PLG100 Lecture Notes PDF

Lesson #1 and #2 in NOTEBOOK What is Theory? - Intended to explain phenomena and provide a framework for understanding Methods for studying cities? - Quantitative: Analyzing data using statistical methods - Qualitative: Observation, field research, interviews Question to consider: How can...

Lesson #1 and #2 in NOTEBOOK What is Theory? - Intended to explain phenomena and provide a framework for understanding Methods for studying cities? - Quantitative: Analyzing data using statistical methods - Qualitative: Observation, field research, interviews Question to consider: How can we use theory for a planning professional? Why do we need to know urban theory? - Defining a problem depends on what good, normal, desirable, and natural are, therefore we really need to understand these elements of cities. - Two ways to think of a city: 1. As a state 2. As a process What is a city? - Gideon Sjoberg: - A community of substantial size and population density that shelters a variety of non-agricultural specialists including the literate elite. - Mumford: - “ City is a related collection of primary groups and purposive associations.” - Louis Wirth: 1. Large 2. Dense 3. Heterogenous - Weber: - A market settlement or place “where the local inhabitants satisfy an economically substantial part of their daily wants in the local market.” - Philips: - Exists when there are cultural ingredients considered essential to urban life-fine arts, exact sciences, writing. V. Gordon Childe Criteria on how to distinguish an early city from other forms of human settlement: 1. Larger size and denser population 2. Classes of ‘nonfarming specialists, including artisans, merchants, administrators, and priest, all supported by the agricultural surplus  3. Taxation and capital accumulation 4. Monumental public buildings 5. Ruling elites or classes who absorbed, accumulated, and organized the surplus 6. Exact science, needed to predict, measure, and standardize 7. The invention of writing or scripts, enabling the “leisured clerks” to elaborate the exact and predictive sciences 8. Specialist in the arts 9. Long-distance trade in vital materials 10. Community membership based on residence alone, rather than kinship Why do you think cities have come to exist? There are 4 explanations as to why 1. V Gordon Childe’s thesis: POET P- population O- organization E- environmental improvement T- technology Three revolutions: Neolithic - Old stone age, (hunter gatherers) to settled agriculture. Urban - Rise of complex civilizations and cities. Industrial - New means of economic production creates new urban forms 2. Material: the coveted and advantages of proximity - According to Jacobs and Mellaart, the first cities likely developed through trade - which would turn Childe’s thesis on its head. 3. Non-material: culture and spirit - Mumford argues that the role of the sacred nonmaterial items was critical to city development. Ceremonial meeting places with “spiritual or supernatural powers” 4. Non material: leaders and institutions - Spiro Kostof argues that the spirit of the people was what established cities: powerful leaders, religion, trade, environment, or agricultural evolution was a key.  Lecture #3: Ancient Cities - 09/23/2024 - Fertility of the natural environment (places that could sustain the agricultural environment) - Common correlated layout of the city (everyone lived in a similar form) - Planners provide a sense of order and safety and people with power who don’t follow rules often get in trouble - Taxes: brought your stuff and offerings to retain all of the infrastructure - Tell = created from a city’s new buildings being constructed on the ruins of old ones (when houses start to fall apart, they get leveled and have houses built on top of them) - Gridding of the cities was made to maintain order, allocate property, and get from point A to B - Organic Growth = natural, unplanned growth where the process is an urban settlement evolves from a village origin (area grows naturally) - How to access the house? - Have to go in from a smaller street to access the door (don’t really want access because the center of the world is a family unit and your housing is the main focus and you don’t want people to come to your door) - Focus of life was on that religious structure as it was where all the wealthy lived as it provided a safe space with everything you might need - Early cities had internal plumbing and others didn’t and had to resort to treating the area around them like a bathroom - Urban Form Determinants that Morris talks about: - Natural World Determinants: - Topography - Climate - Construction materials and technology - Human-made Determinants: - Economic - Political - Religious - The Pre-Urban Cadastre - Defense - Aggrandizement - The Gridiron - Urban mobility - Aesthetic - Legislation - Urban Infrastructure - Social Religious and Ethnic Grouping - Leisure - Locational Determinants: - Organic Growth Settlements - Water, food, defense, trade  - Planned Urban Settlements - Water, food, defense, trade + social, political, and economic reasons - India: Harappan Cities (Morris) - Mohenjo-Daro, Indus Valley (Pakistan) - Earliest known planned towns in history - All Harappan cities must have been laid out according to the same system of town planning Lecture #4: Ancient Classical Cities Greece and Rome - 09/30/2024 - Classical Era Cities: - The classical era = 8th BC to 6th AD centered in the Mediterranean - Greek and Roman societies flourish and influence Europe, North Africa, and West Asia - Greece - Town building reflects the