CITY PLANNING

CITY PLANNING. In early modern Europe city planning was not a profession, as it is today, but a function of public administration and the emerging profession of architecture. Plans for new cities, extensions, and redevelopment were made by monarchs, bureaucrats, municipal authorities, architects, military engineers, and amateurs. From the mid-fifteenth through the eighteenth centuries, the broad trend in the theory of city planning was increased understanding of cities as complex systems of interrelated elements having to do with public utility and beautification.

Planning was informed by practices established in the Middle Ages and memories of ancient Rome. The medieval legacy included municipal building regulations and a repertoire of urban design techniques and features, among which were plans based on grids, such as the bastides of France and Spain, and symbolically charged public spaces, such as the Piazza del Campo in Siena. Popes, such as Alexander VII (reigned 1655–1667); kings, such as Louis XIV (ruled 1643–1715); and even the governments of the French Revolution regarded imperial Rome as the supreme model for public administration and urban grandeur and vied to meet the standard of magnificence suggested by ancient ruins and descriptions in Roman literature.

Medieval rulers and artisans involved in planning cities drew on a variety of texts, including the treatise on architecture by the ancient Roman architect Vitruvius (first century B.C.E.), but they did not write systematically on the subject. This task was taken up in the fifteenth century by Italian authors, who, reinterpreting Vitruvius, addressed urban design within comprehensive treatises on architecture. Influential in this respect were Leon Battista Alberti (1404–1472), Filarete (Antonio di Pietro Averlino, c. 1400–c.1469), and Francesco di Giorgio Martini (1439–1502). They posited ideal cities shaped by theories of fortification, social order, and geometry. In their view, urban design was to follow the same compositional principles of hierarchy, symmetry, and regularity that governed architecture. Diagrammatically, the ideal city was contained within walls forming a regular polygon. The street pattern was regular and could be a grid or a radial system. A public square with buildings housing secular and religious authority occupied the center. For over two hundred years, this model served for the planning of military garrison towns such as Palmanova, Italy (1593), and Neuf-Brisach, France (1698). In a few instances, such as Charleville (1608) in France and Zamość (c. 1579) in Poland, local princes adopted the model as an expression of prestige and cultural attainment.

The theoretical treatment of city planning in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries generally followed themes established earlier, but thinking about planning was hardly stagnant. Developments can be seen best in building regulations. Among the more notable legislative achievements were the Spanish Laws of the Indies, promulgated in 1573, which included many provisions addressing city planning in the New World; the Rebuilding Acts of 1667 and 1670 for the reconstruction of London after the Great Fire (1666); and the regulations governing the construction of St. Petersburg, issued from 1714 to 1737. The London ordinances, for example, addressed building materials and construction techniques, street widths, and standardized house types.

Beginning in the mid-eighteenth century, several new attitudes transformed city planning theory. Military engineering was increasingly regarded as a discrete profession, and the links between fortifications and urban design loosened. Authors such as the French architect Pierre Patte (1723–1814) promoted the creation of master plans that addressed traffic circulation, sewage, and street lighting among other functional and aesthetic concerns. In some settings, questions regarding city planning became matters of public debate. In Paris in 1748, the decision to create a square honoring Louis XV (now the Place de la Concorde) prompted an informal competition attracting amateurs as well as professionals. Other indications of increased public interest are books and pamphlets advocating the adoption of specific plans, such as John Gwynn's (1713–1786) proposal for London, published in 1766.

Urban populations increased significantly in early modern Europe, but most of the growth was in existing cities. New cities were founded as instruments of specific state policies. In addition to garrison cities, specialized types included seaports (Livorno, Italy, 1576), cities supporting princely palaces (Versailles, France, 1660s–1680s), and manufacturing centers (Perm, Russia, 1723). In the second half of the eighteenth century, some designers, among them the French architect Claude-Nicolas Ledoux (1736–1806), regarded such foundations as opportunities for social as well as physical planning. New cities typically were modest in scope. An exception was St. Petersburg (fortress begun 1703), which Peter the Great (ruled 1682–1725) envisioned as a full-fledged capital rivaling Amsterdam, London, and Paris.

City planning throughout early modern Europe primarily addressed the extension, redevelopment, and reconstruction of existing cities. The primary compositional elements of urban design were gridiron and radial street patterns, public squares, and broad, straight streets aligned with architectural monuments and framed, ideally, by buildings with uniform facades. These elements were refined in Italy during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, noted by travelers, and depicted in engravings and paintings. In Rome, influential examples included the improved streets linking major Christian monuments and the public squares designed by Michelangelo on the Capitoline Hill (begun 1538) and Gian Lorenzo Bernini at St. Peter's (1656). Among other celebrated works were Piazza San Marco in Venice (improvements begun 1537) and the extensions of Turin realized throughout the seventeenth century.

The crowded centers of medieval cities were enticing targets for redevelopment, but the high cost of land acquisition limited the scale of most projects. Disasters offered extraordinary opportunities for transformation, as was the case in Lisbon following the earthquake of 1755. In many instances, however, major changes to the street plan could not be implemented. Ambitious new plans by Christopher Wren (1632–1723) and others for London after the Great Fire were put aside in order to simplify reconstruction. Extensions offered the most frequent opportunity for planning. Their scope varied from piecemeal additions (eighteenth-century Berlin) to single plans more than doubling a city's land area (Nancy, France, 1588), and various combinations of speculative and governmental interests drove them. Among the most spectacular examples are the extensions to London and Bath, England, realized by developers throughout the eighteenth century. A distinctive feature of their work was the use of squares, often containing a private park, framed by row houses embellished to a greater or lesser extent by classical details in accordance with the wealth of the intended occupants.

CITY PLANNING

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