Sir
Patrick Geddes Commemorative Lecture
held annually by the Royal
Town Planning Institute in
Patrick Geddes is widely regarded as
the founder of modern town planning. His interest in the natural sciences led
him to a professorship at
The first lecture was held in 2004 to
coincide with the 150th anniversary of Geddes'
birth.
The seventh lecture is presented by Peter
Head OBE FREng FRSA, Director, Arup on Wednesday 21 April 2010 at 17.45 in the Hawthornden Lecture Theatre, National Galleries
of Scotland, The Mound, Edinburgh EH2 2EL (entrance by Princes Street
Gardens), entitled Sustainable Economic Development: towards the emerging
Ecological Age.
All the available Geddes
lecture texts are posted below, latest first –use these links to skip to earlier ones:
2004 Jonathon Porritt: Sustainable Development Past and Present
2005 Raymond Young: Cities in Devolution
2006 Greg Lloyd:
Planning and the public interest in the modern world
2007 Richard Wakeford: Wanted: Visionary planners to apply levers
for a sustainable world
The sixth lecture was presented on
Murdo Macdonald (Professor of the History of
Scottish Art at Geddes’ old University,
Sir Patrick Geddes and the Scottish
Generalist Tradition
at the Royal Society of Edinburgh 22-
with a welcome by John Esslemont, convener
of the RTPI in
introduction by Stewart Stevenson, Minister for Transport, Infrastructure
and Climate Change,
and a vote of thanks by Ben Tindall,
chairman of the Sir Patrick Geddes Memorial Trust,
Sir
Patrick Geddes and the Scottish Generalist Tradition
The
Sir Patrick Geddes Memorial Lecture 2009
Edinburgh Edinburgh
Murdo Macdonald
Professor of History of Scottish Art, University of
What do we know about Patrick Geddes?
He was a pioneering ecologist, an
influential botanist, a highly-original theorist of cities, an advocate of the
importance of the arts to everyday life, a committed community activist, a
publisher, and – of course - a founder of town planning.
He was born in Ballater
in Aberdeenshire on
He had a life of extraordinary vitality,
variety and interest. He was appointed in 1888 as the first Professor of Botany
at
Back in
Geddes’ commitment to national revival was
profoundly international in outlook. As a student, both from a scientific and a
cultural perspective he was drawn to
So: that is a little of what we know about Geddes.
But my opportunity this evening is to deepen
our understanding of Geddes’ diverse achievements by
exploring his thinking from the perspective of the culture of which he was
part. I hope that this deeper analysis of the wellsprings of his thought will
illuminate his relevance, not only with respect to the history of Scottish
thinking in general, but also with respect to the cultural benefits for today’s
Scotland of understanding the powerful intellectual context from which Geddes’ thinking sprang. Thus I want to emphasise not just Geddes’ historical importance but the relevance of his
vision for us here and now. For example: the current state of the global
economy is a reminder that it is not wise to define the needs of the planet as
though money were more important than the realities of the lives to which that
money is meant to relate. Almost a century ago Patrick Geddes
put it this way:
‘Some people have strange ideas that they
live by money. They think energy is generated by the circulation of coins.’
That thought comes from Geddes’
final lecture to his students at University College Dundee in 1918, and the
wider passage contains not just comment on global finance but a profound
statement about planetary ecology. What Geddes says
is this:
‘How many people think twice about a leaf?
Yet the leaf is the chief product and phenomenon of Life: this is a green world,
with animals comparatively few and small, and all dependent upon the leaves. By
leaves we live. Some people have strange ideas that they live by money. They
think energy is generated by the circulation of coins. But the world is mainly
a vast leafcolony, growing on and forming a leafy
soil, not a mere mineral mass: and we live not by the jingling of our coins,
but by the fullness of our harvests.’
What more apposite comment could there be
with respect to the wider sustainable development of the planet? In the end it
is vegetation, not money, which is the issue. In that same lecture Geddes reflects on the interdependence of arts and sciences
and how each should inform the other and it is this interdisciplinary approach
to thinking that I wish to consider this evening, for this is the Scottish
educational tradition of which Geddes was part. For Geddes, the economist required the complementary insight of
the ecologist and such opportunities for mutual illumination applied across all
the arts and the sciences.
This generalist view gives insight into his
approach to planning. For Geddes, planning risks
losing touch with the communities, cities and regions that it sets out to
serve, if it does not take a multiplicity of approaches into account. Listen to
this summary of his philosophy of planning, which he submitted as part of a
1915 report. It was written at the behest of Lord Pentland, not in
‘Town-planning is not mere place-planning, nor
even work-planning. If it is to be successful it must be folk-planning.’
What Geddes meant
by this was that what was needed was a full appreciation of the cultural,
historical and geographical antecedents of a community, and furthermore the
capacity to enable that community to be fully aware of those antecedents.
That’s why his cultural revival was at the heart of his
Geddes continues:
‘This means that [the task of town-planning]
is not to coerce people into new places against their associations, wishes and
interest - as we find bad schemes trying to do. Instead its task is to find the
right places for each sort of people; places where they will really flourish.
To give people in fact the same care that we give when transplanting flowers,
instead of harsh evictions and arbitrary instructions to “move on”, delivered
in the manner of officious amateur policemen.’1
1 Geddes, P., 1915, Report on the Towns in the
The architectural historian Norma Evenson wrote of Geddes that ‘his
common sense approach was ... difficult to fault. He approached his
investigations with receptivity to the local scene, seeking to understand the
nature of the Indian settlement, and making no attempt to impose a foreign
conception of urban environment.’2 This
exemplary approach can be seen in two contrasting images from one of his Indian
reports which show Geddes’ plan for the development
of an area of an Indian town versus the municipal plan. The municipal plan is
based on imposing an alien grid of streets, no doubt related to some utopian masterplan or perhaps just to lack of time or imagination.3 By contrast, Geddes’
plan is sensitive to the local building pattern, and it is centred on the
planting of a tree in the centre of a human-scale, community-oriented space. Geddes knew how much difference a single tree could make.
Back in Edinburgh every unoccupied site was an opportunity for him to develop a
garden.
2 Evenson, N., 1988, The Indian
Metropolis; 114-115. See also M. Fry, 2001, The Scottish Empire; 229-230.
3 Tyrwhitt, J., Geddes in India; 53-56. Excerpted from
the ‘Madura’ material in Geddes,
Report on the Towns in the
But, again, what concerns me this evening is
not so much what Geddes did, but the background to
what he did and how that background helps us to understand him. While Geddes’ influence as a pioneer of town planning has
received considerable attention over the years, the Scottish generalism that drove it, has not.
My aim in this lecture is, therefore, to complement other perspectives on Geddes by giving emphasis to the distinctive Scottish
intellectual tradition of which he was part.
When the Italian architect Giancarlo De Carlo visited
‘Here in
4 Interview with the Italian architect Giancarlo
De Carlo by Peter Wilson, Newsletter No. 1 of the
So what is this generalism?
Geddes put it this way:
‘[a] general and
educational point of view must be brought to bear on every specialism.
The teacher’s outlook should include all viewpoints. …. Hence we must cease to
think merely in terms of separated departments and faculties and must relate
these in the living mind; in the social mind as well – indeed, this above all.’ 5
5 Final lecture by Geddes to his
My own awareness of this generalist current
of thought stems from the teaching of the philosopher and historian of ideas
George Davie, at the
6
Traces of this generalism
remain in
7 For further
consideration see M. Macdonald, ed., Edinburgh Review, Democracy and Curriculum
Issue, No 90, 1993 and M. Macdonald, ‘The significance of the Scottish
generalist tradition’, in J. Crowther, I. Martin
& M. Shaw, eds., 1999, Popular Education and Social Movements in Scotland
Today.
Hugh MacDiarmid, a
generation younger than Patrick Geddes and a
generation older than George Davie, and a friend of both men, wrote of Geddes in The Company I’ve Kept in these terms:
‘his constant
effort was to help people to think for themselves, and to think round the whole
circle, not in scraps and bits. He knew that watertight compartments are useful
only to a sinking ship, and traversed all the boundaries of separate subjects.’8
8 MacDiarmid, H., 1966, The Company I’ve Kept.
As Philip Boardman
put it, Geddes ‘held constantly before both
teachers and students the single goal of reuniting the separate studies of art,
of literature, and of science into a related cultural whole which should serve
as an example to the universities still mainly engaged in breaking knowledge up
into particles unconnected with each other or with life.’9
9 Boardman, P., 1978, The Worlds of
Patrick Geddes; 129.
While I want to emphasize the rootedness of Geddes’ thinking in
a Scottish tradition, I want also to stress its international context. As his
great American disciple Lewis Mumford said ‘[Geddes’]
While Scotland may have insisted on
fostering generalism at a time when other nations
were headed down a more specialising route, there is, of course, nothing
exclusively Scottish about a generalist tradition of thinking. For example,
from a central European perspective one of the great early modern generalists
was the 17th century Moravian educator, Jan Amos Comenius,
a thinker praised by Geddes in his book Cities in
Evolution. Comenius put the rationale for generalism like this:
‘He deprives himself of light, of hand and
regulation, who pushes away from him any shred of the
knowable.’10
10 Quoted by David Masson, 1873, in his
monumental Life of
Geddes was never one to push away from himself any
shred of the knowable, and he may well have read that very quotation for it
appears in a work by his older Edinburgh contemporary, David Masson of the University of Edinburgh.
