Planning History Paper

8/8/2019 Planning History Paper

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Timothy Shah

October 20, 2010

PLAN 502

A Holistic Analysis of Planning History in North America

Prepared for: Leonie Sandercock

A planners history is one of shame and triumph,This is his story; listen, comprehend and evaluate,

His tools are capable of transforming a communitys physicality

He will assess, plan and design to reach an optimal vitality,

His influence is profound in embellishing the city,

Slum clearance, master plans, and zoning as tools of rationality,

Urban problems arise and ignite his reactive thinking,

A proliferation of problems suddenly loses his focus,

His attention shifts to a new locus,

David continues to search for Goliath,

Goliath scale planning problems allow him to showcase his heroism,Blind self-interest may be defeating an act of egotism

What about Bauer, Jacobs and Hayden on the value of community planning?

They are too radical and futile for his simplistic thinking,

Geddes, Adams and Howard define my profession,

Revolutionary ideas putting others in suppression,

Why is he the ultimate and omnipotent human being?

Where is the she, they and people in this story?

His social imagination is constrained and exclusive,

Sharing power with the community must be an illusion,

Pro-active thinking is counter-intuitive in his mind,

To bind with the architects is his ultimate find,

This is his planning story

Frederick Gardiner once said planning was too often an academic, impractical exercise, an

obstacle to the business of the city, an impediment to bold ambitions (Bocking, 2006, p. 60).

June Manning Thomas once said planners were often held responsible for the racial effects of

their actions even though the decision makers often were not planners (Thomas, 1995, p. 201). Iopen this essay with two quotes to illustrate the conundrum that continues to plague planners,

that is, a wide variance in public perception viewing them as both good and evil. The first quote

by Gardiner reminds me that planners have, at times, endeavoured to fight large scale

infrastructure projects that would displace residential communities. Gardiner said this about

planners, because some, in the 1950s, spoke up against the Gardiner Expressway in Toronto

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which was seen as symbolic of economic progress for the city by some; however, the

construction of the Gardiner demolished more than 170 houses and erased many streets around

lakeshore (Slater, 2003).

The second quote by Thomas explains how planners are sometimes victims of their own

professional zeal. While figures like Gardiner blamed planners for delaying massive urban

infrastructure projects, those affected by the project usually marginalized and low-income

communities might directly lay the blame on the planner who was vehemently sticking up for

the community in the first place. Indeed, planners can become scapegoats because their

profession is not always clear or understood by the city in which they work. Thomas further

elaborates by discussing how planners were often held responsible for the racial effects of their

actions even though the decision makers often were not planners.

Whether directly involved or not, planners have been accused of helping architects carry out

social segregation, particularly in places like New York City. In my undergraduate urban history

course, I learned a little bit about the malicious and racialized planning in American cities. More

often than not, it was design and racial politics that problematized the planning process. For

example, some bridges in Long Island were deliberately designed to have low clearance (9 feet)

to discourage public transit on the parkways so buses could not pass through them. These buses

would mostly be used by low-income groups and racial minorities who had issues with

automobile affordability (Tuan, 1994). Discouraging public transit and impeding groups from

mobility depicts how physical infrastructure in cities can cause social segregation. It was the

architects who designed these projects but planners were blamed for allowing this type of design

to shape parts of the urban landscape.

These two stories can be seen as contrasting interpretations of planning history. In this essay, I

will draw on two interpretations of planning history. One is offered by David Gordon and Gerald

Hodge in their bookPlanning Canadian Communities. The other interpretation is drawn from

stories laid out in Making the Invisible Handedited by Leonie Sandercock. Importantly, I

discuss the dominant narratives, voices and themes of the books, and provide a comparative

analysis of the stories told.

