Site planning in landscape architecture and architecture refers to the organizational stage of the landscape design process. It involves the organization of land use zoning, access, circulation, privacy, security, shelter, land drainage, and other factors. This is done by arranging the compositional elements of landform, planting, water, buildings and paving in site plans. Site planning is the design and process of planning for a new development project. Within Community Development, this stage of site planning is the organizing phase where city planners create a tactical/detailed plan of new developments. These site plans are the exact details city planners need to give their proposal to the community. This is the proposal to the community to get development plans approved of. Through site analysis and precise dimensions taken by development engineers, community members are given an exact image of what developers want to do.
Factors
Site planning generally begins by assessing a potential site for development through site analysis. Information about slope, soils, hydrology, vegetation, parcel ownership, orientation, etc. are assessed and mapped. By determining areas that are poor for development and better for development, the planner or architect can assess optimal location and design a structure that works within this space. Within site analysis you also need to take into consideration the structure of zoning throughout a city. These are regulations that have been structured to separate the land of what can be used as residential and industrial. This allows a city to not be over powered by one type of land distinction. When creating a development project plan city planners take into consideration and look at other buildings site plans to see what characteristics it has that helped get their building or renovation approved. City planners must look at different aspects that may affect the citizens around them because they are the ones living next to this. City planners must take into consideration height of a building, walking space, parking for cars/bikes and does it stand out from the cities other building types, design wise. These are all things that have to be considered because citizens are not going to want buildings blocking certain views/sunlight, customers/ new residents taking up parking current residents parking and having a building style that looks out of place and like it doesn't belong because city planners wanted a new/modern style building. Within the it plan there also is details about where everything currently is, not only buildings but water, sewer and power lines. These are necessities that need to be kept safe and taken into consideration when developing a new development project. Within creating new development plans there are regulations that all buildings have to follow that are created by the city. These are regulations to help keep new development projects going out of control and keeping our city contained and not expanding at alarming rates that we cannot control.
History
Site Planning was created by city planners to develop a clear plan/ design of what the city planners want for our community. To start off, community members would make claims of buildings that need renovations and improvements to their community. Then the community developers want to come up with a way to satisfy their community members and this is done by creating a site plan. Planners have discovered that they have to be smart about with there designs because they have to remember they have a certain budget. All these actions of creating this design is called site planning.
