March 23, 2010 • 29 mins
In this episode, Josh and Chuck discuss the origins, philosophies and practices of urban planning.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should Know
from House Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W Chuck Bryant
(00:21):
that would make this stuff you should know? As if
you didn't know, should I speak? Yeah, please do speak?
Bail me out. Yeah, this is a show number two
in the temporary office. I hate this place so much.
I know it's weird. Get used to it, buddy. We'll
be here for the next six weeks and then it'll
be like whoa look at this new studio would be
(00:43):
like the kitchen of the future. Yeah, yeah, but from
the fifties, so Chuck, Yes, Josh. Do you know what
May seven was? It was a big day, my wedding anniversary. No,
that was not my wedding anniversion. Go ahead. Was a
weird thing to say if it wasn't true, okay, um, chuck.
(01:06):
USD seven represented the day that more humans in modern
times lived in cities than did rural areas. I believe
it a couple of so that didn't blow your mind. No,
I believe it so a couple of researchers, one from
NC State and another from our Deer University of Georgia. Uh,
(01:28):
did some demographic numbers, crunched them and came up with
three billion, three hundred three million, nine hundred ninety two thousand,
two hundred and fifty three people in cities. And on
that day there were three billion, three hundred three million,
eight hundred and sixty six thousand, four hundred and four
rural people. Do you know what percentage that breaks down
(01:49):
to fifty something? It was fifty points something because they
were projected at that since you brought it up past
stats in eight hundred only uh, slightly more than two million,
I'm sorry, two of the world's population lived in the
cities by nineteen hundred. That was and uh they predicted
by it. Would you know why the shift Industrial revolution boom? Yeah,
(02:15):
we went from an agrarian society to one where you
could make the cheese in the city, and so everybody
moved to the city, right. I thought it was tai food.
I think that was that was a happy benefit of
byproduct um and uh so people started moving to cities
more and more. By nineteen ten, there were scores of
cities around the United States that boasted a million or
(02:38):
more people. Right. Yeah, they were kind of crappy though,
they were. And one of the reasons why is because
they were just kind of thrown together. Right. Somebody wanted
to open a business, Well, you bought the land, built
the business, and probably lived upstairs from it. Right. There
was sprawl, cramp conditions, tenement housing, um, poor water quality.
(02:59):
Can I read the quote? Yeah? From Henry Blake Fuller's
novel with the Procession and the nineteen hundreds, they were
describing Chicago, and the protagonist Truesdale Marshall said, Chicago is
a hideous monster, so pitifully grotesque, grewesome, appalling. Yeah, not
not a pretty picture now, And anybody who's familiar with
(03:20):
Chicago now would be like, what that's Chicago. Chicago was
the bomb, you know, that's what they say. That's exactly
what someone would say. Right. The reason why somebody would
say that today is because there was a guy named
Daniel Hudson Burnham. Love this dude. He was Chicago architect
and uh monsieur. Burnham came up with this thing called
(03:42):
the City Beautiful Program, right, yeah, and I agree with it.
Form build a form and function will follow, right. So uh,
Mr Burnham's vision was to create municipal art like fountains, statuary,
green space, parks, sidewalk and if you beautified the city,
(04:03):
crime other social ills would kind of fall off at
the very least because of the newfound civic pride, right,
people want to keep it clean. You see some kids
spray painting a beautiful fountain, You're probably gonna open his
skull with your walking cane, right right, yeah, and he
um he unveiled this at the eighteen nine World's Colombian
(04:23):
Exposition that was one of the best ever in Chicago.
And uh, he started applying those principles uh in between
nineteen o two and nineteen o five in d C, Cleveland, Ohio, Manila,
oddly in San Francisco. Well, hey, the Filipinos needs some
help to you know. Um, and uh, the the whole
(04:45):
thing really kind of came together for him since he
was a Chicago architect. Uh in nineteen o six when
he and another guy named Edward Bennett created the Plan
of Chicago the Kitchen of the Future, right yeah, And
that's basically the first example of well not true, because
urban planning goes all the way back to Rome. But
(05:06):
the first example of a comprehensive plan for an American city,
growth plan for an American city. Right. And actually the
Romans didn't necessarily have a comprehensive plan. They had really
good architects who were who who Burnham based his ideas on. Right.
They had a lot of municipals are, a lot of
great municipal gathering spaces. They had the aqueducts, sewers, harry water,
(05:28):
they had sewers and public houses that were placed in
areas where everybody could enjoy them. Right. And that is
one of the tenants of urban planning that we'll get
to is not to exclude any people's because of like
geographic location or like socio economic conditions. Right. So, so
Burnham basically throws down the gauntlet and says, I have
(05:50):
created urban planning. Right, good for him, good for all
of us. And it kind of took off. In addition
to the Romans, which borrowed heavily from, he also leaned
a lot on the Parisians. Have you ever been to Paris?
I have. It's a gorgeous city, awesome, awesome city. Apparently,
back during the seventeenth century, during the reign of Louis
(06:12):
the fourteenth UM, there was a lot of really good
planning going on, or at least public architecture being raised
in areas that weren't really settled. But these these uh
court architects had the foresight to be like, well, people
are kind of spreading out over here. They're probably gonna
need this land eventually, so we're gonna put some parks
over here and just attract them. And sure enough, that's
(06:33):
where people started to settle. So that concept and then
the concept of equality uh for citizens, as far as
the urban planners concerned, um or really, they kind of
formed the foundation of Burnham's principles. Right, Yes, should we
just simply state the goal of urban planning, let's do.
I'm actually gonna read it because it's it's just so
succinctly put here. It is to guide the development of
(06:55):
a city or town so that it furthers the welfare
of its current and future resident by creating convenient, equitable, healthful, efficient,
and attractive environments. That says it all. But you would
be a pretty shoddy urban planner if you built a
fountain somewhere and went to, uh, it's the park of
the future, Like it's a lot more than that, right, sure.
(07:16):
So there's basically three main things that an urban planner
takes into account when creating a plan for an existing city.
There's also planned communities, also called new towns or new cities.
