What is Environmental Planning?

Environmental planning is the process of facilitating decision making to carry out development with the consideration given to the natural environmental, social, political, economic and governance factors and provides a holistic frame work to achieve sustainable outcomes.

Academic Definition of Planning.

Planning (also called forethought) is the process of thinking about and organizing the activities required to achieve a desired goal. It involves the creation and maintenance of a plan, such as psychological aspects that requ ire conceptual skills. There are even a couple of tests to measure someone’s capability of planning well. As such, planning is a fundamental property of intelligent behavior.

Also, planning has a specific process and is necessary for multiple occupations. In each field there are different types of plans that help companies achieve efficiency and effectiveness. An important, albeit often ignored aspect of planning, is the relationship it holds to forecasting. Forecasting can be described as predicting what the future will look like, whereas planning predicts what the future should look like for multiple scenarios. Planning combines forecasting with preparation of scenarios and how to react to them.

What is Town Planning?

The comprehensive planning of the physical and social development of a town, including the construction of facilities.

Town and country planning is the process of making decisions on the development and use of land. It is a tool for guiding and facilitating development and regeneration in a way that also preserves the best features of our environment.

1 Town Planning is “the determining and drawing up plans for the future physical arrangement and condition of a community or the comprehensive planning of the physical and social development of a town.”

2 Town Planning is “the physical, social and economic planning of an urban environment (such as a town)”

3 Town Planning is the planning and design of all the new buildings, roads and parks in a place in order to make them attractive and convenient for the people who live there.

4. Town Planning is the designing the physical layout of cities, planning the infrastructure of an urban area.

5. Town planning, the conscious intervention by government into the orderly growth of urban centers, aims to improve health, ensure efficient land use, protect the environment and facilitate economic development.

6. Urban, city, and town planning is the integration of the disciplines of land use planning and transport planning, to explore a very wide range of aspects of the built and social environments of urbanized municipalities and communities.

Unplanned, organic cities

Humans have built towns and cities for thousands of years. A cluster of huts, a camp by a river, a citadel on a commanding height – numerous places like these have grown organically into permanent settlements. With streets and housing following the contours of the land, many of these organic cities were charming. Others were overcrowded and unsanitary, failing to provide enough sunlight or fresh air. Some made poor use of their sites or outgrew them.

Origins of town planning

Alongside organic communities, planned cities and towns have also existed from ancient times. Often, they followed a simple grid laid over the landscape, with houses placed side by side along straight streets. In the Renaissance (15th century), rulers of city-states aimed to achieve grand effects, with bold geometry and large public areas. In the Baroque era (17th century), this tendency grew and monumental architectural and landscape ensembles were designed and built. Examples include Louis XIV’s Palace of Versailles (17th century) and Pierre L’Enfant’s plan for Washington DC (18th century)

Plans imposed on colonial lands

Towns and cities in the Australian colonies and other 19th-century British colonies were often planned in distant London. The Colonial Office produced plans to be imposed on the land; regardless of how well (or badly) they suited a site.

Concept of Ekistics

The term Ekistics was first coined by the renowned planner Doxiadis (1903-75) and applies to the science of human settlements drawing on the research and experience of diverse disciplines including urban, regional, city and community planning and architecture as well as behavioural science including human psychology, anthropology, culture and politics. The term was derived from an ancient Greek noun meaning 'the person who installs settlers in place' - which captures the very essence of what we do at Ekistics.

It involves the study of all kinds of human settlements, with a view to geography and ecology, the physical environment, and human psychology and anthropology, and culture, politics, and occasionally aesthetics. As a scientific mode of study, it is currently found to rely on statistics and description, organized in five ekistic elements: nature, anthropos, society, shells, and networks. It is generally a more scientific field than urban planning, and has considerable overlap with some of the less restrained fields of architectural theory.

Nature, the first element, represents the ecosystem within which rural settlements must exist.  It involves a number of component processes including the hydrologic cycle, biosystems, airsheds, climatic zones, etc. Archaeological studies show that even primitive man with limited tools made profound changes in natural systems. Overcultivation in the Thar desert of the Indian subcontinent and overgrazing in the Middle East are two examples of how early cultivations weighted the natural balance and tipped it towards an uninhabitable landscape. If such significant changes in the natural system could be brought about by such limited numbers of men, it seems logical to suppose that today's 6,000 million persons must have far greater effectiveness in fouling the planet. 

