City Planning

1 Introduction

1.1 Read the text title and hypothesize what the text is about. Write down your hypothesis.

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1.2 What do you know concerning this issue? List your ideas in the table left column “I know”.

I know that…	I have learnt that…

 

1.3 If you know answers to these questions write them down in the space given after each question.

 

	What do city planners deal with?
	When did city planning begin?
	Who developed the first systematic theories about city planning?
	What outstanding city planners do you know?
	What does a master plan show?
	What experts are engaged in city planning?
	What countries are the leaders in the development of new towns?

 

1.4 Circle in the list the words and expressions you know. Write down their translation in the table and calculate the percentage of your lexical competence.

 

	local government			overcrowding
	to deal with			to keep pace
	slum-clearance			to hire
	run-down housing			treelined
	residential area			extremely costly
	protective wall			to achieve a goal
	to solve a problem			recreation area
	to beautify			to restrict

City planning is the process of preparing programs to guide the development of cities and towns. City planners – the people who direct the process – advise local governments on ways to improve communities. They also advise governments and real estate developers who are planning entirely new neighborhoods and communities. City planners try to predict the future. They attempt to forecast such developments as large changes in population and industrial activity.

City planners deal chiefly with the physical layout of communities. They make proposals designed to beautify communities and to make life in them comfortable, enjoyable, and profitable. Their proposals include slum-clearance programs, projects to replace run-down housing, recreation areas, shopping centers, and plans to improve transportation and parking facilities.

A city planner’s day-to-day work chiefly involves improvements in parts of a community. But a planner views a community as a single system in which all the parts are dependent on one another. A planner may create a master plan and use it as the basis for all the work. The city planner’s suggestions for changes in any part of a community must follow the master plan. For example, the plan might restrict the height of buildings in residential areas.