Cities are important achievements of man’s cultural progress. These are human agglomerations showing a lot of economic, social and cultural diversities. It is these diversities which lead to the development of differential land use, functional characteristics and lay out patterns within the city.
In the second part of the 20th century the phenomenal growth in urban population has not only led to the increase in the size and number of urban centers, accentuation of intra and inter urban disparities but creation of a number of problems related to flooding.
5. Good cities are clean and healthy. They have good air and water and healthy buildings in which it is good to stay. Materials will last give “patina” of the city.
6. Good cities combine centralized infrastructure with de-centralized systems. Management of flows of water, materials and energy is optimal and attained to natural life-cycles.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
7. Good cities have great experiential value. Activities, movements and flows are visible. This enhances emotional, behavioural and cognitive growth of cities, and facilitates their engagement with urban life and the environment.
8. Good cities have a past and a future, identifiable in their built form as well as in their social and cultural life.
Urban planning is an applied discipline in which plans are formulated and executed for the development, improvement and reconstruction of existing urban centers and planning and development of new urban areas. Its prime objective is to improve the quality of the city life and make judicious utilization of its land resources.
It endeavors to solve urban problems and improves the quality of urban life. Urban planning is based on many principal pies which undergo changes depending upon the changing socio-economic needs of the urban society. For example, in earlier city planning much attention was focused on the layout of the buildings, patterns and width of the roads and streets etc. but today economic and social aspects have also been added. Some of the broad principles of urban planning are as follows:
ADVERTISEMENTS:
1. Urban Decentralization-
under this principle decentralization of industries and residential areas is encouraged through the development of new suburban towns to bring down overcrowding in large metropolitan cities. Under recently formulated National Capital Plan this principle is being applied to lower down congestion and overcrowding in Delhi.
2. Garden Suburbs and Garden City-
the credit of introducing this principle goes to Ebenezer Howard (1898) who suggested development of garden suburbs to ease out problem of congestion in London.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
3. New Town-
this principle suggests the formation of new planned towns outside the municipal limits of the city. Such towns should be equipped with all urban facilities so as to attract industrial and business houses. In India New Delhi has been planned on the basis of this principle.
4. Expanded Town-
these towns attract workers, artisans, businessmen and industrialists from neighbouring city to develop their economic activities and, hence, play significant role in easing out the burden of population in the metropolis.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
5. Urban Renewal-
this is an important concept of urban planning. It helps in the planning and improvement of land use pattern in the old existing cities through the development of master plan for 10 or 20 years. This principle is being followed for planning a number of old cities of the country.
6. Slum Clearance/Improvement-
-under this principle two fringed strategies are being adopted to improve the conditions of urban slums. These slums arc; removed and slum dwellers are offered residential accommodations in new planned colonies free of cost or at concessional rate. Wherever such slum clearance is not possible basic civic amenities like drinking water, drainage, electricity, road etc are provided to improve the environmental conditions of these slums.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
7. Rehabilitation versus Redevelopment-
this principle is applied for improving the housing conditions in the old cities. It may involve improvement in the old buildings or construction of the new one at its place after demolition.
8. Traffic Segregation-
this principle is utilised to remove transport bottlenecks and improve urban traffic. It offers various solutions like widening of roads, segregation of slow moving vehicles, construction of tunnels and over bridges and underground railways etc. Sometimes crowded business areas are also segregated from vehicular traffic.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
9. City-Centre Redevelopment-
under this principle attention is focused on the improvement of the CBD which may include removal of unproductive land uses and restricting / banning the movement of vehicles in this area.
10. Planning for Future Cities-
this principle focuses attention on the planning of new towns / cities keeping in mind the future need of the city or region. This may be done through the development of satellite towns, linear cities, dispersed cities or radial cities.