Italo-American City and Regional Planning and Housing Seminar
Ischia, 1955

 
 

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Philadelphia’s Planning Program
Edmund N. Bacon, Executive Director, Philadelphia City Planning Commission

The technical side of Philadelphia’s planning program springs from the economic necessities. The human relations side is deeply imbedded in our democratic traditions of local government. Much of the motivation for the technical planning derives from an acute awareness of the dynamic situation in which cities are competing with each other for economic advantage. Elements of this competition include costs of production, taxes, adequacy of public services, such as water, highway and port facilities, and general residential attractiveness of the city. Much of our way of doing planning and of our efforts to put it into action are influenced by our belief that the efficiency and order which the planner desires is less important than the preservation of basic individual democratic liberties and, where the two are in conflict, the demands of the democratic process must always prevail.

Beginnings of the Philadelphia Planning Commission.
The first efforts for a revitalized planning program in Philadelphia came, not from the government, but from a small group of young citizens. Various committees were formed and a continually widening circle of existing civic organizations became interested in the proposal. Finally, a group of about 60 organizations petitioned the City Council to establish a planning program. The strength of the testimony of the public hearing, not so much the product of the influence of any of the individuals who spoke, as of the remarkable combination of representatives of a truly wide cross-section of the community, resulted in the adoption of the planning ordinance and the appointment in 1942 of the nine-man Planning Commission. From the first moment that the Commission sat in formal session it was aware of the fact that it occupied its place because of the work, over many months, of citizens’ groups. Its first act was to pledge cooperation with the formal Citizens’ Council on City Planning which was created by the community organizations which had worked on the ordinance. This pledge has been maintained through the twelve years of its operations. In the meantime, the Citizens’ Council has grown to have almost 200 civic organization members. Its budget of $ 40,000 a year, derived mainly by contributions from the business community, and its staff of six persons, enables it to issue bulletins and hold large public meetings in various parts of the City to interpret the Commission’s program to the public, and to serve on Advisory Committees and issue technical bulletins directed toward influencing official planning policy. It is the interaction of the official body and the independent citizens’ group, supporting or criticizing the official body according to the various issues involved, which had given much of the strength to Philadelphia’s planning program.

Development of Planning Under the Home Rule Charter.
Ten years after creation of the City Planning Commission as a purely advisory body without powers, the voters of Philadelphia adopted a new Home Rule Charter. Under this Charter, the Commission was established as an integral part of the municipal government directly advisory to the Mayor in the formulation of basic municipal policy. The Commission consisted of six citizen members, appointed by the Mayor, and three members of the four-man Mayor’s Cabinet including, importantly, the Director of Finance. This results in integration between long-range planning recommendations and policy discussions at the administrative level. Important new powers were given to the Planning Commission, including that of formulating every year a program for all public expenditures for capital improvements over the six following years. The first year becomes the Capital Budget, the document actually appropriating funds for the projects. This is forwarded to the Council by the Mayor and, following public hearings, is adopted by the Council as official governmental policy with such modifications as it may desire. This planned scheduling of the financing of projects is of critical importance in giving the dimension of reality to the planning concepts and in assuring that the energies and resources of the community are directed toward planned objectives (1).

Economic Competition and the Highway System.
American cities have prospered or declined according to the character of the transportation system which serve them. New York City seized the supremacy from Philadelphia (by far the principal city of Eighteenth Century America) early in the last century by the development of the Erie Canal, providing cheap water transportation through the Great Lakes chain to the markets of the mid-west. The mode of transportation has changed in the intervening years and today, increasingly, trucking over the major highways is playing a major role in economic activity. With the development of the Pennsylvania Turnpike across the State of Pennsylvania to the Ohio border and its extension through Ohio, eventually, undoubtedly to Chicago, and the development of the New Jersey Turnpike, soon to be part of an unbroken expressway system from Portland, Maine to Washington, D.C., Philadelphia finds itself at the crossroads of the main east-west and the main north-south highway of the North-eastern part of the United States. The problem then becomes that of providing, by express highway extensions, easy and rapid access to the Port of Philadelphia, its industrial districts and commercial centers, before the convenient by-pass to New York is completed. The expressway system for Philadelphia was developed into mature form in 1950. From detailed traffic studies completed in 1947, the Commission worked out for the entire coordinated system the anticipated traffic volume for the year 1970. This has proved to be of inestimable value in later developments and was very helpful in securing agreement to have a portion of the expressway system built by the Delaware River Port Authority, supported by bridge tolls. The basic form of the expressway system consists of an inner loop around the edges of the business center with four radials extending in northeast, southeast, northwest and southwest directions to connect with the regional system of turnpikes and with an outer circumferential system to tie together the regional hinterland, and to provide a by-pass avoiding center city (2). Some ten miles of the Schuylkill Expressway are under construction in 1955 and a study has just been completed to attempt to determine the economic feasibility of construction of the Delaware Expressway financed by tolls (3). The Planning Commissions of the three adjacent Counties and the Regional Planning Commission covering these three Counties cooperate closely with Philadelphia in the development of the regional aspects of the highway system.