attitude to life of inhabitants - Attitude to life shaped by geography - Topography supports the formation of separate city-states, each with a nucleus and surrounded by countryside - Climate conducive to open-air community orientation, democracy, consultation, and public voice - Key Planning Achievements of the Greeks (Morris) 1. Greek invention of the “Polis” 2. Colonizing movement 3. Cities with clearly defined limits, compact urban forms, the gridiron, and integrated social life 1. Greek Polis - Generally refers to a city-state or self-governing community - Aimed to make it possible for each citizen to realize their spiritual, moral, and intellectual capacities; a living community, almost an extended family - Plato felt the ideal city should have 5,000 citizens and Aristotle that each citizen should know each other by sight - Physical form of the polis stressed public life through public temples, stadiums, the agora (a combined marketplace and public forum), and theaters - Private houses were low and turned away from the street - Acropolis is the stronghold of the whole community and the center of public life - Your house did not matter  - Agora = marketplace, central zone, or living heart of the city (daily scene of social life, business, politics) 2. Colonizing movement: - Urban growth pressures were contained by sending out emigrant expeditionary parties to found new cities in the Mediterranean - Expansion of trading contacts - Basic elements of a typical Greek city plan comprise: - Acropolis - Enclosing city wall - Agora (public meeting space + market) - Residential districts - Leisure and cultural areas - Harbour and port - Possibly an industrial district 3. Systematic Planned Approach - Cities with clearly defined limits, compact urban form, the gridiron, and integrated social life - While some cities grew organically, new towns and redeveloped districts were planned - Miletus (oldest) and Prience are the best-known examples - At least 60 colonies originated from there - Priene considered the clearer example, containing everything that makes a polis, all very neatly and ingeniously arranged and subordinated to the Hippodamian plan - Miletus circa 479 B.C. - A planned city reconstructed after its destruction by the Persians - The Master Plan for the reconstruction of the city was prepared by a Milesan architect, Hippodamus of Miletus (aka the Hippodamian method of planning cities) - Note orthogonal street pattern and insertion of typical Green elements including… - Agora - Theater General Principles and Practice of Roman Town Planning (Morris) - Castra (pl) - Military garrisons, encampments, forts, or fortified legionary camps, characteristically existed only as temporary centers for local military activities but some formed the basis for permanent settlements - Followed a strictly applied imperial plan - A - defensive wall  - B - the forum at the intersection of the Cardo (C) and Decumanus (D) - Two main streets that intersected each other → start of a grid layout - Bottom figure E is theater - There was an arena and most of the households in the town had a courtyard where families would engage Three main classes of Imperial Town (Governance) - Coloniae - either newly founded settlements or native towns, allied to Rome with full Roman status and privileges - Municipia - usually important tribal centers, taken over with formal chartered status but only partial Roman citizenship for their inhabitants - Civitates - market and administrative centers for tribal districts which were retained in a Romanized form - Rome itself was divided into regions, which were subdivided into vici (quarters separated from each other by the streets which bounded them) and each vicus a special administration presided over by its own magister City of Rome - Romulus and Remus - Founded Rome and Romulus led for a while - Romulus bounds the city of Rome - “Caput Mundi” Rome - Engineering - Sewers and water supply - Initially were open drains - Romans were the first to develop this large-scale sewer system - Aqueducts - transported water to the city downhill Rome - Urban Form Components (Morris) - Fortification - Consisted of seven different layers of walls - Expanding their defensive systems - Street System: - Itinera, tracks only for men on foot - Actus, permitted the passage of only one cart at a time - Viae, (larger street) permitted two carts to pass each other or to drive abreast - Consisted of different types of roads for different types of activities - Housing: - Damus, privileged single-family occupation - Insula, (building block) divided up into a number of flats (cenacula) - Rules on height (fire, issues on structural collapse) - Rules on use of tiles, roofing material  - Rules on spacing between places so that fire cannot spread from one to another - Markets: - 3 main ports: Ostia, Portus, and pool of the Tiber - City Center - Recreation - Handouts from the government were what most people lived on - One-third of the population living off of public charity - you had to keep them well fed and well entertained by celebrating holidays (which could break into riots and protests) Lecture #5: Medieval Cities to Rennaisance Baroque Cities - 10/07/2024 Organic Growth - Natural and unplanned process from where a urban settlement evolves from a village origin - Represents the broadest of two directional contrasting continuous streams of activity by human kind and present day has created - Water source, incremental devlopment, natural paths and roads, market space, wells, hubs of activity Medieval Cities - Medieval Period/Middle Ages/Dark