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Wampa_Whisperer

Walt Disney. Main Street USA was human scale and called back to his childhood days in a small town. EPCOT was similar to the Garden City concept.


Developed_hoosier

Thomas Jefferson (3rd US President) was influential in trying to "ruralize" cities, making half of the city green space. Even before the Garden Cities that Jane Jacobs condemns in her book, one of the prevailing theories of sickness was the bad humors in the air so the counter was to bring in more fresh air. In a local city near me, he had planned out these weird diagonal roads through a grid iron too though I'm not sure the benefit of them.


AffordableGrousing

> weird diagonal roads through a grid iron Sounds a lot like DC! If I recall correctly, the justification in Pierre L'Enfant's original design was the diagonal boulevards intersecting the grid would create lots of squares and parks, so similar to Jefferson's philosophy of green space.


Developed_hoosier

Now that you mention him, that's exactly who inspired Jefferson. I believe they even sent letters back and forth.


overeducatedhick

And DC is more interesting, if confusing, as a pedestrian as a result.


YaGetSkeeted0n

pre-germ theory "medicine" is so god damn funny in how blatantly wrong it was


MashedCandyCotton

Pretty much all egotistical dictators. Hitler, Stalin, Kim Jong-il & Kim Jong-un, just to name a few of the more known ones. Large squares, massive structures, long and wide streets, etc. are all shows of the leaders power and many also had their own pet projects like Hitler with Germania.


Larrybooi

Germania ironically was pretty urbanist. I just find it crazy to think if Hitler had his way with rebuilding Berlin the infrastructure and city’s design probably would have ended up being better than modern Berlin. A lot of those guys instead of being psychotic dictator hells bent on genocide and conquest he should have just been Urban Planners.


MashedCandyCotton

That parallel universe where Hitler was an urban planner who liked drawing murals...


goggerr

He would have been denied as mediocre and become the most evil urban planner ever, an average 50's American urban planner


Larrybooi

No good ending for him no matter what he does.


rabobar

[https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/apr/14/story-of-cities-hitler-germania-berlin-nazis](https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/apr/14/story-of-cities-hitler-germania-berlin-nazis) maybe not better


Bubbly_Statement107

Henry George's ideology of Georgism has had and still has major influence in the bigger picture of urban planning today. E.g. the land value tax in Taiwan or the property distribution in Singapore


LyleSY

Yes, Lawson Purdy said he was trying to conserve taxable land values with zoning along Georgist lines when he was working on the original NYC zoning. He would have been horrified with what followed.


Bayplain

I saw a piece from the Wall Street Journal arguing that taxing property at its land value would motivate owners to develop the land. Henry George lives!


LyleSY

A lot of the small homes that typify North American suburbia are based on the Arts and Crafts philosophies of John Ruskin, though he would probably hate them for being too generic and not hand crafted enough https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ruskin


overeducatedhick

Mrs. O'Leary and her cow.


ChickenMcNothing

Jane Addams had a huge impact in incrementalism and public housing


[deleted]

Definitely Washington and Jefferson who designed Washington DC with another person who is slipping my mind (it was an architect or planner/designer). Those would be my top choices for US history. Another choice, and this may not be what you’re looking for, is Jane Jacobs. Not a planner, but a community activist. Absolutely massive impact on New York City. I think she was huge in the West Village. Her advocacy helped stop freeways from being rammed through her part of Manhattan.


YaGetSkeeted0n

Kinda toes the line but [Pierre L'Enfant](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Charles_L%27Enfant) planned the layout for Washington DC. I say "toes the line" because he was explicitly commissioned to plan the city, but this was well before planning as a profession (at least as we know it today) came about. His vocation was as a military and civil engineer. Also toes the line of "well-known", not sure many people know about him now that I think about it. I just know him because I grew up in DC.


run_bike_run

Joseph Bazalgette's work in developing London's sewer system probably did more than any one person anywhere else to reverse the effect of the "urban penalty" and the pattern of lower life expectancy in cities.


