Regulating the Timing of Urban Development

Abstract

Coordination, major aspect of planning, involves space and time. Effective urban demands simultaneous attention to both. In the past half-century static attempt at space coordination has become widespread. Its essence is expressed in certain dictionary definitions of the noun plan: a representation drawn on plane or a scheme of arrangement. The plan, the comprehensive plan, the zoning plan frequently are interpreted as embodying an ideal and ultimate balance among districts of land classified as residential, commercial, and industrial. Since this conception deals with the what irrespective of the when it represents what I term static space coordination. A dynamic approach to space coordination is suggested by other dictionary definitions of plan: a schematic program indicating parts in their arrangement, a method of Here we shift from dealing mainly with ultimate categories and patterns of land use to considering the activities involved in urban development. This latter approach stresses the coordination of programs of action. It relates industrial, business, service and residential construction activities; it coordinates the variety of activities that extend the urban transportation system; and it relates all these to the activities that utilize parcels of land. The evolving demands on urban already have forced shift in focus from the map to the program of action. The ultimate plan map as the goal of is being replaced by planning process conception in which the plan is regarded as an open-ended sequence of plans describing at each successive point in time desirable equilibrium among ever-changing activities. Any single map in the series represents cross-section cut through the community at some critical instant in time-a concatenation little likely to be repeated at any other time. (One eminent city administrator now uses the term forward in place of master planning.) Necessarily, this conception of urban involves coordination in time as well as space, of programs as well as land areas. Capital budget programming is start, but deals only with small portion of large problem. It is my belief that until the science of invents greatly improved methods for regulating the timing of urban development, many attempts at space coordination must con-