Right did you know Columbia, Maryland was one of those
until I read this built from the ground up. It
was one of the United States first plan communities, which
(07:37):
is different than a suburb. Right, this is the town's
and they said, we we want a city, build it
for us, and uh they did. Yeah, and it's grown
since then. Same with rest in Virginia and uh, the
government often gets into the acts. Alamos, Oak Ridge, both
of those are planned towns for a very important reason. Yeah,
(08:00):
the Manhattan Project. I am the bringer of death, destroy
of worlds. I have become death. I think whatever, good
old Philipoppenheimer and wait for the evening, Yes it is Robert.
So the three things that they take into account, Urban
planners take into account of the physical environment, right. Yeah.
That means obviously where it is, uh, what the climates
(08:22):
like you gotta got you know, if you're building in Seattle,
you gotta take into account the misty rain that falls. Sure,
and also if you, especially if you're planning a town
from the ground up, and especially if it was the
early twentieth century, you were likely to take advantage of
a river. Uh, specifically a fall line where the river
runs out of the mountains and into the sediment the
(08:44):
delta right towards the ocean. Coastal plains of course, very popular. Yeah,
so um and also Chuck, speaking of rivers and water,
people love to settle by water for trade, for drinking water.
It's really important, um. As water scarcity continues. By I
think five an estimated quarter of the world's population are
going to be without access to clean drinking water. I
(09:07):
predict that a lot more people are going to show
up in areas where there are there is water, whether
it's already established or they're going to found new areas
towards the headwaters or the tall lines, makes sense, right,
And our migration patterns are going to shift radically within
the next fifty years. That means other areas will be
(09:28):
deserted too. Yeah, that's gonna be weird. It is gonna
be weird, and it's gonna be a big challenge for
urban planners who also take into account the social environment, right,
that is UH, groups that um a city's residents belong
to neighborhoods, um workplaces. UH in policies. You've seen slum
Dog Millionaire, I have a great movie. So in the
(09:50):
in Mumbai, I think fifty of the residents live in
the slums. Those are pretty serious slums too. And in
Africa you mentioned this aim deal with water in Nairobi,
uh and Lagos, more than six of households aren't connected
the water, so that that's not very good urban planning.
So if if Lagos, Nigeria said, hey, we want an
(10:13):
urban plan, we want a master plan for our city,
probably one of the first things that this urban planner
would come up with was a way to get water
equitably throughout the town. Right. And then there's also the
economic environment and really important. Yeah. Basically you want to
take into account existing businesses, but also figure out a
way to attract new businesses and let the economic engine thrive. Right. Yeah.
(10:38):
The future part of it is UH one of the
key components of urban planning and one of the reasons
it's criticized is some some critics will say that they
take too much the future into account, too much, and
they don't concentrate enough on what we need right now.
But we'll get to a little more of that later.
We will. Let's keep on with the master plan show. Okay, well,
(10:59):
what's a mess your plan? Josh? Uh, Well, it's not
as ominous or sinister as it sounds. Basically, it is
exactly what it sounds like. Take away the ominous sinister part.
It's the master plan for this community. How the how
the transportation sector figures in or will figure it sure,
how land use will be um factored in the future,
(11:22):
um airports, water, sewage, right, parks, neighborhoods, housing again, economic development. Basically,
you have to take all these components. People living in
the city, people working in the city, how they're getting
from home to work, what they're seeing along their route,
and then how they're sustaining themselves food, water, that kind
(11:42):
of thing, and creating a plan for the future, right
and that the urban planning doesn't stop though at this
like uh, pie in the sky, goog, we should just
do this. This would be great. It has to be feasible,
it has to be workable. They got to show how
much it costs and how it's going to be carried
out to They can't just present some some nebulous, awesome
(12:03):
goal that can never be reached. Have you seen a
master plan? Uh? No, have you? They are ridiculously detailed.
Really Yea. Often they'll have UM, it'll it'll look kind
of like a big blueprint's commanded like hundreds of pages
right right, But the way that I've seen it done
is um. Each page is like a transparency but they're huge. Um.
(12:24):
And then so you'll have like the physical the geography
of the of the area city right. Then the next
is um the infrastructure, and the next page that overlays
it until you have like this thick Oh it literally builds.
You look over it and you can see the whole
master plan, but it's it's sector by sectors, bit by bit.
That's really interesting. It's like a flipbook. Right. You also
(12:45):
need public support for this, Yeah, that's one of the keys.
You have to get your your the public on your side,
or you're dead in the water. Because, as everyone knows,
if the public is against you, the politicians are gonna
start listening and they're not gonna go against the public
too much either. They will some, but if the public
is really really against something, then the politicians have to
put the brakes on you. Back when I was a
(13:05):
cub reporter for a weekly down in Henry County, there's
this group called Neighbors Opposed to Parker Road development and
not that they called the acronym NOPE. And they were
just like this grassroots group of neighbors that became like
this political powerhouse that we're fighting this development that was
going to take over a really beautiful field in their area.
(13:27):
And for years and years and years they fought. They
showed up a city council meetings, county zoning meetings, everything
they could show up to. They show up in these
yellow shirts and they created this really loud voice and
it was really admirable. Uh. And ultimately they there was
a compromise of struct so it wasn't like this this
terrible tract housing that the county had plenty of already.
It was nicer housing with fewer lots per acre. And
(13:52):
then I think like sixty of this land was dedicated
uh imperpetuity green space like a park. Yeah, so they
really they really did a lot. Yeah, we got the
belt Line here in Atlanta, which is u a project
which has a lot of green space that's tied to
a light rail line all over the city, which is awesome,
And I love this idea until I heard that I
(14:14):
was gonna be like eighty five years old by the
time it was finished. It's gonna take a while. Yeah,
and that's actually since I brought it there. That's another
one of the criticisms is that it's very time intensive
to to do many of these plans, and the fact
that that these processes take too long. Current residents are like, well,
what I don't want to like give up my tax
(14:35):
money for something that's going to be around in forty years, right,
that's part of it. And also if you're in a
kind of a new urban area, um, this thing is
gonna evolve and change and go well beyond the plan
before it be implemented. So time is definitely of the essence. Absolutely.
And you said that, you know, the politicians often will
(14:56):
not go along. That's not necessarily true in my experience. Well,
spend go along with the developers dollars, and they actually
do have legal authority to flex their muscles here there.
