Urban planning (urban, city, and town planning) is a technical and political process concerned with the control of the use of land and design of the urban environment, including transportation networks, to guide and ensure the orderly development of settlements and communities. It concerns itself with research and analysis, strategic thinking, architecture, urban design, public consultation, policy recommendations, implementation and management.
A plan can take a variety of forms including strategic plans, comprehensive plans, neighborhood plans, regulatory and incentive strategies, or historic preservation plans. Planners are often also responsible for enforcing the chosen policies.
The modern origins of urban planning lie in the movement for urban reform that arose as a reaction against the disorder of the industrial city in the mid-19th century. Urban planning can include urban renewal, by adapting urban planning methods to existing cities suffering from decline. In the late-20th century, the term sustainable development has come to represent an ideal outcome in the sum of all planning goals.
Read more about Urban Planning: History, Sustainable Development and Sustainability, Theories of Planning, Process, Dark Side of Planning
Famous quotes containing the words urban and/or planning:
“And New York is the most beautiful city in the world? It is not far from it. No urban night is like the night there.... Squares after squares of flame, set up and cut into the aether. Here is our poetry, for we have pulled down the stars to our will.”
—Ezra Pound (1885–1972)
“For the people in government, rather than the people who pester it, Washington is an early-rising, hard-working city. It is a popular delusion that the government wastes vast amounts of money through inefficiency and sloth. Enormous effort and elaborate planning are required to waste this much money.”
—P.J. (Patrick Jake)