City Planning

Most cities grew with little or no planning. Even those that were originally laid out on a plan—for example, Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia—have grown haphazardly. Unplanned growth has created many of the problems cities now face, especially in regard to slums and transportation.

Zoning, which regulates the type, use, and size of buildings, is a widely practiced preventive measure intended to control haphazard growth. Certain areas are set aside for certain types of buildings—factories, offices and stores, apartment buildings, single-family homes. The goal of zoning is to place business and industry in convenient locations for shoppers and workers and to preserve existing residential neighborhoods.

Zoning boards may also regulate the size of buildings, especially in residential areas. Other rules are directed against overcrowding by requiring buildings to be built a certain distance apart.

Almost every large American city is engaged in renewal programs to reclaim blighted areas, often using funds granted in part by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Downtown redevelopment projects have been successful in a number of cities, including Baltimore, Milwaukee, and St. Louis. Programs to replace slum dwellings with low-rent high-rise apartment buildings, however, have had mixed results—the new buildings, for a number of reasons, often become slums in their own right. The construction of urban expressways has also produced mixed results. In some cities the expressways have achieved their purpose of improving transportation facilities, but in others they have made downtown traffic congestion even worse, have caused severe financial troubles for mass-transit systems, and have contributed to the prosperity of the suburbs at the expense of the city.

Since city and suburbs share many common problems, metropolitan planning is almost a necessity. This requires cooperation between city and suburbs, but often is hindered by lack of a central administration. In an attempt to meet this problem, Toronto, Ontario, created a metropolitan government for the city and its suburbs. This government supervises road construction, schools, police, public transporation, zoning laws, and the water supply for the entire area. Local affairs are still controlled by individual communities. In 1957 Miami, Florida, and its surrounding communities became the first metropolitan area in the United States to adopt a similar plan.