Transportation as a Total Problem.
The center city streets are narrow and congested at present. The studies of the Delaware Expressway showed that, by 1960, even with a six-lane cross-section, the capacity of the highway would be exceeded by the traffic volume in the central section. Although Philadelphia fortunately has an excellent passenger sub-way system, the current trend is lesser use of the subways and increased use of automobiles for the downtown trip, resulting in continually increasing congestion. The Delaware Expressway report suggests the possibility of the use of tolls as the means for controlling the volume on the expressway and of avoiding the reduction or negation of its usefulness by the degree of congestion which reduces the speed to that of ordinary city streets. The thought has further been advanced that the long-run solution may consist of imposing a toll system on the whole express highway network to produce a balanced use of the expressways in proper relation to their capacity, and also to produce revenue which can be applied toward subsidizing the mass transit system, thereby reducing congestion on the highways.

Industrial Land Use Planning.
The basic structure of the comprehensive plan consists of the rail and highway network related to the industrial land use areas. A study of industrial land use needs (4), published in December 1950, indicated that, by 1980, the land devoted to industrial use in Philadelphia should be doubled, taking into account the trend away from multi-story buildings into one-story structures with ample parking space and recreation areas around them. From this study a generalized regional plan for the location of the additional industrial areas was made sufficient in scope to meet anticipated needs. At the same time that this rather stratospheric 1890 study was going on, the Commission was carrying out some very practical plans for giving force to the plan after it was made. Through its Technical Advisory Committee on Zoning, it recommended to the City Council, and the Council adopted, a revision of the Zoning Ordinance prohibiting the building of houses in industrial districts. This made possible, for the first time, the legal reservation of undeveloped lands primarily for industrial use. Following a series of meetings over several months with the community organization in a section of Philadelphia which was largely undeveloped, general agreement was reached on a plan for development of this section of the City which included over a thousand acres for future industrial expansion. This portion of the plan was adopted by City Council and thereby created an industrial land reserve. Currently, the official plan for this section is in process of adoption. The industrial spaces are being expanded to allow for further industrial increase. At the present time, the University of Pennsylvania under contract with the Planning Commission, is preparing a more detailed and focused analysis of industrial development than has hitherto been made. This includes a determination of the type of industry which would particularly benefit by being located in the Philadelphia area, the extent of growth that may be anticipated by industrial types to the year 1960, 1970, and 1980, and the special land and facilities requirements of these industrial types. This will give us a background for a revision of the comprehensive industrial land use plan to provide space with the characteristic needed. Considerable industrial acreage is being obtained by the reclamation of low lying land through the use of the redevelopment power and funds making possible broad-scale application of marine fill. Further establishment of industrial districts in blighted central sections of the City is included in the long-range plans.

Financial Implications of Industrial Planning.
The industrial study and its advisory committee have already pointed out that industry in the old-multi-story loft type buildings is continually seeking large outlying sites where it can construct one-story structures with plenty of room for expansion. Since the City limits of Philadelphia cover only a limited portion of the regional area and since there are only limited areas of open land still available for industry within the City, a serious economic and tax problem may be created. In our area, as in most U.S. cities, the normal type of residential development produces considerably les revenue in local taxes than the amount required for local public services. The difference is made up by income derived from the excess of taxes over service costs in commercial and industrial areas. If the trend of movement to outlying locations results in a substantial reduction in the proportion of industry within the City limits, the City will face serious fiscal problems. Detailed analysis of this problem will be made following the completion of the basic industrial study and will have a strong influence on the basic plan proposals.

Redevelopment of Blighted Areas
Another economic problem of major proportion is the economic and social decline of large inlying older sections of the City. Buildings are deteriorating, houses are being torn down and vacant lots are accumulating. The environmental factors discourage new building. The consequence is a spreading area of deterioration whit a declining population. In the long-run the trend if unchecked must inevitably lead to financial disaster. With the aid of city, state and federal redevelopment funds, the City Planning Commission, the Housing Authority and the Redevelopment Authority are at work on programs for revitalizing these declining areas. At the beginning of the current program we saw our work as more than simply tearing down huge areas, sending the population elsewhere, and rebuilding with new structures. It included strengthening neighborhood structure, removing the worst sore spots, providing necessary community facilities and amenities, and revitalizing neighborhood spirit and morale. Redevelopment plans aim at preserving basic existing population groupings and institutions. This led us to a program of a series of small clearance areas and new building or rehabilitation projects each designed by different architects rather than larger, undifferentiated plans (5). In this approach, a problem quickly arose from the failure of the architects to coordinate the planning of their individual contiguous projects. The effort appeared likely to result in a spotty hodgepodge of development which fell short of the basic concept of urban renewal. A way had to be found to bind together a series of individual projects individually designed into some sort of overall civic unity. The system which we evolved we consider to be a basic contribution to thinking on the urban design problem. In collaboration with the architects who are designing the several areas, and following the development by them of their first preliminary sketches for their individual areas, the design staff of the City Planning Commission prepares an over-all skeletal design structure of open spaces to serve as a backbone for the design system. This is based on an analysis of the organic social and physical structure of the neighborhood and of the basic distribution and significance of its various institutional buildings. The plan for the entire redevelopment area includes a definite system of green walkways, squares and open spaces. Designed in detail by the Commission’s staff, these focus on the several significant local institutions and landmarks. The basic site plans of the individual architects are adjusted to hear a meaningful relationship to this system of organized green open spaces. The consequence is a sense of “depth in time” obtained by the use of the older institutions as focal points in contrast to much newer construction and, also, the production of an urban scale and texture which is not ordinarily achieved when a single designer covers so large an area. Design of this type requires a high degree of technical skill and design ability on the part of the planning agency coordinating the program and, also, of cooperation and forbearance on the part of the individual architects. The total civic design produced is superior to that which would be obtained by the individual efforts of either group alone.

Design of New Communities in Outlying Areas.
The planning of the large remaining open areas provides the City Planning Commission with an opportunity to develop new patterns for community living. The Far Northeast Physical Development Plan, tentatively adopted by the Planning Commission, sets forth such a pattern of community organization (6). The residential areas are separated from each other by the natural stream valleys which remain open, and, where necessary , by planned greenbelts, into units of about 600 to 800 houses each. The through traffic flows around the outside edge of these neighborhoods. Each neighborhood has a core with small local shopping center and a site for a church. The centers of the neighborhoods are connected by a loop system of streets on which are developed bus routes. The bus loop can carry the residents from one center to another and, via the expressways, rapidly to center city. The internal system of each neighborhood consists of a ring street off which are a series of loop streets on which the houses are developed. This means that, by reason of its inherent design, the street system acts as an automatic filter, separating traffic down into finer and finer categories: ultimately the traffic using any street is only that which is destined to an area served directly by it. The clear unity of form of the neighborhood groupings also should result in the development of a definite social life around the community center. In general, approximately four of these neighborhood units are grouped into a school district which is located at the point of juncture of the four neighborhoods. Assuming that each neighborhood has 600 families, the some 2400 families that would be in the school district would produce from 400 to 600 elementary school pupils under prevailing Philadelphia conditions, which approximately meets the standards acceptable to the Philadelphia Board of Education. The schools are located on the greenway system of natural stream-valleys through which pass foot paths and bicycle paths. This means that many of the children will go to school by the greenway system entirely separated from the vehicular street system. Under the control given to it by the Charter, which requires (Section 4-603) Planning Commission approval of all street plans, the City Planning Commission is able to secure coordination of development of the various private property owners to carry out the basic tenets of this plan.

