Urban Planning – Historical Miscellany

Frederick Bigger on Housing and City Planning, 1938

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).

Building Wilmerding

The town of Wilmerding in the Turtle Creek valley outside Pittsburgh was designed as an ideal industrial town for the employees of Westinghouse. Here is a note on its progress from the Philadelphia Real Estate Record and Builders’ Guide, April 17, 1889.

At Wilmerding, near Wall’s station on the Pennsylvania Railroad, work is being pushed rapidly on the Westinghouse air brake shops, previously reported; and plans are ready for the new hotel and club house; also for a number of dwellings. Plot 21, in the plan, is reserved for a park, which will be laid out in drives and a pavilion, band-stand, etc., etc., erected. Plot 22 will be the site for the club-house and hotel, before reported. On plot, No, 5, near the works, Mr. T. W. Welsh, superintendent of the Air Brake Works, will erect a magnificent residence. Plot 26 will be covered with a handsome school house, supplied with every modern convenience and improvement. On plot 4 the Pennsylvania Railroad will erect a large depot and waiting-rooms. Of the 1200 workmen, now employed, fully one-fourth have bought lots from the Improvement Company, and will erect dwellings in the near future, and as many of the employees, are unable to secure lots, the original limit will probably be extended to include the Turtle Creek side. Six hundred and twenty-five feet of frontage on the Monongahela river, near Port Perry, have been bought by the company, in order to supply the new city with water, to be pumped into a reservoir 260 feet above the river, and then piped to Wilmerding. Every dwelling in the city will be furnished with the Westinghouse incandescent light, natural gas, and water. About $4,000,000 will be expended within the limits of 600 acres. It is also stated that a syndicate has been formed to erect a large glass works on the opposite side of Turtle Creek, and that two of the largest glass works in Pittsburg are negotiating for sites on which to erect buildings for their works. This deal has not progressed sufficiently to give names. Mr. Charles Payne is President of the Wilmerding Improvement Company.

Heights of Buildings in 1914

From a Pittsburgh trade magazine called the Construction Record for April 4, 1914, we take this article about the implications of American skyscrapers. Already they had reached heights unimaginable in Europe, and the question of regulating the heights of buildings, and perhaps instituting some sort of zoning system, was coming up in cities all over the United States.

Heights of Buildings.

During the last eight months there has been under way a remarkably thorough and intelligent study of the regulation of the heights of buildings. This investigation was financed by a $15,000 appropriation of the Board of Estimate and Apportionment of the city of New York.

The commission has investigated the practice of many cities in America and Europe in height, area and occupancy regulations. Studies have been made as to the effect of these regulations on property and rental values and on the more general growth and development of the community. The attitude of the courts with regard to the constitutionality of such regulations has also been considered.

The commission’s investigations brought to light many interesting facts. One finds, for example, impressive evidence, of New York’s peculiar situation as regards building heights by comparing the city’s tallest skyscraper with the height of buildings in other cities. The Woolworth building is 750 feet in height. This is 670 feet higher than the maximum limit for buildings in London, 678 feet higher than the limit in Berlin, 685 feet higher than the limit in Paris, 671 feet higher than the limit in Rome and 678 feet higher than the limit in Stockholm.

A building erected to a height equal to the combined maximum heights permitted in these five great European capital cities would be seven feet lower than the World building, and the World building is only half as high as the Woolworth building. A building erected to a height equal to the aggregate height limits of London, Berlin, Paris, Rome, Stockholm, Edinburgh, Zurich, Frankfort-on-Main, Cologne, Dusseldorf and Hamburg would exceed the height of the Woolworth building by only 14 feet.

The maximum heights of buildings permitted by ordinance in some of the large cities of the United States having such restrictions are:

	FEET
Baltimore	175
Boston	125
Charleston, S. C.	125
Chicago	200
Cleveland, O.	200
Erie, Pa.	200
Fort Wayne, Ind.	200
Indianapolis, Ind.	200
Los Angeles, Cal.	150
Manchester, N. H.	125
Milwaukee, Wis.	225
Newark, N. J.	200
Portland, Ore.	160
Providence, R. I.	120
Salt Lake City	125
Scranton, Pa.	125
Worcester, Mass.	125

The commission’s report contains tabulations which were most difficult to obtain, but which were invaluable in framing the recommendations bearing on safety and health. In this connection there are tables showing the number of people on each floor in a number of typical factory and office buildings; showing the use of artificial light near the windows of office buildings on narrow streets at noon in summer on a bright sunlit day; showing the movements of people down stairways; showing the movements of crowds on the level; showing the congestion in office buildings, factories, large department stores, etc. From such data calculations were made showing the length of time it would take to get people out of certain typical crowded buildings, showing the congestion that would result in certain downtown streets if the buildings were vacated in a panic and showing the inadequacy of exit facilities in many buildings.

Much attention has been given by the commission to the districting or zoning system in German and Austrian cities and to the increasing adoption of this system of height and occupancy restrictions in the United States. The American cities represented in such maps are Boston, Washington, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Baltimore and Indianapolis.