Comenius shares something else with Geddes. He was an advocate of visual methods, indeed in his
book, Orbis Pictus he
developed for the modern era the notion of visual experience as integral to
verbal explanation. In that work, according to another of Geddes’
older Scottish colleagues, the pioneering educationist Simon Somerville Laurie,
‘Comenius applies his principles more fully than
in any other.’11 I have noted the link between the visual and
the general, and one of my aims this evening is to draw attention to the
linkage in Geddes’ thinking, as in that of Comenius, between the ability to take a broad view of
knowledge on the one hand and the ability to think visually on the other. It is
important to note that such linkage is also crucial to understanding other
generalist thinkers, whether we think of a 15th century artist like Leonardo Da Vinci or a 20th century geneticist like C. H.
Waddington.12 It is not
hard to see why this psychological linkage should exist, for there is a holism
in a visual approach that is not evident in more linear methods of notation.
And there was, in Geddes’
11 Laurie, S. S., 1881, Comenius; 191.
12 See for
example, Waddington’s The Strategy of the Genes,
1954, Behind Appearance,1969, and Tools for Thought,
1977.
For example, in The Democratic Intellect
George Davie makes explicit the link between generalism
and visual thinking in his discussion of the tradition of Scottish mathematics.
In the 18th and 19th centuries, through Scottish editions of Euclid, this
tradition had emphasised a geometrical rather than an algebraic approach and
one can note that Geddes referred to geometry as ‘the
greatest educational influence of all.’13 Further
indication of the significance of this commitment to the visual and its
concomitant generalism can be inferred from the fact
that Geddes wrote the entry on ‘morphology’ for the
9th edition of that generalist, Edinburgh publishing project the Encyclopaedia
Britannica, while James Clerk Maxwell had written the entry on ‘diagrams’ a
few years earlier.14 Geddes’ friend and colleague at University College Dundee,
the biologist D’Arcy Thompson, also contributed to
the 9th edition and in due course wrote that classic of visual thinking about
biology, On Growth and Form. This work followed a few years after Geddes’ own classic of visual thinking applied to the
social, cultural and urban field, Cities in Evolution.15
13 Boardman, Worlds of Patrick Geddes; 20. Boardman
also notes that in Perth Geddes was taught that other
most visual of disciplines, geology, by James Geikie
(1839–1915) who, along with his elder brother Archibald, was among the most
influential geologists of his day. He was author of a
number of books including the standard work on the glacial period. In addition
he was a translator of the poetry of Heinrich Heine:
truly a generalist and visual thinker to inspire Patrick Geddes.
14 Maxwell was,
until his death in 1879, was also science editor of that edition.
15 The two works
were published in 1917 and 1915 respectively. A further indication of the
interest of Patrick Geddes’ work from a
visual-thinking perspective can be found in Volker
Welter’s illumination of his place within the utopian–spiritual strand of
European modernist architectural thinking in his book Biopolis,
2002.
An understanding of Geddes
must, therefore, take note of this Scottish generalist tradition for its visual
as well as its interdisciplinary aspects. What flows from this is an
appreciation of Geddes’ Scottish intellectual context
as psychologically central to his wider achievement, not least as a planner.
Let me take the
Certainly the way Geddes
developed his Outlook Tower can be thought of as a kind of three-dimensional
response to Comenius’ Orbis
Pictus in so far as it is ‘not only a …
treatment of things in general, but of things that appeal to the senses’.16 But
whether it owed a direct debt to Comenius or not, the
organisation of the Outlook Tower was a physical expression of Geddes philosophy. The Outlook Tower was both at the heart
of the social spaces of Geddes’ halls of residence
and central to the wider historical and geographical context of the city and
the region.17 In 1922
Lewis Mumford was to describe the Outlook Tower as
the point of origin of the Regional Survey Movement,18 but as early as 1899
Charles Zueblin of Chicago University felt confident
in describing it as the world’s first sociological laboratory.19
16 Laurie, S. S., 1881, Comenius; 191.
17 It was in 1892
that Geddes first began to experiment with this
tower, but not until 1896 did it become fully defined as a centre for
investigating the relationships of city, region and planet, from every
perspective. For the earlier history of the
18 Mumford, L., 1922, The Story of
Utopias.
19 Zueblin, C., 1899, ‘The world’s first sociological
laboratory’, American Journal of Sociology, vol iv, no. 5, 577-591. Heinz Maus,
comments in his A Short History of Sociology (1962; 47), that ‘one may say that
it is with Geddes that the town first moves into the
purview of sociology, which, astonishing as it may seem, had up to then dealt
with it only casually and occasionally’.
