Urban planning is considered to be an important arm of urban development. Planning is an important aspect of development. Generally speaking, a plan is a scheme, a design or a framework of programmes of action, strategies and activities.
> Urban planning is the study of the built environment of a city, town, or other urban areas and is closely related to environmental studies, conservation, and land use planning.
> Urban planning is a technical and political process concerned with the control of the use of land and design of urban environment, including transportation, networks, to guide and ensure the orderly development of settlements and communities.
> Urban planning is a complex and dynamic process to synthesize the diverse activities, perspectives, aspirations and resources into a composite whole.
> Urban planning is one of the important public policies that government regulates. It involves the spatial resources, instructs the development of a city and the countryside and construction. It is concerned with maintaining social justice, safeguards public security, and public benefits.
Need and Importance of Urban Planning:
It is believed that planning in general makes economic and social development easier by providing scope for explicit collection, analysis and interpretation of data and developing alternative policies that can systematically resolve competing demands and conflicts. As urban development is an emerging area and new areas are added to urban areas gradually, therefore urban planning is a key to urban development. It helps to accomplish the task as how to meet the needs of residents for food, fiber, and other natural resources. It also anticipates the need for places of residence, recreation, industry, trade, service, and other uses of land. It facilitates the provision of a system of transportation, sewage disposal, water supply, recreation, education, health, etc.
Urban planning enables a government to optimally utilize land and to create a smart and compact city, together with a new paradigm of land use and flexibility. It helps to ensure that the various establishments in urban areas are situated in appropriate localities. This avoids overcrowding and lessens congestion in a transportation system and other public facilities.
Urban planning enables a planner to judiciously utilize the scarce financial resources in various activities of urban development such as poverty eradication, employment generation, water conservation, energy, transportation, environment and population control, etc.
Urban planning helps to integrate the sect oral approach to planning. In urban development, different experts are engaged in different sectors such as housing, sewage, transport, land management, etc. In general, all these professionals are competent not only to manage their own sector but also to establish co-ordination with the other sectors. Good inter and intra sect oral management is sine-quanon for urban development. This is possible only with the help of systematic urban planning.
Components of Urban Planning:
