thory

1. Exploring Urban Environment Problems
According to Modern and Postmodern
Theories
Niyan H. Ibrahim
MSC. City Planning
31/1/2018
Theories of Urban Planning

2. Contents:
I. Abstract:
II. Key words
II. Introduction
III.Literature review
IV. Research Problem
V. Objectives
VI.Methodology
1. Urban environment
2. Modernism and urban environment
3. Post modernism and urban environment
VII. Results
VIII. Discussion
IX.Conclusion
X. Bibliography

3. Abstract:
• The urban areas are in continues growth.
• The size of cities are extending in a high rate.
• the cities are suffering from urban environment problems related to
the structures of the cities and the surrounding region of cities.
• This paper will try to examine the urban environment problems that
can be traced back to urban theories. Through analytical descriptive
approach and according to planning paradigm we will try to frame the
urban environment issues into modern and postmodern context.

4. Introduction:
• In the last thirty years new studies were focusing in broader
environmental perspectives such as the urban nature, cities and
towns have impact on wider environment and the modern urban life
sustainability, supplemented the issue.
• Cities’ population is increasingly concentrating, low densities pattern
of urban spatial growth, urban sprawl, largely expanding outward,
leapfrog urban development, spatially segregated land use, and
development of commercial strip in widespread form are not
representing a good life quality in urban areas (Dieleman & Wegener, 2003).
• Because of these reasons many cities are expected to more likely
become megacities and sprawling urban regions, by which these
cities become the most complex, largest manmade structures created
(Royal Commission, 2007).

5. Literature review:
• Postmodernity can be defined as the contemporary society where
different changes are happening. Postmodernity provides a new
understanding of the world, yet people are in a situation of facing
new challenges and risks (Plachciak, 2010).
• With all the differences yet there is a new morality ruling the people’s
attitude. the world is not under one united project anymore, but it is
expected that all act toward sustainable development to balance the
social, economic, and ecological order of the world (Plachciak, 2010).

6. Conti. …
• On the other hand, modernity as defined by Plachaciack (2010), is
seen as the origin of almost all problems in the urban areas of the
twentieth century and the solution is in understanding postmodernity
and act sustainability (Plachciak, 2010).
• Suresh & Kumaran (2003) define the urban environment problems
into four categories including local environmental health problems,
city regional environmental problems, extra urban impacts of urban
activities and the urban impacts of regional or global environmental
burden.

7. Research Problem:
• This paper will try to explore the problems of urban environment during
modernity and postmodernity, and also explore the impacts of those
problems and where it seems to be heading according to dominate
planning paradigm theory in context of a particular time frame.
Research objectives:
• The main aim of this work is to relate the issues of urban environment
to modern and postmodern era and seek the impacts of urban planning
theories in attempt to define and solve urban environment issues.
• Another aim would be to relate the issues of both aspects to each other
and find out how the solution of environment problems in
modern/postmodern have resulted in creating new terms of problems
in the context of urban environment.

8. Methodology:
The methodology of this study is an analytical descriptive approach,
which is used to give definition and analyze the concepts of modernity,
postmodernity, and urban environmental issues according to the
dominant urban planning theories paradigm of the time of both
modernity and postmodernity era. Through analyzing the concepts the
main issues or the origins of urban environment issues are being
deduced.
Urban environment:
The cooperation of population, growth, city management and built
environment with natural environment together create the urban
environment (Suresh & Kumaran, 2003). Other urban parameters are
also part of urban environment, as land use, infrastructure, energy and
health (Shabatura, Bauer, & Iatsevich, 2016; Suresh & Kumaran, 2003;Bartone, 2001).

9. Modernism and urban environment:
• The social movement for reform in the later part of the 19th century is
the origin of modern urban planning, which was the reaction against the
industrial city disorder (Faninestein, 2016).
• The desire of planning began from visioning the ideal city with
consideration movement of goods and people, adequate sanitation etc.
…(Faninestein, 2016).
• Zoning was the theme of planning which can be defined through the
division of urban space .urban density was reduced.
• Planning in this era were comprehensive master planning.
• Reflecting the images of the automobile reaction to technology were
the beginning of modernism in the early twentieth century (Irving, 1993).

