CHAPTER ONE

The chapter one aims to distinguish and settle the ambiguity between the general and
concise meanings of the word planning. For me he was in his most objective approach within
this chapter.
First, Hall gave the most common meaning of planning which involves both the first two
of these elements: planning is concerned with deliberately achieving some objective, and it
proceeds by assembling actions into some orderly sequence. One dictionary definition, in fact,
refers to what planning does; the other, to how planning does it. He points out that most people
only understand the general meaning of planning which is based on the idea of the plan as a
physical representation or design.
Second, he expanded the meaning of planning in relation to its application to urban and
regional setting. He said that urban and regional planning is spatial planning which refers to
planning with a spatial, or geographical, component, in which the general objective is to provide
for a spatial structure of activities (or of land uses) which in some way is better than the pattern
that would exist without planning.
Third, he talked about the history and the development of planning as an activity.
Planning developed into a science of decision-making, which was inspired and has foundations
from concepts in philosophy and politics; it harnessed the thinking of a number of social
sciences, such as economics, sociology and psychology. It has led to a more evolved meaning
which is not only based from the old idea of planning as production of blueprints for the future
desired state of the area, but also the new idea of planning as a continuous series of controls
over the development of the area, aided by devices which seek to model or simulate the
process of development so that this control can be applied.
Lastly, he cited the objectives in planning. He starts with planning as the solutions to the
need to organized small towns to a now much more flexible, working with much greater
information. And it is more rational at least potentially so. It covers almost the whole of human
experience. The ideal urban and regional planner would have to be a good economist,
sociologist, geographer and social psychologist in his or her own right, as well as having several

other necessary physical-scientific skills, such as a good understanding of civil engineering and
of cybernetics statistician, systems analyst and educationalist.
Nevertheless, he said that the alternative system has created many new problems and
pitfalls of its own. For example, the development of computerization does not make planning
easier, in the sense that it somehow becomes more automatic.

CHAPTER TWO
Chapter two formally starts the recorded history and origins of urban growth. Modern
urban and regional planning has arisen in response to specific social and economic problems,
which in turn were triggered off by the Industrial Revolution at the end of the eighteenth century.

The Greece and Elizabethan London was stated as the origins of some early planning
problems. The rumbling horses of the chariot in Greece was the first recorded noise pollution
and the burning of sea coal in the fourteenth century London was the first recorded air pollution.
He stated that these problems brought the need for a proper planning regulations to
bring the community in order. So as an effect many cities in both the ancient and the medieval
world were planned, at least in the sense that their existence and their location were laid down
consciously by some ruler or some group of merchants; and among this group, a large
proportion even had formal ground plans with a strong element of geometric regularity.

He then relates the early town planning to its more modern face especially before the
industrial revolution, the baroque era in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He made
them distinct but related to one another.
Industrialism made a great impact, which for me was the main idea of the second
chapter. There were many critical points in the time of industrialism, such as proper sanitary and
water supply. To combat the problems the Select Committee on the Health of Towns (1840) and
the Royal Commission on the State of Large Towns (18445) produced the two major Blue
Books, or official reports which established a single authority in which proponents of urban
planning would be regulated.

The start of modern transportation such as trams, horse buses up until electric trams
and trains brought both positive and negative effects into the layout of the cities. Due to these
negative effects a minority of thinking people were alarmed. In this era we also saw the
development using the rural areas and homes were decentralized rapidly. And The need for a
much larger type of planning was on its way..
CHAPTER 3
Chapter 3 is all about the two division of thinkers who revolutionize ideas regarding urban
and regional planning, : the Anglo-American group and the continental European group.
First, the Anglo-American tradition:
Ebenezer Howard : Garden Cities : all industry was decentralized deliberately from the city, or
at least from its inner sections, and a new town was built around the decentralized plant, thus
combining working and living in a healthy environment.
Raymond Unwin and Barry Parker : Social City. The surrounding green belt,
the mixture of industrial and residential areas, and the emphasis on single-family housing
of good design. It did, however, compromise on the principle of self-containment: because most
of its inhabitants came from the city, where they held jobs, subsidized public transport was
provided for them to commute back. Both Unwin and Parker consistently argued for the Howard
principle of generous green belts around the new communities.
Clarence Perry, Clarence Stein and H. Alker Tripp : the Neighbourhood unit idea, which in
essence is merely pragmatic: certain services, which are provided every day for groups of the
population who cannot or do not wish to travel very far (housewives and young children), should
be made available at an accessible central place for a fairly small local community, within
walking distance of all homes
in that community.
Patrick Geddes and Patrick Abercrombie: Abercrombies most notable contributions to AngloAmerican planning theory and practice, however, were made in extending city planning to a

