The development of urban centers has a lasting and intricate history. Even though urban planning as a well-organized profession has merely existed for less than a century, all cities exhibit distinct extent of forethought and sentient design in their functioning and layout (Guttenberg, 2007). If one was to understand the initial basis of forming urban centers, cultivation of crops and domestication of animals allowed people to make permanent settlement. In contrast, early man led a nomadic life that revolved around hunting and gathering. The raw materials of urbanization came together in the 4th millennium B.C.: production of a surplus of storable food, a complex social organization, a system of writing and technological developments such as the plough, loom, potter’s wheel, and metallurgy (Hart, 2001, p. 525-6).
The intent of this paper is to understand the efforts that have previously been put into planning urban cities since they have significantly dictated how people live today. Understanding the past helps to understand the future, and this makes the effort worthwhile. Urban centers play very important roles in society such as storage, manufacture, and trade.
Constraints on Urban Form
Sustainable urban areas are what many aspire to realize because these areas are typically physical artifacts placed in top of preexisting natural world. It is hence imperative to respect the natural constraints that are inherent. They have to conform to the landscape to which they are located, even though advances in technology have meant that man can manipulate this platform to suit individual purposes. For instance, although it was largely purported that cities were best built on slightly sloping land, San Francisco has been developed on a hilly site (Garvin, 2002).
A constraint such as climate requires the planners to align the streets to take advantage of cooling breezes, buildings are also engineered to adapt to the rainfall, temperature, wind, snow, or similar conditions. A closer inspection of American cities and other urban areas will show that they are located close to water sources such as rivers. Transport routes also influence where urban centers pop up (Garvin, 2002).
Components of Urban Structure
As stated earlier, urban planning is a very complex process that requires weaving of distinct elements in order to perfect. The key components of the physical structure of an urban center have for long been; networks, buildings, and open spaces. These components have not been in use for a long period, but it seems to be the only solid arrangement that has been in use for a long time. Many alternative arrangements have been proposed in history and tried, but most did not last (Brotchie, 2008).
Networks
The only element that as changed over time is the type of networks that a city uses. Modern urban areas use a vast array of pathways to ferry its residents, energy, water, goods, and information. The case of history is relatively similar but the modes through which all the subjects would have been ferried differ.
Buildings
The finger prints of urban areas can be cited as its buildings. Anyone can readily identify New York City by seeing the Empire State Building, the White House distinguishes Washington DC, and so forth. Residential buildings mainly consist of almost half of all buildings in urban set ups, but they also vary in sizes and location.
A trend that is increasingly visible is the increasing size of buildings to form very tall building in the central business district of most cities. Tall buildings meant for business are also becoming common in the suburbs today as compared to the past.
Open Spaces
Open spaces play a very important role in facilitating the quality of life in cities. They realty influence which cities will be deemed as desirable to live in, and hence their absence has a potential to tarnish the reputation of an entire city.
Evolution of the Urban Set Up
It is expected that more people will move to urban areas in the future in a move that will see the rural population generally outnumbered by that of the urban residents (Gunder, 2003). This can be stated as one of the greatest developments that has been witnessed over time in regards to the setup of urban areas.
In the latter half of the 18th century in America, the city was primarily a setting for commerce. Buildings largely owned by the middle class expanded along with their owners’ prosperity in businesses. Common buildings included offices, banks, hotels, warehouses, and small factories. New urban centers also developed during this period due to the growing in commercial enterprises, where the neutral grid was the most effective approach to partition land into parcels for sale. Land was one of the hottest commodity anyone would possess at this time, and the stakeholders would continually speculate on shifting land values. Religion, politics, and cultural imperatives were not shaping urbanization for the first time in a long time. Rather, this process was largely dictated by the market imperatives. Around 1920, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston exemplified the commercial cities of this era, with bustling and mixed-use waterfront districts (Gunder, 2003).
Modern/Future City Planning
Modern cities along with those of the future will be significantly be developed by knowledge that has been accumulated over the history of urban planning (Peter, 1991). This is the core reason as to why the study of the history of urban planning is so important. Without it, modern and future cities would not be built on any solid knowledge foundation, which means that their existence and fulfilment of their desired roles cannot be guaranteed.
Cities today are mainly planned using two key elaborate techniques: visionary and institutionalized city planning. The prior is based on what people deem to be ideal cities. For instance, Plato’s republic was an ideal city. Most of the cities that can be fit into this category are developed from scratch such as the case of Las Vegas that as developed at a very fast pace. Institutionalized city planning is a bit more complex and involves the input of some key stakeholders such as the state, city and federal governments (Peter, 1991).
Summary
The fact that the larger population in the United States is destined to live in urban areas means that proper preparations have to be initiated in order to ensure that a favorable way of life will prevail. A huge part of this endeavor falls in the hands of urban planners who now have the pivotal task of preparing the urban centers for the incoming masses. Since urbanization has been a gradual process, these planners can seek critical lessons from the past: finding ways that have worked and avoiding those that have failed. Studying the history of urban planning is not a choice, rather a mandatory step that guarantees some firm foundations for present and future set up of the areas where most people will reside.
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