Neighbourhood Planning- Origin, Issues and Options

Neighbourhood Planning- Origin, Issues and Options

                                                                                Jit Kumar Gupta

                                                                                 jit.kumar1944@gmail.com

·      Word Neighbourhood has been defined in the Free Dictionary, in terms of; immediate environment; surroundings; vicinity;a district  where people live; the people in a particular area; neighbours; neighbourly Feelings; in the neighbourhood of approximately.

·      Looking at the dictionary meaning of the word neighbourhood in physical planning parlance, it denotes a community or number of people living together in a locality or in close proximity and sharing a common space. So, the word Neighbourhood has both spatial and human dimensions , putting them in a physical proximity in any part of the city

·       Neighbourhood planning as a concept, has its genesis in the synergy brought in by interaction among people people living close by and sharing a common space, to promote a feeling of togetherness and knowing/ supporting each other, which generally remains missing in urban areas in general, but in large urban centers in particular. The concept was largely used and extended in the planning of urban areas to make cities more rational and humane  to overcome large number of social and environmental problems plaguing the industrial cities of 19th Century.

·       Neighborhood ,as a geographically localized community within large city,  with considerable face-to-face interaction among members, has been promoted as a concept, approach, strategy and option by Clarence Perry,  as a response to rational planning, development and management of residential areas  in metropolitan areas, for ensuring safety of children and elders walking to schools; catering to prevailing social and intellectual attitudes of the early 1900 ; ensuring distribution of open spaces and playgrounds in the industrial cities of early nineteenth century in America.

·      While the concept of the neighbourhood unit emerged as early as 1923, at a joint meeting of the National Community Center Association and the American Sociological Society in Washington, D.C., it was the publication of Clarence Perry's paper, in the 1929, ‘ Regional Plan of New York and Its Environs’, which led to its promotion as a planning tool.

·      Clarence Perry, envisioned neighborhood as a model for residential development in metropolitan areas, to plan safer cities and safer communities against the uncontrolled and unregulated vehicular traffic. Neighborhood  planning was designed to provide a framework for urban planners attempting to design functional, self-contained and desirable neighborhoods in industrializing cities besides creating new residential communities which satisfies social, administrative and service requirements for satisfactory urban existence.

·       Over a period of time concept has been extended  to serve the broader purpose of providing a distinct identity to communities besides offering designers a framework for dissecting the city into smaller suburbs to make it manageable, productive, qualitative and livable

 Concept which had its origin in USA, with variable degree and variable contours, over the years has been used extensively, both locally and globally, by planners and architects to provide a framework and model for planning and developing residential communities and to promote healthy social and physical relationship besides creating functional, self-contained and desirable  social units with appropriate quality of life.

·      The concept of the neighborhood unit has been used extensively and forms a notable aspect of designs of the new town movement. However, despite variations used in creating neighborhood units, the basic concept and variety of institutional, social and physical design principles of neighborhood planning enunciated by Perry,  have remained universal. These principles provide specific guidelines for the spatial distribution of residences, open spaces, community services, streets and businesses involving well defined boundaries, safety from vehicular traffic, promoting pedestrianization, keeping vehicular traffic on fringe, providing assured level of open spaces, community facilities based on defined norms for a defined population with primary school as the focus of community.

·       William E. Drummond - a central architect in Frank Lloyd Wright’s studio,  advocated neighborhood unit should be the organizing basis of the whole city; to be regarded as a unit in the social and political structure of the city. Accordingly, the neighborhood unit, as a model for residential environment, containing community facilities, parks, local shopping and housing, has revolutionized the basic approach to city planning promoting decentralization, minimizing travel, rationalizing traffic and equitable distribution of community facilities and amenities across city, based on population housed. Concept has made urban planning more transparent, objective and inclusive, promising assured quality of life to all the residents of the city including poorest of the poor.

·      The neighborhood unit, as a comprehensive physical planning tool, has also helped in promoting community centric life within the urban areas, away from the pollution, smoke and ugliness of industrial plants. However, despite distinct advantages neighborhood has also promoted fragmentation of cities promoting dichotomy and contradictions in their planning, development and management. Looking at the variations in the growth and development of cities, one can visualize that neighborhood has also been used as a planning tool to promote discrimination and differential quality of life for the various income groups in the cities. This calls for looking at the concept both critically and objectively in order to make it more rational, effective and efficient.

Objectives;

Based on the intent, content and concept, objectives of neighbourhood planning were enumerated  by Clarence Perry, in terms of;

·      Making city planning, more objective, transparent and children/resident centric.

