What is Urban Planning? Crash Course Geography #47

Summary

This Crash Course Geography episode envisions future cities with sustainable transport, green spaces, and community involvement in urban planning. It explores urban geography's role in shaping city development, reflecting societal values and relationships. The Latin American Model and Brasília's urban planning are discussed as historical examples, highlighting the impact of colonialism, wealth, and race on city structures. The episode also addresses urban sprawl, redlining, and the ongoing challenges of creating inclusive, equitable urban spaces.

Takeaways

• 🌳 The future cities envisioned in the script feature excellent public transportation, wide boulevards, dense urban cores, and wild spaces, promoting coexistence with nature.
• 🏡 Sustainable materials like mass timber are suggested for future construction, emphasizing environmental consciousness in city planning.
• 🤝 Participatory design is highlighted as crucial, meaning every inhabitant should be involved in the planning and maintenance of their city.
• 🚶‍♂️ Urban planning is influenced by economic, political, and social relationships, shaping the built environment and reflecting societal values.
• 🌆 The Latin American Model of city planning is discussed, showing how colonial priorities are embedded in city structures, impacting wealth display and social status.
• 🏙️ Brasília is presented as a case study of modern city planning, aiming to be innovative and address social issues, yet facing challenges in meeting contemporary living needs.
• 🚗 Urban sprawl and white flight in the United States are discussed, showing how urban planning can both facilitate and exacerbate social segregation and inequality.
• 🏘️ The historical practice of redlining and urban renewal is critiqued for their role in creating and maintaining racial and economic disparities in housing.
• 🌐 The script emphasizes the importance of considering the aspirations and situations of city dwellers in urban planning, recognizing the complexity of city life.
• 🔄 The acknowledgment of Indigenous peoples' relationships with land is made, urging viewers to learn about the history of their place of residence and engage with local Indigenous nations.

Q & A

What are the key features of the imagined future cities described in the script?

The imagined future cities have excellent public transportation, wide boulevards for walking, biking, and recreation, dense urban cores with wild spaces, homes made of sustainable materials, and participatory design involving every inhabitant in planning and maintenance.

How does urban geography reflect cultural traits and economic and political relationships?

Urban geography reflects cultural traits and economic and political relationships through the built environments, such as parks, City Hall, and houses, which are products of these relationships and tend to reproduce the social relationships of the time.

What is the role of urban geographers in understanding city development?

Urban geographers study patterns of human settlement and land use in urban areas, and how these patterns change over time. They use models and economic processes to predict the future and explain the present, including city development.

What is urban planning and how does it influence the design of urban spaces?

Urban planning is about the design and regulation of space within urban areas. Urban planners work to weave together economic, social, and environmental goals of a region to create zones for work, play, and living that benefit the region.

What is the Latin American Model of city planning and how does it reflect colonial priorities?

The Latin American Model describes city types designed by Spanish colonizers, featuring central plazas with cathedrals, markets, and a grid of streets. It reflects colonial priorities by showing wealth and social status through housing arrangements around the central market.

How did the arrival of colonizers change urban development in Latin America?

With the arrival of colonizers, urban development in Latin America shifted to include showing wealth and social status through housing arrangements, with wealthy housing developing around central markets and zones of disamenity, or squatter settlements, forming on the periphery.

What was the vision behind the design of Brasília, and how does it differ from the traditional Latin American model?

Brasília was designed to be innovative, opening development to the interior of Brazil without the poverty of older colonial cities. Unlike the traditional model, it was designed to look like a bird or airplane, with a monumental axis for public buildings and wings for residential neighborhoods.

How did the design of Brasília impact its development and the lives of its residents?

Brasília's design, based on a 1950s vision, led to issues with adapting to how people live today. The city was designed for cars and to separate work and living areas, which resulted in the development of suburbs and uneven access to resources and jobs.

What is redlining and how did it affect urban development in the United States?

Redlining was the practice of color-coding urban maps to indicate high-risk neighborhoods for lending money. This made home and land ownership difficult, especially for Black and Asian Americans, and contributed to segregated neighborhoods with limited access to resources.

How can urban planning address structural disadvantages in city design?

Urban planning can address structural disadvantages by intentionally considering the needs of marginalized communities and creating inclusive, equitable spaces. It involves learning from past mistakes and involving a diverse range of voices in the planning process.

Outlines

00:00

🌆 Visions of Future Cities and Urban Planning

The paragraph envisions a future cityscape with efficient public transportation, ample green spaces, and sustainable construction materials. It emphasizes the importance of participatory urban planning, where all inhabitants have a say in the development of their city. The narrator, Alizé Carrère, introduces the topic of urban geography, which studies the cultural, economic, and political factors that shape our built environments. The focus is on understanding patterns of human settlement and land use in urban areas, and how they evolve over time. Urban planning is presented as a critical discipline that can significantly impact people's lives by designing spaces that balance economic, social, and environmental goals.

05:03

🏛 Historical City Planning and Its Impact

This section delves into the historical context of city planning, particularly the Latin American Model, which was influenced by Spanish colonizers. It discusses how the design of cities, such as the inclusion of central plazas and grid layouts, reflects the priorities and social structures of the time. The paragraph also touches on the concept of 'zones of disamenity,' which are areas of informal settlements that often lack legal rights and are prone to displacement. The discussion then shifts to modern city planning, exemplified by the case of Brasília, a city designed to be a modern and innovative capital. However, despite its visionary design, Brasília has faced challenges in meeting the needs of its growing population, highlighting the complexities of urban planning and the need to consider the evolving desires of city dwellers.

10:04

🚦 The Consequences of Urban Planning and the Fight for Equitable Cities

The final paragraph addresses the social implications of urban planning, focusing on the historical injustices and inequalities that have shaped American cities. It discusses phenomena like urban sprawl, white flight, and the discriminatory practices of redlining and urban renewal that have disproportionately affected minority communities. The paragraph emphasizes the need for urban planning to be inclusive and to actively counteract structural disadvantages. It suggests that future urban planning efforts must learn from past mistakes and involve a broader range of voices to create more equitable and vibrant cities. The paragraph concludes with a call to action to engage with local Indigenous and Aboriginal communities and to acknowledge their ongoing relationship with the land.

Keywords

💡Urban Geography

Urban Geography is the study of human-made places, focusing on how and why cities develop as they do. It examines the patterns of human settlement and land use within urban areas, and how these patterns evolve over time. In the video, urban geography is central to understanding the historical and contemporary planning of cities, such as the Latin American Model and the unique case of Brasília, which reflects the economic, political, and social relationships of the time.

💡Urban Planning

Urban Planning refers to the design and regulation of space within urban areas. It involves a complex interplay of economic, social, and environmental goals to create zones for work, play, and living that benefit the region. The video emphasizes the significant influence urban planners have on people's lives, as seen in the discussion of Brasília's innovative design and the challenges it faced in meeting the needs of its growing population.

💡Latin American Model

The Latin American Model is a concept describing the urban development patterns established by Spanish colonizers in Central America and parts of the American West and Southwest. This model is characterized by central plazas with cathedrals, markets, and a grid of streets, reflecting colonial priorities and social status through housing arrangements. The video uses this model to illustrate how historical urban planning decisions shape the social and spatial structure of cities.

💡Zones of Disamenity

Zones of Disamenity are areas within cities that are characterized by poor living conditions, often inhabited by those who cannot afford better housing. These zones typically consist of squatter settlements built from available materials, lacking legal rights and often at risk of displacement. The video discusses how these zones are a result of urban planning that does not adequately address the housing needs of all citizens.

💡Brasília

Brasília, the capital of Brazil, is highlighted in the video as an example of modern urban planning. Designed by Lúcio Costa and Oscar Niemeyer, it was intended to be a futuristic city, breaking away from traditional colonial patterns. However, the video points out that despite its innovative design, Brasília faced issues such as urban sprawl and the development of suburbs, indicating that urban planning must adapt to the changing needs and desires of its inhabitants.

💡Urban Sprawl

Urban Sprawl refers to the expansion of urban areas into suburban and rural lands, often characterized by low-density, car-dependent development. The video discusses how urban sprawl in the United States was facilitated by investments in the highway system and other factors, leading to the movement of white populations away from city centers and contributing to racial and economic segregation.

