AR- 309

TOWNPLANNING
MODERNPLANNINGIN
PAKISTAN AND
ABROAD
 MODERNISM AND MODERN PLANNING
• Modernism describes an array of cultural movements rooted in the changes in Western society in the late
nineteenth and early twentieth century.
• The term covers a series of reforming movements in art, architecture, music, literature and the applied arts
which emerged during this period.
• Within the realm of architecture and planning, modernism respond to the environmental and social
inefficiencies of the nineteenth-century city.
• The movement held to the goal of generating ever-new forms of building that made the highest use of latest
technology while providing healthful and comfortable living for all the inhabitants of a city.
 • Saw the machine age as a chance to
remake society and improve the lives of all.
• He was a leader in the modernist
movement, and promoted functional, pure
buildings.
• He wanted to bring the industrial revolution
to architecture, mass-producing buildings
• His philosophy is laid out in his “Five Points
of a New Architecture”
Le-Corbusier
An Influential Architect And City Planner
 VILLA CONTEMPORAINE
An unreal zed utopian planned community intended to house three million inhabitants
designed by the French-Swiss architect Le Corbusier in 1922.

• The plan is centralized and

organized according to a system of
land uses with monumental axes
cutting through.
• A rigid geometrical distribution of
uniform buildings with huge open
spaces including a system of mass
transportation.
The business section is in the
heart of the city symbolizing the
centrality of the secular
power, compromised of 25
glass skyscrapers, each with 60
storeys in height (5% of the
surface area).
• The next two belts contained residential
blocks, stacked up with garden terraces
grouped around interior courtyards or
arranged in a linear pattern.
• Beyond the residential blocks, is a vast area
of greenery, placing gardens for workers and
industrial districts, ports, or even sport
complexes.
• The main goal of the project was
to facilitate traffic, therefore; fast
automobile traffic was completely
separated from pedestrians'
lanes.
• The highways were elevated,
intersecting the city from all sides
and connecting the peripheral to
the centre of the city while
Pedestrian traffic was amid parks
and gardens.
 The Contemporary city was meant to achieve standardized principles of town
planning, as the rigid geometry was a part of the machine aesthetics.
Le Corbusier presented a city solving the urban problems by separation & order.

FAILURE?

• Class based conception of life – different classes being separately housed.

• Doubts were expressed about the scale and degree of centralization.
• Critics attacked its focus on the central city, where land values were highest
and dislocations most difficult.
• The creation of vast empty spaces in place of close-knit streets with their
varied civic life
 PLAN VOISIN

The Plan Voisin consisted of 18 identical skyscrapers, which were spread out evenly over an open plain of
roads and parks.
• The development could accommodate 78,000 residents over an area of 260 hectares.
• In stark contrast to the dense urban area that the plan intended to replace, only 12% of the area
of Plan Voisin was to be built-up.
Of the built-up area, 49% was partitioned for residential use, while the other 51% accounted for
all other uses of the space.
• Roughly a third of the open area was reserved for vehicle use, while the rest was pedestrian-only

Ultimately, Plan Voisin was

rejected by the city of Paris.
• It was seen to be too
radical.
• Did not coincide with the
light conditions offered by
the center of Paris
CITIES CANNOT BE DESIGNED WITH JUST A SET SQUARE

THE CITY IS A LIVING 'ORGANISM'

THE UNITÉ MODEL GENERATES SEGREGATION

 MODERN PLANNING ABROAD
 In order to understand the modern planning abroad one may refer to encyclopedia of
urban planning by Whittick Arnold and read the contemporary theories and practices in
the western world.
 It narrates that since 16th century the mode of planning cities is divided in seven main
categories.
1. The Authoritarian Planning
2. The Utilitarian Planning
3. The Romantic Planning
4. The Utopian Planning
5. The Technocratic Utopia
6. The Technocratic Planning
7. The Organic Planning
 AUTHORITARIAN PLANNING
It is basically a geometric planning which emerged in 16th century onwards under priestly dictators & absolute
monarchs who wanted to create an urban setting which can emphasize their power structure in society.
The prin iples of this kind of planning include a
• long street,
• uniform blank front and
• an open plaza for a monument or obelisk.
An ideal “geometric” plans for political capitals.
Such design of cities can only be maintained through legal regulations and in long run it must be
modified & rebuild. Because these plans are made by ignoring social & economic needs.
The major fault in authoritarian planning is not in its geometry but false assumptions of centralized
power that ignores the important functions of neighborhoods.