·      Recognizing community as the unit/basis of urban planning

·      Promoting high degree of social interaction among  community to make growth of cities relevant and rational

·      Making neighborhoods self-contained & self-sufficient in day to day living’

·      Providing adequate open spaces for promoting health and social-interaction

·       Making community safe from noise, pollution and  city traffic.

·      Creating a well- defined hierarchy of roads -both internal and external

·      Empowering communities to manage the local spaces

·      Diminishing travel and traffic within cities and making urban development safe, effective and efficient

·      Defining norms and approach to planning of the neighborhood- both new/old

·      Combating numerous social problems including community disintegration, economic marginalization, and environmental degradation.

·      Rationalising planning of new towns and extension of existing towns globally.

·      Promoting the idea of making cities human centric and planned on human scale

·      Promoting the concept of planning for people and not vehicles.

·      Bringing institutions and communities on the common platform in planning process

 Principle

Clarence Perry, also defined Neighbourhood planning  principles in order to ensure that planning of communities remains rational and realistic;

·      The neighbourhood planning was conceived to be a comprehensive physical planning tool, to be utilized for designing self-contained residential neighborhoods which promoted a community centric lifestyle, away from the "noise of the trains, and out of sight of the smoke and ugliness of industrial plants", emblematic of an industrializing New York City in the early 1900s

·       According to Perry, a neighborhood should  essentially comprise of;

- a population of about 5000–9000 residents,

- with schools, places of worship, and recreational areas at its center.

 - occupying an area of 160-acre

- neighborhood is to be developed such that

 - it houses 10 dwellings per acre.

 - having elementary school with an enrolment of between 1,000 and  1200 pupils.

 - Making basic facilities and services  accessible at a distance of not more than one-quarter mile from their place of residence.

 - 10 percent of the area allocated to recreation.

 - Major road arteries confined to the boundaries

 - whereas  internal streets planned for providing flawless access to the residents of the neighborhood

Based on the description given above, 6 major principles enunciated by Perry for governing and guiding the design and development of a good neighborhood included:

·      Focal Point of the neighborhood should be the elementary school,

·      Arterial roads should be to be placed at the perimeter so that it defines the boundary of the neighbourhood and keeps heavy traffic on the fringe of the neighbourhood.

·      Interior roads should follow a well- defined hierarchy of roads to differentiate between the arterial roads and the local streets.

·      Minimum 10% of  total area of NH should be mandated for open spaces.

·      Commercial area should be placed on the periphery of the neighborhood, preferably at the junction

·      Radius of the NH should be  kept at maximum of ¼ mile

Thus specifying size, population and residential density to have adequate number of families and students to justify the provision of a school; providing essential basic public buildings within a walkable distance; minimizing the distance to be travelled for accessing all basic amenities; providing sufficient open spaces; rationalizing traffic with fast traffic confined to periphery ; permitting only slow moving traffic within the neighbourhood area; placing the commercial component on the periphery on the arterial road; were the principles defined for the planning of the neighbourhood/

Core principles of Perry's  planning and designing of Neighborhood Unit revolved around several physical design ideals which included;

·      Make school as the Core of Neighbourhood ;Looking at the entire context, Perry tried to put in place a clear agenda for defining and planning of the neighbourhood unit. Considering the context of safety, he stressed the need of adopting human scale based on walkability in order to fix the size of neighbourhood. Based on the observations and data available, he concluded that a child could walk about one-quarter of a mile and no more than one half mile within a time span of 10 minutes without being stressed. This distance, he found sufficient for excluding the major arterial streets in the planning. Making school as the fulcrum of the community, the size of NH unit was placed at 160 acres. Density and population defined  for the  NH were considered as other principle used by Perry  for making  provision of the school and other amenities, which could also be used by the community for neighbourhood meetings and activities. Perry envisioned to make neighbourhood planning, school centric based on the human scale with mobility leveraged by walking.

·      Population and Density;  Maintaining size  of the neighbourhood, sufficient to support a school by housing a population  between 5,000 and 9,000 residents with area placed at approximately 160 acres was the other principle used by Perry. Housing  density  was placed at  ten units per acre. Principle also involved making  optimum use of the school facilities for conducting  neighbourhood meetings and activities besides constructing a large play area around the school  building  to be used by the entire community

·      Placing arterial streets along the periphery; was considered appropriate so that the boundaries of the Neighbourhood are clearly defined , which would distinguish and demarcate  the "place" of the neighborhood clearly and exclusively. Internal roadwork was to be designed in such a manner that would eliminates unwanted through-traffic from the neighborhood. Based on the principle of exclusion, the third principle enunciated for defining neighbourhood was to place arterial streets along the perimeter so as to eliminate unwanted through-traffic from the neighbourhood. In this way, major arterial roads became the definers of the neighbourhood unit rather than its divider.

