Learn to Draw the Plan
Acquire Visual Literacy
Most newcomers to urban planning receive formal instruction in basic skills during grade school, high school, and college. Students go beyond basic verbal literacy to understand and apply skills in creative and technical writing. Similarly, students learn basic mathematical and quantitative skills during their school years. Visual literacy, however, rarely receives the same level of formal instruction. Some students do learn elementary skills in art, graphic, and digital drawing — but not all students and certainly not with the depth and breadth of skill needed in professional planning. Consequently, when beginning a career in urban planning newcomers to the field often require some remedial training in visual literacy. Even at the level of graduate education I have heard entry level planners ask for some basic training in preparing effective diagrams, using scales to provide dimensionally feasible concepts, and draw rudimentary ideas. Given this lack of visual literacy, it seems to me that drawing plans should be the first topic in learning to practice. If you were fortunate to receive an effective education in visual literacy, then consider this advice as a way to improve your skills and/or help your colleagues gain such skills.
Draw Plans With Points, Lines and Planes
Newcomers to city planning should think of plans as a combination of geometry and geography. Planners draw points, lines, and planes – not on a sheet of paper but on the geography of the land. These points, lines, and planes have common everyday names that appear on a map. For example, planners might identify a “point” which is intended as public place like a “gateway”. A line may be drawn for a “main street” or “scenic drive”. A larger area might be drawn as a “campus” or “civic center”. Some of the geometric forms are visible (like a shoreline) and some invisible (like a sewer line). Some forms are concrete (like a street) and some are abstract (like a property line).
Each map we draw has a “scale”. Technically, the “scale” is the ratio between the size of an element on the drawing (like a rectangle representing house or a line representing a street) and the corresponding size of that element on the ground in “real life”. One inch on a map may represent one foot, one meter, or one mile on the ground. This ratio, or correspondence between the component of a drawing and the same component on the ground, provides the basic tool planning practitioners use to represent their thoughts.
What appears as a large landscape circle in the midst of a housing area (left) also appears just as a small point, at the end of the white arrow, in the larger neighborhood plan (right). The difference derives from the two different scales for each drawing. Midtown Neighborhood Triangle Plan, Milwaukee, 2002.
For planners, the “scale” of the drawing also becomes the scale at which conceptualize and illustrate ideas. The scale determines whether a particular concept for a place would be drawn as a point, line, or plane. For example, in an online digital drawing where one inch equals several miles, a college campus might appear as a point. As we zoom into that same digital drawing the scale changes, more details emerge, and the campus appears as a large plan or area that contains an internal set of other places defined by points, lines, and planes. We see this change in “scale” every time we zoom in or out of a map on a digital screen. Planners must be able to draw, remember, and evaluate the geometry and geography of a city at multiple scales at the same time.
Sometimes the drawing of spatial organization includes just one city block with multiple houses, cars and trees. Sometime the spatial organization moves up to a larger scale and represent an entire neighborhood (the streets are still shown as lines, but the houses have become just points on the map). Moving up to a larger regional scale, (a) we may only see the lines representing major arterials and no longer see the lines for the local street system, while (b) the dots for houses disappear completely. Regardless of the scale, however, the drawings created by planners should always depict four basic components of communities that establish the basic types of actions recommended by planners:
physical places in the city (both built and natural environments)
public services essential to sustain a community’s life and welfare
programs to achieve community goals
policies that lead to a vision of social, economic, and cultural well-being
Within these four broad categories many different types of plans have arisen. Many physical plans illustrate designs for public places. Some plans focus on delineating areas for public services such as transportation. Other plans depict the locations of policies for the natural environment or boundary lines for economic and social programs. Even when a plan simply designates a broad economic program (like job creation) it is usually focused directly or indirectly at a specific geographic area and defined by the lines that surround the area in question. The area in question might be a nation, state, region, city, neighborhood, street, or front yard. All of these type of plans – places, public services, policies, and programs – can, and should, be drawn on maps to establish their appropriate location and how the plan fits into the larger spatial composition of community geography.