Three years earlier Geddes
had emphasised the visual thinking inherent to the arrangement of the Tower, in
these words:
‘While current education is mainly addressed
to the ear (whether directly in saying and hearing, or indirectly in reading
and writing), the appeal of this literal “
20 Geddes, P., et al., eds., 1896, The
Evergreen Almanac.
The visitor to the
The way Geddes
used this tower, as a college, as a museum and as a laboratory is one of the
most developed examples his thinking. But we must remember that complementing
the
21 I owe this
particular description to Kitty Michaelson.
22 University
Hall, Edinburgh, Edinburgh: Town & Gown Association, 1900; 10.
23 Cf. ‘Geddes was emphatically not a conservationist, but a
passionate moderniser. As his own interventions in
the Edinburgh Old Town showed, he would happily demolish or alter old buildings
at will if they stood in the way of his wider cultural vision of the future.’
Miles Glendinning and David Page, 1999,
The teaching method that Geddes
helped to pioneer in this complex of buildings was a further expression of his generalism. This was his annual international summer
meeting, and for Geddes a crucial aspect of the
summer meetings was the interplay of different areas of knowledge. For example
the prospectus for August 1896 advertises Geddes
himself teaching courses on ‘Contemporary Social Evolution’ and ‘
24 Kennedy-Fraser, M., 1929, A Life of Song; 120.
In a weekly column that Geddes,
or a close colleague, wrote to accompany these summer meeting studies, an
intriguing glimpse is given of the interdisciplinary links being fostered. The
writer addresses Helen Hay, asking her if she can find in her Celtic ornament ‘means
for the pictorial representation and symbolism of current ideas’.25 This generalist challenge to explore art
and ideas must be seen in the context of Hay’s ongoing work for Geddes magazine, The Evergreen. The Book of
Summer, the third part of The Evergreen, had just been published and
it begins with an almanac for the summer months by Helen Hay. These almanacs
are conjunctions of art and ecological thinking, indeed they give The Evergreen
a visual identity to complement its overall description as ‘a northern
seasonal’. In Geddes’ mind also would have been Hay’s
Celtic knotwork borders for a mural scheme in the
student common room of Ramsay Lodge. These can be seen in old photographs, but
sadly they are now mostly destroyed. Geddes’
enthusiasm for their formal beauty, and their
diagrammatic and symbolic potential is clear: he wrote that ‘each device is
a separate living thought.’26
25 The
Interpreter, no. 8,
26 This comes
from page 13 of a proof copy of The Interpreter dated April, 1896.
But while on the one hand Geddes was interested in how the interlace borders of these
murals had the potential to convey ideas, on the other hand he used the content
of the main mural panels, carried out by the artist John Duncan, to explore the
history of Scottish ideas. So one can see him interested here
in art as a generalist method of thinking in terms of the possibilities both of
its form and its content. The content of those murals begins with Celtic
myth, The Awakening of Cuchullin, a symbol of
the Celtic cultural revival to which Geddes was
committed. I hardly need to stress that there was nothing inward looking about
this, for Geddes’ re-evaluation of Celtic material
was part of an international network of cultural revivals, which included
27 In due course Geddes was to have close links with those concerned with
Indian cultural revival, in particular Ananda Coomaraswamy and Rabindranath Tagore.
The Awakening of Cuchullin is the anchor image of the series and leads
on to The Combat of Fingal,28 which shows a scene derived from Macpherson’s Ossian. The third panel moves us from
Gaelic Celticism of Ossian, to the Brythonic Celticism of King Arthur
in The Taking of Excalibur. This is set, typically for Geddes, in the local context of Duddingston
Loch beneath Arthur Seat. The next panel continues that southern Scottish Brythonic theme with the image of The Journey of St Mungo, at the same time introducing quasi-historical
Christianity into this visual exploration of Scottish legends and ideas.
Following it is an image inspired by the writings of the great Gaelic-speaking
theologian of the 9th century, The Vision of John Scotus
Erigina. This dream is complemented in the next
panel by the thinking of the mage and early scientist from the Borders Michael
Scott, renowned for his translations of Aristotle. Note that these latter
two figures show a significant transition in the series for they indicate the
beginning, in the medieval period, of an intellectual tradition clearly
continuous with the present. The final figure of the first set was The
Admirable Crichton. Crichton
was the 16th century Scottish and European Renaissance scholar par
excellence, and his inclusion strikes a personal note for Geddes, for he was thought to have had his early education
at Geddes’s old school, the
28 Given in the
exhibition pamphlet as ‘Fingal’, but in The
Interpreter as Fionn.
Geddes underlined this visual generalism
further when he described the
‘the Tower may be best explained as simply
the latest development of our Edinburgh tradition of Encylopaedias,
and hence arising in turn in the very same street where are all the others, Britannica,
Chambers, and minor ones. It is in fact the Encylopaedia
Graphica. The Encyclopaedia Graphica for each science and art in turn and in order
...’29
29 National Library of
Of particular interest within this context
of a graphic encylopaedia is the use of stained glass
windows by Geddes for his generalist teaching
purposes. In one of these windows in the
30 The Lapis
image, this ‘philosopher’s stone’ is described in a guide to the Outlook Tower
published in 1906 as an image of ‘an obelisk whereon is outlined in graphic
notation a classification of the Arts and the Sciences’. Geddes,
A First Visit to the
The final window from the
Geddes’ holistic cultural and ecological vision
was thus given impetus and focus by the development of the
31 Zueblin, C., 1899, ‘The world’s first sociological
laboratory’, American Journal of Sociology, vol. iv,
no. 5, 577-591.
Geddes knew the value of specialisation: he was a
biologist by training and he helped to bring into being the disciplines of
sociology, geography, ecology and planning. But he understood that disciplines
depend for their origin on interdisciplinary thinking. They emerge from the
interaction of earlier formulations of study. They come from the spaces in
between. The irony is that as they develop into disciplines, their
interdisciplinary origins are often no longer seen as relevant and the
significance of their relationship to other disciplines may no longer be
perceived. Indeed, it will be in the interests, both financial and
professional, of the practitioners of any new discipline to demarcate it
clearly from other disciplines. Thus the geographer Brian Robson refers to Geddes’ ‘diluted legacy’ in planning, geography and
sociology and comments that too often it was ‘the bare bones, not the spirit’
of Geddes’ work that was taken up.32 That lost spirit was, in large part, his generalism - his interdisciplinary - and it is this that I
think we must revisit in all our thinking about Geddes.
32 Robson, B.T.,
1981, ‘Geography and Social Science: The Role of Patrick Geddes’
in D. R. Stoddart, ed., Geography, Ideology and
Social Concern; 187-207.
Let us, therefore, be inspired for the
future by Geddes as a generalist thinker in a
generalist tradition. If we value his planning vision we must value where it
comes from, and it comes from his intellectual generalism.
In turn that generalism is rooted in the intellectual
tradition of which he was part, in which one area of knowledge is honoured with
respect to the way it relates to others and informs the whole. George Davie
called this ‘democratic intellectualism’ and Geddes
is one of its greatest exponents. At the same time, we who advocate the
interests of
Two industrialised wars fostered
specialisation in the 20th century and the second world war
was a watershed for how Geddes was considered.
Despite the best efforts of Lewis Mumford, after that
war Geddes’ generalism
began to be seen as an eccentric quality, not of importance in its own right.
Yet just as Geddes’ generalism
was fading from public consciousness, south of the Border, C. P. Snow was
feeling the need to invent his ‘two cultures’ debate as though there had been
no previous thinking about the relationships between arts and sciences. But by
this time Geddes’ relevance to the debate was little
noted and his reputation was seen primarily in terms of his role as a
pioneering planner. Indeed had it not been for planners keeping Geddes’ generalist reputation alive during a period of
specialisation, he would have risked being forgotten entirely. This evening’s
lecture is a further example of how the discipline of planning has continued to
honour Geddes, and I am deeply grateful to the RTPI
for the opportunity to place Geddes’ role as a
planner in a wider context.
My task this evening has thus been to
explore Geddes’ life and career in such a way as to
advocate his generalism rather than to regard it as
an inconvenient distraction from a specialised career. Crucially, my task has
been to remind us that this generalism was founded on
a developed Scottish tradition of major cultural value, which deserves to be
properly valued again.
As we stumble from financial to ecological
crisis and back again, the value of Geddes’ Scottish
generalist view could hardly be clearer. I would argue indeed that Geddes’ generalism didn’t simply
allow him to look for sustainable solutions, whether cultural or ecological, it
actually impelled him to look for those solutions and to see them as linked.
And more widely, for Geddes, any sustainable place
could only continue to be so if it took both its heritage and its ecology
seriously. And for Geddes, appropriate action in the
present, in the interests of the future, depended on an in-depth, generalist
understanding of what had happened in the past. That was the essence of his
thinking whether applied to ecology, cultural
revival or planning, the crucial point being, of course, that he saw all these
activities as illuminating one another.
Geddes himself put it this way:
‘Breadth of thought and a general direction
are not opposed to specialised thought and detailed work. The clear thinker
realises that they are complementary and mutually indispensible.’33
33 Tyrwhitt, Patrick Geddes in India; 66.
My aim this evening has been to complement
other perspectives on Patrick Geddes by drawing
attention to the Scottish intellectual tradition of which he was part. In doing
so, I have also drawn attention to the continuing relevance of that tradition
of generalist thinking, and of the visual thinking that accompanies it. My
wider message is that by taking heed of this aspect of our own intellectual
heritage we may look in a more informed way at the issues that face us, whether
cultural, educational or environmental.
Murdo Macdonald
20 May 2009
viewable in pdf form at the RTPI website here
The fifth lecture was
presented on 4 June 2008 by
Harry Burns, Chief Medical Officer for Scotland
The Biological Consequences
of Living in Adverse Circumstances.
A full house gathered to hear the fifth Geddes Lecture at the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Harry Burns was introduced by Stewart
Stevenson, Minister for Transport, Infrastructure and Climate Change. It was a
chance to reconnect today’s work in planning with its vital roots in public
welfare. And it recalled Geddes’
own lectures at the same Society more than 120 years earlier. The text of Dr Burns lecture was not made
available to the organisers, though Dr Burns drew largely from his most recent
Annual Report to Scottish Ministers. Glasgow Centre for Population
Health is a key focal point, and the work by Harry Burns, Carol Tannahill and Russell Jones reads across to the vital
connection between public health and urban design made in US Director of Public
Health Howard Frumkin’s
influential lecture to GCPH in 2006.
All four previous Geddes lecture texts are posted below, latest first They are
viewable in pdf form at the RTPI website here
2007 Richard Wakeford: Wanted: Visionary planners to apply levers
for a sustainable world
2006 Greg Lloyd:
Planning and the public interest in the modern world
2005 Raymond Young: Cities in Devolution
2004 Jonathon Porritt: Sustainable Development Past and Present
Wanted:
Visionary planners to apply levers for a sustainable world
The
Sir Patrick Geddes Memorial Lecture 2007
Edinburgh Edinburgh 6 June 2007 .
Richard Wakeford
Director
General, Environment, Scottish Executive
Introduction and outline [accompanied by Smetana’s Moldova
Design with nature
In my new role as Director General,
Environment in the Scottish Executive my job is to ensure delivery of one of the
new Government’s five strategic objectives – the objective known as “greener”
– to improve
I defer to the experts about the
full significance of Geddes. Real specialists will recognise the link between Smetana’s
- the need
to design with nature; and
- the
concept of ecology.
Designing WITH nature emphasises that the human race has a special place with
respect to the natural world. It’s a compelling theme. So
why, after a whole century, has the design with nature thing not taken off?
And can thinking based in ecological
systems help us with the challenge of climate change? The human race can’t
detach ourselves from the huge natural system that is
our planet. So, if the world is just a big system, can systems analysis
techniques help us?
Those techniques can help us focus
on breakthrough solutions where efforts can be especially effective in
achieving change. In addressing climate change, a systems analysis approach
points to a different role for planners in local, national and international
partnerships. It suggests that there are limits to what can be achieved through
government guidance and through bending the market using taxation or public
spending. Changing people’s mindsets is the most powerful dimension of change.
So, just any old plan won’t do. The
goal must be plans that are owned by the whole community; plans that have the power
to inspire; plans that unite people to deliver the vision. The planning
profession needs to lift its eyes and aim to engage the mainstream. It needs to
communicate and compel from a sense of vision. After all, isn’t that what comes
more naturally to planners than to the rest of us?
Personal
background
While not a planner by profession, I
am passionate for the cause of proper development planning and sustainable use
of our natural resources. That is invaluable in my latest role in Scottish environment
and rural affairs. It was central to the work of the Countryside Agency in
That was a year of so many inspiring
people. Professor Chester Rapkin, for example, taught
regional planning in the
Design
with Nature – McHarg
Design with nature felt right to
Lewis Mumford, as it had to Geddes,
and to Ebenezer Howard who inspired the garden cities movement. It was the
title of a book written by another great Scottish planner – Ian McHarg. It is a product of the late 1960s – the period of
Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring”. It was a time when mankind increasingly came
to be aware of our impact on the world. It was a time when many governments
came to create Departments of the Environment.
Ian McHarg
had been brought up on the edge of
“I
spent my childhood and adolescence squarely between two diametricallydifferent
environments, the poles of man and nature…
“There
were two clear paths from my home, the one penetrating further and further to
the city and ending in Glasgow, the other moving deeper into the countryside to
the final wilderness of the Western Highlands and Islands. The road to
The
other path was always exhilarating and joy could be found in quite small
events, the certainty of a still trout seen in the shadow of a bridge, the
salmon leaping or the stag glimpsed fleetingly, the lambing, climbing through
the clouds to the sunlight above, a cap full of wild strawberries or blaeberries, men back from the Spanish Civil War at the
firepot of a lift from an American tourist in a Packard convertible.” Ian McHarg, 1968
The book itself provides early
examples of strategic environmental assessment. A case study of highway
construction in
The traditional pattern of American
development would see urban sprawl over the countryside as each neighbour in turn sold up. Each sale would lead to a self
contained development, with little regard to what had gone before – a gas
station here, a car showroom, a shopping mall, suburban tract housing. Before
long, the original landscape character would be a distant memory lost under
concrete.
McHarg investigated
an alternative approach in which development would be concentrated along
existing highway routes – not as ribbon development but as planned communities.
Leaving the valleys as greenspace would provide
capacity for greater storm water run-off. It would allow more attractive
places, with views, and access to greenspace – for
recreation that helps physical and mental health. In short, good planning with
nature would provide a better way for the community at large to obtain the
benefits of development while protecting natural resources.
How could the community persuade the
individual landowners not to sell up each small farm to the highest bidder? Only
by finding some way of pooling the profits of development – to benefit those
whose land was zoned for open space, as well as those owning areas that could
take denser development.
Economic analysis showed that
planned development would be worth significantly more than uncontrolled sprawl.
Here was hard financial proof, in a nation that can be pretty sceptical about it, of the value of planning to the
community. All that was needed was a method of sharing the benefits fairly!
Design
with nature – a recurrent unfulfilled paradigm
In
After more than half a century of
town and country planning, are we designing with nature now? After McHarg, in the US Anne Whiston Spirn took up the baton in a seminal book “The
Nature in the
Today in the
That means renewed attention to
urban parks, from entire “green necklace” systems within metro areas to the
emerald-green sanctuary of small vest pocket parks. Community gardens, green
roofs, street trees and planted median strips all count. So-called green geurrillas alight on vacant lots and turn them green
overnight.
US columnist Neil Pearce also
reports on the “green blue” strategies -– handling urban water in more sensitive,
planet-protecting ways, by “daylighting” streams once
enclosed in concrete pipes and by filtering stormwater
more slowly through landscaping features that avoid big engineering solutions
in favour of nature’s more modest but ecologically
sound ways.
There is also attention to health:
for example, tackling asthma-inducing air pollution, and attacking the obesity
epidemic impacting American society. Public health researcher Anne Lusk calls
for linear urban parks to encourage not just walking and biking but such
energetic activities as running, skating and rock climbing (giving adults a
chance to socialize and witness youth’s athletic prowess). She also suggests
“health enterprise zones” to encourage gyms, stores offering fresh groceries
and other health-oriented businesses in rundown areas.
Design
with Nature – the Scottish approach
Scottish Executive support to the greenspace movement also helps the concept of design with
nature. There is lots of good practice which Greenspace
Scotland helps to spread. But design with nature should be second nature for us
– for a whole range of reasons. And it isn’t yet.
At a presentation last month Harry
Burns, our Chief Medical Officer, spoke about the environment and health. A lot
of research was still needed, he said, and we may not be picking up all the
elements in play. But he is convinced that the direct environmental impact of
threats to health remains important; and how we perceive those risks may be more
important than the direct effect. The poorest people already have the poorest
health outlook, which is made worse by lack of exposure to nature and greenspace. So, the creation of supportive environments
should play a significant part in improving the health of the most deprived
sections of our community.
He was concerned that the pursuit of
best value has usually meant pursuit of the best financial deal. Because the
health benefits of good planning are difficult to quantify, they are often not
taken into account. Those benefits can include personal fitness, mental health,
shorter hospital stays – in short a range of benefits that would save society
money in service costs, sickness benefits and the like, as well as creating a
happier community.
If we are to make it easier to
include such benefits in planning decisions, we must obtain better science
backed estimates of the impact of environmental improvements on the prevalence
of chronic ill health. That might add powerful impetus to the new administration’s
Greener Government programme. Health and the
environment could be a cross cutting issue for the new Government. They are
part of the ecological system Geddes would recognise.
A
systems approach to urban environments
Do the planning system and other rules
fail to look at whole systems – in a better partnership with nature? The UK
Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution has recently published a
comprehensive report on the urban environment. Here is an illustration from it.
It illustrates a system, but just
one part of a larger system. These are all ecological networks of a kind that Geddes would recognise – where
the boundaries are not boundaries of separation but boundaries of identity.
The report concludes that the
'effective management of the urban environment requires a new approach to the
governance of our urban areas'. Rather than
focus on ever more technological fixes, it says that the collective failure to
improve the urban environment is because 'much of what is conventional wisdom
has not been implemented effectively'. Improving the urban environment is
'everything to do with human behaviour, institutional
inertia, lack of joined up government, failure to frame problems appropriately
and failure to recognise the complexity of different
constraints'.
