Planning Profession Then and Now

Anne Krieg, AICP

Bridgton Director of Planning, Economic

& Community Development

Ancient Planning

• Top down approach (though philosophers and mathematicians could weigh in)

• Water supply • Military needs

Middle Ages

• Church or feudal authority

• Villages

• Footpaths

Renaissance

• Glorifying the ruler or the state

• Military

• Access

Early Planners

• 1682 William Penn – Philadelphia

• 1791 Pierre L Enfant – DC plan

• 1811 NYC Commissioner’s Plan

Industrial Revolution Planners

• James Silk Buckingham – National Evils and Practical Remedies 1849

• John Snow’s Cholera Map 1855 • Georges-Eugene Haussmann 1850-1870’s • Frederick Law Olmsted 1850’s-1880 • Edward Bellamy Looking Backwards 1888 • Camillo Sitte – City Planning According to

Artistic Principles 1889 • Societies of Architects and Landscape Architects

formed

The Progressive Movement

• Design • Recreation • Better Living • City Beautiful

People in the Progressive Movement

• Ebenezer Howard Garden Cities of Tomorrow 1902

• McMillan Plan – the best of the best in one room 1902

• Daniel Burnham – Chicago (1909) and San Francisco (1906)

• Walter Gropius - Bauhaus movement- 1919

• Patrick Geddes – regional planning

The profession takes hold

• National Conference on City Planning (DC) 1909

• Harvard starts courses in planning 1909 – planning program in 1923

• Massachusetts requires planning 1913

• American City Planning Institute 1917

• Regional Planning Association 1923

The Depression

• Economic Management

• Housing Programs

• Natural Resource Planning

• Planning Schools become more social science based

Thinkers in Urban Stagnation

• Frank Lloyd Wright The Disappearing City 1932

• National Planning Board 1933

• Lewis Mumford film The City 1939

• NY World’s Fair Futurama exhibit 1939

The Profession shifts to federal levels

• National Planning Board 1933

• US Resettlement Administration 1938

• US Housing Act 1937

• Farm Security Administration 1937

Other Professional society shifts

• American Institute of Planners 1938 • MIT – Masters of City Planning 1935 • Cornell – regional planning 1935 • The Green Bible is written 1941

Post WWII • People spilling from the city into planned

towns • Urban Renewal • Influenced by modernism • William Levitt 1950 • Brasilia

Robert Moses You can draw any kind of picture you want on a clean slate and indulge your every whim in the wilderness in laying out a New Delhi, Canberra, or Brasilia, but when you operate in an overbuilt metropolis, you have to hack your way with a meat ax.

Social Activism in Planning

• Jane Jacobs The Death and Life of Great American Cities 1961

• Rachel Carson Silent Spring 1962 • Martin Anderson The Federal

Bulldozer; a critical analysis of urban renewal 1964

• Ian McHarg Design with Nature 1969

More evolution in planning

• Adaptive Reuse – Lawrence Halprin 1962 • Edmund Bacon 1967 Philadelphia planner • Academics in Planning

– Kevin Lynch The Image of the City (when we started speaking planner-ese)

– Lewis Mumford The City in History… 1961 – TJ Kent 1964 The Urban General Plan

And more Federal

Planning

• Economic Development Administration 1965

• HUD 1965 • Model Cities

Program 1966

Next Gen Planning

• Environmental based planning • Marked guilt from urban renewal

loss of neighborhoods • Loathing of Suburban Life/Layout

People

• Horst, Webber Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning 1973

• Robert Caro The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of NY 1974

• Norman Krumholz – work on equity planning 1982

• Bluestone, Harrison The Deindustrialization of America 1982

• Robert Fishman Bourgeois Utopias: the rise and fall of suburbs 1987

• John Forester Planning in the Face of Power 1989

Profession changes

• American Planning Association 1978 • Environmental Systems Research

Institute (ESRI) – GIS • National Environmental Protection

Agency (EPA) established • “star planners” Andre Duany

Millenial Years

• Transportation planning

• Congress of New Urbanism

• Smart Growth

• Form Based Codes

• Collaborative Planning

Planning Today what hasn’t

changed

• Built environment – architecture, landscape architecture

• Public Health

• Social Work

• Natural Environment

• International Planning (nothing to worry about)

Jack of all trades • Designers • Economists • Environmental

managers • Decision

theorists • Negotiation

experts

•Political scientists

•Public administration professionals

• Lawyers •Engineers

Planning Profession

• Not one unifying theory but share basic principles

• Advise, not decide

• See results 5 to 20 years later

• Broadly defined “clients”

• Diverse interests

Problem Solving in Planning

• As you look at possible solution, the questions change

• Not linear decisions, but often options with repercussions

• Can only predict outcomes

• Can’t test a theory • A problem may be

a symptom of another problem

What we sometimes do

Crisis mitigation

emerge out of series of crises and people’s responses to them

health crises (epidemics)

social crises (riots, strikes)

other crises (fire, flood, etc.)

Post 9/11 Post Katrina & Sandy

Me? Community Planning

– Transparency

– Clarify the interests

– Inclusiveness

– Truth-seeking

– Never forget it’s your community