Celebrating the idea of planning

Abstract

The Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) should be proud that it was one of the first organizations to introduce the idea that good cities require public planning by qualified professionals. It is not that no one had thought of urban planning before; there are numerous examples, starting with the design of ancient cities in the Middle East and Asia, medieval cities in Europe, the restructuring of Paris by Napoleon, extensive planning of cities by Bismarck in Germany, planned cities in the UK, and even in the USA. When the RTPI was founded in 1914, there was significant accumulated knowledge that “the market” alone did not produce either majestic or well-functioning cities (Hall, 1998). Public interventions were necessary to produce cities that served as spatial nodes for the governing of emerging markets. What differentiated the creation of the RTPI in the early twentieth century was that “town planning” was now to be embedded within a democratic process, rather than being left to the whims of kings and queens. Its goal was not just to serve the needs of the royalty and the bourgeoisie, but the “emancipation of all communities