Controlling Peripheral Development: Some International Perspectives

If we are to look for 'failures' in the urban planning system, many can be found on the peripheries of the great industrial cities of Europe. This is curious. Many factors and many influences were brought to bear on the emerging planning systems of the various European countries. But one element was crucial, how to handle the pressures for growth? The key planning theorists who addressed themselves to this problem included Ebenezer Howard, who wanted to transplant metropolitan growth into satellite new towns; Ildefonso Cerda, who concluded that uniform peripheral growth, based on polynucleated neighbourhoods, was the way forward; and Le Corbusier, who wanted growth to take place upwards. Yet despite these and other theories, urban growth has generally been accommodated by peripheral expansion with the minimum of planning input. What went wrong? The aim of this paper is to begin to answer this question with reference to three European cities, Glasgow in Britain, Barcelona in Spain, and Ljubljana in Yugoslavia