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Story-telling and Planning

Kenney writes planning has much to learn from histories that foreground political struggle, for

it is through an experimentation of this resistance to discrimination and isolation that the processof cultural formation and the use of urban space become relevant to planning historians

(Kenney, 1998, p. 130). This quote is used to describe the activism of the gay and lesbian

experience in the city, specifically mapping the connection between place and collective identity

that is at the heart of the gay and lesbian experience. The chapter on the Stonewall riots

illustrates a picture that traditional planning history forgot to paint. Kenneys quote above

resonates in the thinking of insurgent citizenship which can be a challenge to modernist

planning. Gays and lesbians help transform inner city neighbourhoods by bringing a new sense

of culture and urban vitality. This is not often discussed in conventional planning history texts.

Hodge & Gordon, while telling their story of modernist planning, discuss it as a state driven and

utopian like process. Their story effectively highlights a number of themes that constitute urban

problems such as congestion, unhealthy sanitation, poverty and health epidemics like cholera and

how the planner responded to these challenges in a heroic and professional manner. Indeed, these

were significant challenges of the 19th and 20th century that affected the urban fabric of the city.

But, who was truly a part of that urban fabric and how did these urban issues relate to the people

most affected by them?

Urban planning as a profession has ineluctably avoided contentious topics like the inclusion of

the gays and lesbians in the urban fabric of the city. Keeney elaborates there has been extensive

and systematic practices of oppression and discrimination targeting gays and lesbians as threats

to the urban social order, a century of resistance to this oppression, resistance that has been both

overt (in the form of political and social activism) and covert through the establishment of

independent gay and lesbian enclaves and cultural forms hidden (Kenney, 1998, p. 120). In the

history of planning, vulnerable groups such as the gays and lesbians and minority groups like the

Chinese and East-Indians in Vancouver were forced to surreptitiously gather together and form a

collective cultural and urban identity.

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The Hodge & Gordon book view planning as a scientific, technical and rational process capable

of solving complex urban problems. Their historical overview very much parallels the

contemporary planning definition from the Canadian Institute of Planners (2010): Planning

means the scientific, aesthetic, and orderly disposition of land, resources, facilities and serviceswith a view to securing the physical, economic and social efficiency, health and well-being of

urban and rural communities. The concept of social efficiency is not well understood and

assumes that social circles or social conditions are capable of being engineered to achieve

optimal efficiency. It is this approach that takes a hegemonic perspective where the planner

works with the community to solve their problems, through a set of tools that are deemed to be

municipally appropriate.

The historical community planning framework outlined in the Hodge & Gordon book pays close

attention to concern over city appearance, city living conditions, the environment and city

efficiency. These concerns have historically led to urban reform movements such as the City

Beautiful, or Slum and Sanitation reform or Ebenezer Howards Garden City concept. Their

perspective demonstrates that planners have a significant interest in making cities more livable

and beautiful but the impact of these projects -such as beautifying and making our cities healthy -

can inevitably result in wide-ranging ramifications on the poor. The planning history told in

Making the Invisible Visible sheds light on some of the displaced people impacted by these

planning and architecturally utopian driven projects.

City beautiful planners had correctly identified most of the main elements of a communitys

physical form with which a planner needed to work: the street pattern, the public buildings and

the park the elements under public control (Hodge & Gordon, 2008, p. 75). This statement

assumes that movements like the City Beautiful created jobs for planners, because without them,

there would not be a planning profession. They fail to explain the real social injustices that

emanate from such movements and why planners are the right profession to deal with them.

In Sandercocks Framing Insurgent Histographies chapter, there is a discussion that contrasts

the urban design thinking offered by Hodge & Gordon. Turning our attention to 19th century

Paris, a place familiar with Baron Haussmanns City Beautiful projects, problems like social

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disorder, congestion, and unsanitary conditions could be remedied by the planners domain. The

so-called purification of the social/urban body involved massive changes to Paris built form

and the expulsion of many residents from the city centre (Sandercock, 1998). Modernity and

hygiene served as the pretext for the demolition of entire quartiers.