💡Redlining

Redlining is the historical practice of denying or limiting financial services, such as mortgages and loans, to residents of certain neighborhoods based on their racial or ethnic characteristics. The video explains how redlining in the 1930s and subsequent urban renewal projects in the 1950s disproportionately affected Black and Asian American communities, leading to lasting disparities in housing and land ownership.

💡Eminent Domain

Eminent Domain is the power of the government to take private property for public use, with just compensation. The video discusses how eminent domain was used during urban renewal, often resulting in the displacement of residents from historically Black neighborhoods, who received minimal or no compensation due to not being landowners or because their properties were undervalued.

💡Structural Disadvantages

Structural Disadvantages refer to the systemic barriers that certain groups face in society, often due to historical and ongoing discrimination. In the context of the video, structural disadvantages are evident in the urban planning decisions that have led to unequal access to resources, opportunities, and quality of life for minority communities.

💡Inclusive and Equitable Spaces

Inclusive and Equitable Spaces are urban environments that are designed to be accessible and beneficial to all members of society, regardless of their social, economic, or racial background. The video calls for future urban planning to involve a greater number of voices and to address the structural disadvantages that have historically marginalized certain communities, in order to create more inclusive and equitable cities.

Highlights

Envisioning cities of the future with excellent public transportation, wide boulevards, and a balance between urban cores and wild spaces.

The importance of participatory urban planning where every inhabitant is involved in the city's development.

The role of urban geography in understanding the cultural, economic, and political influences on city planning.

The use of models and economic processes by urban geographers to predict future urban landscapes.

The Latin American Model of city planning, reflecting colonial priorities and social status through housing arrangements.

The contrast between pre-colonial and colonial housing patterns in Latin America.

The concept of zones of disamenity and their impact on low-income communities.

20th-century city planning in Latin America aimed at preventing zones of disamenity and fostering economic and social growth.

The innovative design and planning of Brasília, the capital of Brazil, as a modern city.

The challenges faced by Brasília in matching the vision of its planners with the evolving needs of its residents.

The unintended consequences of urban planning, such as the organic growth of suburbs outside the main city.

The recognition of Brasília as a UNESCO World Heritage site for its unique urban design.

The historical context of urban sprawl and white flight in the United States, influenced by urban planning.

The impact of redlining and urban renewal on minority communities in the US.

The need for future urban planning to address structural disadvantages and create more inclusive spaces.

The acknowledgment of Indigenous and Aboriginal peoples' relationships with the land in the context of urban geography.

Transcripts

When I think about what cities of the future will look like, or at least what I would like

them to look like, here’s what I imagine:

Our urban areas have excellent public transportation and wide boulevards for walking, biking and other recreation.

There are several dense urban cores with wild spaces weaving between them so that city dwellers

closely coexist with nature.

And homes and apartment buildings made of mass timber or other sustainable - or even living materials!

Most importantly, all of this is designed in a participatory way, meaning every inhabitant

is involved in the planning, implementation and maintenance of their home city.

And of course there’d also be trampoline sidewalks so people could do backflips on

their way to work.

My predictions are just dreams and guesses, but for urban geographers, urban planning

is serious business.

Urban spaces are created by all the economic, political, and social relationships that build

our societies, and how we plan cities changes depending on when and where we are -- for better or worse.

I’m Alizé Carrère, and this is Crash Course Geography.

INTRO

Our built environments -- or all the human-made places we use, from our local parks to City

Hall to our houses -- reflect our cultural traits.

But they’re also a product of our economic and political relationships.

And even if we build a city from scratch, it tends to reproduce the social relationships of our time.

Why and how this happens is part of the focus of urban geography, which we’ve been studying

for 2 episodes now.

As urban geographers we try to understand the patterns behind where people settle and

how land is used in urban areas, and why those patterns change over time.

To do that, urban geographers use models and economic processes to predict the future and

try to explain the present.

Like what cities will look like in the future.

Or how a city developed and how the work of past urban planners and geographers either

helps or prevents people from accessing good homes or jobs.

And within urban geography, we can get even more applied with urban planning, which is

all about the design and regulation of space within urban areas.

Urban planners work for governments and non-governmental organizations, like land conservation groups.

