I. INTRODUCTION
The American landscape is in a constant state of
flux. The patterns and rates of growth of land development often
seem to have a life of their own. As growth occurs in an area, physical
land development frequently seems to spring up overnight. Each project
or facility is constructed in accordance with applicable local regulations.
Since this new development probably occurs in a piecemeal fashion, often
on relatively small areas, it is usually considered to be of little significance
in and of itself. However, the composite impact of several of these
facilities upon the surrounding environment may be quite significant.
The development of land for any use involves a range of issues from environmental
concerns, to the compatibility of uses, to infrastructure coordination,
to detailed consideration for size, character and materials for construction
of facilities. It is safe to say that sensible future growth and
development mandates that we approach site planning and design of the land
for that growth with an eye on all of these issues. This text will
address this entire spectrum with a particular focus on the physical planning
and design considerations.
The material is organized into three major sections. We will
first look at general land use issues. This discussion will center
around two questions: a) How do we tend to organize different human
activities? ; and then b) How do we regulate or control these activities
from the standpoint of physical planning and design concerns? This
second question will be answered by means of an overview of traditional
legal mechanisms and procedures.
The major thrust of this material is focussed on
site planning and design. By this we are referring to specific site-
or project-level issues. However, these must be put into a larger
regional context to make more specific decisions. We will look at
the traditional planning and design process, including research and analysis,
design development, and implementation. The presentation of this
process will be supplemented with illustrations to clearly demonstrate
the considerations and interrelationships that are required to bring a
physical land use development from concept to reality.
The text will conclude with a component entitled,
“Environmental Implications,” in which we will look at some of the environmental
issues that are basically unresolved or unsatisfactorily handled by this
“traditional” process. In other words this will include a discussion
of some of the symptoms and some of the current planning approaches that
are being explored as solutions. We will look at these from the larger
planning level as well as specific site design recommendations.
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