And, if the earth is to support 30,000 million people in the future, the interrelationships and ranges of adaptability of human settlements and natural processes must be very clearly understood and observed, for

neither can survive without the other. At another level we cannot forget man's psychological and physical needs for contact with the world of nature.

Anthropos himself is also constantly adapting and changing. The medical profession, in its move from "barbarism" to concepts of the constitution of the healthy individual, can contribute many important inputs to the better organization of urban life. Studies have shown that certain physical and psychological diseases are directly associated with urbanization.   These include obesity, respiratory ailments and alienation (anomie).  This gives rise to many questions, such as whether it is possible for mankind to adapt to a completely urban world with no rural escapes; what urban densities "are tolerable"; and how the city may be made a satisfactory environment for the growing child. Thus, just as forward-looking medical and public health schools find a need to study the city, city builders must turn to study man.

The realm of Society comprises all those aspects of the urban or rural scene that are commonly dealt with by sociologists, economists and administrators: population trends, social customs, income and occupations, and the systems of urban government. One of the most urgent aspects of society seems to be the problem of the retention, or reorganization, of values inherent in independent small communities after these have become incorporated in megalopolis — in other words, the place of the neighborhood in megalopolis.

Shells, or the built environment, is the traditional domain of the architectural and engineering professions. Here a central problem is how mass-produced, anonymous housing can cater for the needs of very diverse individuals and family groupings. Where can man make his own mark? Where can he leave the touch of his own hand?

Networks provide the glue for all systems of urbanization. Their changes profoundly affect urban patterns and urban scale. We have only to think of the effect of the advent of the railroad, or of piped water supplies, or of the telephone, upon the extent, the texture and the densities of human settlements. The increasingly rapid developments of all types of networks — coupled with population pressures — have been the most potent

heralds of megalopolis. The enormous growth in the uses of energy for the communication of ideas has whetted man's appetite for participating in  all sorts of things that were formerly outside his ken. The television screen has stimulated desires both to participate in new sports, such as skiing, etc., and to participate in debates — political representation, etc.  To respond to man's demands, transportation, communication and utility networks must all expand even faster than the anticipated growth of settlements.

The Ekistic Grid

A major contribution of the ekistic grid is that it incorporates a complete spectrum of the range of human settlements from the single man to the world encompassing Ecumenopolis. This makes it a most powerful tool for urban analysis

Levels of Planning

Town planning is used to regulate land use and construction. A plan defines how residential areas, workplaces, green areas, transportation and traffic and other components of the city are laid out. Town planning is divided into different planning levels. The more general plan dictates planning on more detailed levels.

A city plan is the overall plan for land use and the organization of transportation and traffic. It covers the entire city. The city plan is revised at about ten-year intervals in Helsinki. The city plan steers detailed planning. The city plan can be complemented or revised with a partial city plan prepared for a more limited area. Helsinki’s current city plan (Master Plan 2002) went into effect in 2007 except for the Malmi Airport area. Work on a new Helsinki city plan was begun in the autumn of 2012. Find out more on the Helsinki City Plan.

Detailed plans regulate the uses of the area and scope of construction. The regulations define building heights, street widths and other matters that impact the structure of the area and cityscape. A detailed plan can cover an entire residential area or only one site. A detailed plan process usually takes at least a year but can take as long as several years. Construction can begin after a detailed plan has been approved by the City Council, goes into effect and is legally binding.

What are the sectors of planning?

• Community Development

Community development planning consists of a public participatory and usually interactive form of town or neighborhood planning and design in which diverse community members often termed “stakeholders contribute toward formulation of the goals, objectives, planning, fund/resource identification and direction, planned project implementations and reevaluation of documented local planning policy.

It is a logical “bottom-up” evolution of regional, city and urban planning in an era of plateaued or diminishing public resources, increasing local burdens and responsibilities and public activism. It often promotes public/private partnership as a means to harness physical development activities in support of community-defined goals.

At a minimum, it seeks community consensus for proposed allocations of scarce resources among competing demands. In more vigorous application, community members access a full gamut of planning tools, shaping and being shaped by shared understanding of a complex community information base, directly informing and guiding local plan content, influencing resulting development budgets, projects and thus future infrastructure and land uses, as well as helping coordinate the work of overlapping jurisdictions, levels of government, internal and adjacent

communities and various providers, such as business associations, utilities and schools.

