Surveying and Mapping Requirements for Modern City Planning

The city planning profession is giving increased attention to the improvement of techniques and to the refinement of standards and criteria. Since surveys and accurate maps are the prerequisites of intelligent planning, it follows that, as the process itself is refined and perfected, so must the basic tools be refined. Planners must be alert to exploit new technical developments which will facilitate the preparation of these basic tools. Two major contributions in the field of urban surveying and mapping have been the development and perfection, largely since World War I, of aerial photography and photo grammetry and the development by the American Society of Civil Engineers of universally recommended procedures for the making of engineering surveys of cities.

Although prepared as long ago as 1934, ASCE Manual No. 10 continues as the best available statement on surveying and mapping for modern city planning. The emphasis in this handbook is on the making of city surveys rather than on the specific application of such surveys to problems of city planning. Manual No. 10 might well be supplemented by a baste manual covering the techniques and applications of aerial photography and photogrammetry to the economical and time-saving solutions of many city planning problems. A further supplement might be a definitive statement of surveying and mapping requirements fot modern city planning from the point of view of the city planner who is the user of the survey rather than from that of the civil engineer who makes the survey.