The population of Paris proper began to decline and many workers were dispersed to outlying

suburbs. The Algerians, who have long been discriminated against in France, lived in unhealthy

blocks inside the city. These areas soon became targets for aggressive renovation in the early

1960s (Sandercock, 1998). Finally, neighbourhoods that had a significant immigrant population

justified a state-driven urban renovation process where the removal of poor dilapidated houses

could ameliorate the social, health, and hygiene problem, ultimately contributing to a better and

more robust urban form.

I allude to Sandercocks chapter to portray a significant contrast in the interpretation of

modernist planning, one that challenges this state-driven and design focused process. Hodge &

Gordon discuss this process through an urban design perspective which is consistent with the

structure of their book. However, it gives the reader the impression that planners have

historically had professional responsibilities of urban design to improve the overall urban fabric

of the city.

Sandercock challenges this problematic structure and gives us an understanding of how planning

within the capitalist modernization framework has searched for excuses, such as poor hygiene, to

forcefully remove vulnerable groups: 20th century planning used the language of social hygiene

as a rationale for removing immigrants and people of colour from certain parts of cities

(Sandercock, 1998, p. 18). Planners have a whole range of responsibilities beyond urban design.

The modernist planning perspective is focused on urban design and thus public perceptions

around what planners do focus narrowly on urban design; this may confuse planners

responsibilities with an architects responsibility.

To conclude this section, I offer a story that depicts and urban planning problem that was not

solved by an urban planner. This story is meant to address how reactive thinking is sometimes

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not the planners strongest suite and touches on the value of pro-active thinking; something that

is now more common in the profession with the rise of community planning. This story is found

in a supremely entertaining book called SuperFreakonomicsby Steven Levitt & Stephen Dubner.

New York City circa 1860s was heavily dependent on horsecars to transport goods and movepeople around the city; so dependent that New Yorkers made 35 million horsecar trips a year by

the start of the 1860s. 20 years later, there were even more horsecars to complement a growing

population and to serve transport needs (Levitt & Dubner, 2009).

The unfortunate consequence was an abundance of horse manure that overwhelmed the streets of

New York City. Like other urban problems mentioned in this paper, manure was an egregious

public health concern posing threats to the citizens of NYC. The worlds first international urban

planning conference was held in 1898 and much of the dialogue between delegates focussed on

how to resolve the manure crisis in NYC. A solution could not be agreed upon; instead

technological innovation through the introduction of the internal combustion engine -- came to

the rescue. Indeed, cars replaced horsecars and the manure problems slowly started to disappear

(Levitt & Dubner, 2009).

I continue to tell this SuperFreaknomics anecdote to my friends and colleagues. However, I have

never analyzed it from an urban planning perspective. What I find fascinating is that a

conference of urban planners could not even find a sensible solution to this urban problem.

While the planning profession was only in its infancy at this time, urban issues such as manure or

cholera epidemics attracted the attention of planners and distracted them from thinking about

public health issues in a pro-active manner. Like the City Beautiful movement, planners thought

that the manure dilemma was solvable in a reactionary urban design approach. Alas, it proved to

be unsolvable by their thinking and the city had the fortuity of the novel internal combustion

engine.

Planners could have identified this problem earlier on by working with New York City

communities to alleviate the immediate concerns instead of waiting for it to reach a larger scale.

If planners are truly concerned about the health and well-being of communities, it is

indispensable that they work with such communities to bring about solutions that are

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collaborative and participatory. This is indeed their core strength. As planners did not employ

this approach to the manure crisis in NYC and similar problems around the world, many could

have seen urban planning as a futile profession where planners were only interested in the issues

once they were large scale and then not have the capacity to solve them. This is just one examplewhere the reactionary mindset proves to be self-defeating, counter-productive and puzzling to the

professions purpose.