Ages - 500 AD - 1500 AD - Fall of the Roman Empire to the rise of the Ottoman Empire - Reasons for the fall of the Rome and the Roman Empire (E. Andrews) - Why did Rome fall? - Invasions by Barbarian tribes - Pins the fall of string of military losses sustained against outside forces - Economic troubles and overrealiance on slave labor - Crumbling inside due to severe financial crisis - The rise of the Easterm Empire - Emperor divided the empire into two halfs: western empire and eastern empire → Constantinople - Made it more easier to govern but they drifted apart - Overexpansion and military overspending - Government corruption and political instability - Difficult to govern if size were to increase - Being emperor was a dangerous job - The arrival of the Huns and the migration of the Barbarian tribes - Christianity and the loss of traditional values - Weakening of the Roman legions  - Unable to recruit enough soldiers so started hiring merchanaries who had little to no loyalty to the empire Monotheism - Spread of Christianity and Islam - Religion, Power, and Cities The Islamic City - Principles (Saoud 2002): - Natural Laws - Adaptation of the built form and plan of the city to natural circumstances expressed through weather conditions and topography - Religious and Cultural Beliefs - Mosque has central position in spatial and institutional hierarchies - Cultural beliefs separating public and private lives regulated the spatial order between uses and areas - Design principles from Shariah Law - Rules reflected in terms of physical and social relations between public and private realms, and between neighbours and social groups - Social principles (quarters) - social organisation of urban society based on social groupings sharing the same blood, ethnic origin, and cultural perspectives Human Settlement Over Time… Western Medieval Cities - Collapse of Roman Empire interrupts urban history in Western Europe - Cities shrink, some vanish - Long-distance trade shrinks - Local warlords take over: feudalism Feudal Society - Western Europe controlled by nobility, Church - Rural peasants controlled by landowners (church, nobility) - Nobility provides military protection - Emphasis on rural subsistence European Feudal System - King - Nobles - Knights - Peasants The Medieval City - Area - Medium towns not over 50 ha, small towns 4-10 ha  - Population: 1500 - 35000 - Location - Establish in many and varied locations depending on a combination of traditional needs (protection, commercial advantage, fertile hinterland) - City layouts follow different planning styles depending on location and topography - Farm towns, fortress towns, church towns, merchant prince towns, merchant guide towns Form of Growth - The principal axis invariably ensured the formation of a street market settlement. This preceded the later, centralized market square. (in south-west Germany 12th most towns were based on street market plans; in the 13th century market squares become more common - Medieval urban street patterns developed on a route axis 1. Rib pattern 2. Parallel street pattern 3. Spindle or eplilptical 4. Grid patterns Location: - Linear plan type is found predominantly in flat country. Although distorted linear layouts, following contours, can be found on hilltops or hillsides City Walls - Define the city - Protection in war - Security - Customs and tariff barrier - Ornamental symbol of city Housing - Complex household structure - Different “classes” under one roof, in one household (merchant, workers, servants) - work/retail/residence blurred Revival of Western Cities  - Linked to re-emergence of long distance trade with Eastern Europe, Middle East - Boom in full progress C12th, C13th - Via cities in - Northern Italy - Flanders, Rhineland - Northern Germany 1889 - Viennese city planner Camillo Sitte published Der Stadte-Bau recording city form noting especially the location of public space and civic buildings Florence at end of fourteenth century is running out of room in critical central locations The Hanseatic League 1100s was an alliance of trading guides that established and maintained a trade monopoly along the coast of Northern Europe during the Late Middle Ages and Early modern period (circa thirteenth-seventeenth centuries) Human Settlements Over Time… Renaissance (15th Century) and Baroque (17th Century) Cities - Many urbanists regard the European Renaissance as the true urban revolution because it produced not just big cities, but entire national societies that became majority urban - Major achievements in city-building in this period stimulated by the confluence of five factors (Hodge et al.): 1. The aesthetic theory and concepts from a revival of interest in the classical art forms of Rome and Greece 2. The invention of printing and improvements in the production of paper 3. The growth of wheels traffic as a result of replacing the solid wheel with lighter rim/spoke/hub 4. The invention of gunpowder making medieval fortification obsolete 5. The accumulation of immense, autocratic powers by the heads of some nation states and city states Planning and Design in the Renaissance - Planning (the systematic intervention in the urbanization process) guided by certain design principles (Hodge et al.): 1. Symmetry 2. Coherence 3. Perspective 4. Monumentality Renaissance - Rationality and in line with classical forms and ideals Aspects of the European Renaissance - Urbanization - Urban Design  - Urban Planning Baroque - 17th Century - More ornate detail and decoration of buildings - Baroque layout displays the city’s power and strength