10. Post modernism and urban environment:
• The death of center is what symbolizes post modernism, displaying
metanarrative incredulity.
• The character of postmodernism represented by the social formation
including statues of knowledge and maps are re-drawn, re-described
and de-centered (Yilmaz, 2007).
• Planning tradition at the end of the 20th century in both United
States and Europe started to adapt Jacobs’s argument (Faninestein, 2016).
• Mixed-use development .
• Rehabilitation of existing building.
• Historical preservation .
• The 24 hours city.(Faninestein, 2016).

11. Conti. ….
• Planning in the beginning of the 21th century was not defined by one
single mode (end-means).
• Participatory mode was revealed, residents become responsible for
planning at some levels (Faninestein, 2016).
• With the participation of individuals there are no universal laws (Wright,
2013).
• Unlike modernity cities are not judged by economic development and
social welfares but they are also judged by regenerating the
ecosystem and improving the regions ecological health (Irving, 1993; Schott,
2004).

12. Results: (Modernity)
• Modernism was the most dominated planning theory in the 20th
century, the adapted approach was a semi-scientific. By separating
the land uses and function of the city it tried to create a functional
city.
• The negative aspects of compacted functions of old-cities could be
demolished by providing clean air and water, and less densities of
populations to make the infrastructures more efficient.
• To support the functions of the functional city, scientific plans were
needed to predict the population growth and plan infrastructures for
them.

13. Conti. ….
• Large scale roads and highways were needed to link between those
separated functions so private cars began to shape the cities and
urban areas with all new services started to attract more population
by which the cities grow more faster than ever so extra land was
occupied.
• Based on the requirements of the population growth more
infrastructure services were need to support the needs. Which later
become a burden on both environment and economy. The plans were
unitary, decisions were made from top and the human needs were
above all other values.

14. Results: Postmodernity
• New approaches began to develop with the concern about what had
been lost in the modernism planning.
• Many cities at this era began to adapt to the old model before
modernism cities started to support mixed-use and compact
development.
• Although sustainability can be considered as the reflection of
planning theory in this era. In implication it is almost unadaptable as
it cannot fulfill the needs of all the participants of the planning
process and take into consideration the three magnets of
sustainability.

15. Discussion
• Modernity was the reaction against industrial city which had harmed
the humans’ wellbeing, then it started to duplicate the environment
in the sake of humans’ welfare.
• Postmodernity came as a solution to the damages that were
happening to the environment and also to remove the boundaries
that were set by modernity which were not supporting new voices in
the society. However it did not successed in accomplishing all the
demands of different groups and nature.
• Now the expected is a new era which is called ‘post-sustainability’ in
the literature. Which is main aim is determining the radix of the urban
environment problems and solving them in the context of
sustainability according to the resources available.

16. Conclusion
• As an excuse to the problems of industrial city modernism was an
attempt by planners of rational theory to attribute in eliminating
those issues,
• The endeavor was social reform in urban structure, the consequence
were urban sprawl.
• It succeeded in providing the demands of individual in the cost of
environment disasters.
• Leaving the urban spaces with huge populations, inadequate
infrastructures, segregated land uses, numerous areas of brown and
gray fields.
• Then environmentalist and anti-modernism began to criticize the
modernism ideology of planning and tried to reconstruct modernism
regarding new concepts.

17. Conti. ….
• Eliminating all the laws of modernism, Uncertainty, and unformality
began to appear. Cultural policies disappeared instead different
approaches and voices impacted the political process.
• In a stage where every person have the right to involve in the
planning agendas, the agenda of the stage itself vanished among all
those different voices.
• Inadequate services social security is not satisfying yet and economic
growth still under pressure.
• Planning should go into a higher stage and sustainability goals
perhaps need to be more practical than theoretical, consider statues
que of the cities and proposing solutions that are acceptable by
society and adaptable by economies and reasonable for environment.

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• Dieleman, F., & Wegener, M. (2003). Compact City and Urban Sprawl. Built
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