Over 100 years ago, Ebenezar Howard wrote Garden Cities of To-morrow (1898). This visionary work was Howard's response to the ills of overcrowding in the large cities, fueled by the Industrial Revolution.

The physical, environmental and social conditions of industrial cities in those days were best described in Frederick Engels' The Conditions of the Working Class in England (1845). The conditions described by Engels gave rise to planning ideas developed by Howard and noted landscape designer Frederick Law Olmsted and later, architects Frank Lloyd Wright and LeCorbusier.

The common thread running through all the plans of these early visionaries was a "set of solutions." These solutions were planning principles that responded to the problems evident in the Industrial Revolution City; overcrowding, foul air, lack of open space, absence of nature and archaic sewer and water systems.

Today, 100 years later, we have a different set of problems. In the Central Valley, a bathtub-like valley in the middle of California, population is increasing rapidly, projected to grow from 4 million to 10-14 million by the year 2040. As the bathtub has filled, physical, environmental and social challenges have surfaced, including urbanization of farmland, lack of affordable housing, declining air quality and weakened fiscal conditions, to name a few.

Local government has not responded well to these challenges spawned by population growth, even when confronted with the fact that this experiment of unbridled population growth has already been conducted in the San Fernando and Santa Clara Valleys in the 1950s and 60s.

This entry offers a planning solution to the problems that will come with "the next ten million". This solution, called "Ten Planning Principles for the Next 10 Million", is generally intended to serve as a policy foundation for a city's general plan; however, they can also be used to guide the design of a specific development plan.