Collection by Aaron Britt
Diagrams that Changed City Planning
From now until February 15, SPUR in San Francisco is holding a rather interesting exhibition on the charts, diagrams, and visualizations that have changed the face of urban planning. From Ebenezer Howard's drawings of a garden city to an alarming graph showing our planet's rising temperature, Grand Reductions: Ten Diagrams That Changed City Planning takes a look at the images that have shaped our urban landscape. Equal parts art, design, and inspiring calls to action, the diagrams on view each offer a vision not just of where our thinking about cities has been, but how we might continue to mold them in the future. To read more, check out Benjamin Grant's fascinating essay on the subject in SPUR's publication the Urbanist.
Here's Grant again: "Like many early planning codes, New York City’s 1916 Zoning Resolution established Euclidean zoning that regulated land use, defining residential, commercial, and industrial zones. But unlike many such laws, it also regulated the 'building envelope,' or the allowable volume that a structure could occupy."