Questioning the Tools of Planning

Zoning as a planning tool warrants some historical analysis. Hodge & Gordon discuss at length

the concept of zoning and how it is a common planning tool utilized by municipalities. They

discuss how zoning helps stabilize and protect land values and how it is a legislative tool that

must be uniformly applied and not readily amended. They identify two problems with zoning: 1.

the dilemma between protecting existing land uses and promoting the planning of future land

uses; and 2. the administration of zoning. The topography of an area may render some parcels of

land difficult to build upon and still meet zoning requirements (Hodge & Gordon, 2008).

These two problems associated with zoning are well defined by the authors but are more on the

technical and scientific side of planning. There is a short but critical narrative of the dark side of

zoning in various chapters ofMaking the Invisible Visible. While this book does not offer us a

general understanding of Canadian Planning history, it nonetheless provides a story that can help

new planners reinvent their social imagination.

We know about the technical and legal rationality of zoning, but its effects on people is often

overlooked. Historically, African-Americans, gays, lesbians and lower-income citizens have

been the victims of this planning tool. In the U.S., exclusionary zoning laws had restricted both

the sale and the rental of housing to a single nuclear family (Kenney, 1998). History in the U.S.

has shown that planners have been involved in establishing not only exclusionary zoning laws,

but restrictive statutory provisions, restrictive housing guidelines and narrow judicial

constructions of the meaning of family (Kenney, 1998). Underlying this historical discriminatory

practice was a common belief that gays and lesbians were sexual deviants as one of the causes of

social disorganization (Kenney, 1998).

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There is a profound narrative within the book that explores the negative ramifications of zoning

on the African-American community. Race riots were common in the first half of the 20th century

and planners had an important role to suppress the riots through legislative tools. The race riotscreated industrial, civic, housing and religious issues for city officials. In response to these

issues, planners used residential controls such as zoning to segregate the races and create

restrictive covenants in land titles (Thomas, 1998). The interpretation of zoning - a concept and

tool that is so central to the planners toolkit, is distinct in the two books. Unfortunately, zoning

has been used to exacerbate racial segregation in places like the United States.

In Canada, this tool has allowed for a variety of land uses in cities and towns by ensuring a mix

of environmental, economic and social considerations for the people. However, Hodge &

Gordon speak of this tool from a macro-planning perspective, that is, how it controls the

development of neighbourhoods. This ultimately misses a crucial segment of the exclusionary

effects of zoning and the ramifications for vulnerable groups such as gays, lesbians and racial

minorities.

Heritage and Preservation Planning

Hodge & Gordon briefly discuss heritage preservation in the context of urban renewal plans

incorporating historic buildings in new designs. Planning agencies increasingly pressured cities

to protect and enhance districts of historic buildings such as the National Capital Commissions

Sussex Drive in Ottawa and Vancouvers Gastown district (Hodge & Gordon, 2008). Over time,

their efforts were successful in bringing about planning policies to protect the built heritage of

districts in many Canadian communities. These planning accomplishments are an important part

of the professions history but do not account for how Canadian city districts were transforming

through the expansion of multicultural communities.

Gail Lee Dubrow takes us through a passage of preservation planning in her chapter.

Preservation planning is an instrument of a democratic and inclusive approach to planning that

has been not widely used in the history of the profession (Dubrow, 1998, p. 57). Unlike Hodge

& Gordon, Dubrow argues that historic sites and buildings have the potential to bring intellectual

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developments to a wider audience and to raise public awareness of the contributions of diverse

groups to our heritage such as the Chinese, Japanese and East-Indians.

While Dubrow focuses on the United States, she nonetheless provides an interpretation that ismore inclusive by recognizing the history of immigration, multiculturalism and the diversity that

helped shape the United States landscape. In Dolores Haydens Power of Place, she discusses

how multicultural dimensions of urban history are relevant to the art of place making. In her

chapter, Dubrow discusses how important cultural resources -- such as the Japanese bathhouse in

Washington State -- have no recognition or protection unless they are documented in the

preservation planning tools.

