City Planning After 1945

City Planning After 1945

City Planning History of City Planning After World War II

The extensive physical rebuilding of cities following World War II lent new urgency to city planning. In 1947 Britain enacted its significant Town and County Planning Act, which placed all development under regional control. The building of new towns was also encouraged. The founding of new communities had been pioneered in Britain in the early 20th century by the British city planner Sir Ebenezer Howard. The “garden city” settlements of Letchworth (1903) and Welwyn (1920), built according to his ideas, had been designed as self-contained cities that were protected from urban encroachment by greenbelts, or farmland areas. In the 1950s and ’60s British development of new towns received new emphasis; it became official policy, and numerous new communities were built, many on the outskirts of London.

Other European countries similarly emphasized physical planning after World War II. Major urban reconstruction took place in Rotterdam, the Netherlands; Hamburg, West Germany (now part of the united Federal Republic of Germany); Helsinki, Finland; and elsewhere. New towns were also built, among them Tapiola, in Finland, and Melun Senart, on the outskirts of Paris. Europe’s new towns in turn encouraged the planning and construction of similar self-contained communities in other areas of the world, including Brasília, in Brazil, and Ashdod, in Israel.

Physical planning also dominated city planning in the United States during the 1950s and ’60s. Efforts were focused on designing vast new suburban housing subdivisions and providing for their transportation needs. The redevelopment of older central cities was also a major concern. The Housing Act of 1949 authorized significant federal funding for urban renewal. For the next two decades the typical redevelopment strategy in the U.S. was to replace slum areas with new construction. The Housing Act of 1954 required the formulation of “workable plans” to forestall urban deterioration, and it provided the backbone of funding for most of the master plans then in existence. Additional federal housing subsidies led to new urban residential projects that included both the construction of new housing and the rehabilitation of existing housing. The interstate highway network of expressways, begun in the early 1950s, influenced the shape of all metropolitan areas.

The development of new towns was also tried in the U.S., although without notable success. The two best-known new towns-Reston, Virginia, and Columbia, Maryland-were begun in the early 1960s. Later in the decade the development of new towns was encouraged by several federal housing acts. Reston and the federally aided communities, however, experienced financial and operating problems. (1)

In this Section: City Planning, City Planning History, City Planning in Greece and Rome, City Planning in the Renaissance and Beyond, City Planning in the 20th-Century, City Planning After 1945, Modern City Planning,

Comprehensive City Planning, City Planning Development Controls, City Planning Policies and City Planning Future.

Resources

Notes and References

  1. Encarta Online Encyclopedia

See Also


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