1. w
Da Vinci’s
ideal city
Apart from painting and sculpture,
Leonardo da Vinci tried his hand at many
different fields including science, architecture
and town
planning.
When the plague
struck Milan in the 15th
century, da Vinci sketched
designs for a redevelopment
of the city. It included a system of
canals for carrying freight to and from
the sea and for carting away waste and
a two-tiered street system that allowed carts
and ordinary people to stroll along broad lower
streets while the gentry used colonnaded streets
on an upper level. Da Vinci believed the cramped
nature of the city helped spread contagion and
his design was intended to allow air to flow more
freely and light to reach more parts of the city.
Although his idea of separating upper and lower
classes seems to modern eyes to be snobbish, he
was right about cramped, dirty cities being places
where disease spreads easily. His city was never
built but some of his design principles were later
used in the city when parts were redeveloped.
Medieval towns
In medieval times, feudal lords would often set aside a parcel of land to
establish a town, mostly for commercial reasons to set up a market and
collect rents and tolls. While the planning in some of those towns consisted
of nothing more than creating a main street, others were more elaborate.
Some followed the pattern of using a grid established in Roman times.
In many cases towns were built with a wall for defensive purposes, which
often limited the growth of the towns and created overcrowding, because
people did not want to expose themselves to danger by building outside
the walls. Not all of these planned towns survived and those that failed
came to be known as villes manquees. Because they were often
simply planted on unused land they were settled in
areas people did not naturally want to live.
Designing Canberra
When the Australian colonies joined together at
Federation in 1901 there was some debate about
where the capital of this new nation should be
located. When the politicians finally agreed the
capital would not be in an existing city, they decided
on the site of what is today Canberra. Because there
was no federal town planner to create a new city
a competition was held in 1912. Of the 137 entrants,
the design sketched by US architect Walter Burley
Griffin, with help from family and friends including
wife Marion Mahony, was chosen as the winner.
Griffin’s design (above) showed great sympathy for
the existing landscape and included three centres of
the town linked by straight roads to form a triangle.
A series of lakes and water features created by a
dam on the Molonglo River would stretch across the
middle of the triangle. The focal point of the town
would be Capital Hill, where the national parliament
building (completed in 1988) now stands.
Did you know?
n When workers, many of them immigrants from
around the world, were building Canberra a planned
tent city was established to house them.
New York
The US also applied the ancient concept of the grid design to
many of its major cities, including New York. When first established
by the Dutch as New Amsterdam in 1624, it grew to become merely a
collection of residential and business areas without any particular order.
By the end of that century it was in British hands, renamed New York, and
some order was being imposed. By 1807 the city, which covered the southern
tip of Manhattan, was growing rapidly and in that year commissioners were
appointed to produce a plan for the extension of the city. They decided on a grid
pattern but ignored the local topography, allowed no space for parks and planned
to cram the entire length of the island with cheap housing. Residents protested and
launched a campaign for a park in 1844. Eventually enough money was raised to buy up 700
acres (284ha) of real estate to establish what is today New York’s green heart — Central Park.
The park now encompasses 843 acres (341ha).
Being a town planner
In the early days of modern town planning, governments usually used the
services of architects. Today, though, there are university courses available
that specialise in town planning and urban design. In Sydney, town planners
such as Paul Gerlach are involved in shaping our new suburbs and how
we will live and move around. Gerlach works for developer Delfin
Lend Lease and was project manager for the Bingara Gorge
residential development south of Sydney (pictured left in
planning stages). He describes his background as being
in “town planning and landscape architecture, with
a particular emphasis on urban design’’. Modern town
planning focuses a lot on the processes of planning and
working towards gaining approval through the relevant local
council. “There are a lot of controls, regulations and guidelines,’’
Gerlach says. When starting to plan a community Gerlach and his team
look at the reasons why people want to live in a certain location. In past
centuries it was important for communities to be close to transport,
resources and perhaps farms but today people have a lot more freedom
about where they live because of cars and electronic communication.
Gerlach focuses on the needs of a community, plans town centres, creates
essential facilities and determines how it will fit in to the surrounding
natural environment. “We try to work with the natural environment to
create the layout of the streets and parks,’’ he says.