There's this thing called eminent domain. Yeah. I think we
talked about that in the squatting episode. Okay, I thought
you meant we already talked about it in this podcast. No, no,
of course I was zoning out or something like that.
(15:17):
But speaking of zoning, oh yeah, nic zoning laws have
a lot to do with it too, And that's where
the well, the planners have to be aware of all
these zonning laws, which is, you know whether or not
an area is zoned for like business or for mixed
use or for family only um housing. But that's where
the politician can can flex their muscles as well, get
zoning laws changed, and they can get the cops out
(15:38):
there and be like, tear it down or we'll club you.
Yeah that's true. Yeah, so Chuck. Not everybody's all hip
on the urban planning thing, right, especially the early twentieth
century version Burnham's original vision. There was a lady by
the name of Jane Jacobs who wrote a book in
nineteen sixty one death in Life of Great American Cities.
(16:03):
She is awesome. Yeah, I researched her a little bit. Um.
She passed away not too long ago, and the Rockefeller
Foundation actually created something called the Jane Jacob's Metal and
that recognizes individuals who have made a significant contribution to
thinking about urban design. She was radical at the time. Dude,
early sixties. Yeah, And what she came up with, Chuck was, um,
(16:24):
that basically five main points, right. And the first is
that the city is an ecosystem. And like you said,
this was radical. This is that nobody looked at a
city like this before. They're all drunk and you're smoking
and drinking at work all day. I didn't think about
that game, right, So, so Jane Jacobs just was the
one who was sober and stopped and paid attention. Right, Okay,
So if a city is an ecosystem, that means it's
(16:47):
constantly evolving and moving and thriving. And if you look
at it and each aspect of it as a system
that's interconnected with the rest of the system to make
up this organism or ecosystem, idealy you have a concept
of what the city actually looks like, not what you
want it to look like. Right. Um, you also have
to take into account, um, the community. Right. Well. Yeah,
(17:10):
and she she was a big critic of a lot
of urban planners that many times weren't even from that city,
would be hired and brought in and uh not put
their feet to the pavement and talk to the local residents.
And she thought that was obviously a big key was
called bottom up planning, and that was radical at the
time too, as was mixed use development. That was she
was kind of the first champion of mixed use development, right,
(17:32):
which we're really starting to see today. Even now it's
not really taken off at least. I can't say, um
for other towns necessarily, but in Atlanta, oh yeah, man everywhere, Yeah, um, live, work, play, right,
but it's but nobody's necessarily subscribing to it. You know,
there's a lot of them are sitting empty at this point.
They definitely are, um, but I do think that in
the future that's pretty much what we're gonna have to have. Yeah,
(17:55):
And her mixed use wasn't only the modern thing that
we see where there's like an apartment upstairs from a
from a chapeau shop. It was she thought building should
vary in age and condition as well, so like don't
just go in and bulldoze everything and build everything up new. Yeah,
she wanted different ages, conditions, and rental properties, own ownership properties.
(18:17):
That's what she means. Um. She also thought all of
it should be packed together, which is definitely counterintuitive, especially
for the time. Everybody thought the closer you put people together,
the more crime and other special ills are going to
break out. Right. Her point was, no, you put people
together and in this this mixed use area, and you're
(18:38):
going to have city life seven. It's not just you know,
when five o'clock comes to places deserted, there's always going
to be people around. Things are always going to be open.
Um and and she called for higher density. Lastly, she
also said that a lot of emphasis should be placed
on local economies. Yeah, this is what I'm the big
fan of. UM. She was definitely not in favor of
(19:00):
going and tearing down the old mom and pop shops
to put in a large corporation because it's quote unquote
more stable. She thought the stability of the small business
in small entrepreneurs was was the way to go. You
could do that by revitalizing downtown UM or having certain
districts be very niche like the Hammock District in the
(19:23):
Max Scorpio episode of The Simpsons, right, or the Garment District,
the Garment District, Hells Kitchen, the meatpacking district, right Exactly.
New York has a lot of districts, and what she
was saying is, so you have a district over here
in Manhattan that specializes in garments, and then you have
a district over here in Brooklyn that specializes in meat.
(19:46):
Somebody in the garment district is going to go, I
need some meat and goes over to Brooklyn and vice versa, right,
and it all works. Yeah, So it's cross pollination of
towns or different parts of town to get people out
and about rather than over to the old Navy, slash target, slash,
bed bath and beyond. It's so ubiquitous here in Atlanta.
(20:08):
Have you seen that postcard? It says, um Atlanta like
no place else but then Atlanta. The font is kind
of big, and then the background within each letter is
like a target, an old navy, a bed bath and beyond.
It is very The light just changed in here because
the sun that was really weird. We're not used to windows.
(20:32):
Oh I'm tripping. Uh. So her ideas were revolutionary, and
they in the early sixties built on kind of the
modern foundation of what urban planners many times due today.
You know, although she was criticized for fostering gentrification. Yeah,
I could see that there's a there's a real problem
(20:52):
with it, especially in areas that have extensive suburbs. People.
White people come out of the suburbs into the old
town by cheap property and do it enough in droves
that they drive out the lower classes who have to
go out to the slightly outer suburbs or the inner suburbs,
and then they push white people already there further out,
(21:14):
and it becomes a sufficious cycle where white flight takes
place exactly through gentrific cases. Not good, that's not that's good.
She She counted that though, gosh, I wish I had
a quote with me. I can't remember what it was,
something that was shut up, shut it. Yeah, that was it,
I think now. It was something about um, mixed communities
and mixed races and everyone kind of living together. Yeah.
(21:36):
So she wasn't for driving out, you know, the poor
people or anything like that. Well no, I mean who
is jerks rich people? I guess so, um, chuck, we
finally arrived at my favorite part the future, right right? Yeah?
About what fourteen years after Jane Jacobs wrote her book,
NASA got a few people together. They did in to
(22:00):
plan the city in the sky. They've been we've been
planning space development, urban planning. I guess that would be
would that be urban lunar urban lunar planning for a
long long time. What they came up with was a
city that's a wheel, right, as Journey says, the wheel
and the sky keeps on turning, and this wheel would
(22:25):
actually spin, it would rotate on an access yes, alright,
the wheel and this guy would keep on turning on
Um and through this it would actually create gravity and
allow for movement of air. Right, so people could do
anything that they wanted to on Earth as long as
you know, there was an old navy in this wheel
(22:48):
city UM, and they could also breathe and not float.
