History of planning and urban design in 20th century Essay

History of planning and urban design in 20th century - Essay Example Why I chose architecture and planning? I cannot give a simple answer for that. Maybe it was because since childhood I have liked painting and construction and have yearned to create things on my own. It seems that architecture and planning can satisfy my imagination in terms of space, creativity, and colour.After my five years of study in the Department of Architecture and Planning and three years’ work experience, I asked myself this same question. The result is that Part of the above factors as well I realized that architecture and planning have an intrinsic appeal for me and that they are not only an art, but also more importantly a kind of technology. I studied architecture and town planning together as I have never thought of them as separate jobs. They are merely two sides of a same coin, the difference being mostly in the scale of the work. As part of my university degree I completed courses in different aspects of architecture and planning such as history of architectu re and urban development, urban transportation planning, urban and landscape infrastructure and services, city planning process. I found these subjects very interesting.   After my graduation I worked as a planning engineer with the Ministry of Transport. The work experience I gained during that period helped to strength my specialization, improve my research skills, integrate my knowledge, and build my leadership skills. As part of my professional development I took additional training courses in various areas such as transportation planning, traffic engineering and scientific research.... The garden city concept combined the town and the country in order to provide the working class an alternative to working on farms or 'crowded, unhealthy cities'. Garden cities were intended to be planned, self-contained, communities surrounded by "greenbelts" (parks), containing proportionate areas of residences, industry, and agriculture (2). Letchworth was the first garden city, in the UK in 1903, followed by Welwyn in 1919. These were small in size, providing for a few thousand residents. In Australia, the suburb of Colonel Light Gardens in Adelaide, South Australia, was designed according to garden city principles. So too was the town of Sunshine, which is now a suburb of Melbourne in Victoria. New towns throughout the world were modeled after these garden cities. This theory was an attempt to improve the appearance of cities and streets by means of architectural and spatial effects. (3)   In 1920 the ideas of modernity began to appear by designer Le Corbusier brought more mod ern ideas and new methods of building and introduced the skyscraper. The main idea was to combine residential home designs with the feel of the city. This was also a way to use modern technologies to eliminate congestion and chaos that was experienced by small cities. This was achieved by and changing the streets to highways and constructing towers set within the gardens. Theories suggest that the center of a great city should consist mainly of skyscrapers – exclusively for commercial use – and these groups of skyscrapers should be set within large, rectangular park-like green spaces. A huge transportation hub sits in the center and includes depots for buses and trains, as well as the highway intersections. This plan segregated pedestrian circulation paths from the roadways and