Planned cities are settlements that are carefully planned from their inception. They are typically constructed on previously more or less undeveloped land.
Old towns are urban districts from before the 19th century. Some of them are planned from the beginning; others have grown organically from village size.
Destinations
[edit]
Map of Planned cities
Africa
[edit]Asia
[edit]- 3 Astana
- 4 Islamabad
- 5 Nara — the capital of the first strong centralized Japanese state, with its layout based of that of Chang'an, the capital of China during the contemporaneous Tang Dynasty.
- 6 Kyoto — the second imperial capital of Japan, a status which it retained until after the Meiji Restoration in 1686, with its layout also based on that of Chang'an.
- 7 Naypyidaw
- 8 Priene & Miletus
— ruins of two ancient Greek cities close to each other on Turkey's western coast, both early planned communities. Priene featured one of the earliest grids, remarkably on a steep mountainside. Miletus was also renowned for its grid, and was the hometown of Hippodamus, considered to be the father of urban planning – "Hippodamian plan" is another term for a grid plan. - 9 Putrajaya
- 10 Quezon City
- 11 Sri Jayawardenapura Kotte
India
[edit]Europe
[edit]- 19 Gdynia — planned port city built from scratch in interwar Poland, full of modernist buildings from the era.
- 20 Gothenburg — as the Danish Empire held much of Scandinavia's western coast, Sweden's only Atlantic port up to the 17th century was at the Göta river. The old city was commissioned by King Gustavus II Adolphus. Since the 19th century, Gothenburg has been Sweden's main industrial city.
- 21 Helsinki — planned port city founded in the 16th century by King Gustav Vasa with the aim of competing with Tallinn as a trading city. It wasn't successful at that time, but in the 19th century it was revived in a nearby location, now planned as the capital of Finland by order of Tsar Alexander I. It took half a century for it to surpass the former capital Turku in population, but the street layout in the centre and buildings in some central areas follow the original plan, designed to resemble that of the Imperial Russian capital Saint Petersburg.
- 22 Paris — while the city has a long history as unplanned settlement, modern Paris is result of complete demolition of former cramped medieval neighbourhoods and significant reconstruction of entire city to a modern standard in mid-19th century, also known as Hausmann's renovation.
- 23 Pompeii — the ancient Roman city, is like various other Roman cities in having a grid throughout most of its area.
- 24 Saint Petersburg — new capital of Russia founded in early 18th century by Peter the Great on land newly conquered from Sweden as a 'window on Europe' with lots of huge French-influenced neoclassical buildings and wide boulevards meant to impress Western guests
- 25 Wolfsburg — factory town and headquarters of car manufacturer Volkswagen. After World War II, it produced the famous Volkswagen Beetle.
- 26 Yerevan — Armenia's capital as it exists today is widely regarded as one of the best surviving examples of an early Soviet planned city, having been laid out on a plan by the architect Alexander Tamanian in 1924.
- 27 Milton Keynes — a mid to late 20th century planned community, although it incorporates the existing centres of Bletchley and Wolverton.
- 28 Letchworth Garden City, 29 Welwyn Garden City — 20th century examples of the Garden city approach to urban planning.
North America
[edit]- 30 Cancun — Cancun did not exist in 1970 when the federal tourism ministry (FONATUR) began exploring the idea of creating a tourism utopia of Caribbean beaches lined with modern hotels. The city was designed with tourism infrastructure concentrated on a strip of barrier beach supported by a city for locals designed around the concept of supermanzanas built up of manzanas. Supermanzanas are essentially self-contained neighborhood units while manzanas are essentially what blocks are in other cities.
- 31 Celebration — Built next to Walt Disney World and originally developed by the Walt Disney Company as a planned community, with shared amenities that are for the exclusive use of the town's residents. The downtown area is known for its pastel-colored low-rise buildings in a beautiful setting by the lakefront.
- 32 Manhattan — The City of New York, which then consisted of Manhattan only, introduced a street grid plan in 1811 for streets from 14th to the Washington Heights neighborhood uptown. The grid starts with 1st Street just north of Houston Street, but only on the East Side; the West Village does not have a grid, so it is only starting at 14th Street that there is a consistent grid across the entire island, with a few notable exceptions such as the preexisting course of Broadway. Manhattan's grid is certainly not the first, but it was nevertheless an important achievement that set the stage for the next two centuries of orderly development and navigation through the city's streets.
- 33 Ottawa — Originally a small lumbering town before Queen Victoria chose it to be the capital of Canada (in order to sidestep the rivalry between Toronto and Montreal and ensure a stronger defense against possible U.S. attack), the city shows many European influences. The Parliament buildings resemble Britain's and, though it is no longer obvious, Elgin Street was originally a broad avenue patterned after the Champs Elysee in Paris.
- 34 Washington, D.C. — The purpose-built capital of the United States, initially laid out on a diamond-shaped plan on both banks of the Potomac River, on land that was ceded by the states of Maryland and Virginia. The portion on the west bank of the Potomac River was returned to Virginia in 1847, but it is still effectively part of the D.C. metropolitan area, and home to The Pentagon and Arlington National Cemetery.
Oceania
[edit]- 35 Adelaide — Built on a plan by Colonel William Light, the capital of South Australia is known for its orderly grid system in the city centre and North Adelaide, and the surrounding parklands that separate them from each other and from the other suburbs.
- 36 Canberra — The purpose-built national capital of Australia, with its layout designed by the American husband-and-wife pair of Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin.
- 37 Griffith and 38 Leeton are two small regional cities in the Riverina region of New South Wales also planned by Burley Griffin.