And I think also everybody was issued an orange bell
bottom jumpsuit too. As far as the nineteen said, five
guys came up with you've been working on that one
just now. Okay, Yeah, that's good. And Mars too. They're
talking about colonizing Mars obviously. Yeah, we're talking about terrist
(23:08):
eating you remember, So maybe one day we will live
on the Moon and on Mars. And that's where some
serious urban planning has gotta go on. Check. I wanted
to talk to you about something real quick. One of
the things that one of the trends that we're seeing,
especially with mixed use development UM is a focus on
the city center going upward rather than outward. You and
(23:31):
I live in one of the most sprawling cities in
the country, and I would say one of the least
well planned cities. Yeah, our transportation is awful. You know
what they're proposing right now. We have traffic problems. So
they're proposing on making each UH side northbound in southbound
eleven lanes apiece. Well, I thought they did studies that
said that if you just build more lanes, will just
(23:53):
be more cars. They're doing it anyway, that's just stupid.
All right. We have a plus sign rapid trans that
system that has like eleven stops on it. Right, it's terrible,
and we have terrible, terrible sprawls. So commutes are awful.
People throttle one another during traffic. Well, Atlanta grew really
fast and we weren't prepared. I mean I grew up here.
(24:14):
I remember in the nineteen seventies Atlanta was, I don't know,
a quaint southern city, and then you know, the population
booms so fast and there was zero foresight in Atlanta.
City government is notoriously rotten and corrupt. So this is
what we've gotten now is a big mess. Do you
know how big Metro Atlanta is. It didn't like close
(24:34):
to five million people or something. No, no, not population
like size six thousand square miles. I don't even know
what that means. Technically speaking, Metro Atlanta encompasses six thousand
square miles and a hundred and ten smaller municipalities. Cheeze
in that nuts is a sprawl six thousand square miles. Yeah,
(24:54):
I don't understand that. That's nothing compared to l A though. No,
that's pretty sprawling as well. Out from Phoenix, I think
is the most sprawling city in the country. Yeah, well,
those desert you know, they can just go as far
as they want. I remember leaving town in l A
was so frustrating because you would get in your car
to like go out of town for the weekend, and
you would drive dude for like an hour and a
(25:15):
half without a break in everything. It was still just
stuff and people everywhere. And then eventually you would get
to a point where you know, they would be like
land space and exits that didn't have much going on,
but it just seems like it was all connected as
a big, huge mess. They called the south Land. Well again,
I predict larger population densities or higher population densities in
(25:41):
cities that have access to clean water. New York had
had it right. They were forced to grow up instead
of out, obviously, but well they did both last to Connecticut,
New Jersey. You're just part of New York. Although people
are going to write in and say, no, we're not.
My friend Robert actually he's a fan of the show.
He's uh urban planner, or was in l A. And
(26:03):
when I saw him in l A and said, hey man,
what are you doing out here? He said, Oh, I'm
an urban planner. Nice work. Screw up. Yeah, he's in Boston.
I don't think he still does that. Hello Robert, Hey Robert,
And Hello oh Claire, Wisconsin. Why not? So that's it
for urban planning, right? Do you have anything else, Terry?
(26:24):
You got anything? Uh? If you want to learn more
about urban planning, including all the bullet points chuck and
eyes so faithfully read in this podcast, you can type
that into the handy search bar at how stuff works
dot com, which means it's time for a listener mail. Yeah, Josh,
I'm gonna call this uh from Andrew and Cleveland and
it's about his brother and I like brother stuff. Because
(26:47):
I have a brother. I want to thank the two
of you for letting me spend a few hours with
my brother recently. My older brother lives in New Orleans
with his wife and a younger sister who lives with
our and I have a younger sister who lives with
our father in New York. I live in Cleveland, about
an hour from our mother. You got that, yeah, Okay.
A few months ago, my brother, serves in the army,
(27:07):
got a call that he was being brought uh for
a tour of Iraq, so he's he was leaving had
been several years since we had visited him, so my
sister and I could up a plan to drive across
the country to pay him a surprise visit. The plan
was for my sister to fly into Cleveland, he would
get into my truck, and we would drive the whole
way to New Orleans, with about a day to spend
with my brother before he left. Disaster struck with the weather,
(27:29):
My sister's plane was delayed because of snow in the east,
and it was delayed twelve hours and really limited our options.
What it came down to was I would have to
pick up my sister from the airport at three and
drive the entire fourteen hours by myself because my sister
is too young to drive and hopefully get to my
brother's house before he leaves at eight am. So driving
(27:51):
through the night is no fun. Josh, he's concerned about
getting their period. But then a miracle, my sister's iPod
had I believe every episode stuff you and know on it,
and I've never even heard of you guys before this.
Curious I turned on the podcast and my brain was
immediately filled with interest in laughter, the science, humor and
discussions drove the fatigue from me, and I listened to
(28:11):
you guys non stopped while my sister slept. I think
he has this confused for radio lab. I think so too.
I was actually surprised when I arrived in New Orleans
because it felt like time just flew by. Upon arriving,
we surprised my brother were able to spend just a
couple of hours with him over breakfast with he and
his wife. It was a joyous but tearful day, and
my brother told me he could not have wished for
(28:32):
a happier thing to happen. Very cool, So thank you
guys very much for the podcast. It gave me two
hours with my brother that I otherwise would have missed.
And I am now an avid fan of your show.
I listened every week and I'm reminded of breakfast with
my brother and it makes me smile. Sweet from Andrew
and Cleveland. That's really awesome. Yeah, we've already gotten road
(28:52):
trip stories from the Cannonball Run episode. Right yeah. Okay,
So if you have a tear jerking story about your
sibling or family member, and remember family is what you
make it, sure um send it in an email to
Stuff Podcast at how stuff works dot com. For more
(29:16):
on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff
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It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should Know
from House Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W Chuck Bryant
(00:21):
that would make this stuff you should know? As if
you didn't know, should I speak? Yeah, please do speak?