1. Designing (and Sustaining) Places
The physical places of a city, as drawn by planners, may range in size from a small garden to large parks, from small bus shelters to skyscrapers, from a driveway to a freeway, from a single water barrel to a water treatment plant. All of these items are parts of a city and all of them can be the content of an urban plan. In each region and at each time in history the names for the places drawn by planners will vary. Here are some commonly used names for the points, lines, and planes that a planner might draw on a map:
Places drawn as points on a map: gateway; square; courtyard; plaza; civic building, pocket park
Places drawn as lines on a map: main street, neighborhood street, scenic drive, rural line, boulevard, shoreline
Places drawn as planes or areas on a map: campus, business district, residential neighborhood, harbor, military base
It is not reasonable for any one plan to include all the places that make a city. Moreover, a broad area plan at the jurisdictional level of a nation or region should not delineate the precise location and design of places in that should be illustrated at a smaller scale “jurisdictional” level. It would be foolish for a nationwide jurisdictional plan to include the specific setbacks for all front yards in every state. Even at the level of city government, places like front yards should not be planned the same way throughout the city but planned for a neighborhood or single block face. That is, planning the physical parts of the city requires multiple plans or plan variations that fit different contexts, scales and constraints.
All of these plans require customization. Sometimes place-making can follow fairly routine decision making, especially for familiar places, like school playgrounds. Other, more complex types of places, such as a riverwalk or arts district present unique challenges for which successful solutions require many levels of problem solving, qualitative choices, and specialized talent (like the aesthetics of a new city hall or cultural institution). While it is easier (and less expensive) for planners to copy and reuse standardized solutions, it is also less likely that standardized solutions will fit well into all places in a community. Planners face a constant dilemma of balancing the cost and value of “commoditized” solutions versus the costs and value of more “customized” solutions.
Known internationally as a triumph in the design of a public place, the Spanish Steps (built 1723-1725) reflects great talent, years of debate, a storied history, and actions required from both the Pope and the King of France. For planners, however, it must be remembered that in addition to the talented designers and leaders who created this public place, other individuals and organizations still must provide the public services and that sustain this place active, appealing to tourists, and well-maintained. Rome, 1976
Every place in the city usually impacts the other places in its context — from small, seemingly irrelevant impacts (like the location of a tree in a parking lot) to complex, highly significant impacts on city-wide functionality like the location of a fire station, school, or water treatment plant. Understanding the impacts of place-making requires an understanding of multiple social, economic, and political issues. Will everyone in the neighborhood like the layout and location of a new park? Will local leaders like the economic impacts of a new subdivision or a new highway? Will neighboring communities be helped or harmed by an adjacent community’s creation of a new business district? The rise of so-called Not-In-My-Back-Yard (NIMBY) groups is testament to the fact that every line or point in every plan has consequences for multiple members of each community. Good planners understand the interactive impacts of each place and make recommendations intended to create the best overall outcomes for each community.
2. Distributing Public Services & Facilities
Public services include both the operation of services and the physical facilities and infrastructure for those operations such as: circulation (transit and streets); energy (power plants and transmission lines); education (schools and libraries); recreation (playgrounds and parks); safety and security (fire, police, emergency management); and public health (hospitals and sanitation). Many different types of agencies and units of government provide these services, including cities, towns, special districts, regional organizations, state governments and so forth. Large metropolitan areas often have multiple departments and subunits. For example, some large transit systems have their own independent police services. Smaller communities obviously combine service delivery operations.
Many communities create special districts, independent of municipal government, to provide public services such as school districts, library districts, parks districts, and regional transportation authorities. The plans and associated drawings that correspond to each type of district service will also vary. A plan for a sanitary sewer service system, for example, might be drawn using points for individual utility stations, lines for the location of pipes and cables, and planes (or subareas) to denote different parts of a utility district.
Over time, the geometry of each service evolves. Sewer lines are expanded, replaced, and rearranged. Police precincts change their boundaries in response to local needs for safety and security. School districts change with the size, age and educational needs of their constituents. The set of systems that provide services to urban communities cannot be illustrated in just one plan. In fact, planners may have a harder time deciding what “not to draw” versus what should be included in a planning map. In practice, the spatial organization of public services should be viewed as a set of overlapping, interacting, and constantly changing geometric networks. As each public service changes, so too does the impact on the community.
For centuries, many cities failed to plan public services effectively – especially those services that did not seem relevant to immediate issues. Long term risks were not addressed by routine services. As a result, disasters, emergencies, and other catastrophes almost always led to planning through hindsight rather than foresight. The potential failure of public services carries a risk – ranging from risks of basic human survival to risking the highest levels of cultural attainment.
Circulation — movement throughout the city — represents one of the most challenging and evolving public service faced by planners. Circulation, in all its modalities, impacts all of our places, values, and opportunities. These images reflect just a few issues in the wide array of services faced by planners for generations. Clockwise: Copenhagen, Milwaukee, Chicago, Split, St. Louis, Toronto, Toronto, Vienna, New York, 1967-2008.
