These are the ideas that drove planning in our cities through the middle of the twentieth century. Experience would seem to show that they were exactly backwards, but the arguments presented here will help us understand why so much of twentieth-century urban planning was driven by a need to make people do things they did not want to do.
City Planning as a Determinant of the Location and Character of City Housing Projects of All Kinds.
Abstract of an address by Frederick Bigger, A.I.A., Architect and City Planner, Pittsburgh, at the Conference on Planning, Richmond, May 4, 1936.
There are significant differences between housing projects which raise questions of importance to the city planner.
1. In the first category are housing projects designed to be sold off, dwelling by dwelling, to future individual owners, who are unlikely to preserve the wholesome characteristics of the original unified design.
2. In the second category are projects designed as entities, but rented to many individual families either as a long term high class investment, or as a venture of speculation. In this case, the well-being of the occupants will undoubtedly receive greater consideration.
3. In the third category are housing projects of limited dividend corporations or housing authorities, which have social objectives and restrict their rents; in theory, permanent assets in a city plan. These projects need to be safeguarded by separation from neighborhoods affected by commercial manipulation.
There have been too many cases in which lack of barriers brought changes in zoning regulations, and damaging commercial frontages.
4. In the fourth category are similar projects owned by the occupants of the houses, which require similar protection.
The planner must know whether a project is to be split up for sale or held, whether it is to be merely a profit and loss commodity, whether a social objective is contemplated and whether or not it is owned by the occupants of the dwellings.
If one holds a title deed but is obligated by a mortgage on his property, it is necessary to realize that this privilege of complete control over his property is limited.
If a project is not owned by its occupants, the need for better living and the demand for profit are conflicting forces.
The planner is necessarily controlled by the expenses incidental to the basic cost of the project, such as public utilities, landscaping, etc. If the designer is influenced only by the profit motive, he will locate his housing project so that it can be subsidized by the existing community through an earlier provision of utilities and schools, though another location might be better from the standpoint of the city plan.
Housing designed for sale to individual owners, and large-scale housing on a speculative basis, promise no permanence and no stable contribution to improved housing. The other categories offer possibilities of greater stability and continuity of existence. Community planners must therefore favor the latter groups.
A general amount of open space is a basic element in planning a socially desirable housing project in which financial values are to be permanent. The town planner must consider these fundamental points as of greater significance than the more technical aspects of studies of population and economics.
—The Octagon, August, 1936 (PDF).