Planned communities

DEFINITION: Human settlements for which most design aspects are determined before building begins

Among the factors that designers of planned communities take into account is the need to protect and preserve a healthful environment. Through careful placement of roads, retail spaces, and other amenities in relation to living spaces, such communities can minimize detrimental environmental impacts.

Ever since the development of agriculture, enclaves of people have clustered in central locations and dwelled in close proximity to one another. Such ancient cities as Babylon, Nineveh, Jerusalem, Cairo, Athens, and Rome have set the pattern for urban planners through the ages. The typical Greek or Roman city had two main thoroughfares running perpendicular to each other that intersected to form a public area at the city’s center. Smaller streets running parallel to the main thoroughfares were lined by dwellings and shops. This configuration created the grid pattern still used by many city planners. The typical medieval city was walled for defense and had narrow streets that curtailed the movement of invaders. These small arteries led to a central square, where inhabitants gathered to socialize and receive information. During the Renaissance, narrow passageways gave way to large boulevards that opened cities to light and space.

The first city in the United States to be built according to a plan was Washington, DC, designated to replace New York City as the nation’s capital. The city planner for Washington, Pierre Charles L’Enfant, borrowed heavily from his mentor Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann, inventor of Paris’s spokes-and-hub plan. L’Enfant superimposed diagonal thoroughfares, all of which led to the Capitol, on a giant rectangle.

A great advance in city planning occurred in 1908 with the creation of Forest Park Gardens outside New York City. The designer of this project, Frederick Law Olmsted, had designed company towns in New England. He was committed to preserving large areas of open space in densely populated residential communities. Olmsted persuaded the commissioners of New York City to purchase large tracts of undeveloped land, which eventually became Central Park. Olmsted’s influence is felt in such subsequent projects as the Sunnyside Gardens in the New York City borough of Queens, and Radburn, New Jersey, a bedroom for Manhattan created in 1929. The designers of many later planned communities, such as Reston in Virginia, Greenbelt and Columbia in Maryland, and Westlake and Laguna Niguel in California, heeded Olmsted’s call for the preservation of space for public parks, bicycle lanes, jogging paths, and other such amenities.

Sensitivity to the Environment

Modern-day city planners consistently pay careful attention to environmental concerns in their planning. Among the matters they consider are the desirability of parks and open spaces, the need for noise abatement, residential areas’ proximity to shopping facilities so that automotive is minimized, and zoning regulations that prevent the incursion of factories, airports, and other potential polluters into residential areas.

One planned community that has taken such considerations very seriously is Tapiola, which is located 10 kilometers (6 miles) outside Finland’s capital, Helsinki. Tapiola, the brainchild of Heikki von Hertzen, a banker who developed the garden city’s plan, has separate roads for automobiles and for bicycles, as well as an elaborate network of footpaths for pedestrians. Major outside roads are routed around Tapiola, minimizing vehicular traffic in the town. Each of Tapiola’s dwellings is within 230 meters (755 feet) of a food store, so it is unnecessary for residents to drive within the community to buy groceries. Every building in the town is heated by a central heating plant. Tapiola values people over machines and industry, although some small, nonpolluting industry is permitted inside the town limits to provide work for inhabitants, relieving them of the need to commute to other workplaces.

US Communities

When World War II ended in 1945, hundreds of thousands of American veterans returned to the United States, married, and established families. The nation had an immediate need for affordable housing. This need was met in part by William Levitt, who planned and built communities in the Northeast. By 1950 he had turned a potato patch near New York City into Levittown, a community of 17,500 reasonably priced single-family homes that became a model of city planning for the masses. Levittown’s schools, shops, and parks were attractive, but the community was dominated by identical cookie-cutter houses. Levitt overcame this problem somewhat by using different colors of exterior paint and varied landscaping around the homes, lending them some individuality.

As the overall of the United States began to age, many new communities were established specifically for people over the age of fifty. Among the notable so-called leisure communities that serve this population are Del Webb’s various Sun Cities, Lake Havasu City, and Green Valley in Arizona. A more recent development in planned communities for seniors has been the establishment of retirement communities for gays and lesbians, such as Manasota outside Sarasota, Florida.

Among the most ambitious planned communities in the United States are two near Washington, DC. Columbia, Maryland, begun in 1963 by John Wilson Rouse, consists of ten villages centered on a business area. The population of Columbia, a self-contained community, is about 97,000, many of whom are employed within the town. At about the time Rouse was establishing Columbia, Robert E. Simon, Jr., planned a community in Virginia, 32 kilometers (20 miles) northwest of Washington. This community, which was eventually named Reston, consists of five villages and a town center that accommodate approximately 56,000 people in a broad variety of dwellings ranging from single-family homes to high-rise apartments and condominiums. Similar planned communities have been established since 1965 in other parts of the United States, including Southern California, Arizona, New York, Pennsylvania, Arkansas, Texas, Hawaii, North Carolina, and Florida.

Bibliography

Forsyth, Ann. Reforming Suburbia: The Planned Communities of Irvine, Columbia, and the Woodlands. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005.

Gause, Jo Allen, ed. Developing Sustainable Planned Communities. Washington, D.C.: Urban Land Institute, 2007.

Hardy, Dennis. From Garden Cities to New Towns: Campaigning for Town and Country Planning, 1899-1946. New York: Routledge, 1991.

Nishimi, Kristen, et al. "Master-Planned Communities in the United States as Novel Contexts for Individuals and Population Level Research." Preventative Medicine, vol. 154, Jan. 2022, www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0091743521004370. Accessed 21 July 2024.

Platt, Rutherford H., ed. The Humane Metropolis: People and Nature in the Twenty-first-Century City. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2006.

Talen, Emily. “Planned Communities.” In New Urbanism and American Planning: The Conflict of Cultures. New York: Routledge, 2005.

"What Is a Planned Community? The Surprising Benefits." EXP Realty, 11 May 2023, exprealty.com/guides/what-is-a-planned-community-the-surprising-benefits/. Accessed 21 July 2024.