The perceived stability and functionality of public services impacts the perceived overall value of a community. The perceived value can drop dramatically due to failed public services that results from disasters such as floods, fires, storms, power outages, and political upheavals. Sometimes, when catastrophic service failures occur slowly, the impacts may be less visible and dramatic. Nevertheless large negative impacts can accrue incrementally from poor services. When poor services, such as clean drinking water, unfold slowly they often impact the poorest, least powerful population groups. This has been the case with environmental contamination, infrastructure degradation, and power failures. All such events, risks, and rewards should be the subject of actions proposed by planners.
The fact that some communities attain the highest quality of services often derives, not from their wealth, but from an understanding that effective planning and provision of public services will reduce long-term community risks and increase long-term community rewards. The risks and rewards related to public services reach across many aspects of daily life — social, environmental, and economic. For example, the best universities, museums, and cultural facilities usually depend on public support and, in return, often attract new, younger populations which improve long term community value and growth. Cultural facilities for the performing arts often thrive in communities that have offered long-term support and appreciation for such activity. In a similar way construction of major sports venues almost always incurs heated debates between groups that view such facilities as a hallmark of higher community quality versus those who see such facilities as wasteful. Planners almost always need to play a role in balancing such issues, minimizing the risks, and maximizing the rewards.
3. Creating Programs for Social And Economic Activities
Planning must address the social and economic welfare of the community. This mission has remained central to planning practice for centuries, across multiple cultures, forms of government, crises, and opportunities. The actions which address this planning mandate typically take the form of programs to be enacted that create, restrict, or manage new opportunities for social and economic activity. These programs always apply to specific geographic areas. Planners draw the lines around the places where the programs apply. This occurs all the time with zoning and land use. It also occurs typically in the field of economic development, environmental planning, urban design, transportation, housing, etc.
In 1619, the small cottages shown above (left foreground) provided housing for eight “poor honest old impotent persons” according to the plaque on the brick wall. Over the years many individuals and communities have planned and implemented programs for social and economic missions. Farnham, England,
Over the last several decades zoning and land use regulations have become increasingly important in public discourse. Zoning districts vary considerably in the types of uses, structures, land divisions, level of detail, social and economic content, aesthetic conditions, amendments, review procedures and so forth. Every state government establishes its own rules for the creation and administration of zoning districts. Legal controversies over the districts created by planners reach the U.S. Supreme Court.
The planning issues that occur in zoning and land use concern the protection of property rights for land owners as well as persons occupying or using the land. The U.S. constitution clearly recognizes the protection of property rights. Planners make recommendations that impact how property can be used and arranged in specific places. Social and economic issues that have arisen in relationship to planning recommendations include:
• restrictive covenants and discrimination
• eminent domain and who can “take” land and for what reason
• density and exclusionary regulations
• access to and from private and public property
• the right to access to water
• restrictions on behavior on public property
Frequently the programs and regulations regarding property become highly detailed. When regulating density one district may be zoned such that only single-family residents are allowed. In turn, there are debates over of what constitutes a residence or defines a family. Setbacks for front, side, and back yards are almost always set by the zoning code. Over time, however, the rules are changed, and issues arise over the application of detailed dimensions to buildings constructed before the regulations. At times communities grant property owners “variances”, “conditional uses”, or other exceptions to the regulations. Each community, however, defines such exceptions differently. Some zoning codes heavily restrict the form of a building but not its use. Other codes focus on use.
Centuries ago, Bologna’s planners devised a geometric system of creating porticoes along the edges of all the streets, in all the buildings. This program of development has continued to this day and adds enormous quality and opportunity to the social, economic, and political life of the community. Bologna, 1976.
Moreover, many communities adopt different types of special districts – like historic preservation or environment conservation. These plans are also drawn, dimensioned and applied in different ways to the geography of a community. Within these specialized sets of programs many different variations occur. Some historic preservation districts, for example, derive from municipal rules, others from state policies, and many from the federal government.
While historic preservation aims to retain existing buildings, other regulations, such as building codes, aim to remediate conditions. Building codes, usually focus on one property at a time. Occasionally planners designate selected geographic areas designated for “code enforcement”.
More aggressive programs, like urban renewal, lead to demolition of buildings and forced displacement of their occupants within specific geographic areas. Displacements like this can destroy families and social networks. Urban renewal programs, initiated through federal legislation, intend to eliminate “blight” and so-called “slums”. In practice, however, the large-scale demolition of neighborhoods often worsens the social and economic welfare of the inhabitants. Moreover, some urban renewal programs have replaced potentially functioning neighborhoods with new forms of development and urban patterns which have proven highly dysfunctional. Planners have participated on both sides of this issue. Debates about urban renewal continue today.
