"Incremental Planning The Value of Incremental Development in City Growth and Clarification of the Organic"

Abstract

We often find ourselves wandering through the older parts of cities and understand that these places are generally walkable, diverse, and varied. We experience these observations directly as we engage with our physical surroundings. These wanderings seem to generally elicit the same question; “Why can’t we make places like this today?”. This is not a question of historic character, authenticity, preservation, or materiality. It is, rather, a question of the process of subdivision and the actions through which these cities have been developed. The one consistent characteristic, common to all these areas, is that they were developed incrementally, over time, evolving with each addition in the absence of a strong, centralized projection of use distribution. Varied uses emerged in seemingly haphazard patterns. The incremental development process is possible in both highly planned as well as more loosely planned cities. Manhattan is simultaneously one of the most rigidly planned cities as well as one of the clearest examples of incremental development over the past two hundred years. Paris is another example of a city borne of incremental development; however, it grew without a clear, centralized plan. Instead, it developed on the margins, with many smaller, individual decisions about its form and growth, with the basic unit of development the individual, parcel of subdivision. Manhattan is compositionally orthogonal, and Paris is compositionally organic. However, both are operationally organic, meaning the individual projects were developed in the absence a rigid, use-based system that projected zones and parcels of particular uses. It is possible to build cities that are walkable, diverse, and varied, and further, that are adaptable and sustainable, but only if we understand the fundamental structure that led to the outcomes of cities that emerged in pre-regulatory periods and those planned and developed in the post-regulatory, zoning and land-use prioritized, era; the era in which we find ourselves currently.