The Japanese language school in Washington is yet another example of a building that celebrates

the language, traditions, culture and the common Japanese heritage. Historically, planners have

not been as active in embracing and protecting these heritage sites; they have focussed largely on

sites such as the ones described by Hodge & Gordon. Furthermore, the long history of exclusion

and discrimination has undermined the possibility of finding vocal advocates for the preservation

of the Japanese heritage sites (Dubrow, 1998).

In summary, preservation planning is a critical part of the planners tool kit. Dubrow argues that

the planner has a responsibility to enforce existing regulatory controls and to determine whether

the protections they confer are equitably distributed. In addition and beyond what Hodge &

Gordon suggest, planners have an ethical and political responsibility to advocate for the

preservation of cultural resources when systematic inequalities have weakened the power of

particular groups to defend their own tangible heritage (Dubrow, 1998, p. 66).

Insurgent Citizenship and Modernist Planning

This final section of the essay discusses the differences between insurgent citizenship offered by

James Holston, and modernist planning principles developed by Le Corbusier and the Congrs

Internationaux dArchitecture Moderne (CIAM). James Holston explains how planning is

generally used to refer to urban design, derived in large measure from architectural theory and

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practice (Holston, 1998). Moreover, this dominant mode of planning was developed by Le

Corbusier and the CIAM.

Hodge & Gordon do not thoroughly discuss the principles of the CIAM; instead they see it as anextension of Le Corbusiers theories of building and planning. At first glance, a non-planner

could be confused as to what the professional differences were between civil engineers and

planners in the 1930s. Hodge & Gordon explain how the Athens Charter recommended that

urban planning be broken into four functions; dwelling, work, recreation and transportation. In

addition, planners would be responsible for rigourous separation of land uses, to be connected to

high speed modes of transportation (Hodge & Gordon, 2008).

The Hodge & Gordon interpretation of the CIAM and the planners urban design role is

informative and useful in understanding the four functions. However, it is a plain explanation

which corroborates the problematic and simple definition of modernist planning where the state

itself is the supreme planning power. Holstons critical analysis of the CIAM attempts to shed

light on its dominant principles such as the theory of colonization to implement the new

architecture-planning-technology to achieve both an objective and subjective transformation of

existing conditions (Holston, 1998). Further, the CIAM model appealed directly to the state

authority to institute total planning of the built environment. The notion of transforming an

unwanted present by means of an imagined future would impose state driven plans on society,

assuming that the model was widely accepted. These ideas would take the form of master plans

which could fix the future.

A major difference between Holstons chapter and the Hodge & Gordon book is the discussion

of ethnographic planning. Ethnographic planning questions how to include the possibilities for

change encountered in existing social conditions (Holston, 1998). Importantly, it is the best way

to establish the terms by which residents participate in the planning of their communities. This

process must be closely monitored by planners to ensure that power is not constantly at the state

level or held solely by the wealthy. In contrast to the CIAM model, insurgent and ethnographic

planning looks at approaches on how to engage the community in planning and urban design.

Insurgent planning recognizes multiple citizenships based on the local, regional and transnational

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affiliations that aggregate in contemporary urban experience (Holston, 1998). While CIAM

principles are widely embraced in planning today, there has been a major shift in imagination

and planning practice to consider the merits of a more participatory and inclusive approach.

Conclusion

Summarizing the history of planning in North America could take the form of a comprehensive

and rigorous doctorate dissertation. In this essay, I provided an analysis of selected themes and

stories in planning history. Conventional planning texts such asPlanning Canadian

Communities, offer readers an informative and adequate understanding of the traditional

planning stories. These stories include the urban reforms movements of the late 19th and early

20th centuries, the influence of Thomas Adams in thinking about conservation planning, the rise

of Le Corbusier and urban design principles, post-World War II suburban development, and

heritage conservation and participatory democracy in the 1970s, to a new urban agenda today of

smart growth, intensification and new urbanism. These stories are profoundly unique to the

profession of planning but are only pieces of the whole puzzle to a critical eye.