·      Designing internal streets  ;Perry advocated the need for adopting a well-defined pattern/hierarchy of road network for the internal mobility in order to make it NH safe. He focused on the reduction of the number of vehicles moving within the neighbourhood besides limiting their speed. To achieve this, he suggested the adoption of narrow and curvilinear street design for both safety and aesthetic purposes. Such streets, by design, would discourage unwanted through traffic and enhance the safety of pedestrians by rationalizing vehicular speed.

·      Positioning local shopping on the fringe/ periphery/boundary; For stopping and excluding non-local traffic, Perry proposed that local shopping area should be placed on the perimeter or close to the main entrance of the neighbourhood. Locating shopping on the fringe will not only stop the entry of vehicles but will also eliminate the need for providing parking vehicles coming for shopping.

·      Dedicating at least 10 percent of neighborhood area for parks and open space; Perry considered open spaces vital for promoting community living and to promote the environment and ecology of the area. Perry considered these spaces vital for promoting social interaction between the residents. He advocated the distribution of open area  within the community and the residential blocks for their optimization. Keeping in view the role and importance of these spaces, at least 10 percent of the neighbourhood area (16 Acres),was suggested to be dedicated to parks and open space, creating places for play and community interaction.

Titled "The Neighborhood Unit, a Scheme for Arrangement for the Family-Life Community", Clarence Perry's monograph offered in concrete terms a diagrammatic model of the ideal layout for a neighborhood of a specified population size. This model provided specific guidelines for the spatial distribution of residences, community services, streets and businesses.

A diagram of Clarence Perry's neighbourhood unit, illustrating the spatiality of the core principles of the concept, from the New York Regional Survey, Vol 7. 1929

Planning of Neighbourhood;

Following approach is suggested for planning of residential Neighbourhood ;

·      Defining boundary; The first step in planning is to define the boundaries of the neighborhood based on existing natural/manmade features, such as rivers, canals, existing administrative boundaries,  roads etc.,

·      Involving Communities; After the boundaries are established and defined ,  members of the neighborhood should be  involved in the planning process- defining the vision, mission , goals  and requirements of various uses/amenities  to be provided in  the planning of the neighbourhood. Creating a core group of all  stakeholders for taking forward the planning and designing of the neighbourhood unit would be valuable for realistic planning  and implementation of the NH

·      Involving Professionals & Undertaking Planning; for undertaking planning  of the neighbourhood, based on the input received  from the residents and detailed studies /survey conducted of the site besides  information gathered from residents  including retail or employment surveys, demographic data or housing needs assessments. Successful neighbourhood plans typically seek to deliver community wishes in ways that are supported by the underpinning evidence.

·       Implementing the Plan;  Committee comprising of the representatives of the community; professionals, service providers, experts, planners and engineers need to be created for  finalizing/implementing the plan. This requires the planning committee to decide what actions need to take place for  effectively implementing the plan. The committee must decide what resources are available with the community, and how to raise more resources for project implementation besides making optimum use of available resources and minimizing the need for additional resources. 

·       Managing operation and Maintenance; Final step of neighborhood planning is generally considered to be evaluating and monitoring. Planning and sustaining a functional neighborhood involve enormous work and decision-making, and so plans may also need periodic review /revision or replacement by a new plan.

Conclusion;

Neighborhood Planning ,as an idea, concept, option and strategy has been extensively used globally by Architects and Urban Planners to plan and decentralize cities, create cities within cities, promote self-contained communities and to make cities more humane, safe and socially interactive. Accordingly, large typologies of neighborhood planning and designing with varying shapes, sizes and contents have emerged in the urban context with Americans using superblock and French using Sector for the neighborhood planning. Despite high degree of relevance, neighborhood planning has not been able to deliver the envisioned objectives. Cities in the  process have been socially and physically fragmented, leading to clear division into different communities with little physical and social connectivity.

Variance in planning and designing norms followed at neighborhood and sub-neighborhood levels have promoted more dichotomy and contradictions with varying quality of life. Differential population and infrastructures have divided the city into high and low end neighborhoods. City fabric in large cases has emerged as distinct social map of communities graded on the area/location basis with neighborhood planning emerging as instrument of social segregation/division. Neighborhood has been used in the planning of capital city of Chandigarh (India) with entire city fabric woven around Sector as the basic unit. Despite the various criticisms, the concept of neighborhood units is still relevant today because it  continues to provide a well-defined framework for the planning of cities and towns. NH planning helps in the creation of livable communities where people live together and interact with each other. The concept of neighborhood unit has been institutionalized in various cities across  different countries including New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Tokyo, Chandigarh  and India.