• Square & rectangular blocks

• unnecessary streets & pavements
 UTILITARIAN PLANNIN

• The repercussions of geometric extension of the town.

• It is also termed as commercial utilitarian planning because its major objective is to
maximize the returns from sale & rent.
• The other aspect of utilitarian planning is the encouragement of private sector
investments in the development.
• Inefficient urban spaces, congestion, more built-up areas then open spaces and lacking
domestic amenities.
• It requires a series of municipal regulations to control the land uses through limitations of
heights & density of buildings.
 ROMANTIC PLANNING

• A revolt against the utilitarian planning.

• The Romantic planning rejects the concepts of life that makes a human being & its
environment subservient to either political power structure or mechanization in the
development of a city.
• The Romanticism in planning restored the historic continuity to urban forms and institutions
which was destroyed for private profit.
• Restored the historic heritage through fresh appreciation of natural landscape which was quite
different from the formal geometric patterns.
• Abandon the repetitive blocks, unbroken street fronts and created for large units and designed
such roads that confirm their width & pavements, as per population and traffic density.
• They followed contours instead of grading the land. The romantic planner reduced the cost of
development and was able to afford more open space for gardens. In this way he beats the
utilitarian planner at his own financial game
In his book, he examined that medieval and renaissance city and
proved its aesthetic failure due to more rigid kind of geometric
planning, with over emphasis on symmetry, uniformity &
centralization.
Mr. Camillo Sitte contributed the concept of diversified
neighborhoods, markets, squares & green open spaces rather
than uniform avenues & block as the basic unit of planning.
These principles were further elaborated by Mr.: Robert Unwin
in his book “Town planning in practice” in 1909
 UTOPIAN PLANNING

exhibits the elements of all three types of Authoritarian, utilitarian and romantic planning
an ideal city both in form and function.
Franck Lloyd Wright’s scheme
for Broad Acre city where
each family gets acres of land
within a rigid Grid of lots &
roads.
Wright’s Broadacre City was
envisioned with the hope of liberating
the individual and connecting citizens
to nature. The architect and planner
believed in the possibilities of the
automobile – that people had the
power to choose where they wanted
to go, whenever suited them – but his
plan does not cater for the type of
freedom found in being able to walk,
cycle, or use public transport.
 TECHNOCRATIC PLANNING

• The technocratic planning describes a process which is going on from last one century;
where mechanical services are increasing with huge costs for providing water from
distant sources, disposal system of sewerage & garbage, paved streets, rapid
transportation systems, tunnels, bridges, multilane highways & large parking lots.
• The aim of technocratic planning & ideas is to make every urban activity, a function of
a machine.
• In theory technocratic planning assumes that all human problems are open to a
technological solution and all human needs can be met by invention of a mechanical or
electronic device that can stimulate them & satisfy them or divert them .
 ORGANIC PLANNING
• The organic planning conserves past urban forms & prepares them to accommodate future
needs.
• The concepts of organic planning sprung out from rich knowledge of urban past and better
sociological understanding of the nature of cities.
• The organic means well organized with a dynamic balance.
• For example, the garden city plan of Ebenezer Howard is the first diagrammatic expression
of organic form.
• Need plays an important role in the style of a particular era. Because no single generation,
no single mind, no single architect or planner could have forecast and designed the result of
the city design.
That organic planning requires an intimate knowledge of urban culture, human needs,
purposes & means with cooperative participation & critical judgment by the community
while new plans for city are under process
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