What is Urban Planning?

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. It also deals with regeneration of old cities that are suffering from long term infrastructure decay.

Real urban planning is a relatively new concept. It gained popularity beginning in the mid-to-late 19th century, when it became obvious that there should be some kind of plan or larger goals for the growth of big cities.

Nowadays, urban planning takes all aspects of a city into consideration. It includes plans for safety, aesthetics and common sense placement of everything from houses to factories. Parents wouldn't want their children's playground next to the water treatment plant, for instance, and urban planning helps eliminate such problems. Goals for attractive architecture for city buildings are put into place and pleasing green spaces are planned. Good urban planning gets schools into the neighborhoods where they are needed most, places hospitals in centralized locations, allows for growth and plans highways accordingly.

History of urban planning dates back to the early civilizations like the Mesopotamian, Harappan and Egyptian Civilizations. Distinct characteristics of urban planning from remains of the cities of Harappa, Lothal and Mohenjo-daro in the Indus Valley Civilization (in modern-day northwestern India and Pakistan) lead archeologists to conclude that they are the earliest examples of deliberately planned and managed cities. These cities have roads laid at right angles in a grid like pattern, houses built for more residential privacy, well planned wells and a drainage system as well.

The Greek Hippodamus (c. 407 BC) is widely considered the father of city planning in the West, for his design of Miletus; Alexander commissioned him to lay out his new city of Alexandria, the grandest example of idealized urban planning of the Mediterranean world, where regularity was aided in large part by its level site near a mouth of the Nile.

For more information on the history of urban planning please click on the following hyperlink:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_planning#History

Aspects of planning include:
• Urban Aesthetics
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_planning#Urban_Aesthetics

• Safety
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_planning#Safety

• Slums
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_planning#Slums

• Urban Decay
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_planning#Urban_decay

• Reconstruction and renewal
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_planning#Reconstruction_and_renewal

• Transport
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_planning#Transport

• Suburbanization
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_planning#Suburbanization

• Environmental factors
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_planning#Environmental_factors

• Light and Sound
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_planning#Light_and_Sound

Perhaps good urban planning is most evident in good highway planning in a city. Anticipating growth and traffic needs for a big city is crucial. Urban planners must consider how future growth will affect traffic flow and try to eliminate trouble spots before they become a problem. Even placing sewer systems and drainage systems is a necessary element of urban planning, albeit a less glamorous one. Urban planners must consider geography, the water table and numerous other elements of a city's landscape in order to properly plan for this necessity.
Since so many disciplines make up the larger concept of urban planning, a group of urban planners may have widely divergent degrees: civil engineering, architecture, botany, landscape design, electrical engineering, business administration, and so on. Urban planners who are good at what they do are highly sought after by municipal governments. When efficient urban planning is used, cities are more attractive and serve their citizens to the best of their potential.