ABSTRACT
Planning in the modern world is principally the science-or art-of looking into the future and seeing what needs must be met during the coming year, the coming five years, the coming twenty years. Using its estimate of these needs, an authority-a city or a region or a country-plans its future development, its distribution of resources, its use of land or buildings, in a word, its priorities. Subsidiary to this are the planning controls which the authority imposes on the individual. These are governed by the authority’s view of its own development, but they are more concerned with matters that arise from the initiative of the private person than with public works. The Romans recognised both these aspects of planning. Nevertheless, the structure of their society and, for their own City, their awareness that they were restricted by the past, their site being determined by necessity rather than free choice,1 meant that planning was a less important sphere of governmental activity for the Romans than for us.