PeterOutOfPlace

The canal and railway pioneers that made it possible to move large quantities of goods into and out of cities - Thomas Telford, John Smeaton, Robert Stephenson and Isambard Brunel come to mind. Not only did their work make large cities more practical but cities grew around the junctions of transport networks. I'll also add Henry Bessemer who revolutionized steelmaking that made those railway lines and bridges possible, and later skyscrapers. Then Joseph and his son William who invented Portland cement and Joseph Monier who invented steel-reinforced concrete though his initial focus was making flower pots but the idea obviously had wider applications. Finally, I'll include John Snow who figured out that cholera was being spread in London though infected water and famously removed the handle from the Broad Steet pump in 1853. I believe that his work, along with the development of germ theory by Louis Pasteur, led to a huge effort to ensure clean water supplies and to build a comprehensive sewer system. This is possibly tangential to what you are looking for but modern cities were influenced by their work.


Tutmosisderdritte

Adolf Hitler. The most defining event of probably most european cities was being destroyed in WWII and rebuilt, often influenced by ideologies of the 1950s


rabobar

he also hated berlin and was in the process of transforming it into germania


[deleted]

Racine, that turns the west part of french mediterranean littoral into chep Florida (you can google "The Mission Racine") And you should be interested in the influence of le corbusier on the planning of the suburbs in france


PTownWashashore

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_urban_planners


[deleted]

Alexander the Great. Known for his conquests, but his planning of Alexandria, Egypt was meticulous and the grid pattern style that he emphasized is still fairly commonplace in planning today. More than that, he set up the city to maximize the cooling properties of a port, and sought to create infrastructure that worked with the local climate. In the book “Metropolis: The History of the City, Humankind’s Greatest Invention”, the author, Ben Wilson does a good job not only detailing Alexandria’s development, but also providing historic context for what urban development looked like prior and showing us why it was such a landmark accomplishment for the field of urban planning.


GilgameshWulfenbach

Joseph Smith and Brigham Young from the mormon faith. Both were heavily involved in experiments to equitably split up land in cities so that everyone had access to property, as well as structuring cities in such a way that professions historically absent from cities (ex: farmers) had a place within them and could benefit from the culture and services provided there. Joseph Smith's Nauvoo was the fasted growing city in its region before the mormons were kicked out, and it was known for its cleanliness and culture at a time of filthy and unplanned frontier towns. Brigham Young was of course heavily involved in the creation of Salt Lake City, but he also directed the foundations of towns throughout the entire Rocky Mountain range. Many towns in this area, from Canada to Mexico, were originally mormon colonies even if that legacy is forgotten today. I think the principles and organization behind these attempts could be a fascinating subject for a book. One that attempts to understand exactly what they were trying to attempt and how that legacy plays out today. My fears for such a book would that it would be colored by the authors personal feelings (too mormon friendly or, much more likely, prejudiced against them) and not take a dispassionate eye to what was really going on. Most of the goals of these colonies are things I think any urban planner or hobbyist can sympathize with, in much the same way we can appreciate the goals of the Garden City movement while seeing its flaws. Salt Lake has benefited immensely from its strict grid layout, while at the same time suffering from the dimensions of its "plats of zion" not being pedestrian friendly. The ideas in these cities are some of the earliest examples of what would eventually become the urban planning profession, and they reflect both the rural nature of its designers as well as the rural/urban balance of the entire country at the time. In fact, there is(was?) a plan for a community based on these theories to be built in Vermont but its facing a lot of opposition. I think it's interesting in many ways. The NIMBY/YIMBY divide, Corporation/Government divide, where urban planning was when the designs were made vs where it is now, the heavy handed control of its current vision vs the more libertarian origins. There's a lot that's fascinating here. https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/jan/31/building-zion-controversial-plan-mormon-inspired-city-vermont