wider scale. Geddess contribution to planning was to base it firmly on the study of reality: the
close analysis of settlement patterns and local economic environment.
Frank Lloyd Wright : a completely dispersed though planned low-density
urban spread, which he called Broadacre City. Here, each home would be surrounded by an
acre of land, enough to grow crops on; the homes would be connected by superhighways,
giving easy and fast travel by car in any direction. Along these highways
he proposed a planned roadside civilization, in which the petrol (gas) station would
grow naturally into the emporium for a whole area;

The European tradition:

Arturo Soria y Mata: a main road runs straight through the linear centre of the city, carrying a
tramway (since scrapped), with rather geometrical housing blocks on either side.
Tony Garnier and Ernst May : a design for an industrial city (Cit industrielle) which, like
Howards garden city, was to be a self-contained new settlement with its own industries and
housing close by.
Le Corbusier : The first was that the traditional city has become functionally obsolete, owing to
its increasing size and increasing congestion at the centre. The second was the paradox that
the congestion could be cured by increasing the density. The third proposition concerned the
distribution of densities within the city. Fourth and lastly, Corbusier argued that this new urban
form could accommodate a
CHAPTER 4
Chapter four is all about the emergence of regional planning and the new laws with much
supportive study was made.
Most notably the Barlow commission, this commission were, first, to inquire into the
causes of the geographical distribution of industry and population, and possible changes in the
causatory factors in the future; second, to consider the disadvantages social, economic and
strategic of the concentration of industry and population into large centres; and third, to report
on remedies that were necessary in the national interest.

Its great importance was that it

provided for comprehensive government controls over the distribution of industry, of a
negative as well as a positive kind.
CHAPTER FIVE
The Fifth chapter talks about the regional policy and its change from 1945 to 1980.
Regional policy is a system where the large internal differences of income and opportunity
between its regions will be equalize, transferring resources from richer to poorer regions. The
number one aim of the planning policy is to create employment, reduce unemployment rate and
improve the efficiency of industry increasing its gross regional product and income. The
economists tend to focus on the issue of employment over the other problems exist in Britain for
the reason that, unemployment is a more visible and evident problem, more statistics about it is
available. Their mission is to make poor regions which suffered a 4.5% unemployment into a
development district monitoring its economy for a period of time. The chapter also discuss
about the conservative government and labor government and its discrepancies. Labor
governments tends to be a more hands on that the conservative where new factories in less
prosperous place are erected that create plenty of jobs which focus professional and scientific
kind of employment. It concluded that regional policy created about 300,000 new jobs but
doubts from other economist are still present.
Policy changes from 1960 1980 is being discussed, it is all about the change in
development districts where concentrated help is most needed to it. The theory of Growth Pole
is introduced, it says that development is not uniform over an entire region but takes place in a
single pole. The growth pole theory was applied to the different area of Britain and change the
district policy into growth pole. The idea is to identify parts of region with the best prospect of
rapid growth development and treat it as a growth zone. They want equality in growth criticizing
the continuing disparity between the distressed problem area and rapid growth of prosperous
areas.
In this area, Peter Hall elaborate one of the biggest of element in regional planning and it
is the economy of the area. How he used the different information and analogies about the
economys fluctuation that time is a good way to understand and visualize it by the reader. He
point out that prosperity is related to some wheres distress conveying that the whole regions
economy should be balanced in all aspects.