Bail me out. Yeah, this is a show number two
in the temporary office. I hate this place so much.
I know it's weird. Get used to it, buddy. We'll
be here for the next six weeks and then it'll
be like whoa look at this new studio would be
(00:43):
like the kitchen of the future. Yeah, yeah, but from
the fifties, so Chuck, Yes, Josh. Do you know what
May seven was? It was a big day, my wedding anniversary. No,
that was not my wedding anniversion. Go ahead. Was a
weird thing to say if it wasn't true, okay, um, chuck.
(01:06):
USD seven represented the day that more humans in modern
times lived in cities than did rural areas. I believe
it a couple of so that didn't blow your mind. No,
I believe it so a couple of researchers, one from
NC State and another from our Deer University of Georgia. Uh,
(01:28):
did some demographic numbers, crunched them and came up with
three billion, three hundred three million, nine hundred ninety two thousand,
two hundred and fifty three people in cities. And on
that day there were three billion, three hundred three million,
eight hundred and sixty six thousand, four hundred and four
rural people. Do you know what percentage that breaks down
(01:49):
to fifty something? It was fifty points something because they
were projected at that since you brought it up past
stats in eight hundred only uh, slightly more than two million,
I'm sorry, two of the world's population lived in the
cities by nineteen hundred. That was and uh they predicted
by it. Would you know why the shift Industrial revolution boom? Yeah,
(02:15):
we went from an agrarian society to one where you
could make the cheese in the city, and so everybody
moved to the city, right. I thought it was tai food.
I think that was that was a happy benefit of
byproduct um and uh so people started moving to cities
more and more. By nineteen ten, there were scores of
cities around the United States that boasted a million or
(02:38):
more people. Right. Yeah, they were kind of crappy though,
they were. And one of the reasons why is because
they were just kind of thrown together. Right. Somebody wanted
to open a business, Well, you bought the land, built
the business, and probably lived upstairs from it. Right. There
was sprawl, cramp conditions, tenement housing, um, poor water quality.
(02:59):
Can I read the quote? Yeah? From Henry Blake Fuller's
novel with the Procession and the nineteen hundreds, they were
describing Chicago, and the protagonist Truesdale Marshall said, Chicago is
a hideous monster, so pitifully grotesque, grewesome, appalling. Yeah, not
not a pretty picture now, And anybody who's familiar with
(03:20):
Chicago now would be like, what that's Chicago. Chicago was
the bomb, you know, that's what they say. That's exactly
what someone would say. Right. The reason why somebody would
say that today is because there was a guy named
Daniel Hudson Burnham. Love this dude. He was Chicago architect
and uh monsieur. Burnham came up with this thing called
(03:42):
the City Beautiful Program, right, yeah, and I agree with it.
Form build a form and function will follow, right. So uh,
Mr Burnham's vision was to create municipal art like fountains, statuary,
green space, parks, sidewalk and if you beautified the city,
(04:03):
crime other social ills would kind of fall off at
the very least because of the newfound civic pride, right,
people want to keep it clean. You see some kids
spray painting a beautiful fountain, You're probably gonna open his
skull with your walking cane, right right, yeah, and he
um he unveiled this at the eighteen nine World's Colombian
(04:23):
Exposition that was one of the best ever in Chicago.
And uh, he started applying those principles uh in between
nineteen o two and nineteen o five in d C, Cleveland, Ohio, Manila,
oddly in San Francisco. Well, hey, the Filipinos needs some
help to you know. Um, and uh, the the whole
(04:45):
thing really kind of came together for him since he
was a Chicago architect. Uh in nineteen o six when
he and another guy named Edward Bennett created the Plan
of Chicago the Kitchen of the Future, right yeah, And
that's basically the first example of well not true, because
urban planning goes all the way back to Rome. But
(05:06):
the first example of a comprehensive plan for an American city,
growth plan for an American city. Right. And actually the
Romans didn't necessarily have a comprehensive plan. They had really
good architects who were who who Burnham based his ideas on. Right.
They had a lot of municipals are, a lot of
great municipal gathering spaces. They had the aqueducts, sewers, harry water,
(05:28):
they had sewers and public houses that were placed in
areas where everybody could enjoy them. Right. And that is
one of the tenants of urban planning that we'll get
to is not to exclude any people's because of like
geographic location or like socio economic conditions. Right. So, so
Burnham basically throws down the gauntlet and says, I have
(05:50):
created urban planning. Right, good for him, good for all
of us. And it kind of took off. In addition
to the Romans, which borrowed heavily from, he also leaned
a lot on the Parisians. Have you ever been to Paris?
I have. It's a gorgeous city, awesome, awesome city. Apparently,
back during the seventeenth century, during the reign of Louis
(06:12):
the fourteenth UM, there was a lot of really good
planning going on, or at least public architecture being raised
in areas that weren't really settled. But these these uh
court architects had the foresight to be like, well, people
are kind of spreading out over here. They're probably gonna
need this land eventually, so we're gonna put some parks
over here and just attract them. And sure enough, that's
(06:33):
where people started to settle. So that concept and then
the concept of equality uh for citizens, as far as
the urban planners concerned, um or really, they kind of
formed the foundation of Burnham's principles. Right, Yes, should we
just simply state the goal of urban planning, let's do.
I'm actually gonna read it because it's it's just so
succinctly put here. It is to guide the development of
(06:55):
a city or town so that it furthers the welfare
of its current and future resident by creating convenient, equitable, healthful, efficient,
and attractive environments. That says it all. But you would
be a pretty shoddy urban planner if you built a
fountain somewhere and went to, uh, it's the park of
the future, Like it's a lot more than that, right, sure.
(07:16):
So there's basically three main things that an urban planner
takes into account when creating a plan for an existing city.
There's also planned communities, also called new towns or new cities.
Right did you know Columbia, Maryland was one of those
until I read this built from the ground up. It
was one of the United States first plan communities, which
(07:37):
is different than a suburb. Right, this is the town's
and they said, we we want a city, build it
for us, and uh they did. Yeah, and it's grown
since then. Same with rest in Virginia and uh, the
government often gets into the acts. Alamos, Oak Ridge, both
of those are planned towns for a very important reason. Yeah,
(08:00):
the Manhattan Project. I am the bringer of death, destroy
of worlds. I have become death. I think whatever, good
old Philipoppenheimer and wait for the evening, Yes it is Robert.
