Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
There can be little doubt that these older urban themes achieved some success
in influencing the future development of cities throughout the world, although in
practice the ideas were often drastically modified and were eventually found to
create their own problems. Hence the history of their applications holds lessons
for us in the context of the new urban themes, making it important to find ways
of ensuring that the new ideas do not get watered down in the same way, or even
debased, such as Regional Planning and Garden City concepts. Of course there
were many other twentieth century themes related to urban development that blos-
somed and then declined, as Peter Hall (
1988
) showed in
Cities of Tomorrow
. They
ranged from various designs, through economic and social issues or problems, to
conceptual and theoretical changes. In many ways Hall's review showed the way
in which urban development has been constantly influenced by new ideas that be-
come fashionable, even faddish, but then usually faded and were replaced. But by
the end of the twentieth century the results of the distortions of the older policies
and the emergence of a series of new problems, have not led urban scholars and
practitioners to develop one or two new themes as in previous decades. Instead, a
large number of new urban ideas have emerged, each advocating solutions to what
were seen as particular crises of urban development at the turn of the century. This
group of new themes that have emerged within a few years of one another has
surely created a distinctive new phase in the history of urban development.
13
The Various Themes
Each chapter in this topic focuses on what are considered the major themes that
have emerged in the decades around the turn of the twenty-first century. In most
cases the background problems that led to the new theme are reviewed and the key
elements in the theme are summarized in various sections or in conceptual models.
It seemed appropriate to begin with one of the earliest and perhaps the most pub-
licized of these ideas. New Urbanism (Chap. 2) seeks to reverse the trend to urban
sprawl and to create more attractive and liveable areas, with less dependence on the
car and provide a more people-orientated focus through a set of principles known as
the New Urbanism Charter. This is a very useful and wide ranging set of summary
principles, but the neo-traditional emphasis upon design and liveability does little
to solve many of the other major problems facing towns and cities that has led to
other themes. However the extension of the New Urban ideas to the Smart Growth
and Transit Orientated Development concepts in particular do provide more specific
solutions to some of the problems caused by sprawl. What is particularly missing
is the limited attention to social problems, which has led to greater interest in the
Just Cities approach (Chap. 3). This chapter draws attention to the antecedents of
the question of injustice in cities and the way that many people do not share in the
wealth of urban places, as well as being unfairly treated and having limited influ-
ence on how places develop. The fundamental nature of the problems of justice in
cities made it important to deal with these issues early on in this study, even though
the approaches are so different to the chapters on either side. Practical guides to
