Architecture Guide: Town Planning

PART-I

What is Town planning?

The art and science of ordering the use of land and siting of buildings and communication routes so as to secure the maximum practicable degree of economy, convenience, and beauty.

An attempt to formulate the principles that should guide us in creating a civilized physical background for human life whose main impetus is thus … foreseeing and guiding change.

An art of shaping and guiding the physical growth of the town creating buildings and environments to meet the various needs such as social, cultural, economic and recreational etc. and to provide healthy conditions for both rich and poor to live, to work, and to play or relax, thus bringing about the social and economic well-being for the majority of mankind.

Planning is a process of helping a community, identify its problems and its central values, formulating goals and alternative approaches to achieving community objectives, and avoiding undesired consequences of change. This process of planning results in frameworks for coping with change. Some are physical elements such as streets, roads, and sewer lines. Some are concepts that serve as guides to action, such as the goal of becoming a major distribution center or of encouraging investment in the core of the city. Some are regulatory, reflecting the desires of the community to encourage good development and discourage bad development.

“A city should be built to give its inhabitants security and happiness” – Aristotle

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What do planners do?

Planners deal with the fact that human communities are always in the process of changing. The consequences of this change can be chaotic and destructive, or enhancing. It is the planner's task to help communities cope with this steady growth, change, and renewal in ways that will maintain-and improve-the community's quality of life.

Planners recognize the complexity of communities. As with natural environments, human communities are strengthened by diversity. One task is to help communities become even more diverse, broadening the variety of employment, educational, cultural, entertainment, shopping, and housing opportunities and promoting a broad range of land uses, income levels, and types of people. Another task is to help communities deal with the clashes of interest produced by such variety and turn these differences into a positive force for constructive change.

Planners share a concern about the future, a belief that something can be done about bettering our human-made and natural environments, and the recognition that planning, withrelevant implementing tools, is the best method available for communities to achieve this.