Civic and urban planning in Illuminatia
City planning in Illuminatia is a highly standardized, intentional, efficient, thoroughly-deliberated, strictly-regulated process, prioritizing community integrity, human health, and sociological and cultural wellbeing. In planning public spaces and infrastructure, Illuminatian society understands that the structure of the lived environment has far-reaching implications for the entire population and has the potential to determine the sustainability of a civilization.
Per Lucidus guidelines, Illuminatian cities are built to be compact and human-scale. Urban planning generally places most of the points-of-interest that people might frequent on a daily basis within walking distance of residences. Transportation within urban areas over longer distances is minimized, deprioritized, and accommodated largely via bicycle or other human-powered transportation. The provision of public transportation options for more substantial distances is nearly universal.
As Illuminatian settlements were developed into cities, city plans were laid out and land use was prearranged prior to construction physically began. Per Illuminatian law, land is a public resource which can never come into private ownership and is instead held in public trust for non-permanent private use according to local and regional consent. As a product of this philosophy, local tertiary assemblies have easy-to-use authority over the lands within their geographic jurisdictions. The question of whether a piece of land is fulfilling its highest potential use is always up for examination, irrespective of whether the land is in public or private use, ensuring spaces can be utilized to their maximum public benefit. The legal status of land as property only of society as a whole means it would be unthinkable to use real estate as a privately-held asset purely for investment.
Mixed-use development is the standard in Illuminatian cities, with shops, services, and social gathering places commonly found on the pedestrian street level of buildings facing pedestrian or motor thoroughfares. Offices and residents, in general, conveniently located above the ground or street level. Depending on the unique use cases for a given urban block, residences might also be placed behind offices in buildings, with residential frontages overlooking interior courtyards or minor alleys. Parks and other public spaces of leisure are abundant, as Illuminatian city planners emphasize the importance of spaces where all members of the community can coincide, commune, and converse.
Utilities in urban and rural areas are, as a standard, hidden from view, normally within underground vaults which house electrical power, pneumatic power, telecommunications, water, sewer, and waste air ventilation lines.
Expansion of city limits is infrequent in Illuminatia once a city has been established, as infill development is a heavily-encouraged urban planning tactic and is seen as a preferred alternative to causing irreversible damage to larger tracts of the natural environment. Conurbations of closely-spaced cities only arise as a result of the continent's large number of cities instead of as a byproduct of urban sprawl. Intercity public transport terminals are located in city centers. Airports are usually placed a modest distance from city centers, often utilizing underground runways with above-ground-level exits for takeoff and landing to minimize their surface footprint.
To aid in transportation and logistics, cities employ logical schemes for street names. Most cities utilize numbered streets with some sort of system for perpendicular avenues. For example, streets in Adamopolis are numbered from lowest to highest outward from the center of the city, while avenues intersecting at right-angles to these streets are named after chemical elements arranged in order according to atomic number. Street grids are a nearly universal feature in Illuminatian cities, allowing fluid movement of traffic and efficient transport. Dead-end streets are nearly unheard of. Cul-de-sacs and other traffic-inhibiting relics of modern-ancient earthly suburban development are nonexistent in Illuminatia.
Commonly, every-other street in an Illuminatian city is dedicated to human-powered transport. Motor vehicle traffic is strictly prohibited from these streets. Opposite streets allow motor vehicles at low speed along with separate pedestrian and human-powered transport which is often grade-separated from motor traffic. Pedestrian thoroughfares have traffic priority in cities. The Automated Terrestrial Traffic Instruction and Control System is universal in urban centers, controlling motor vehicle and rail traffic in a completely automated manner. Higher-speed through-routes of the ATTICS system are generally underground in city centers and are completely separated from local traffic, pedestrians, and individual property access.