Aside from practices governing large areas (like zoning and urban renewal) planners also create social and economic activities for specific places. Specific place-based programs include activities such as street festivals, farmers markets, senior centers, public health programs and many related issues. In all these cases, the spatial organization of the area to which the programs apply requires careful planning to be efficient and effective.
4. Turning Visions Into Policies
“Do great stuff”. This phrase is my cynical view of the typical high-level visions established in many plans and reflects a deep problem in planning. The less cynical phrase from Burnham is “make no little plans”. To be useful, planning visions, missions, goals and related ideas must be meaningful. From my perspective, the first step in making such concepts meaningful requires answering the questions: What great “stuff”, where is it placed, why should we do it, and how can we make it happen? Answers to these questions include all of the items noted previously: designing public places, distributing public services, and creating programs for social and economic activities.
Many plans begin with setting visions, or missions. Often the “vision” becomes the first issue addressed in a plan. Unfortunately, “visions” can also be “delusions”. The critical role for planners, at this high level of plan-making, requires us to provide good professional judgement including pragmatic analyses which may or may not be popular with the clients we serve. Usually, our clients rely on us to apply critical thinking from a large knowledge. Clients expect planners to have the answers to questions about projects, likely outcomes, and challenging issues embedded in the vision they wish to achieve. As advisers, typically to the executive leadership in local government, the value of planning depends on the credibility of our work, not its popularity.
Helping communities adopt a meaningful vision almost always requires an analysis of that vision in terms of different places in the community. More specifically, high level plans and the associated policies should address the specific neighborhoods, districts, and corridors in the community. A meaningful vision for a community should have customized goals applicable to each subarea. Planners must translate highly generalized and abstract visions into more specific context dependent and localized goals for each part of the city, each public service, and each set of programs and regulations. This customization process occurs frequently with regard to issues like transportation, housing, education, safety, and economic development.
Methodologically, planners may be taught to “begin with the vision” or “begin with the goals”. Good practice, however, begins with knowledge — knowledge of the community. Many people should be involved in the discussion of goals and visions – elected officials, citizens, business owners, community leaders, young and old, old-timers and newcomers. The discussion of policies and visions should be informed by the planner’s insight regarding multiple community attributes and history. That is, long before a vision is formalized, there should be open discussion with insights and knowledge from past plans and their outcomes.
Disaggregating a vision into a spatial diagram – according to a community’s neighborhoods, districts, and corridors – can be an achievable task once the planner has effectively defined these different places. Often, for example, one neighborhood will interpret a vision of the future as leading to development of new housing while another neighborhood only wants remediation of existing houses in disrepair. The same goal of economic prosperity may imply economic development of a main street corridor in one part of the community, new job-training programs in another neighborhood, and major public works for roads and utilities in yet another industrial district. Also, for example, the goal of achieving environmental quality and increasing resilience to climatic change may mean improving emergency management in one neighborhood and remediating flooding issues in another. In sum, a singular statement of a vision should have many diverse implications distributed across the geography of the community.
As our policies become geographically and geometrically more specific they begin to imply different levels of need and, in turn, different levels of required resources. Almost invariably the discussion of resources impacts the distribution of revenue through capital and operating budgets of local governments. The physical geometry of the plan also implies different impositions on the resources of the individuals and groups who live and work in each area. As planners change the points, lines, and planes that define a community’s goals, they invariably impact the economic resources that impact the entire population. While the impacts may not be visible in the first statement of a “vision” those impacts are nonetheless powerful. The importance of establishing the right vision, based on a solid knowledge and insight, cannot be overstated.
Finally, planners must understand the goals as a dynamic, evolving, interpretation of a community’s vision. Goals shift with cultural attitudes, social and economic change, environmental conditions, political trends, and technological evolution. While a plan represents a vision, and constituent goals, at one moment in time, it must be assumed that they change incrementally. Sometimes the changes can be seen in a few days but, on many occasions, they change slowly such that major shifts only become observable after a many years.
Sienna’s world famous public place, the Campo, is formed by multiple buildings which, except for the landmark tower, follow a relatively standard height. Many European cities have used other design policies to create more functional and effective cities that have sustained their value for hundreds of years. Today similar policies have re-emerged under the current name of “form-based codes”. Sienna, 1976.
Topic summary:
Acquire Visual Literacy
Draw Plans With Points, Lines and Planes
1. Designing (and Sustaining) Places
2. Distributing Public Services & Facilities
3. Creating Programs for Social And Economic Activities
4. Turning Visions Into Policies