Paul Gerlach (left)
looking over plans
with MP Phil Costa
Bingara Gorge
(left) starts to
take shape
Town planning
Series 10
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Sources and further study
Cities by John Reader (Heinemann)
Grand Obsessions by Alasdair McGregor
(Penguin/Lantern)
The Invention Of Paris by Eric Hazan (Verso)
The Medieval City by Norman Pounds
(Greenwood Press)
An Ideal City www.idealcity.org.au
Encyclopaedia Britannica — Urban Planning
T
hroughout history many towns and cities have
simply sprung up in an ad-hoc fashion. In many
cases this resulted in crooked streets,
a lack of amenities, overcrowded living
quarters and sometimes disaster such as
fire or building collapse. But since ancient
times there have also been attempts, some
more successful than others, to plan out the
places where hundreds or thousands of people
will live in close proximity. Town planning is
now a specific academic discipline and most
councils, governments and developers can call
on the expertise of planners who have learned
from, or sometimes ignored, centuries of
experience of building urban centres.
What is a town planner?
A town planner is a person who has the job of determining
how a suburb, town or city will grow, either by designing the
changes themselves, appointing designers or by setting limits or
specifications for all new developments within that area. In some
cases this has involved people being commissioned to design an
entire city from scratch — for example Walter Burley Griffin, who
designed Canberra — but in most cases it means people employed by
governments to make adjustments for changes in population according
to how parts of the city or town are being used or will be used in the
future. Town planners deal with a range of issues, including architecture,
infrastructure and public amenities such as schools, shops, hospitals,
roads, street lights and sewers, and environmental matters such as
ensuring space is left for parks and reserves and pollution is controlled.
Did you know?
n In 1459 Pope Pius II decided to transform his
birthplace, the ancient town of Siena (below). He
hired the architect Bernardo Rossellino, who created
many of the city’s finest public buildings surrounding
a grand open space known as the Piazza Pio II
n When Adolf Hitler came to power he planned
to redevelop Berlin (below) along ancient Roman
lines, with broad avenues and grand buildings. He
commissioned architect Albert Speer to draw up the
designs. Some of the buildings were created, along
with the foundations of a massive triumphal arch,
before World War II interrupted construction. Hitler’s
vision for the city was never realised.
n Sometimes cities are transformed by disaster.
A fire in Rome in 64 AD provided the emperor
Nero a chance to rebuild a substantial part of the
city. Although some suggest he lit the fire so he
could remodel Rome, he then created a housing
development using wider streets and brick bases
to help prevent more fires.
n London was redeveloped after a major fire in
1666. King Charles II appointed six commissioners
to design the new parts of the city with wider
streets and houses made of brick rather than
timber. Architect Christopher Wren also
designed many new churches including his
masterpiece, St Paul’s.
n Pierre L’Enfant’s 1791 design for
Washington DC, the capital of what was
then a new nation, included plans of streets
radiating out from important buildings.
Some of the streets form a five-pointed star,
causing many to believe there is some Masonic
or satanic symbolism hidden in the design of
the city. But Frenchman L’Enfant was neither
a Mason nor a satanist.
Editor: Troy Lennon Graphics: Dan Murphy Design: Will Pearce
Walter Burley Griffin,
designer of Canberra
Ihaveplannedanidealcity–acitythat
meetsmyidealofthecityofthefuture
Ancient planners
Archaeologists have discovered that some of the earliest cities in the world
were planned. Many of these cities were laid out on a grid pattern. Grids
made towns neat and easy to build but they did not pay much heed to the
local landscape, often requiring vast amounts of earth to be moved to make
way for streets. Where the topography
made building too difficult the grid had
to simply stop. The city of Miletus, a
Greek colony in what is today Turkey,
was a planned city. It was designed by
Ionian Greek architect Hippodamus after
the original city had been sacked and
destroyed by the Persians in 494 BC.
Building began in 497 BC and the grid
plan proved so successful that it coped
with the growth in population from a
few thousand to 100,000 over the
course of 500 years. Hippodamus’s grid
design would influence many Greek and
Roman city designs. Even centuries later
the grid concept of design influenced
many cultures, including Spain, and is
evident today in cities established by
the Spanish such as Havana, Santa
Domingo and Cartagena.
Renaissance visionaries
In the 15th century, artists and architects began to rediscover
the concepts of ancient town planning and many Renaissance
thinkers, including Leonardo da Vinci, devised their own
ideas on how to design a perfect city. Driven by the writings
of ancient architects such as Vitruvius, architects devised
cities to be long-lasting, useful and beautiful. They used
elements of classical architecture such as arches, columns
and domes, but improved on the ancient cities. They
created wide streets and open spaces or piazzas, helping
to rid some parts of cities of their cramped, narrow streets.
Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574) redeveloped parts of Florence,
creating long corridors of wide streets branching off from
important palaces in the city.
Google Earth view of Milan streets
Google Earth view of New York
11
School Town hall
Residential
Shopping centre
Playground
Park
Car parking
Office block
This is our plan of an
imaginary small town or
suburban centre
For a class project, plan and
draw a map of your perfect
small town or suburb.
n