They weave together the economic, social, and environmental goals of the region with

the intent of creating zones of work, play, and living that will benefit the region.

As urban planners we have a tremendous influence on people’s lives and there’s a lot to consider!

So for the next three episodes, we’ll explore different types of planning and how we think

about space and understand the relationships that guide where and how humans build cities

and everything in and around them.

Historically there have been lots of different ways to plan cities, and different cultures

have their own patterns of urban development, or how cities grow and change.

For example, there’s the Latin American Model.

This model describes the types of cities mostly Spanish colonizers designed as they built

up cities throughout what’s now Central America and much of the American West and

Southwest -- often on the same land as indigenous cities they had destroyed.

And the way any society designs their towns and cities, whether centuries ago or today,

will give us clues about the goals of the leaders of that society.

In the cities of Latin America, colonial priorities are built into the city, like how they include

a plaza with cathedrals and space for markets, and a grid of streets like the cities in Europe.

For indigenous peoples like the Aztecs, the central plaza was an element that was also

used in planning and urban design, with prominent buildings, a palace, a temple, and a place

for ball courts and sacred areas.

And in pre-colonial times the way housing was located, both planned and unplanned, varied

across Latin America -- even within similar empires.

But that shifted with the arrival of colonizers.

In the Latin America model, showing wealth and social status through housing arrangements

became a common design.

Housing for the wealthy developed around that central market.

And radiating out from the central market to the periphery are zones of disamenity,

which are corridors of squatter settlements made up of thousands of people in the city

who can’t afford a house or land, but who still need a place to live.

Squatters tend to build their houses out of whatever materials are available, and this

is a highly precarious living arrangement.

And even though it’s a common type of neighborhood in low income areas in many cities around

the world, the lack of legal rights to the home in which they live makes it easy to displace those communities.

So how a city is structured influences how it develops and tells us about the things

the people living in it value.

It can also tell us how we imagine our city in the future, things like how many people

might live in the city, or what types of industry might be there.

Like in the 20th century, city planning in Latin America tried to fix or prevent these

zones of disamenity from happening, while also creating regions that thrive economically and socially.

Take for example, Brasília, the capital of what we call Brazil.

The area wasn’t even a city by the early 1950s when Brazilian leaders decided that

by 1960 it would finally be the new site of the nation’s capital.

Urban planner Lúcio Costa won the design competition and invited his friend and architect

Oscar Niemeyer to make his vision of a modern city a reality.

They wanted to create something innovative that would both open development to the interior

of Brazil and be an urban place without the poverty of older colonial cities.

Unlike the traditional Latin American model, Brasília was designed to look like a bird

or airplane flying off into the future, and it’s much farther inland than other major Brazilian cities.

Overall the original city was made up of one monumental axis, or the body of the bird,

which contained the public buildings, museums, government offices, and other job-focused areas.

And the two wings contained the residential neighborhoods.

These superquadras contained residential towers for middle and upper income workers from the

monumental axis, as well as community spaces, parks, schools, playgrounds, and in theory

everything a community would need.

But while Brasília is considered a modern design masterpiece, even well planned cities

go off script.

The relationships contained within a city are just that messy.

Brasilia was designed based on a vision of the future from the 1950s, and it doesn’t

match how people want to live their lives today in 2022.

The city was designed to rely on cars and even to try and separate where people worked and lived.

And while most people agree that not all mixing is good -- like we don’t want toxic industries

spewing chemicals near homes and schools -- robust communities do have some level of mixing between

commercial and residential, like shops, office work, and houses.

Being able to work and live close together is important for keeping transportation costs

low and maximizing how many services a person can easily reach from their home.

But the relationships that form in a city inevitably bubble up and imprint themselves

on the landscape anyway.

Brasília was designed for 500,000 people, but by 2020 there were over 4.6 million people living there.

All those people couldn’t all fit in the original wings, so suburbs, or low density

car-dependent areas outside the main city developed.

In Brasilia they’re called satellites, and they grew organically and do not match the

aesthetic of the rest of the city.

They’re vibrant with people living and working in the same areas, and contain the messiness

of uneven access to resources and jobs.

