City Planning

City planning attempts to reduce uncertainty in urban change processes and to provide knowledge to public and private decision making. In their growth processes, human communities are in constant mutation. The results can be orderly progress or chaotic decline. City planning helps communities cope with change in ways that can improve their livability and quality of life. Cities are by nature complex entities, and a planner's main task is to help make informed decisions, thereby creating healthy and safe living conditions, efficient transport, adequate public facilities and aesthetic surroundings and broadening employment, housing, shopping, and educational and recreational opportunities.

Even though cityplanning activities tend to react to socioeconomic forces already in motion, city planning's ultimate goal is to assist the achievement of desirable futures. In addition to working on different types of plans (master, strategic, site, etc.), city planners are responsible for collecting and analyzing data, ensuring and setting standards, creating and proposing programs, analyzing development proposals, enabling discussions, mediating conflicts, and achieving consensus and/or compromises, among many other activities, as noted by Barry Cullingworth and Roger Caves in 2003.

City planning is known by different names in other countries, such as “town planning” in the United Kingdom and “urbanisme” in France. Planning happens within a legal framework of plans, ordinances, regulations, laws, policies, and guidelines. These legal frameworks also differ from country to country. Planning involves multiple areas of urban intervention, [Page 158]such as land use, housing, transportation, and economic development. Planning activities also happen at a variety of different scales: site, neighborhood, city, regional, national, and global.

Even though planning emerged from other disciplines, such as architecture, engineering, and economics, it requires more than a narrow specialist view. Planning is highly interdisciplinary, and while planners do not replace other professionals, they are able to speak diverse technical languages and integrate knowledge in ways that no other professionals do. Planners study multiple subjects in school (e.g., demographics, infrastructure, law, public finance, and ecology). Because of their unique background, they are able to bring added value to the way cities develop. Planners support the emergence of more equitable, efficient, and sustainable cities.

Planners in the United States are represented by two main professional organizations: the American Planning Association (APA) and the American Institute of Certified Planners (AICP). The APA is a nonprofit publicinterest and research organization representing more than 30,000 practicing planners, officials, and citizens involved with planning matters. More than half of APA's members work for state and local government agencies. APA resulted from the consolidation of the American Institute of Planners, founded in 1917, and the American Society of Planning Officials, established in 1934. The AICP is APA's professional institute, certifying planners who have met specific educational and work criteria and passed a certification exam. Planners are bound by the APA and AICP codes of conduct and professional practice.

Deliberate planning activities are many centuries old. They include the arrangement of housing in regular patterns, the location of civic and religious structures along main roads, and the creation of squares and open spaces in central areas of cities. The Greek and Roman civilizations gave particular attention to planning. In the Greek era, streets were arranged in a grid pattern, and urban development was implemented according to defense principles. Romans made full use of symmetry in their planning of cities and military camps, as well. During the medieval age, European cities and towns were planned around castles and monasteries with informal street patterns. The Renaissance period revived city planning along Grecoroman classical orientations. In the U.S., these orientations can be seen in Pierre Charles L'Enfant's 1791 plan for Washington, D.C. The plan included wide streets, parks, malls, open spaces, and public buildings (e.g., the Capitol and the White House) in a grand design.

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