Park and Recreational Development.
Philadelphia is fortunate in having the largest and one of the finest municipal parks in the United States within its boundaries, the Fairmount Park. Several of the other stream valleys have been developed into parks providing a reasonably integrated park system. About thirty new playgrounds were acquired within the last eight years spread throughout the City. Detailed studies are now in progress to attempt to establish new standards for parks and open spaces in the congested central areas. On the assumption that additional funds will be available for redevelopment from federal sources, plans are being advanced for utilizing these funds to establish a system of open space throughout all older sections of the City.

Central City Development.
An important part of the Planning Commission’s work in the attempt to establish in center city a form and scale of architectural design which is a reasonable expression of the dynamic and developing qualities of the region. William Penn’s original simple plan with its five squares provides desirable amenities but is quite lacking in the vigorous scale and monumental character which distinguishes so many European cities. The great parkway development leading to the Art Museum, which was designed by Jacques Greber toward the beginning of this century , provides a splendid civic unit, unfortunately somewhat removed from the heart of central city. The demolition of an elevated railway structure and station in the very core of the downtown area, releasing for new development some 14 acres, provided an opportunity for a new vigor in center city and required us to attempt to think through the problem “What is monumentality under current conditions?”. Even before the removal of the railroad structure was assured, the Planning Commission prepared its suggestion for the new development. This was built around the concept of Penn Center as a front entrance to center city, connecting together and with the downtown area, the two subway systems which cross at this point, the Pennsylvania Railroad underground tracks, a connection with parking facilities related to the expressway system and, at its western end, a bus and airlines terminal. The Commission’s original idea was the creation of a garden mall extending about 1400 feet down the center of a four-block area one level below the street and opening onto the subways and the lower level railroad waiting room. This garden space was to be straddled by three tall office buildings and lined by shops with normal street frontage on one side and two-story glass fronts opening onto the lower level garden esplanade with its fountains and trees open to the sky. This kind of system of interrelationships between the transportation systems was based on a planner’s understanding of the broad functional side of city development and given an architect’s three-dimensional expression. As often happens in such projects, the actual execution is quite different from the original conception, but the force of the idea contained in the Planning Commission’s original proposal is clearly evident in the extent to which it has survived in the work which is now being carried out. This is particularly noteworthy because the Commission actually had no legal powers at all to enforce its architectural ideas. To the extent that they are incorporated in the current development, it is simply because the developer voluntarily chose to use them. It was finally decided not to retain the garden for the full length of the four blocks but rather to develop a continuous lower-level esplanade under roof. However, a series of four or five garden spaces are definitely provided for, strategically spotted, opening into the lower-level and directly visible from the subway and the railroad station. These will give a character to the entire lower-level section which is quite unique. The structures above the ground are designed to cover only half the space available, the remainder will consist of an esplanade extending the greater part of the length of the project in which there will he trees, fountains and sculpture. It is planned to make this a sort of index of Philadelphia’s museums, with examples from the collections of each. A large parking garage at the western end will be a desirable practical asset.

General Approach to the Planning Process.
The Commission’s technical staff fully recognizes that city planning must be based on detailed economic analysis and on a reasonably complete statistical interpretation of the community’s growth and development. It recognizes that, in the final analysis, the purpose of the greater part of this activity is to produce for the people who live in the city a richer and more enjoyable life. This inevitably involves the design of the environment. The technical staff of the Commission must include experts in the field of economics, sociology , statistics and engineering. It must also include designers of the highest ability and skills. The demand is for designers on a level quite different from that traditionally found in architects’ offices. Here there can be no dependence on the client for the formulation of a program and the design thinking cannot be limited to a small geographical plot. New concepts must be evolved on which the design process is based and new relationships must be conceived. Design must he broad in its geographical scope and capable of natural organic extension. The designer must be capable of seeing and understanding the underlying organic structure of the neighborhood which he is attempting to plan and of the larger area and of the city as a whole. He must be able to produce designs which are elegant and finished in their detail but which cover only the most essential areas and have within them that type of implicit dignity and strength which is capable of binding together into one harmonious urban form the design efforts of the several individual architects who detailed the adjacent areas. Implicit in this conclusion is the idea of the inherent force and persuasion of such design; and a challenge to planning and architectural education to give us such designers.