Planning and how it has Evolved

One of the things that really struck me in the history of planning is the rapid urbanization of the United States. That being the movement of people from rural areas to the city. In a lecture professor Jordon James spoke about tenement housing in New York and how people were living so closely with one another throwing sewage in the streets or in huge cesspools. In these early apartment complexes, there were up to 3 generations of family’s in what was one room. Those rooms didn’t have any running water or sanitation and it wasn’t until the early 1900’s when all apartments were required to have proper sanitation. Just to see how poorly these areas were planned is surprising to me. Then seeing the pictures of all the horse manure and human waste in the streets could not have been good for public health or the water quality. In contrast when looking at how roman and Greek cities were planned it was amazing that we took such a step backwards. In Rome there was running water through public bathrooms to make sure that sewage wasn’t running through the streets. Also, how the romans planned out living areas for their people that were more spread out, so they didn’t have to be as packed in.

This struck me so much because it shows how much our city’s need to be planned out and how far we have come. It shows that today we can still make improvements in how we plan our cities to be better for the people who live in them. That we can look back at the beginning of early cities like New York and see the flaws and avoid them. Then look at how the roman and early Greek societies grew and what worked so well for them. Or even now when we look at how our cities have grown over the past Hundred years into what they are today.

Looking at our cities now they are highly suburban this happened overtime through a process called suburbanization. Suburbanization is the process where communities spread out from the central city. This became widely popular in the early 20^th century due to the invention of the automobile. So, people could live away from the inner city but commute to it for work. That way of planning is still used today but is starting to transition into something new.

A new way of thinking is Exurbs. Exurbs are clustered developed areas within suburbs that act as metropolitan areas and rely heavily on public transportation and being close to jobs instead of having to go into the city for work. Exurbs are not attached to an inner city like the suburbs but are their own community of people living outside of the city without having to engage with the inner city its self.

This new way developing suburban areas is almost like a mix of early tenement housing and suburbanization, it is an area that is built to be dense and have less needs for cars. Were as now most developments that I have seen have always been developed with cars in mind. Also, the invention of the microchip could be giving the power to the masses like the car did in early 20^th century. The microchip has brought entertainment to the masses, so people don't need the city to have fun. As well, with online shopping people no longer need to go to department stores to get clothes or other items like grocery’s or even matrasses can be ordered online . One of the downsides is that now with the formation of things like Exurbs it been shown that people are forming more like-minded communities. This meaning that people of the same religious views are now able to pick more than ever a place where people think like they do. Or in the case of politics more and people can choose to live around people they know have the same political views as they do. This could be good because people can choose to live somewhere that they feel more identifies with themselves but could also be detrimental to the flow of ideas. People then are only being consumed with things that they agree with and never have their ideas challenged. All of this said now more than ever people can truly pick their home to be a sense of place that they identify with.