Community Leadership & the Cincinnati Planning Commission
Planning historian Larry Gerckens takes a look at how the citizens of Cincinnati made planning history ninety years ago….
Search Results for by Laurence C. Gerckens, FAICP
V is for Vision
Vision is imagination capable of inspiring planners and builders to respect the works of today, while moving forward with greater visions of the community of tomorrow. Planning historian Laurence Gerckens offers three examples….
W is for Water
Planning historian Laurence Gerckens provides an overview of how water has shaped the development of American cities….
Z is for Zoning
Planning historian Laurence Gerckens provides an overview of the origins of zoning in America….
I is for Inclusionary
…this practice resulted in concentric bands of increasing exclusion, with low and moderate income citizens unable to afford homes in lower-density perimeter residential areas. Editor’s note: for more detail on this, see Gerckens’ PCJ article,…
O is for Open Space
In the early 1850s, New York City’s gridiron street system was continuing its northward expansion up Manhattan Island, unrelieved by open space reservations. Only two relatively small open spaces, Union Square and Washington Square, served…
Q is for Quiet
The American city of the 1890s was cacophonous. City streets were not only filthy, creating public health hazards, they were also noisy. Cobblestone or granite Belgian block streets rang out with the clang and thud…
S is for Sustainable Development
Colonial Americans were well versed in what we would today call sustainability. As noted in R is for Regional Planning, sustainable development was at the heart of James Oglethorpe’s 1733 plan for Savannah. At Savannah,…
D is for Design
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…
E is for Ecology
The word “ecology” literally means the study of homes (“eco”= homes; “ology” = the study of). In common use, however, ecology denotes the environment that surrounds our human existence and how people interact with it….
F is for Farmland
Maintaining productive agricultural soils has been the basis for the economic and cultural growth of most nation states. In America, however, farmland preservation efforts have gained momentum only fairly recently. For years, the accepted practice…
G is for Growth Management
Through the 1960s, community and regional planning efforts were generally directed to the accommodation of growth as dictated by market forces. Planning focused on the provision of infrastructure needed to facilitate the continued expansion of…
H is for Historic Preservation
America is a relatively young civilization, measuring its history in hundreds, rather than thousands, of years. With a seemingly inexhaustible supply of new and largely undeveloped land to the west (excluding from consideration, as unfortunately…
