Talk:Theories of urban planning

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Tidied up 21/02/06

Clarification requested re: Density

The article states, "Densities are usually measured as the floor area of buildings divided by the land area, or in a residential context, by the number of dwellings divided by the land area. Floor area ratios below 1.5 are low density. Plot ratios above five are very high density." I don't have a problem with (floor area)/(land area), since you are dividing area by area and thus arriving at a pure (unitless) number. But in (number of dwellings)/(land area), you are dividing a pure number by an area in an attempt to arrive at a pure number. Therefore, the unit of area should be specified.

It looks as if that's been clarified, but Floor Area Ratio is being used ambiguously. Although it's defined as (floor area)/(land area), the numbers used (e.g., <2 for exurbs) imply (floor area)/(area of building footprints). Could someone who is familiar with the term correct that? Here's the original change if that helps. Bennetto 02:26, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Floor area ratio is only one way of measuring density, and not necessarily the most useful, since different kinds of buildings are occupied in different ways, and in different cultures. There is also residential density (the number of dwellings per Ha or per Km2, or per acre or per sq. mile), and there is population density (number of people per Ha/Sq.Km/acre/sq.mile). And then there are even more specific uses of the term 'urban density' (by people such as Peter Newman) which refers to the total number of people divided by the total area of 'urban land' in any given city, or part of a city, such as a local government area, or census district etc). There are also measures of employment density (number of jobs per unit of area, take your pick, SI or Imperial), and any number of others that are relevant to the planning issue under consideration. This section of the article needs a fair bit of work (esp the transport section).Eyedubya 11:36, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Naming / 'land use planning'

Surely a better name for this article would be "Land use planning" as planning occurs in rural areas as well. G-Man 19:13, 13 August 2005 (UTC)

Urban planning and land use planning are two seperate areas of study. Land use planning is a topic studied by urban planners, but they are not necessarily the same. --Chris 03:54, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

So why does land use planning redirect here then?. G-Man 19:32, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

Because no one has written the article. In the meantime it can point here, but this article is about urban planning! Feel free to add your own about land use planning, and we can link them together. --stochata 19:55, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

Im with the above comments, if anything urban planning is only one part of land use planning, i have had a go at what i hope is up to scratch for a land use plannign article, i kept it minimalist as i note there alot of "xxx planning" articles most of which are not very good. Bjrobinson 13:29, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

Addressing considered a part of urban planning?

Mention if house addressing and street numbering have ever been considered a part of urban planning, and why not. Give a link to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_numbering

Planners get tasked to manage address systems, but it's not an essential element of "urban planning" by any stretch. In my personal experience, the post office and emergency management are leaders in addressing, with planners coordinating. --JC Shepard 03:22, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

OK, added Urban_planning#Addressing. Jidanni 10:50, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

Misc

I'm embarking on a major overhaul of this page. Much of the information is incomplete, and too narrowly focused on a) physical planning and b) American planning. Townsnda 08:50, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

As a long-time lurker, longer-time urban planner, I like the feel of this article; however, it is high on fluff and low on substance. There is enough controversy within the profession itself regarding what "urban planning" is to make the topic difficult. See, e.g., Myers, D. and T. Banerjee (2005) "Longer View: Toward Greater Heights for Planning: Reconciling the Differences between Profession, Practice, and Academic Field," Journal of the American Planning Association. 71(2): 121-129, which I myself don't personally agree with, yet presents a strong argument. This would be a better entry sticking to description and leaving original opinions to the journals. (See Wikipedia:No original research). JC Shepard 21:57, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

On the planning and transportation topic, none mentioned motorcycles. Surely they work well on traffic, and traffic jams are reduced in cities where there is a high percentage of motorcycle riders, and they are familiar to us for over a century. But this contributor doesnt know the numbers. Anybody? Mauricio Manco ( oitoparafusos@hotmail.com )

Removals

I removed this. It isn't anywhere close to NPOV. Andy Shepard

Many urban areas show little sign of ever having being planned in any coherent or socially-aware way. Buildings and spaces may reflect the different priorities of a different era, or simply demonstrate an undue (anti-social or environmentally-insensitive) emphasis on the priorities of the organisation or individual that paid for their construction. Left-over parts of a town or city that appear to serve no particular purpose have been labelled by the pejorative acronym "SLOAP" meaning Space Left Over After Planning. Unfortunately such spaces are all too common, particularly in suburban areas, and planners, businesses, politicians, land agents and communities all have a duty to consider how these flaws in the urban fabric might be repaired.

Redlinks

In adding a paragraph on urban planning to Mitigation of global warming, I discovered that these are all redlinks. Are there articles they should redirect to? Otherwise we should create the articles.