So the three things that they take into account, Urban
planners take into account of the physical environment, right. Yeah.
That means obviously where it is, uh, what the climates
(08:22):
like you gotta got you know, if you're building in Seattle,
you gotta take into account the misty rain that falls. Sure,
and also if you, especially if you're planning a town
from the ground up, and especially if it was the
early twentieth century, you were likely to take advantage of
a river. Uh, specifically a fall line where the river
runs out of the mountains and into the sediment the
(08:44):
delta right towards the ocean. Coastal plains of course, very popular. Yeah,
so um and also Chuck, speaking of rivers and water,
people love to settle by water for trade, for drinking water.
It's really important, um. As water scarcity continues. By I
think five an estimated quarter of the world's population are
going to be without access to clean drinking water. I
(09:07):
predict that a lot more people are going to show
up in areas where there are there is water, whether
it's already established or they're going to found new areas
towards the headwaters or the tall lines, makes sense, right,
And our migration patterns are going to shift radically within
the next fifty years. That means other areas will be
(09:28):
deserted too. Yeah, that's gonna be weird. It is gonna
be weird, and it's gonna be a big challenge for
urban planners who also take into account the social environment, right,
that is UH, groups that um a city's residents belong
to neighborhoods, um workplaces. UH in policies. You've seen slum
Dog Millionaire, I have a great movie. So in the
(09:50):
in Mumbai, I think fifty of the residents live in
the slums. Those are pretty serious slums too. And in
Africa you mentioned this aim deal with water in Nairobi,
uh and Lagos, more than six of households aren't connected
the water, so that that's not very good urban planning.
So if if Lagos, Nigeria said, hey, we want an
(10:13):
urban plan, we want a master plan for our city,
probably one of the first things that this urban planner
would come up with was a way to get water
equitably throughout the town. Right. And then there's also the
economic environment and really important. Yeah. Basically you want to
take into account existing businesses, but also figure out a
way to attract new businesses and let the economic engine thrive. Right. Yeah.
(10:38):
The future part of it is UH one of the
key components of urban planning and one of the reasons
it's criticized is some some critics will say that they
take too much the future into account, too much, and
they don't concentrate enough on what we need right now.
But we'll get to a little more of that later.
We will. Let's keep on with the master plan show. Okay, well,
(10:59):
what's a mess your plan? Josh? Uh, Well, it's not
as ominous or sinister as it sounds. Basically, it is
exactly what it sounds like. Take away the ominous sinister part.
It's the master plan for this community. How the how
the transportation sector figures in or will figure it sure,
how land use will be um factored in the future,
(11:22):
um airports, water, sewage, right, parks, neighborhoods, housing again, economic development. Basically,
you have to take all these components. People living in
the city, people working in the city, how they're getting
from home to work, what they're seeing along their route,
and then how they're sustaining themselves food, water, that kind
(11:42):
of thing, and creating a plan for the future, right
and that the urban planning doesn't stop though at this
like uh, pie in the sky, goog, we should just
do this. This would be great. It has to be feasible,
it has to be workable. They got to show how
much it costs and how it's going to be carried
out to They can't just present some some nebulous, awesome
(12:03):
goal that can never be reached. Have you seen a
master plan? Uh? No, have you? They are ridiculously detailed.
Really Yea. Often they'll have UM, it'll it'll look kind
of like a big blueprint's commanded like hundreds of pages
right right, But the way that I've seen it done
is um. Each page is like a transparency but they're huge. Um.
(12:24):
And then so you'll have like the physical the geography
of the of the area city right. Then the next
is um the infrastructure, and the next page that overlays
it until you have like this thick Oh it literally builds.
You look over it and you can see the whole
master plan, but it's it's sector by sectors, bit by bit.
That's really interesting. It's like a flipbook. Right. You also
(12:45):
need public support for this, Yeah, that's one of the keys.
You have to get your your the public on your side,
or you're dead in the water. Because, as everyone knows,
if the public is against you, the politicians are gonna
start listening and they're not gonna go against the public
too much either. They will some, but if the public
is really really against something, then the politicians have to
put the brakes on you. Back when I was a
(13:05):
cub reporter for a weekly down in Henry County, there's
this group called Neighbors Opposed to Parker Road development and
not that they called the acronym NOPE. And they were
just like this grassroots group of neighbors that became like
this political powerhouse that we're fighting this development that was
going to take over a really beautiful field in their area.
(13:27):
And for years and years and years they fought. They
showed up a city council meetings, county zoning meetings, everything
they could show up to. They show up in these
yellow shirts and they created this really loud voice and
it was really admirable. Uh. And ultimately they there was
a compromise of struct so it wasn't like this this
terrible tract housing that the county had plenty of already.
It was nicer housing with fewer lots per acre. And
(13:52):
then I think like sixty of this land was dedicated
uh imperpetuity green space like a park. Yeah, so they
really they really did a lot. Yeah, we got the
belt Line here in Atlanta, which is u a project
which has a lot of green space that's tied to
a light rail line all over the city, which is awesome,
And I love this idea until I heard that I
(14:14):
was gonna be like eighty five years old by the
time it was finished. It's gonna take a while. Yeah,
and that's actually since I brought it there. That's another
one of the criticisms is that it's very time intensive
to to do many of these plans, and the fact
that that these processes take too long. Current residents are like, well,
what I don't want to like give up my tax
(14:35):
money for something that's going to be around in forty years, right,
that's part of it. And also if you're in a
kind of a new urban area, um, this thing is
gonna evolve and change and go well beyond the plan
before it be implemented. So time is definitely of the essence. Absolutely.
And you said that, you know, the politicians often will
(14:56):
not go along. That's not necessarily true in my experience. Well,
spend go along with the developers dollars, and they actually
do have legal authority to flex their muscles here there.
There's this thing called eminent domain. Yeah. I think we
talked about that in the squatting episode. Okay, I thought
you meant we already talked about it in this podcast. No, no,
of course I was zoning out or something like that.
