Academic literature on the topic 'City planning – Swaziland – History'

"September, 1984".<br>Thesis (PhD)--Macquarie University, Centre for Environmental and Urban Studies, 1985.<br>Includes bibliography : leaves 405-418, and index.<br>Introduction -- The peaceful path to real reform -- The garden city movement -- An international phenomenon -- Australia: setting the scene -- Importing the garden city -- Overview of theory and practice -- An environmental ideal -- Garden city principles -- Garden towns -- Garden villages -- Garden suburbs -- The metropolitan scale -- Conclusion.<br>The garden city tradition in estate and metropolitan design derived its name from the garden cities advocated by Ebenezer Howard in To-Morrow (1898). A major force in the history of British planning, its influence was felt around the world. This thesis is the first overview of Australian theory and practice, focusing on the period between 1910 and 1930. Five basic tasks are attempted: an outline of the original garden city idea; an examination of the general ideology and organization of the garden city movement; clarification of the international context; specification of the general character and distinctiveness of garden city advocacy in Australia; and a systematic record of actual projects. -- The discussion indicates that the nature of the Australian response reflected the interaction of imported ideas with local circumstances. As in other countries, Howard's 'peaceful path' to 'a better a brighter civilization' was not fully followed. Instead, the garden city assumed three main guises. First, it functioned as an inspirational environmental ideal. Second, it brought together concrete principles for improved lay out that were advocated for and implemented in three different settings: special purpose 'garden towns'; 'tied' housing estates for industrial employees; and residential suburbs and subdivisions. These 'garden suburbs' dominated the local scene but, as with the other developments, translation of the ideal into reality was imperfect, being deleteriously affected by financial, political, and administrative factors in particular. Third, and at a larger scale, the garden city helped to introduce certain tentative ideas regarding the desirable size, shape and structure of the metropolis. -- The approach adopted is basically empirical, with the most important source material being the contemporary Australian planning literature. The structure is best described as 'stratified chronology'. The analytical framework combines three main approaches to planning historiography: the societal (setting planning events and developments in their broadest economic, political, cultural, and institutional context), the biographical (emphasizing the important role of individuals in the importation, diffusion and implementation of garden city thought), and the morphological (a spatial emphasis involving an inventory of landscape impacts). The major theme permeating the thesis is that of the 'diluted legacy': the drift in the garden city tradition away from Howard's holistic, radical manifesto through liberal environmental reforms to actual schemes which compromised or even totally contradicted the original idea in physical, economic and social terms. The extension and conceptualization of this idea provides one of several important areas for future research highlighted by the thesis.<br>Mode of access: World Wide Web.<br>xi, 424 leaves ill

This dissertation examines the spatial and public health dimensions of class relationships, social control, and state power in Mexico City during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It focuses specifically on the process of urban planning and public works that the Bourbon state undertook during the late colonial period, and considers the variety of reasons and justifications given for the projects themselves. City leaders pointed to the environmental and health benefits that would go along with improved sanitation, new drainage systems and paving of city streets, the expansion of the public water supply, the renovation of city markets, and new bathhouse regulations. Elites, however, viewed these improvements as a way to gain leverage over the plebeian classes. Elites viewed the urban poor as the root of many of the environmental problems the viceregal capital faced, and considered common practices among the popular classes, such as the indiscriminate dumping of garbage and waste, defecating and urinating in public, loitering, washing clothes and other personal items in public fountains, and public nudity as a threat to civic order and safety. Elites feared that this type of activity would also transgress into other types of disorder, namely criminal activity. These behaviors also represented to elites the uncivilized nature of the urban masses, challenging the cultural norms upon which elites based their social superiority. This "polluting" behavior also reflected badly on the state, illustrating their lack of political control over city residents, and undermining its legitimacy. In the end, the programs instituted did little to alleviate many of the environmental problems of Mexico City: the scope of programs was limited, focusing on the city center at the expense of the surrounding poorer barrios where improvements were most needed; enforcement of legislation passed to change many plebeian habits was lackluster at best; and funding for the projects was clearly insufficient.

The present thesis chronicles the decision to replace Portland, Oregon's Harbor Drive, a downtown highway located between Front A venue and the Willamette River, with Tom McCall Waterfront Park, a thirty-seven acre linear greenway, in the late 1960s and 1970s. These events provide an example of the battle against the ascendancy of the automobile and the ability of concerned citizen groups to affect city planning decisions.

Much has been written on postwar suburbs in North America, and their impact on society. What are missing are histories of the housing that exists within these suburbs, and how both the idea behind suburbs, and the realities of the time, had an impact on the design of such housing. For this work, Bramalea, Ontario, was chosen as a case study location to begin exploring suburban housing design. Begun in 1958, Bramalea was unique in that it was designed as Canada's first suburban satellite city, which meant it was planned as a self-sufficient community. Houses in Bramalea were a product of both their location, but also of outside influences. Economic conditions, technological advances, and design trends, all influenced the history and evolution of suburban housing. Popular culture and the changing ideas about the nature of suburbs also played an important role in the houses that were built in Bramalea.

Thesis: M.C.P., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Urban Studies and Planning, 2014.<br>Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.<br>Includes bibliographical references (pages 133-142).<br>This thesis seeks to demonstrate that the notion of informal urbanization- normally applied to discussions of cities in the developing world-is equally effective in describing a range of housing practices in New York City, one of the wealthiest, most prototypically urban cities in the globe. The model of a binary, or gradient, between the "formal" and "informal" cities has been remarkably productive in many contexts, but has seen little use in the study of U.S. Cities. The thesis provides a definition of informal housing, based upon that of the international development community, and applies this definition to three instances in New York City it proposes fit. By unifying diverse practices and histories, I argue that informal housing in the city has been a persistent element that can be found across classes, architectural typologies, geographies, and historical moments. The methods of the thesis include consulting from primary sources (news reports and planning studies), secondary academic planning texts, conducting interviews with participants and planners, and producing my own relevant photographs and maps. These materials are synthesized into four chapters. The first provides background on the notion of informality, and offers a modified definition of the phenomenon that unifies the New York examples with their international counterparts. Chapter two charts the birth of informality with the codification, in the late years of the 19th century, of moral and physical standards in the immigrant-populated tenements of the Lower East Side of Manhattan. It then charts the reoccupation of those same tenement spaces, without capital or legal tenure, by the often politically motivated squatters in the Upper West and Lower East Sides in the latter half of the 20th century. Chapter three provides a history, from 1960 to the present, of the informal transformation of commercial loft spaces to residences in SoHo and Brooklyn and describes the effects of these conversions on the neighborhoods in which they occurred. Chapter four demonstrates how the low density built form of Queens was developed in reaction to the tenement era, and how it is currently being informally reconstructed into a dense, urban space for marginal immigrants, despite some typical (and atypical) challenges to that informal use. The thesis concludes by arguing that in each case-despite differences in built form, geography, users' incomes and the historical context-informality, as understood in the developing world, is present in New York. Further, it argues that the official reactions to these liminal cases of housing- variously, repression, neglect, and accommodation-provides a history of the planning regime's shift from prescription to acceptance of unofficial action. It calls for a greater unity of discussion and collaboration between those planners, architects, and urban thinkers working on cities in the U.S. and those whose expertise centers on cities in the global south. Finally, the thesis closes by summarizing some potential lessons from the experience of informal housing in New York City over its long and varied history, and offers guidance, informed by these lessons, on how the city might address its present informal housing boom.<br>by Michael Waldrep.<br>M.C.P.