…key developments that shaped the 20th century American city. The article also includes numerous photos, plus sidebars on: tenement housing; the Model-T; the Triangle Fire; Dams; Levittown; and interstate highways. 1. 1847: The beginning of…
Planning historian Larry Gerckens takes a closer look at what he considers the ten most significant “failures” that shaped the development of America’s cities in the 20th century….
Planning historian Larry Gerckens takes a closer look at what he considers the ten most significant “successes” that shaped the development of America’s cities in the 20th century….
…residential areas. By the early 20th century, newly adopted land use zoning controls expanded on the exclusionary nature of community planning by not only physically separating industrial, commercial, and residential zones, but also by distinguishing…
…the early decades of the 20th century, followed three sequential steps: (1) data gathering; (2) plan making; and (3) plan implementation. The first step involved the gathering of all information about the community that might…
…all such uses, allowing them only in limited geographic areas, identified as “industrial” zones. Interestingly, however, early 20th century as “model” zoning ordinances did not prohibit offices, retail sales, or even residential uses, from locating…
…mid-20th century, when many of our tools and ideas for where we lived and how we got around were new and we were more naïve about what might happen. But we don’t have that excuse…
…the 20th Century, local governments extended and inflated dimensional standards to the point of creating an enforced no-man’s land between buildings, a spatial geography that inspired the title of James Howard Kunstler’s book, The Geography…
Creative designers established the foundations of American community and regional planning in the second half of the 19th century, and early years of the 20th century. Their visions of a more ideal America, one that…
…heard in public meetings throughout the country, “What right does the government have to tell me what I can do with my property!” Clearly, the Supreme Court decision of the 20th century that had the…
…thinly over vast regional areas — and shaped the character of the 20th century American city. The primary city-shaper until the mid-1920s was the trolley. Electric trolleys, running on fixed-rails, generated high density residential development…
…by the Court’s clearly implied approval of building setback controls in Eubank v. Richmond. In the early decades of the 20th century, New York City was faced with construction of tall buildings that cut off…
Accurate and up-to-date maps are the foundation for all community and regional planning. The starting point for mapping has long been the display of streets and property lines on plats. But by the early 20th…
