well, this is another of my first semester’s assignment- and as usual I’m gonna put it here for reference. So, we was told to write an essay 1500 words long on a topic and I’ve chosen urban planning. yeah, I used to be a fan of SimCity 4 and I thought it wasn’t that hard writing on that topic, and it turned out to be more than 2000 words; so if you prefer it in Word document, please feel free to download:-
- click to download - urban planning essay - word 2007
sorry for those using using word 98 – 03, I couldn’t upload it cause the size of the document ridicules me.. so here is the first part of it; -
Definition
Urban planning is the branch of architecture which deals with the design of physical arrangements of public facilities and the determination of the usage of the urban space. Basically, urban planning or otherwise known as city planning is the organization of all elements of a town or other urban environments. A professional who works in the field of urban planning is an urban planner, which works together with local governments to formulate plans for the growth and renewal of urban communities which may deal with predefined policies and strategies.
Elements of Urban Planning
Urban zones
To fulfil the needs of the community, the land can be divided into several urban zones according to its function. There are three types of urban zones; residential, commercial and industrial zones. Residential zone is basically the accommodation or living place for the citizens while commercial zone usually comprises of commercial offices and commercial services, such as shop lots. On the other hand, industrial zone can be divided into agricultural farms, dirty, manufacturing and high-tech industries.
Public facilities
Another element of urban planning is the public buildings. Some are public facilities of several disciplines; education, health, commercial, governmental, sports and recreational. Examples for educational buildings are schools, libraries, museums, colleges and universities while health buildings are medical centres, hospitals and disease research centres. Public commercial buildings are stock exchange and convention centre while governmental buildings are city hall and sometimes palaces. Stadiums and race tracks are sports buildings and zoos and parks are recreational buildings.
Public departments
In addition to facilities, there are also public buildings for departments, for example police, jail, military and fire departments. Depending on the size of the urban community, these buildings may also differ as in police kiosk, police station and police headquarters.
Utilities
Utility is also an important element in urban planning; with one being the electricity. To supply electricity to urban communities, one or more power plants need to be constructed. Power plants also come in different types such as coal, natural gas, solar, hydroelectric, windmill and nuclear power plant. Choice of power plant depends on the cost of construction, cost and amount of power generated and also pollution.
Apart from electricity, there are other utilities that are equally as important as electricity. They are water supply, sanitary system and garbage disposal. Water supply is usually either pumped from the underground or taken directly from river and sea, and is filtered before it is provided to the citizens through a system of water pipes. In contrast, the sanitary system works by collecting waste from buildings and sent to waste treatment centres through another series of pipe networks. As for the garbage disposal, garbage is collected from homes by garbage trucks before being sent to the landfill with optional incineration and recycling.
Transportation
Another major element of the urban planning is the transportation system. The transportation system of urban planning is mainly about the travel between residential home and workplace as it contributes the highest traffic volume that may result in traffic jams. The most basic transportation mode is roads and streets, where they are used connect every location of an urban community. If roads and streets cannot accommodate the volume of traffic, upgrading to avenues and highways is one of the solutions. Avenues are roads with more lanes in the city downtown while highways are several lanes often elevated to connect two or more large urban communities.
However, some huge cities still experience traffic congestion even with avenues and highways, and urban planners turned to rail transit systems for solution. Examples for rail transit systems are monorails, subways and the newer bullet train. Monorails are built suspended in the air, supported by columns while the subways are built underground. These rail transit systems are both very efficient and very expensive, with use only in heavily congested areas of a city. Rail transit on the other hand, is different from railways, in which trains are used to connect cities instead of areas inside the city.
Instead of just land transportation, transportation system also consists of water and air transportation. In the modern context, water and air transportation are mostly used to transport people between cities, with small exception of water transportation inside cities like Venice and Bangkok. Ferries that are ships carrying cars and people across a water body are slowly becoming obsolete with construction of bridges being more practical for transportation. For intercity travels, seaports and airports are built to transport not just people, but also industrial products within containers and cargo.
Cultural Significance
Recently, urban planners considered cultural significance as an element of an urban community. Both engineering feats and artistic works like skyscrapers, bridges, tunnels, monuments and sculptures are built to symbolically represent the image of an urban community and to boost cultural significance of that particular city. Some examples are;
Part II: Ideal City Plan will be uploaded soon
