Key Components and Players Involved in Effective City Planning and Innovative Planning Practices

As part of our final report we are expected to select a planning issue within the City of Boston and undertake an analysis of the issue from a planning perspective. An issue that the City of Boston is dealing with that caught my attention was the lack of affordable housing available to its current and future residents. As cities start to evolve and attract large amounts of people, they also face some drawbacks that can affect where and how city residents can live. Our trip to Boston, Massachusetts opened my eyes to the city’s housing issue and its increasing housing and land values. An issue of this nature often causes residents to be pushed out of the city, into the suburbs or can cause homelessness. Low to moderate income families and youth across the City of Boston are struggling to pay rent and make ends meet. After our meeting with the Boston Housing Authority, I wanted to further explore the issue of housing affordability so I reached out to the City’s Department of Neighborhood Development for more information This paper will look into some topics such as when housing became an issue in the city, if Boston’s student population plays a role, if there any shortcomings in terms of how the city plans for affordable housing, if there are any specific programs in place that deal with affordable housing and if Boston is looking into what other cities may be doing.

Rapid urbanisation has caused a variety of problems, including transport congestion, lack of sufficient homes and living conditions, sanitary and health care issues, and crime. For all these problems, city planners have attempted potential solutions, each with varying degrees of success. Cities including London, Manila and Mumbai have several of the aforementioned problems, and have each tried their own potential solutions. This essay will discuss how successful these schemes have been in resolving these issues.

Its population increased by 48% within few years. The expansion of cities resulted in destroying unbuilt and farm lands to further the constructions. Landowners with land interfering with “planned residential communities” were forced to give up their lands and see them destroyed. As the author states, families such as Warnes were forced to see their family lands bought and built. Even though such intact lands are rare in the area and beneficial to the population as somewhere to connect with nature, entrepreneurs prefer the economical profit. The suburbs expand and with every new family moving in the area, more cars are purchased adding to the gridlock.

These tools include demographics, development, urbanization and culture. These tools must be understood by geographers in order to be used properly. They can help with this understanding through the organization and use of space. In the article Geography Strikes Back claims are made that tools such as these help geographers to understand global conflicts. For example the article poses the questions, “Why does President Vladimir Putin covet buffer zones in Eastern Europe and the Caucasus…?” and then goes on to answer saying that it is, “Because Russia still constitutes a vast, continental space that is unprotected by mountains and rivers… [Putin] expresses a deep geographical insecurity” (Kaplan 1). Geographers can organize space on maps to come to conclusions such as these. These conclusions in turn help geographers to understand development and culture in areas of impact. As the global population explodes human geography becomes increasingly important. Using statistics and data to show demographical shifts and urbanizations has led to many claims of future problems such as megacities. Megacities are cities with a population of 10 million or more. Using population growth trend lines and progressions, James Canton in his article is able to claim that, “By 2040 most of the world’s population will be living in megacities.” (Canton 1). He also

3. In the 1990’s the central business and residential districts of cities in the United States became the focus of a revitalization process. Discuss how each has contributed to this revitalization process.

Task #1 : Analyse the impacts of at least two urban dynamics operating in a large city of the developed world.

City area can no longer rest on its reputation as a diversified economy with a well-educated population. The region has fallen behind in growth and competitiveness compared to its peer cities and it needs concerted focus to improve.

The government cannot keep ignoring the disproportionately negative impact on marginalized groups and disadvantaged neighborhoods that the current strategy has had. Policies should aim to benefit the most disadvantaged, which will require the government to implement equity over equality. Policies will need to acknowledge differences between different groups and people. In addition, community development policies should increase citizen participation, which will make the city more a collective right for everyone, instead of just for the powerful and wealthy. These goals will help steer the community development strategy away from issues such as gentrification that ignore the needs of the marginalized, and will instead focus specifically on helping those who need help the most. This does not mean policymakers need to disregard economic impact entirely in policy analysis, but they should also recognize social impact and focus on the economic impact for the most disadvantaged communities in the

Along with a thorough enough discussion of anything comes the inevitable unearthing of its strengths and weaknesses. The Portland Plan has a number of strengths: it is comprehensive, well thought out, inclusive, and should ultimately lead to a well-planned and sustainable city. How in-depth the Portland Plan is, is a testament to its preparedness to face any challenges to lead the Portland of today into becoming the Portland of tomorrow, as any potential question that may arise is likely addressed within the text of the plan. The mercurial nature of the plan is to its advantage, as anything not addressed within the text of the plan does not render the plan obsolete, but rather may be simply found by finding the popular opinion of the

I chose to attend a city council meeting for this assignment and was very surprised at what I witnessed. The city council served an important purpose and the meeting actually accomplished many important goals. Among the interesting things that I saw at the council meeting were the people who attended, the people who presented, the people who sat on the council, and the subjects that were being voted upon in the meeting.

Metropolitan areas exhibit an amazing diversity of features, economic structures, amounts of infrastructure, historic roots, patterns of development, and degrees of conventional planning. Yet, lots of the problems that they deal with are strikingly acquainted. For example, as metropolitan areas grow, they grow to be increasingly diverse.

An emerging issue is that of urban sprawl. While some aspects of urban sprawl has been seen since ancient times, this phenomenon has started gaining the most momentum in the past century, aided by the advancement of technology, especially with the rise of mass produced automobiles, houses and highway systems. Many people unknowingly contribute to this environmental problem, as is the nature of it. Urban sprawl deals with the growth of the suburbs, the area between the urban and rural areas of a city. Most of America’s largest cities and states, in terms of population, are prime examples of urban sprawl. Opponents of urban sprawl usually cite the government as a major cause of sprawl. The government may be a major catalyst of

Many small town dwellers and villagers had left their hometown for the cities in search of higher standard of living. This movement from rural areas to big cities is called urbanization (Boundless, 2015). As a result, urbanization is the process by which there is an increase in the number and the percentage of people living in the urban settlements and the amount of industrialization of the settlement. In Belize statistics shows that 45% of the population lives in urban areas (Population Reference Bureau, 2014). It also refers to the increase in the size of land area occupied by urban settlements such as towns and cities. Although urbanization has brought about numerous positive impacts, it also has its share of disadvantages as well. The negative impacts of urbanization shall be discussed by means of the economic, environmental and social aspect.

[1] Explained by this exemplifies that a city should have a foundation for it to grow off of. I do believe this will also be the doing of the citizens that help plan at meetings with communities, yet a good foundation is what will lead to a “good city”. Furthermore, with the influence of citizens, a good city will develop from nothing and will have a sense of cultural background from the past of citizens who live there currently.

Kevin lynch’s book ‘Good city form’ gives us the answer of the question that what are the factors and aspects which makes good city and how to achieve it as cities are too complicated objects, they are far beyond the control, and they also affect the too many people with too many cultural variations. The book provides knowledge of various urban theories through comprehensive discussions.