The City Plan and What It Is

SINCE the development of a city plan involves an expression of the combined viewpoints of many technical groups, it will easily be seen that individual definitions must vary. It may be more to the point, therefore, to discuss a general conception of the city plan and what it is rather than to attempt further definition. While it may not be possible to establish complete agreement on what the city plan is, it is possible to note the basic elements around which most definitions have been constructed. Planners agree that if a city is to realize its fullest possibilities, a program of physical development must be planned and carried out, instead of leaving the growth of a city to chance. This leads to the idea of a visualization of individual projects, which, in the aggregate, and properly correlated, will bring about the desired development. These projects physically represented in a series of maps and drawings making up a tangible guide for the development of the city are then generally spoken of as the master plan. A visit to the drafting room of any planning office or department will bear out the suggestion that the purposes of the city planner, reduced to a series of maps and drawings, constitute the master plan. This plan, being the correlation of all the unit plans that have been developed through cooperative effort, will have required many preliminary studies. They will be represented in base maps of topography, of physical conditions, of areas, of streets, and other fundamental features. There will be maps outlining proposed changes and suggested new developments, and sup rimposed arrangements of these on the maps of existing conditions. There will be supplementary charts of assessed valuations, of growths, shifts, and densities of population, and of traffic loads and peaks, and of many other pertinent facts to which consideration must have been given before final conclusions could be made. In addition to these graphic representations, there will be found detailed interpretations of procedures that must be observed if the plan as outlined by the maps is to be carried out. A general paper on the city plan and what it is must necessarily deal with these purposes and interpretations of the planner in an attempt to bring out the essential features of the elements that are common to all comprehensive city plans, and it is proposed to show, through a brief analysis of these elements, the chief factors that must be taken into account in the development of a typical city plan

Archaeology · Business · Environmental planning · Geography · Plan (archaeology · Political science · Urban Design and Spatial Analysis

• Distinguishing ‘planning’ from the ‘plan’. Institutional and professional implications of taking urban complexity seriously

  Stefano Moroni•European Planning Studies•2023

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