Today Brasília is an UNESCO World Heritage site because of its ambitious and unique urban design.

It’s an example of how we can plan something on paper, but a city is a space that encapsulates

so much more than grids, buildings, and jobs.

Cities are also all the aspirations and situations of the people who live in them and all the

negotiations they have to make with economic, political, and physical forces to live full lives.

But not everyone is allowed to live full lives or build community, and urban planning can

play a role in that.

For instance, in urban sprawl and white flight in the United States, which was the progressive

movement of white people farther and farther from the center as they gained wealth and

as minority populations moved into the city.

Urban planning also helped to facilitate that movement.

In the 1960s there was an infusion of investment in the US highway system.

And being able to get places quickly helped shift the location of entertainment and shopping

from town centers to stand-alone complexes and edge cities.

There were also incentives like affordable land to build new homes, and low interest

home loans to WWII military veterans.

All that coupled with low fuel costs and other lingering effects from WWII made it possible

for those in the middle and upper economic classes to leave cities and move out to the suburbs.

Well, it made it possible for SOME people.

Because there were also forces working hard to keep minority Americans from owning land

and houses, especially Black and Asian Americans.

For instance, if we go back to the 1930s, some forces to prevent people from owning

land were already in effect.

Redlining is when urban maps were color coded to indicate which neighborhoods were considered

high-risk to lend money to.

The credit of people in Black neighborhoods, followed by those of recent immigrants, was

rated the highest risk level and outlined in red.

This made home ownership and land ownership very difficult.

And it got even harder in the 1950s.

After almost 20 years of planning and discussion, the auto industry and highway engineers presented

plans to build a complex interstate system from coast-to-coast -- one that cut right

through many cities.

This paved the way -- literally!

-- for urban renewal, which was a process in cities that allowed them to clear away

areas deemed as blighted to allow for new construction.

Overwhelmingly, those freeways went through historically Black neighborhoods.

And the houses that were removed did go through the process of eminent domain, where a landowner

must be compensated for property taken for public use.

But because many of the residents were not and effectively could not be landowners, they

received minimal compensation, if any.

The properties were also undervalued, so anyone who did receive compensation rarely got enough

to move to a similar neighborhood elsewhere.

So we have to remember that urban planning is part of larger social systems and can be

abused by those in power.

In the US, the freeways and easy movement that allowed suburbs to thrive also involves

a history of redlining and urban renewal that allowed some neighborhoods to wither.

Other places, they created segregated neighborhoods with limited access to financial resources.

Legally redlining may have ended, but unfair housing and real estate access are still problems

many Black people and other minorities face.

So any efforts to build poverty-free cities in the future or any efforts to eradicate

the urban poverty that already exists must intentionally address the structural disadvantages

built into the way our cities and communities are designed.

Whether it’s social status in colonial cities in Latin America, wealth and community and

innovative design in Brazil, or race in North America, every choice that’s made about

where to allow different types of land use reflects the relationships and values of whoever

is making those decisions.

While urban planners understand the social and economic mechanisms that create vibrant

cities, and know so much more than in the 1950s when Brasília was built, that experiment

proves we can’t just unbuild our cities and start over.

As we plan the cities that will thrive in our near future, we can learn from these lessons

and involve a greater number of voices to try to make more inclusive and equitable spaces

- but more on that in a future episode.

No arrangement of a city is neutral towards relationships, and the built environment reflects

the people and classes that are prioritized.

Next time we’ll explore the relationships fostered across distance as we look at industrial geography.

Many maps and borders represent modern geopolitical divisions that have often been decided without

the consultation, permission, or recognition of the land's original inhabitants.

Many geographical place names also don't reflect the Indigenous or Aboriginal peoples languages.

So we at Crash Course want to acknowledge these peoples’ traditional and ongoing relationship

with that land and all the physical and human geographical elements of it.

We encourage you to learn about the history of the place you call home through resources

like native-land.ca and by engaging with your local Indigenous and Aboriginal nations through

the websites and resources they provide.

Thanks for watching this episode of Crash Course Geography which is filmed at the Team

Sandoval Pierce Studio and was made with the help of all these nice people.

If you want to help keep Crash Course free for everyone, forever, you can join our community on Patreon.