ABSTRACT
The effects of urban planning are the greatest, and the most invisible, influences on human life and culture. Modern planning is a direct extension of the ancient and pre-modern models: imposing order on nature for the health, safety, and amenity of the urban masses. And the practice of modern urban planning also takes place at a stage of human development when the planner's defining goal is no longer merely to impose human order on nature. All the goals and functions of planning both the ancient holdovers and the modern elaborations are present in the first planning responses to the urban conditions associated with the Industrial Revolution. The new urbanism is both a visionary planning and design movement that addresses the idea of sustainability and a process of real-estate development. The problematic nature of the utopian planning project as applied to colonial cities is, perhaps, just one example of a deeper issue that affects all planning exercises, especially the utopian.
