Principles of Intelligent Urbanism (PIU) is a theory of urban planning composed of a set of ten axioms intended to guide the formulation of city plans and urban designs. They are intended to reconcile and integrate diverse urban planning and management concerns. These axioms include environmental sustainability, heritage conservation, appropriate technology, infrastructure-efficiency, placemaking, social access, transit-oriented development, regional integration, human scale, and institutional integrity. The term was coined by Prof. Christopher Charles Benninger.
The PIU evolved from the city planning guidelines formulated by the International Congress of Modern Architecture (CIAM), the urban design approaches developed at Harvard's pioneering Urban Design Department under the leadership of Josep Lluis Sert, and the concerns enunciated by Team Ten. It is most prominently seen in plans prepared by Christopher Charles Benninger and his numerous colleagues in the Asian context.[1] They form the elements of the planning curriculum at the School of Planning, CEPT University, Ahmedabad, which Benninger founded in 1971. They were the basis for the new capital plan for Thimphu, Bhutan.[2]
- ^ Benninger C. (2001): “Principles of Intelligent Urbanism," in Ekistics, Volume 69, Number 412, pp. 39 –65, Athens.
- ^ Thimphu Structural Plan 2002-2027 Archived 2010-06-23 at the Wayback Machine