CHAPTER 6
Chapter six is all about the Planning of Cities and Region. This chapter focuses on the
different aspects of regional planning such as the population and how it becomes a big factor in
the growth of the cities. The term baby boom is used to signify how the number of population
increase suddenly, the author explained it and according to him, it is due to the different reasons
such as early marriage and also people tend to search more on job and education making them
separate in their families resulting to increase in the demand of houses. And according to him,
that time, more population is equal to more small houses that cause a huge pressure in urban
development and also more demand for employment. The rapid buy of different goods and
vehicle ownership are also evidence of the population bloom. But at some point there is some
fluctuation in the population due to the different regulation set by the authorities. In the latter part
other components of regional has been affected such as the housing and infrastructure needs.
Planning is now crucial at that state, architects had a planning battles in the different urban
areas introducing different kinds of alleviation such as greenbelts, the clean air act, new traffic
schemes for public transport and different reforms in each regions.
The whole chapter also emphasized that population is a one thing to be considered in
regional planning.
CHAPTER 7
The history of planning in Europe is what the focus in chapter 7 is. It describes different
issues and implications of these problems from the post war period up to the 21st century. Peter
Hall discussed the places where urbanization flourished and the areas that became neglected
as urbanization rapidly grew.
As the plan for the halt ofrapid industrialization took place, a considerable number of
farmers migrate from the country side to the major industrial areas of Europe leaving the farms
to fall into ruins or restoration of homes for townspeople. One of the effect of these migrations is
the centralization of urbanism at the central Europe. While the central regions flourished,
peripheral regions succumb to high unemployment rate. These region differences created a new

geography of Europe and the place where large urban agglomeration is found in a linear
megalopolitan zone. The region is called Blue Banana.
Centralization is part of European tradition as seen from the plans of the region and
even countries. Just like the European region, France has shown its own centralization plan.
The concentration of urbanism at France is at Paris. As planners thought of Paris as a
competent place for primacy among the world cities, different plans and strategies were
formulated as to keep Paris at the top of French economy. Of course, even when the focus of
development is at Paris, the other region of France must not be neglected. Because of the
primacy of Paris in the development of France, the other regions need to catch up with the
speed of growth of this city. To do that, they need to break the concentration of the economic
life. Theyve decided to establish eight new major cities that will balance the economy and the
rapid population growth in the area. The new towns are to have different facilities that will cater
the population needs and will be connected by different public transportation.
As many of the cities flourished, a number of cities decline and that is a way to balance
things. If the cities in Europe set aside their tradition for a centralized planning, a balanced life
style would be in effect and will be fair to all the European people.
CHAPTER 8
The chapter 8 demonstrates a plenty of faults in the planning of the United States after
the war. Peter Hall expressed his thoughts on how the United States planned their cities.
Europeans and Americans differ somewhat in their definition of planning. They sees the
planning of United States as a contradiction in terms.
The United States is seen as a land where the phenomenally rapid settlementprocess
has been accompanied by unprecedented destruction of irreplaceable natural resources; where
extreme affluence marches hand in hand with large-scale pockets of poverty, often close by;
where urban areas sprawl unregulated into fine open country, leaving a trail of ugliness and
economic inefficiency. Fiercely critical as it may be, this is the stereotype which many European
professional planners, and many intelligent European citizens, hold. pg. 189
Since the United States is a larger continent than Europe, it possesses a vast and
complex system of planning agencies and of planning measures. Even though it is a region that
is very developed, it still have economic development problems on poverty. Although the
definition of poverty in United States differ in the rest of the world, as poverty in United States

may mean a middle class living style at other countries, it is still a problem that needs to be
addressed for them to have a quality life. These economic problems were strategized and
worked to be solved. They focus on different issues like poverty and unemployment. As a large
region, United States cities were very far away from each other. And by being far, it adds to the
problem of connectedness within these cities. Instead of relying on every cities resources,
United States planned to make each city independent. The application of the smart growth
helped the United States utilize their lands more. As the smart growth follows a proper zoning
where houses will be a fewer miles to work and has an adjacent public transport available.
CHAPTER NINE
Chapter 9 mainly focused on the planning process stages of evolution. The planning
process may have evolved from master plan or blueprint era to Systems planning and
participativeconflict planning but planning is still planning. The principles are still there and it
only become more systematic as time goes on.
The master plan or blueprint era shows how planning is done still without proper
justifications and objectives of their work. It is more on details in terms of land-use patterns,
whereas the systematic planning involves a series of study and evaluations in which planning
considerations and strategies will be based. The introduction of cybernetics in the planning
process helped planning to be more sophisticated. Rather than dealing with a completely new
subject matter, cyberneticsis essentially a new way of organizing existing knowledge about a
very wide range of phenomena. It is composed of different systems that compliments each
other. It can be compared to having a thorough investigation on a matter and providing a
realistic approach to a solution.