Planning Maturity

This weeks blog is inspired by Nigel Taylor's  Anglo-American Town Planning Theory since 1945: Three Significant Development but no Paradigm Shifts.

Since the end of the WWII there has been a maturing of the planning profession. From the architecture inspired of the early 1900s to distinct area with its own evolving theories and modes of practice. And as a true profession there were distinct differences in the way the practitioners believe that the job should be done emerging.

Le Cobusiers Modernist view of

'Towers in the Sky' surrounded by

parkland and freeways neglected the

needs of people.

 

Jane Jacobs Greenwich Village in NYC.

Jacobs' Post Modernist view of a world that

should be varied, diverse, a mixture of old

and new. Jacobs book 'The Life and Death of

Great American Cities' expands on all

these elements and is well worth the read.

 

One of the emerging schools of thought was that a planner was not only a person to make the city pretty but they also need to be able to follow a process of inclusion and research. The shift of planner’s role from creating the pretty to following a process brought legitimacy to the profession that wasn’t there in the early years. The other emerging thought was the way in which the city was designed. The post modernist view, of complexity being critical for a vibrant city, contradicted with the earlier modernist views of simplified order, promoted by the likes of Ebenezer Howard and Le Corbusier.

The shift from pretty to process, from modernism to post modernism shows that the planning profession is able to revolutionise their own planning theory and process.