Urban Planning

Urban planning was an attempt to rationalize and control the uncontrolled development in urbanization. People wanted to get the city back under control by architecture and zoning. There were a few different theories having to do with urban planning and how to make cities into what are today's suburbs. In the cities there was concern about crime, deviance, unwed mothers and people were wondering where the society was headed.
Ebenezar Howard who wrote "Garden Cities of Tommorow" had the idea to remake and contain the city. He looked at what populations are doing and how they are behaving. He said there are three magnets which draw people where to live. At this point people either lived in a city or a country. With this theory the city and country would come together and take little pieces from each to make today's suburbs. This created a co-op, this is where everyone collectively owns shares in a building and not just one or two people. The entire community benefits rather than some individuals. This also keeps prices moderate with people's incomes and limits the size to 30,000 people per town. Howard's five main things for this was decentralization, which is breaking up the big cities into little smaller cities, agricultural and industrial, cooperative land ownership, and large scale planning. The first town-country was Radburn, New Jersey back in 1929. To read more about Howard and to get a look at good old Radburn, NJ click here http://www.gmu.edu/library/specialcollections/plancomm.html