• private vehicle,
• medium-density,
• mixed-use fixed
• town center
• transport node - List_of_transport_topics#Nodes is the most relevant I could find, but I think it deserves an article.

--Singkong2005 13:35, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

• FIXED Transport Nodes now redirects to somewhere logical
• FIXED Town center redirects to Town CenTRE
• ????? I suppose medium density should goto to 'Development Density' but no such page exists

Mixed use is a nice article... i hadn't seen it before :) Bjrobinson 22:46, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

reversion 6/6/6

Reverted article back form this: [1]. Although quite well written and relatively interesting it added whay too mush to the opening section, was in a strange format, appeared to be the (very intelligent) personal veiws of the author, looked silly, was unnesscarily long, was unsourced.Bjrobinson

Reinsertion of "Comeback Cities"

discussion started at User talk:EurekaLott:

Hi EurekaLott. You removed a book reference in the article on Urban planning. It is a very classic and important book for the topic, especially on revival of extant urban areas, so I put it under a general bibliography. Bests. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 12:56, 15 September 2006 (UTC) (talk)

I never heard of it either... amazon sales rank of #164,382 and using the "what people bought after vieing this page thingy" i reckon only 14 people have ever bought it. Bjrobinson 14:48, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Since the book was added to the Notes section, I removed the General bibliography section as redundant. Hope that works for everybody. - EurekaLott 03:46, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

Well, it works for now. Looking up a scholarly book on Amazon to see how important it is --- that's not a good method. Useful for popular fiction, etc. Some of the best texts and scholarly books have very few sales on Amazon but are highly quoted and respected. One should have qualitatively looked it up using Google. I also had included a Business Week review of the book. And a lot more than "14" people bought it since it is used in university courses. Best Regards. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 14:59, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

Needless to say, of course, it has been included as part of the canon of the American Planning Association, the professional society for urban planners in America. [2] Quoting from the American Planning Assocation synopsis:

In COMEBACK CITIES, Paul Grogan and Tony Proscio show how innovative, pragmatic tactics for easing the nation’s urban ills have produced results beyond anyone’s expectations.

Ineffective efforts by big government and business working independently have given way to public-private partnerships and grassroots nonprofit organizations that are willing to experiment to solve urban problems. Pragmatism, not dogma, has produced the charter schools movement and a new law enforcement focus on “quality of life” issues. A new breed of big city mayors has welcomed business back into the city, demanded results and performance from city agencies, downplayed divisive racial politics, and cracked down on symptoms of social disorder. As a consequence, America’s inner cities are becoming vital communities once again.

Although there is still much to be done, Grogan and Proscio base their optimism on several trends that could boost the impact of grassroots community development. For example, ample access to capital and credit, reductions in violent crime, and much-needed overhauls of public housing, welfare, and public schools all are harbingers of urban revival.

Ron Brownstein of the Los Angeles Times has written that this book is "arguably the most important book about cities in a generation."

Paul Grogan was a professor at Harvard Business School and also an administrator. For a bio, see [3].

And here are some significant reviews of the book. [4] ... from the New York Times to the journal "Urban Affairs".

--- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 15:14, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

ok. As always we all manage to make it all right :) This page is #1 on a goolg serch now though so we do need to keep it 'tight'. Bjrobinson 18:59, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

reconstruction

Whatever the motives... this section is good? The pictures are welcome too, nice one of the Kabul Masterplan. Bjrobinson 11:54, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm not so sure it's an entirely positive addition. This section, ARCADD, Inc., City of Light Development, Hisham N. Ashkouri, and most of the contributions of User:Arcaddmarketing appear to be one big self-promotion effort. - EurekaLott 12:35, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Can't deny that... the username even includes 'marketing'. Ill go with the consensus, but currently i think its done sensitively. The pictures are also useful, we could do with a GNU licensed masterplan pic for other planing related articals Bjrobinson 21:07, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

"Non-planning"

I think this article could deal with the examples of laissez-faire or non-existent zoning, whioch occurs in both developed and developing countries (e.g. Houston, Texas) and its effects. Grant65 | Talk 12:13, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

a quick glance into google maps will reveal, that there is no such thing as non-planning either in the usa or, as far as i know, in any other developped country. apart from the usual urban sprawl, houston looks well planned to me. one could certainly look up the effects of non-planning in places like kathmandu or bogota. Sundar1 12:11, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

"Looks well-planned" is not the same thing as planned. The article on Houston says:

Houston is the largest city in the United States without zoning laws, and so has grown in a different manner. Rather than a single "downtown" as the center of the city's employment, five additional business districts have grown throughout the city: Uptown, Texas Medical Center, Greenway Plaza, Westchase, and Greenspoint.