• Land Use

Land use involves the management and modification of natural environment or wilderness into built environment such assettlements and semi-natural habitats such as arable fields, pastures, and managed woods. It also has been defined as "the arrangements, activities and inputs people undertake in a certain land cover type to produce, change or maintain it"

• Transportation Planning

Transportation Planning is involved with the evaluation, assessment, design and siting of transport facilities (generally streets, highways, bike lanes and public transport lines).

• Environmental/Natural Resources Planning

Environmental Planning is the process of facilitating decision making to carry out development with the consideration given to the natural environmental, social, political, economic and governance factors and provides a holistic frame work to achieve sustainable outcomes.

• Economic Development

Economic development is the sustained, concerted actions of policy makers and communities that promote the standard of living and economic health of a specific area. Economic development can also be referred to as the quantitative and qualitative changes in the economy. Such acts can involve multiple areas including development of human capital, critical infrastructure, regional competitiveness, social inclusion, health, safety, literacy, and other initiatives.

• Urban Design

Urban design is the process of designing and shaping cities, towns and villages.

In contrast to architecture, which focuses on the design of individual buildings,

urban design deals with the larger scale of groups of buildings, streets and public

spaces, whole neighborhoods and districts, and entire cities, with the goal of

making urban areas functional, attractive, and sustainable.

Urban design is an inter-disciplinary subject that utilizes elements of many built

environment professions, including urban planning,landscape

architecture, architecture, civil and municipal engineering. It is common for

professionals in all these disciplines to practice in urban design. In more recent

times different sub-strands of urban design have emerged such as strategic

urban design, landscape urbanism, water-sensitive urban design,

and sustainable urbanism.

Urban design demands a good understanding of a wide range of subjects from

physical geography, through to social science, and an appreciation for

disciplines, such as real estate development, urban economics, political

economy and social theory.

• Housing

• Historic Preservation

Historic preservation is an endeavour that seeks to preserve, conserve and protect buildings, objects, landscapes or other artifacts of historical significance. The term tends to refer specifically to the preservation of the built environment, and not to preservation of, for example, primeval forests or wilderness.

Philippine definition of urban place

Barangay

The National Statistical Coordination Board recently approved a new definition of urban areas for adoption by all concerned. The new definition is as follows:

1. If a barangay has a population size of 5,000 or more, then a barangay is considered urban, or

2. If a barangay has at least one establishment with a minimum of 100 employees, a barangay is considered urban, or

3. If a barangay has 5 or more establishments with a minimum of 10 employees, and 5 or more facilities within the two-kilometer radius from the barangay hall, then a barangay is considered urban

Further, all barangays in the National Capital Region are automatically classified as urban and all highly urbanized cities would be subjected to the urban-rural criteria in order to determine its urban-rural classification. All other barangays are therefore classified as rural.

Global definition of urban place

A conurbation is a region comprising a number of cities, large towns, and other urban areas that, through population growth and physical expansion, have merged to form one continuous urban and industrially developed area. In most cases, a conurbation is a polycentric urban agglomeration, in which transportation has developed to link areas to create a single urban labour market or travel to work area

What is a Region?

Metropolitan area / Region

A formal local government area comprising the urban area as a whole and its primary commuter areas, typically formed around a city with a large concentration of people, a population of at least 100,000. In addition to the city proper, a metropolitan area includes both the surrounding territory with urban levels of residential density and some additional lower-density areas that are adjacent to and linked to the city. Examples of metropolitan areas include Greater London and Metro Manila.

A metropolitan area, sometimes referred to as a metropolitan region, metro area or just metro, is a region consisting of a densely populated urban core and its less-populated surrounding territories, sharing: industry, infrastructure, and housing. A metro area usually comprises multiple jurisdictions and municipalities: neighborhoods, townships, cities,exurbs, counties, districts, states, and even nations like the eurodistricts. As social, economic and political institutions have changed, metropolitan areas have become key economic and political regions. Metropolitan areas include one or more urban areas, as well as satellite cities, towns and intervening rural areas that are socio-economically tied to the urban core, typically measured by commuting patterns.