Early Urban Planning: 1870-1940

This nine volume set is a carefully balanced selection of writings representing some of the most important currents in the thought of city and regional planning, from both sides of the Atlantic, during the period 1870-1940 when urban planning emerged as a serious disciplinary field.

The set consists of eight key books from this period, handsomely illustrated and reproduced in their entirety, and a separate volume of fifteen short seminal selections - all by major figures of the time.

Abercrombie, Adams, Bauer, Geddes, Howard, Mumford, the Olmsteds, Perry and Unwin are all represented, and Soria y Mata's writings on the linear city appear in translation for the first time.

These authors were considered to be the most influential and respected leaders in the rise of the urban planning field, and their works reprinted here define the theory and practice of city and regional planning during this momentous period.

In addition to seminal works on city planning, the set covers themes such as neighbourhood, Utopian and visionary planning; planning for parks; housing; transportation systems and public health. It provides exemplary writings from the 'city beautiful', 'city scientific', 'garden city', 'linear city', 'municipal art' and other movements.

A wide variety of cities feature in the presentation of these multiple aspects of urban and regional planning, including Paris, Vienna, Amsterdam, Berlin, London, Manchester, New York and San Francisco.

This gives the set a broader perspective, highlighting the differences in approaches to early urban development brought about by a diversity of cultural styles.

Early Urban Planning 1870-1940 is of continued importance today, as it recognizes the need for the marriage of efficiency and good planning processes with health, beauty, open space and harmony with the natural environment - ideals which remain strikingly relevant in development of the twentieth and twenty first centuries.

The set is brought into a modern context with new introductions by Richard LeGates and Frederic Stout, authors of City Reader , and completed with an extensive bibliography of about 100 carefully selected entries.