Is there a comparable examples of a large city without zoning in the developed world? Grant | Talk 15:32, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Cells

What is this 'cells' business mentioned in the article under aesthetics? Honestly never heard of them except in passing reference to new towns. Does this paragraph need to be there? Bjrobinson 15:25, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Ok im going to remove this then :) Bjrobinson 13:21, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Urban history

FYI, I created a category called Category:Urban history that is collecting the history of cities. - Freechild 02:00, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Seminal Books section

This section makes me very nervous... anyone have a proper source to justify this list? Bjrobinson 10:13, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

I agree. And how can the Kerb 15 publication...released April 2007...be a seminal work? Maybe use the economics page as a model? Call it study resources or further reading. Matt Kuzmatt9 13:45, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Transport

This section is of high importance, makes many assertions, yet provides few, if any, sources. There are more ways of calculating density than Floor Area Ratio, and this section should acknowledge this, as well as providing comprehensive links to sources for all figures etc.Eyedubya 11:40, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Spam removal

It is not acceptable in WP to place references to ones own work. if it is important, someone else will do so, See WP:COI. The ones added by Mesmith9 to his own work have been removed, and also the links added by an anon. apparently working on behalf of clients. DGG (talk) 02:27, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Yes, it fair to say their is a gradual decline in quality on this page. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bjrobinson (talk • contribs) 23:55, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

is there other stuff to be removed? DGG (talk) 08:29, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

External links

• Urban Attributes — A glossary of urban terms that have served to describe recent urban phenomena —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jacmaes (talk • contribs) 09:25, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
• Cyburbia — Community for Urban Planners
• Planetizen — Network for Urban Planning, Design and Development
• PlanningNewsVote (PNV) — News website for planning by planners
• The Next American City — a not-for-profit organization founded by a new generation of urban thinkers and leaders to explore the transformation of America’s cities and suburbs —Preceding unsigned comment added by Smalltownfires (talk • contribs) 01:22, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
• NewUrbanNews — News website for New Urbanism —Preceding unsigned comment added by Certified planner (talk • contribs) 05:04, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

The last one seems ok but the rest seem to fail WP:EL, namely:

• Links to search engine and aggregated results pages.
• Links to social networking sites (such as MySpace), discussion forums/groups (such as Yahoo! Groups) or USENET.

--NeilN ^{talk ♦ contribs} 05:11, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

The last one would probably be better if added to the New urbanism article instead of this one. If any of these are to be added back to the article, Planetizen would probably be the most appropriate. It's become the premier portal for urban planning issues, and among other things, serves as a human-edited aggregator for planning news. - EurekaLott (talk) 05:43, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

*Cyburbia is almost certainly the largest and most 'reliable' urban planning community on the net with very in depth discussion carried out in a pretty professional manner, having been around since the 90's. U actually use Cyburbia for proper advice about proper things. It should not be removed.

*Planetizen is considered fairly reliable amongst collegues.

*Planningnewsvote is an RSS feed type thing? Never heard of it. Lots of non related stuff on it, doenst seem useful to have it here

*New Very 'Americocentric', but a professional 'journal' of sorts

*Comment. The key is to keep this free of specific interest sites and pressure groups. Bjrobinson (talk) 12:00, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

Who got rid of all of these? We need links to American Planning Assoc and Royal Town Planning Institute at the very least too. Bjrobinson (talk) 12:15, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

I don't think we should be adding links to the APA or RTPI, because people would then want to add other national organizations like the Canadian Institute of Planners, the New Zealand Planning Institute, the Malaysian Institute of Planners, and so on. - EurekaLott (talk) 16:39, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

But you kept a link to the planning portion of the ODP, twhich you happen to maintain. This could be seen as a conflict of interest; I know when I've done anything that is even barely perceived as such, I'm subject to The Wrath of the Administrators. Elmwood (talk) 20:27, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

But, this is ENG WP therefore APA and RTPI should be included as the most relevent organisations to the subject. Canadian PA were included as their definition was useful and was used in the intro. Why not add Aus and NZ ones to prevent argument? 5 links to the key Planning organisations of the main english speaking countries + 3 of the ones listed above is hardly too much to ask for a 'root' topic such as this which leads onto to many smaller topics. 8 In total is not too many. Bjrobinson (talk) 14:59, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Yes on the national ones just for equal treatment. New American City strikes me as an online magazine, and not a suitable link. DGG (talk) 01:30, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Planning Process

I have an article I have been working on about the comprehensive planning process. I think mentioning the process and adding a link to the article page in the Process section of this article may be a good idea, since the comprehensive planning process is a large part of urban planning. Str0426 (talk) 18:05, 2 April 2008 (UTC)