(15:17):
But speaking of zoning, oh yeah, nic zoning laws have
a lot to do with it too, And that's where
the well, the planners have to be aware of all
these zonning laws, which is, you know whether or not
an area is zoned for like business or for mixed
use or for family only um housing. But that's where
the politician can can flex their muscles as well, get
zoning laws changed, and they can get the cops out
(15:38):
there and be like, tear it down or we'll club you.
Yeah that's true. Yeah, so Chuck. Not everybody's all hip
on the urban planning thing, right, especially the early twentieth
century version Burnham's original vision. There was a lady by
the name of Jane Jacobs who wrote a book in
nineteen sixty one death in Life of Great American Cities.
(16:03):
She is awesome. Yeah, I researched her a little bit. Um.
She passed away not too long ago, and the Rockefeller
Foundation actually created something called the Jane Jacob's Metal and
that recognizes individuals who have made a significant contribution to
thinking about urban design. She was radical at the time. Dude,
early sixties. Yeah, And what she came up with, Chuck was, um,
(16:24):
that basically five main points, right. And the first is
that the city is an ecosystem. And like you said,
this was radical. This is that nobody looked at a
city like this before. They're all drunk and you're smoking
and drinking at work all day. I didn't think about
that game, right, So, so Jane Jacobs just was the
one who was sober and stopped and paid attention. Right, Okay,
So if a city is an ecosystem, that means it's
(16:47):
constantly evolving and moving and thriving. And if you look
at it and each aspect of it as a system
that's interconnected with the rest of the system to make
up this organism or ecosystem, idealy you have a concept
of what the city actually looks like, not what you
want it to look like. Right. Um, you also have
to take into account, um, the community. Right. Well. Yeah,
(17:10):
and she she was a big critic of a lot
of urban planners that many times weren't even from that city,
would be hired and brought in and uh not put
their feet to the pavement and talk to the local residents.
And she thought that was obviously a big key was
called bottom up planning, and that was radical at the
time too, as was mixed use development. That was she
was kind of the first champion of mixed use development, right,
(17:32):
which we're really starting to see today. Even now it's
not really taken off at least. I can't say, um
for other towns necessarily, but in Atlanta, oh yeah, man everywhere, Yeah, um, live, work, play, right,
but it's but nobody's necessarily subscribing to it. You know,
there's a lot of them are sitting empty at this point.
They definitely are, um, but I do think that in
the future that's pretty much what we're gonna have to have. Yeah,
(17:55):
And her mixed use wasn't only the modern thing that
we see where there's like an apartment upstairs from a
from a chapeau shop. It was she thought building should
vary in age and condition as well, so like don't
just go in and bulldoze everything and build everything up new. Yeah,
she wanted different ages, conditions, and rental properties, own ownership properties.
(18:17):
That's what she means. Um. She also thought all of
it should be packed together, which is definitely counterintuitive, especially
for the time. Everybody thought the closer you put people together,
the more crime and other special ills are going to
break out. Right. Her point was, no, you put people
together and in this this mixed use area, and you're
(18:38):
going to have city life seven. It's not just you know,
when five o'clock comes to places deserted, there's always going
to be people around. Things are always going to be open.
Um and and she called for higher density. Lastly, she
also said that a lot of emphasis should be placed
on local economies. Yeah, this is what I'm the big
fan of. UM. She was definitely not in favor of
(19:00):
going and tearing down the old mom and pop shops
to put in a large corporation because it's quote unquote
more stable. She thought the stability of the small business
in small entrepreneurs was was the way to go. You
could do that by revitalizing downtown UM or having certain
districts be very niche like the Hammock District in the
(19:23):
Max Scorpio episode of The Simpsons, right, or the Garment District,
the Garment District, Hells Kitchen, the meatpacking district, right Exactly.
New York has a lot of districts, and what she
was saying is, so you have a district over here
in Manhattan that specializes in garments, and then you have
a district over here in Brooklyn that specializes in meat.
(19:46):
Somebody in the garment district is going to go, I
need some meat and goes over to Brooklyn and vice versa, right,
and it all works. Yeah, So it's cross pollination of
towns or different parts of town to get people out
and about rather than over to the old Navy, slash target, slash,
bed bath and beyond. It's so ubiquitous here in Atlanta.
(20:08):
Have you seen that postcard? It says, um Atlanta like
no place else but then Atlanta. The font is kind
of big, and then the background within each letter is
like a target, an old navy, a bed bath and beyond.
It is very The light just changed in here because
the sun that was really weird. We're not used to windows.
(20:32):
Oh I'm tripping. Uh. So her ideas were revolutionary, and
they in the early sixties built on kind of the
modern foundation of what urban planners many times due today.
You know, although she was criticized for fostering gentrification. Yeah,
I could see that there's a there's a real problem
(20:52):
with it, especially in areas that have extensive suburbs. People.
White people come out of the suburbs into the old
town by cheap property and do it enough in droves
that they drive out the lower classes who have to
go out to the slightly outer suburbs or the inner suburbs,
and then they push white people already there further out,
(21:14):
and it becomes a sufficious cycle where white flight takes
place exactly through gentrific cases. Not good, that's not that's good.
She She counted that though, gosh, I wish I had
a quote with me. I can't remember what it was,
something that was shut up, shut it. Yeah, that was it,
I think now. It was something about um, mixed communities
and mixed races and everyone kind of living together. Yeah.
(21:36):
So she wasn't for driving out, you know, the poor
people or anything like that. Well no, I mean who
is jerks rich people? I guess so, um, chuck, we
finally arrived at my favorite part the future, right right? Yeah?
About what fourteen years after Jane Jacobs wrote her book,
NASA got a few people together. They did in to
(22:00):
plan the city in the sky. They've been we've been
planning space development, urban planning. I guess that would be
would that be urban lunar urban lunar planning for a
long long time. What they came up with was a
city that's a wheel, right, as Journey says, the wheel
and the sky keeps on turning, and this wheel would
(22:25):
actually spin, it would rotate on an access yes, alright,
the wheel and this guy would keep on turning on
Um and through this it would actually create gravity and
allow for movement of air. Right, so people could do
anything that they wanted to on Earth as long as
you know, there was an old navy in this wheel
(22:48):
city UM, and they could also breathe and not float.
