The Interrelation of Housing and City Planning

Over much the greater part of its area, the physical city is the result of the co6rdinated action of housing and city planning, each also acting and counteracting upon the other.Each is affected by the operation of forces that do not play upon the other, but each is subject to influences that also control or affect the other.Some approximate definition of these two terms is necessary.Such de- finitions are doubtless given in the papers that precede or succeed this one, but both city planning and housing are in a state of flux, and individuals use the terms with different interpretations.Housing covers places where people live-places that used to be called &dquo;homes&dquo; and that still are called homes in the country and in parts of cities.But a flat does not have that sense of family life separated and shut off from all the world oustide, that sense of peace and happiness and aloofness, and comfortable security, that the word &dquo;home&dquo; brings to one that has known an abiding place other than a flat.But, nevertheless, it is the many-inhabited flat, the tenement, that has caused the rise of the housing inquiry, an inquiry that is gradually creating a knowledge that has something of the character of a science.The forms of living are too various to permit such an investigation to develop a strict science, but certain of the details of housing, such as the amount of cubic space of air that each room should contain per each individual, are rapidly becoming, and in some cases have become, scientifically understood; and that under- standing is being formulated into statutory law.Housing is not generally regarded as applying to buildings intended for business, commerce, manufacturing, transportation or similar business.City planning is concerned primarily with what the public au- thorities do, or with what they can control, such as the street and other transportation systems, the recreation system, the dock sys- tem.It is in certain details that its direct action upon housing is most apparent

Environmental planning · Geography · Urbanization and City Planning

• Canada's All Right

  Open Access•Richard Harris•Canadian Geographies /…•1992

  Add to list