The purpose of this paper is to discuss the ways that the top-down and the bottom-up approaches to planning can be combined in the practice of planning standards. In the first part, the paper examines the utilization of planning standards through time, while in the second part it aims to unravel the relationship between the use of planning standards and the top-down as well as the bottom-up planning approach. In the third part, the paper focuses on the limitations of bottom-up approaches, in order to demonstrate that they can only be used in a certain planning scale, leaving all other scales to top-down approaches. Last but not least, the paper proposes a framework for the use of planning standards in a combined top-down and bottom-up planning approach.
Abstract:The classification of uses is one of the central issues of urban planning, since it is only by referring to groups of uses that we can achieve the simplification and, ultimately, the understanding of urban space. However, contemporary planning theory has shown very little interest in a theoretical approach to this issue. The present paper addresses the issue by integrating it into the development of an analytical theory of urban uses which it calls urbanology. Specifically, the paper starts with the description of the basic concepts and processes of classification, which are then employed to produce a general theoretical classification of urban uses. Since the classification of uses is not only a question of theoretical importance, but directly related to applied planning, the paper concludes with the elaboration of a second, alternative classification which satisfies the needs of contemporary planning practice.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.