Introduction to City Regional Planning | Brief Introduction of City Planning

INTRODUCTION TO CITY AND REGIONAL PLANNING

Urban planning is the study of how cities and communities are organized and how they are designed to achieve social, economic, and environmental goals. It also focuses on the challenges and opportunities that cities face in today’s changing world. This resource will be useful for all planning students. In this article, we'll go over a bit about what urban planning is and why it's important for us. We'll then discuss some examples of how regional planning makes cities better. Then we'll go into more detail on how regional planning can help with city planning. With all that said let's get started!

So What Is Urban Planning?

Urban planning as defined by (Norton, 2008) is "the practice and art of designing, constructing, maintaining and using urban spaces and communities for human activity, including economic development". The term was coined by French and American sociologist Emile Durkheim back in 1911. As you can probably tell from the name it refers to the "what" and "how" not the "why" of a location or community. But there is still a need to understand what exactly the meaning is. Why would someone even want to plan for a neighborhood or community? Well, for one thing, planning may look like something fun, but the reality is often hard work, lots of money, and time. So it just really means that planning covers every aspect of our lives. Our homes, our neighborhoods, our workplaces, even how we maintain our streets…etc.

So now having said the definition, let's take a walk through an example of what urban planning is as shown below. If a large house wants to be built in New York City, you must have seen pictures of high rises for sale in Manhattan and Brooklyn. These houses are usually quite big and they take up a lot of space in the area. Sometimes it gets pretty tricky because the owner may have plans for his or her family and there is even an option of renting out the home. That last one is the most common option. The owner could decide to do so because he wants to live close to their office (hence the “office space”). Or maybe they want more room or a new bathroom, etc. This is an example of what is referred to as public space (Norton, 2008).

An urban planner may also design for a school district called South Bronx. An entire block of buildings would come together to form a whole district, such as if a student has to attend one school or another. This is what is known as private space (Norton, 2008). You can think of private space as private property. When this space comes up for lease buy it is usually only used for things like schools, playgrounds, or other things that are essential to public use. For example, South Bronx has several public parks, which is what you would call public space. Lastly, a municipal worker could make repairs to the structure on the south side of the road as well as fix up windows. All of these are private spaces too, therefore are not considered public spaces (Norton, 2008) As the above example demonstrates we can see the difference between the two spaces when viewed from different angles.

Public and Private Space

As mentioned before public spaces are commonly referred to in cities and towns as government, government buildings, schools, hospitals, prisons, churches, movie theatres, libraries, museums, restaurants, etc. As for private spaces, the same rules apply. They include everything ranging from personal businesses to residential complexes, housing options, shopping centers, malls, and others. While you think along these lines your brain might start to create ideas of private spaces you likely haven't thought of, so they aren't really part of your mental picture. A quick way to see the difference between public and private space is to watch a video of people walking around the city, I think everyone knows at least one person who walks through a few places daily. Then you have the ones who have lived in certain parts of town for years and they know where everything is. Whereas many people don’t walk very much unless there is some business that they need to be in for then I think more about how their body functions (Norton, 2008).

When considering how urban planning functions to meet society's needs, I think we can really divide them by what they're trying to accomplish in terms of public space and private space. So when discussing how to have a good balance between public space and private space let's talk about how people actually use public space. According to Norton (2008), public space is the space around the people, open areas, and outdoor areas that are used by the citizens, whether its people who need more space to play outdoors, people who want more space as a place for meeting, people who simply want to relax and enjoy being outside, sportsmen and women, people who go to the gym for exercise, people who want to make the most of their outdoor space, people who want a park, as that's really what public space is, people using open space without having a problem. On the other hand, if you think about public space being used by the authorities, you can argue that the police are mostly being used as both. One of their main functions is to protect the lives and property of the people. If you’re worried that you’ll get caught by the cops, you need to give yourself some time. If you just sit down and relax for ten minutes, you’re going to get pulled over. Public space isn’t like people’s houses. People shouldn’t feel comfortable living in their own community or apartment when they don’t have to.

Private space is used for things like recreation, relaxing and relaxing time, things like spending time in the city with friends or doing something else. There are plenty of people who would rather spend the night at the mall than life under a bridge in Brooklyn. Some people prefer to go to the movies instead of staying up late in bed watching TV. Even young children enjoy playing by themselves in the daycare center. As long as they aren't doing anything weird or dangerous they have the freedom to play safely in the city. They should all not be worrying though, the vast majority of people are actually enjoying this little bit of privacy while they're out in public space with the rest of the people. Therefore private space is a type of public space as well (Norton, 2008).

Cities And Regions

As we said that urban planning is planning around the city or region. Nowadays they refer to the larger localities so let me explain a bit more. A city is a set of moving parts that are connected. Every part of a city is connected to the next, and the next is connected to the next until one thing becomes less connected to the rest of the city and more connected to the land, the water, its resources, and its public space. Just like a country consists of villages. Each village has various properties and its people are connected to each other. When thinking about a city what types or structures make it a proper city? Let me help you with that answer by saying that a city is the result of specific forces, some of which are created through human activity. The first such force is culture. Culture is made up of things like traditions, customs, religion, language, culture, music, political systems, education, institutions, belief system, and more. Any of these things contribute to a city and define its people, culture is a great example of this. Culture affects the life of anyone living in a given city. A person would be able to choose which city he or she wants to be in based upon the culture they bring with them. Another point that you can make is that culture determines what kind of work they do, for example, jobs that require long hours of physical labor will most likely not require individuals with low levels of education. They won't be as talented. On the other hand, jobs that require intellectual or analytical abilities will most definitely require people with a higher level of education. However, it can be argued that that also depends on the person. Maybe a teacher or a banker is intellectually inclined, but they may be lacking in other fields like creative intelligence. Maybe a chef is smart but cannot bake cookies, but they know how to chop vegetables. But even then some jobs require a combination of both these factors and these are the types of jobs that a country such as North America has to offer for its population. Therefore culture is a factor in defining a city’s people, their occupations, and their living spaces. The next factor is the location. This can be affected in several ways. Firstly, geography is a factor if your city is an island, then you need to have some kind of port on the coast to get things, but depending on what your city is like you might need a seaport, or somewhere that is very accessible. Secondly, we have a climate. Climate is also determined by geography and weather. Most of the time if you compare the United States, Canada, Australia, Mexico, or Japan, these countries all have climates similar to those found anywhere else in Europe, however, some other countries like Turkey have a similar climate to Europe, just like Asia. Weather is a huge factor in defining not only a city but a whole country and its people. Again we go back to culture. This is what defines where certain events take place and more specifically the people themselves.