Key Planning Histories of the Developing Western Tradition from the Mid-19th Century to the Early 20th Century

This chapter explores three thematic histories of the planning of cities in the developing Western tradition from the mid-19th to the early20th century. The three themes are structured around K. Bosma and H. Hellinga's 1997 identification of three broadly based, thematic planning histories of the mid-to-late 19th and early 20th centuries in northern Europe, each describing a distinctive function of planning: regularization, extension, and modernism. Planning from the mid-19th century to the early 20th century was connected to a range of often interconnected interests and actors from utopian proposals to social reform concerns, from public health issues to economic development concerns. Directed towards the prevention of problems and the achievement of a better quality of life in new locations beyond the existing urban edge, urban extensions have been identified as a connected, but functionally distinctive arena for planning from the mid-19th century.