Forgotten in these themes of planning history are the people who have been marginalized and

who have suffered from the trade-offs of beautifying and making cities more livable. In this

essay, I alluded to stories offered by Making the Invisible Visible to compare and contrast the

interpretations of planning history with Hodge & Gordon. There is not a single correct and true

version of planning history; it is interpreted in drastically different ways. But for any aspiring

planner in an age where social imagination and inclusivity are now more accepted it is not

only critical to understand the progress of planning in transforming our cities, but to also be

cognizant of the inequalities and conflicts that have emerged from this process. In addition, it is

important to understand the limitations of the reactionary approach in planning. I offered a story

from SuperFreaknomics to shed light on the problematic nature of reactionary thinking and whypro-active approaches are more appropriate for the planning profession.

To conclude, I provide a quote from Jane Jacobs which elaborates on the points I have stressed in

this paper. In essence, how modernist planning strives to reach a utopia through beautifying and

transforming cities when the real issues are not even known or properly addressed. There is a11


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quality even meaner than outright ugliness or disorder, and this meaner quality is the dishonest

mask of pretended order, achieved by ignoring or suppressing the real order that is struggling to

exist and to be served (Elizabeth & Goldsmith, 2010).

References

Bocking, S. (2006). Constructing Urban Expertise: Professional and Political Authority in

Toronto, 1940-1970.Journal of Urban History, Vol. 33, No. 1, 51-76.

Elizabeth, L., Goldsmith, S. (2010). What We See: Advancing the Observations of Jane Jacobs.

In D. Taylor (Ed.),Between Utopias. Oakland: New Village Press.

Gerald Hodge and David Gordon. (2008).Planning Canadian Communities: An Introduction to

the Principles, Practice and Participants (5th Ed), Toronto: Thomson Nelson.

Levitt, S.D., Duber S.J. (2009). SuperFreaknomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes and

Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance.New York: William Morrow.

Sandercock, L. (1998). Making the Invisible Visible: A Multicultural History of Planning. In L.

Sandercock (Ed.),Framing Insurgent Historiographies for Planning. (pp. 1-33).

Berkeley: University of California Press.

Sandercock, L. (1998). Making the Invisible Visible: A Multicultural History of Planning. In J.Holston (Ed.), Spaces of Insurgent Citizenship. (pp. 37-56). Berkeley: University of

California Press.

Sandercock, L. (1998). Making the Invisible Visible: A Multicultural History of Planning. In G.L

Dubrow (Ed.),Feminist and Multicultural Perspectives on Preservation Planning(pp.

57-77). Berkeley: University of California Press.

Sandercock, L. (1998). Making the Invisible Visible: A Multicultural History of Planning. In J.

M. Thomas (Ed.),Racial Inequality and Empowerment: Necessary TheoreticalConstructs for Understanding U.S. Planning History (pp. 198-208). Berkeley:

University of California Press.

Sandercock, L. (1998). Making the Invisible Visible: A Multicultural History of Planning. In M.

R. Kenney (Ed.),Remember, Stonewall Was a Riot: Understanding Gay and Lesbian

Experience in the City (pp. 198-208). Berkeley: University of California Press.

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Slater, T. (2003). Comparing Gentrification in South Parkdale, Toronto and Lower Park Slope,

New York City: A `North American` Model of Neighbourhood Reinvestment`? Bristol,

United Kingdom: Centre for Neighbourhood Research. Retrieved November 2, 2008

from the World Wide Web:www.bristol.ac.uk/sps/cnrpaperspdf/cnr11sum.pdf

Yuan, Y.F. (1994). Environmental Determinism and the City: a Historical Cultural Note.

Cultural Geographies, 1, 121-126.

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http://www.bristol.ac.uk/sps/cnrpaperspdf/cnr11sum.pdfhttp://www.bristol.ac.uk/sps/cnrpaperspdf/cnr11sum.pdf

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