A post on Gizmodo traces the long and evolving history of defensive fortifications and how they influenced how cities were built and how people lived.
Dave Munson provides a history of how defensive fortifications shaped cities. Starting with early settlements built on hills in Syria, the discussion shifts to citadels, like in Iraq and other places, to outer walls, like those in many cities in Germany.
Eventually the discussion focuses on star-shaped fortifications, meant to deflect cannon fire, such as Fort Pitt in Pittsburgh and Fort Hill in Baltimore. According to Munson, there was one age of warfare in particular that reversed the millennia long trends of cities providing protection from the violence of war: " The nuclear era was the first time that the incentive for defense actually pushed people out of cities. When you have a single weapon that can kill hundreds of thousands in an instant and level an entire city, urban areas start to look less like refuges and more like targets."
FULL STORY: How Defense Has Shaped Our Cities
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A new global platform will help the world identify and encourage opportunities for more proximity in the built environment—development patterns that can help reduce sources of greenhouse gas emissions and other forms of pollution if built well.
Bossier City - Parish MPC
Wichita-Sedgwick County Metropolitan Area Planning Department
City of Bangor
HUD's Office of Policy Development and Research
Chaddick Institute at DePaul University
HUD's Office of Policy Development and Research
Montrose County
Wichita-Sedgwick County Metropolitan Area Planning Department
City of Lomita
Urban Design for Planners 1: Software Tools
This six-course series explores essential urban design concepts using open source software and equips planners with the tools they need to participate fully in the urban design process.
Planning for Universal Design
Learn the tools for implementing Universal Design in planning regulations.
