area of those cities increased 50 fold! This dependence on the automobile has been inequitable, unsustainable and socially destructive.
> 
> ...


Interesting enough, alot of US cities had their street trams and trollies during the early to mid 20th century. Even NY had its share.

New York


















Los Angeles


















Chicago









Detroit


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## jarbury (Aug 20, 2007)

^^ Now nice pics! I've been to San Francisco and ridden on the popular trams that still remain there!

I guess that reinforces my point though, that things started going wrong after WW2. The removal of tram tracks is one aspect of how the automobile took over the city, eventually excluding everything else, including tram tracks, from "most" cities around the world.


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## Shumbi (Feb 21, 2006)

It was uncovered that General Motors, Standard Oil and Firestone schemed to buy up all the street car operators in cities across the country in the 40's and 50's. They then uprooted them and replaced them with GM buses with Firestone tires running on fuel supplied by you guessed it, Standard Oil. They also awarded urban planning prizes to designers of car friendly plans and lobbied heavily in Washington to have these car oriented plans implemented. None of modern suburbia is an accident but part of a conspiracy that has created modern sprawling suburbia. The SUV was also heavily marketed to families in the suburbs because it is the most profitable for the Autos and Big Oil. Men were marketed as being pussies if they didn't drive a truck and women were sold on being liable to be crushed with their children unless they were safe in a truck. Appeals to male ego and female insecurity.
Now the price of oil is ten times higher than in 1998 and people are stuck driving 30 miles per day to work. Finally the penny drops as US wealth and troops flows to the middle east and the economy grinds to a halt by the whims of Arab sheiks who are now buying into your banks.

p.s If you want to see what US cities would have looked like if GM/big oil hadn't destroyed street cars, check out Melbourne Australia.


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## jarbury (Aug 20, 2007)

^^ Melbourne is still pretty sprawled and auto-dependent, although it does retain its trams. Inner San Francisco might be a better example of a US city that appears less auto-dependent than most. 

What you mention above is very true. One more reason to love peak oil, as hopefully it will lead to the end of sprawl.


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## drunkenmunkey888 (Aug 13, 2005)

WANCH, come to think of it all planned communities and cities have in common in the first decade after construction is the lack of density, population, and vibrancy. Wasn't Shinjuku just like Pudong back in the 70's? I must admit now that I have seen planned communities in Altanta and been to Crystal City in Virginia that American developments suffer from the same sterility and lack of vibrancy as Chinese new cities. Century Boulevard and Lujiazui Park still piss me off though. As deserted as Crystal City, Alexandria, Pentagon City, Rosslyn, and Huntington are, they don't have massive useless boulevards uselessly bisecting their downtown areas (although Alexandria is pretty pedestrian unfriendly).


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## Joey313 (May 2, 2006)

I think a flaw in urban planing is not connecting the streets with the sidewalks and sidewalks with the buildings. With this I mean is like putting a building in the middle of a large block and having empty space around the building. Or making the sidewalks to far from the streets or to big... like a mini park sidwalk. also making every thing so seperate. 
For a city to grow healthy things need to be close so people could walk. Id say the biggest urban flaw is freeways !!!!!!!!1


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## worldwide (May 3, 2005)

reasons why planning is flawed:

because its relatiely new and is indeed a social experiment

because often planners dont have much sway, especially in the usa, so often traffic engineers, developers, and city hall get the best of them


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## GunnerJacket (Jan 25, 2008)

a) I think it's incorrect to label the practice of urban planning as a whole as flawed in any way. How certain communities and people _implement_ the practice can be flawed, but the craft itself is what it is, and the identification of something within as flawed is left to opinion. After all, planning is a means of achieving a vision. That metro Atlanta is a suburban morass isn't a matter of poor planning because that's what planners of the time envisioned. They merely miscalculated the impacts, the precedents, new trends, etc. That select drug and insurance companies are interfering doesn't mean the practice of medicine in itself is flawed... 

Just a point of clarification.

b) Besides that many points mentioned are spot on. Efforts to create vibrant and sustainable urban areas of any scale are subject to the resources of the time and the vision and will of the stakeholders involved. Many communities would gladly install more parks, sidewalks and museums if they had the fiscal means to do so. Many others would readily mandate smaller block sizes, more rigid parking designs, etc, provided the legal framework to make it happen were available. In the US, at least, most communities have a strong sense of home rule and, often rightly so, people grow weary of the concept that "government knows best what I should do with my property." 

I'm 10+ years into a career in regional planning in Georgia (USA). Some of the biggest obstacles I've found in realizing near-ideal planning, in addition to points already made here:

- Comprehensive funding of planning offices. Proper planning is tough without decent GIS or information about the community, made more difficult when most planning offices are really just building permit operations. As a result of the latter, most planning offices are funded based upon direct revenues; Most politicians don't see the benefit of paying for visioning and design standards.

- Education of final decision makers. As hinted at earlier, it's not unheard of that a planning office hand off well crafted recommendations only to see the political officials ignore them in whole or in part.

- Time. This area is improving, but in most cases (especially in the past), by the time a well-crafted plan for a community is ready for public consumption, many conditions and issues will have changed. More so by the time parts of that plan are funded and made reality.


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