The History of City Planning - Assignment Example

? Planning Law Module Journal The history of planning is riddled with many factors that affect this concept, which developed to become what it is today. City planning is as old as the first time men started living in manmade structures. However, the earliest needs for city planning were very different from what they are today (Fogg, 19741). The early city planners were concerned with security factors, and cities were specially planned to allow for the fortification of a city. A closer look at the oldest cities in the world indicates that fortification of cities was very important. Cities would be built on hilltops and mountaintops and watch towers would be placed strategically to make sure that the city was well prepared from attackers. As time went by, other issues that would come to affect city planning emerged. For instance, city planners realized they had to plan cities in a way that contagious and infectious diseases would not be easily spread incase an outbreak occurred. Fire outbreaks that razed whole cities down, like Jerusalem in AD70, led to cities being designed to make sure that cities were protected from such deadly fire outbreaks. In the earlier days, environmental issues were not of importance and these issues only came later during the industrial age. The industrial age brought a number of environmental challenges with it, and there was a need to legislate laws that would make sure that individuals and corporations, as well as government agencies would not intoxicate the environment with industrial waste. This concern for the environment is what is most important in today’s city planning and legislation should look into it more. However, it is not just industrial waste that threatens to harm the environment, but there are many factors and legislation needs. Module 3 Journal The industrial age played a very big role in reshaping population settlement. It caused more and more people to flock into cities looking for work. However, in the 21st century, the information revolution is probably the number one factor that is affecting the way people settle. The information revolution that has been caused by the increasing communication technology that started in the mid seventeenth century has now come to change the way people settle. However, since information revolution is always under continuous development, it is hard to say exactly how it is affecting human settlement. For instance, originally, information technology was only available in and around cities and urban settlements. The way this affected human settlement is that people had to move to cities in order to access these services. In this regard, the information revolution can be said to be having the same effect that industrial revolution had on human settlement. However, as time goes on, information revolution is changing, and it is now easier for people to access these services such as internet connection and cell phone networks, even in some of world’s remotest points. This factor combines with the fact that most people these days work online, mean that the people can now settle anywhere in the world and don’t need to go to cities or urban centers. Part II McAuslan2 (1980) is trying to indicate that planning law is still very crude and that it does not help in making cities better. This viewpoint is wrong because the law has made sure that the freedom that individual and organizations had a hundred years ago is not there anymore, and this helps in protecting cities and the environment in general. Module 4 Journal The local government is a very important arm with regard to the enforcement of planning regulations and laws (Westen3 2009). Without these local governments, the many planning laws would be useless and it would be very hard to manage the real estate available to any cities. Local governments understand the local city best and they understand the concerns of the local people in the best way. For this reason, the local government would be able to help in making sure that the cities are built in accordance to the environmental and social-economic needs of that particular society. Question 2 Local governments should be given more planning powers, because it is only in this way that local governments are able to execute their mandate as the watchdog for the city. However, it is good to remember that power corrupts and therefore as they are given more powers, more mechanisms should be put into place to make sure that the local government does not use the powers bestowed upon them, to engage in corruption or to harass the people it is supposed to be protecting and serving. Question 3 Local governments should not be used to amalgamate with each other, for the fact that the purpose of local government is to serve the needs of the local people as it understands them best. To force local governments to merge with each other would be to defeat the very purpose for which local governments are formed in the first place. As a result, it is best for these local governments to stay individually secluded from each other and to have powers individually, so as to make sure that they are able to deliver their services to the people with speed and accuracy. Module 5 Journal Question 1 The distribution of roles among the various bodies in West Australia is not well. Apart from that, the powers given to the different bodies seem to be overlapping and redundant. The redundancy of the powers of these bodies can be seen in two ways. One, it can be seen as a control mechanism to see that there is no one body that has autonomous powers, thus preventing these bodies from abusing their powers. On the other hand, it is a very inconvenient setting because it means that the bodies will be unable to carry out their mandate smoothly and swiftly, due to the bureaucracy associated. More than that, as Johaness4 (2009) asserts, the bureaucracy developed will mean that real estate developers and other stakeholders such as industrialists, will have to go through tiresome bureaucracies before they can get the final green light to go on with their project. Question 2 The overlapping of the powers given to the different powers will also mean that there may be frequent standoffs between the bodies. This is not very good for the law because the law is supposed to protect rather than cause chaos. Question 3 According to section 123 of the Planning and Development Act 2005, local authorities have to receive the consent of the regional authorities to be able to make decisions on land planning. Regional authorities powers prevails over the local authorities powers, because the local authorities have to receive the mandate of the regional authorities in major decisions. Bibliography Fogg, Stuart. 1974. Australian Town Planning Law: uniformity and change. Brisbane: University of Queensland Press. pp. 3 - 32. Johaness, Sullivan. "Understanding the Role of Bereuacratic Processes in the Enforcement of Law." Forum for Modern Law, 2009: 57-61. McAuslan, Patrick. 1980. The Ideologies of Planning Law. Sydney: Pergamon Press. Westen, McDonald. "Local Authorities and City Planning." Journal of Public Admnistration, 2009: 90-91. Read More