And I think also everybody was issued an orange bell
bottom jumpsuit too. As far as the nineteen said, five
guys came up with you've been working on that one
just now. Okay, Yeah, that's good. And Mars too. They're
talking about colonizing Mars obviously. Yeah, we're talking about terrist
(23:08):
eating you remember, So maybe one day we will live
on the Moon and on Mars. And that's where some
serious urban planning has gotta go on. Check. I wanted
to talk to you about something real quick. One of
the things that one of the trends that we're seeing,
especially with mixed use development UM is a focus on
the city center going upward rather than outward. You and
(23:31):
I live in one of the most sprawling cities in
the country, and I would say one of the least
well planned cities. Yeah, our transportation is awful. You know
what they're proposing right now. We have traffic problems. So
they're proposing on making each UH side northbound in southbound
eleven lanes apiece. Well, I thought they did studies that
said that if you just build more lanes, will just
(23:53):
be more cars. They're doing it anyway, that's just stupid.
All right. We have a plus sign rapid trans that
system that has like eleven stops on it. Right, it's terrible,
and we have terrible, terrible sprawls. So commutes are awful.
People throttle one another during traffic. Well, Atlanta grew really
fast and we weren't prepared. I mean I grew up here.
(24:14):
I remember in the nineteen seventies Atlanta was, I don't know,
a quaint southern city, and then you know, the population
booms so fast and there was zero foresight in Atlanta.
City government is notoriously rotten and corrupt. So this is
what we've gotten now is a big mess. Do you
know how big Metro Atlanta is. It didn't like close
(24:34):
to five million people or something. No, no, not population
like size six thousand square miles. I don't even know
what that means. Technically speaking, Metro Atlanta encompasses six thousand
square miles and a hundred and ten smaller municipalities. Cheeze
in that nuts is a sprawl six thousand square miles. Yeah,
(24:54):
I don't understand that. That's nothing compared to l A though. No,
that's pretty sprawling as well. Out from Phoenix, I think
is the most sprawling city in the country. Yeah, well,
those desert you know, they can just go as far
as they want. I remember leaving town in l A
was so frustrating because you would get in your car
to like go out of town for the weekend, and
you would drive dude for like an hour and a
(25:15):
half without a break in everything. It was still just
stuff and people everywhere. And then eventually you would get
to a point where you know, they would be like
land space and exits that didn't have much going on,
but it just seems like it was all connected as
a big, huge mess. They called the south Land. Well again,
I predict larger population densities or higher population densities in
(25:41):
cities that have access to clean water. New York had
had it right. They were forced to grow up instead
of out, obviously, but well they did both last to Connecticut,
New Jersey. You're just part of New York. Although people
are going to write in and say, no, we're not.
My friend Robert actually he's a fan of the show.
He's uh urban planner, or was in l A. And
(26:03):
when I saw him in l A and said, hey man,
what are you doing out here? He said, Oh, I'm
an urban planner. Nice work. Screw up. Yeah, he's in Boston.
I don't think he still does that. Hello Robert, Hey Robert,
And Hello oh Claire, Wisconsin. Why not? So that's it
for urban planning, right? Do you have anything else, Terry?
(26:24):
You got anything? Uh? If you want to learn more
about urban planning, including all the bullet points chuck and
eyes so faithfully read in this podcast, you can type
that into the handy search bar at how stuff works
dot com, which means it's time for a listener mail. Yeah, Josh,
I'm gonna call this uh from Andrew and Cleveland and
it's about his brother and I like brother stuff. Because
(26:47):
I have a brother. I want to thank the two
of you for letting me spend a few hours with
my brother recently. My older brother lives in New Orleans
with his wife and a younger sister who lives with
our and I have a younger sister who lives with
our father in New York. I live in Cleveland, about
an hour from our mother. You got that, yeah, Okay.
A few months ago, my brother, serves in the army,
(27:07):
got a call that he was being brought uh for
a tour of Iraq, so he's he was leaving had
been several years since we had visited him, so my
sister and I could up a plan to drive across
the country to pay him a surprise visit. The plan
was for my sister to fly into Cleveland, he would
get into my truck, and we would drive the whole
way to New Orleans, with about a day to spend
with my brother before he left. Disaster struck with the weather,
(27:29):
My sister's plane was delayed because of snow in the east,
and it was delayed twelve hours and really limited our options.
What it came down to was I would have to
pick up my sister from the airport at three and
drive the entire fourteen hours by myself because my sister
is too young to drive and hopefully get to my
brother's house before he leaves at eight am. So driving
(27:51):
through the night is no fun. Josh, he's concerned about
getting their period. But then a miracle, my sister's iPod
had I believe every episode stuff you and know on it,
and I've never even heard of you guys before this.
Curious I turned on the podcast and my brain was
immediately filled with interest in laughter, the science, humor and
discussions drove the fatigue from me, and I listened to
(28:11):
you guys non stopped while my sister slept. I think
he has this confused for radio lab. I think so too.
I was actually surprised when I arrived in New Orleans
because it felt like time just flew by. Upon arriving,
we surprised my brother were able to spend just a
couple of hours with him over breakfast with he and
his wife. It was a joyous but tearful day, and
my brother told me he could not have wished for
(28:32):
a happier thing to happen. Very cool, So thank you
guys very much for the podcast. It gave me two
hours with my brother that I otherwise would have missed.
And I am now an avid fan of your show.
I listened every week and I'm reminded of breakfast with
my brother and it makes me smile. Sweet from Andrew
and Cleveland. That's really awesome. Yeah, we've already gotten road
(28:52):
trip stories from the Cannonball Run episode. Right yeah. Okay,
So if you have a tear jerking story about your
sibling or family member, and remember family is what you
make it, sure um send it in an email to
Stuff Podcast at how stuff works dot com. For more
(29:16):
on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff
works dot com. Want more how stuff works, check out
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Chuck Bryant
Josh Clark
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Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.
40s and Free Agents: NFL Draft Season
Daniel Jeremiah of Move the Sticks and Gregg Rosenthal of NFL Daily join forces to break down every team's needs this offseason.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.