ancient cities

prosperity, and general welfare, as well as efficiency
and economy in the process of development.
(Section 6)
General plans evolved over time. Initially, they
were seen as means to achieve an urban order in a
democratic society, whereas, after World War II,
plans were perceived more as expressions of control
over growing municipal territories and devices
of technical and scientific planning expertise. In
the late 1960s and early 1970s, the general plan
instrument was greatly criticized for being too
strict and for its inability to adapt expeditiously to
changing circumstances and market forces.
Nowadays, general plans are still very much
in use but allow for more public participation
during the making of the plan and for more flexibility
in terms of their principles and in terms of
the time frames for incorporating revisions.
General plans are useful documents to establish
the means for moving toward the desired longterm
goals and to help guide decision-making
processes.
How They Work
Typically, the general plan represents the fulfillment
of a governmental legal requirement. For
instance, in Arizona, the state statutes characterize
a general plan as a municipal statement of land
development policies, which may include maps,
charts, graphs, and text in the form of objectives,
principles, and standards for local growth and
redevelopment. The most common goals today are
public health and safety, effective circulation, provision
of municipal services and facilities, balanced
fiscal health, economic opportunities, and environmental
conservation.
A general plan goes through five phases: a
research phase, a period to articulate and clarify
goals and objectives, a phase of plan formulation,
an implementation phase, and finally a revision
phase. One of the main challenges of the general
plan approach to municipal development is its
need for both comprehensiveness and relevance in
rapidly growing urban areas.
See also City Planning; Urban Planning
Carlos Balsas
Further Readings
Gentrification
305
Abbott, M. 1985. “The Master Plan: A History of an
Idea.” PhD dissertation, Purdue University, West
Lafayette, IN.
Kelly, E. and B. Becker. 2000. Community Planning: An
Introduction to the Comprehensive Plan. Washington,
DC: Island Press.
Ken, T. 1964. The Urban General Plan. San Francisco:
Chandler.
Ge n t r i f i C a t i o n
In the mid-1960s, as middle-class households
began to purchase and renovate rundown, tenanted
Georgian and Victorian terraces in the
West End of London, the British sociologist
Ruth Glass coined the term gentrification to
describe a process of working-class displacement
that changes the district’s prevailing social
character. Initially, the defining features of gentrification
included an influx of middle-class
households and the renovation of working-class
housing, invariably resulting in the displacement
of tenants from gentrifying neighborhoods.
Eventually, these processes are capable of completely
changing the class composition and dominant
tenure of inner area communities. Hence,
in usage, gentrification has always referred to
both the physical and social transformation of
neighborhoods.
These days, given the large-scale residential
redevelopment that is occurring in inner cities
around the world, it is difficult to justify restricting
the study of gentrification and displacement processes
to what began as essentially home renovation.
Gentrification studies have expanded to
embrace all forms of residential investment and
redevelopment in declining inner area neighborhoods;
and now, although the context is quite different,
in many postindustrial economies affluent
newcomers and second-home owners are driving
up house prices and destabilizing local housing
markets for long-time residents in rural villages
and coastal communities, producing effects akin to
gentrification.
The effects of what is now characterized as
urban revitalization were simply inconceivable to
urban theorists confronted with suburbanization