The Commissioners were strongly
persuaded by the evidence. But their recommendations were more technical than
transformational - amending planning guidance to recognise
the health benefits of greenspace; incorporating
Health Impact Assessments into strategic environmental assessments; a new
environmental contract between central and local government; and higher
priority to green spaces around social housing.
In short, we need designing with
nature to be integral to our systems. For that, it’s important to understand
where in systems action can lead to fundamental change.
Levers
in a sustainable community - Falmouth
Let me give you two examples of this
– one modest and one regional.
Beacon Regeneration Community Partnership,
As a member of the UK Sustainable
Development Commission, I helped judge the Deputy Prime Minister’s sustainable
communities awards.
The Beacon Regeneration Community
Partnership transformed the place. The source of success was a handful of
determined local residents, supported by local health professionals, teachers,
police and housing officers. When government challenge funds became available
and the district council was required to find out about local ideas, it was two
local health workers who suggested that tackling asthma should be the priority.
Hundreds of damp, mouldy homes were improved, by installing central heating,
double glazing and other energy conservation measures. With dust and damp
removed from the homes, children became healthier. They went to school more
often, so parents could get jobs and hold on to them, with less need for child
care. Children performed better at school, improving their life chances.
This success provided the catalyst
for further action, including traffic calming, dog litter bins, tree and bulb
planting, free security lighting for vulnerable people, a skateboard park, and
courses and self help groups in the community office and youth club.
All this was triggered by a handful
of people who cared enough to be leaders when cash became available. Those two
health workers didn’t dare dream of transforming the estate; but they found the
point to apply levers – where their small efforts had disproportionate effect.
Chicago
[
Let’s look at another big system.
One of the best books I have ever read - William Cronon’s
“Nature’s Metropolis” - tracks the history of
At its hub, the entrepreneurs of
The establishment of food processing
gave
And finally in the 1890s
Identifying the leverage points in a
system – in other words, small actions that have a disproportionate influence –
is important for anyone wanting to trigger a significant change.
Systems
analysis – where to apply levers to best effect
The late Professor Donella Meadows, of the US Sustainability Institute used
systems analysis thinking to identify a kind of league table of dimensions in
which leverage points may exist . This is her list, in
increasing importance as you go down it.
Points of intervention in a system
12.
Numbers (standards, indicators)
11. The size of buffers and stabilising
stocks, relative to their flows
10.
Material stocks and flows (how much change can we cope with?)
9.
Delays relative to rate of system change
8.
Negative feedback loop strength (taxes)
7.
Gain in positive feedback loops (incentives)
6.
Information flows (eg consumer choice)
5.
Rules of the system (laws)
4.
Self organisation, spontaneous innovation
3. The
goals of the system
2.
People’s basic mindset (instinctive behaviour)
1. The
power to transcend paradigms
At the top of the list we have
numbers – big numbers. Do numbers have the power to change anything? In the
main, we react to numbers with a sense of helplessness. How many people in
rural
A long time ago, a very senior
person told me that the only things that governments could do were to make laws
(and enforce them) and to levy taxes (and spend them). While better than
numbers alone, laws and taxes are only halfway down the table. The reason is
that politicians are constrained by the public, by those who will vote for them
in future.
And enforcement becomes difficult.
Can we fine people for heating their homes, while having windows open for fresh
air?
There should be a law against it, we
hear people say. But unless people are persuaded of the need for the law – they
will surely ignore them.
Look at speed limits; set too slow
they are unenforceable – everyone breaks them.
Taxes aren’t a panacea either. You
may recall the fuel price escalator. The idea was to encourage people to buy
more fuel efficient cars by committing to increase fuel tax each year. Rural
groups led demonstrations at refineries and cut the supply of fuel to filling
stations; people needed to be better persuaded of the case for the increased
tax.
In truth, our elected
representatives need to use their powers of influence to make laws and taxes
effective as levers. They can change people’s behaviour
by their passion and rhetoric.
The
importance of changing mindsets
If their influence is to result in
changed behaviour, it is the cumulative small
decisions of individuals that will make a huge difference. Efficient markets
require better information. Better information can help people to buy products
in a more discriminating way. Labelling of embedded
carbon content has just started. But changed decisions will only happen if
people are looking for the labels and acting on them. People need to feel engaged, and informed by such labelling,
and then they can change the market towards sustainability.
Breakthrough depends on the people’s
mindset. Influence comes from every leader who helps to shift the basic
mindsets – footballers, big businessmen, the Royal Family, planners.
The
role of planners in changing mindsets
Planners could play an inspirational
role here, in changing people’s mindsets. “Hang on a minute”, I hear you say, “how many people have ever heard of an inspirational
planner”. Architects maybe, but planners?
That world fair in
rebuilding.
Could the visionary approach of past
planners such as Geddes or Burnham have a modern
parallel? Which modern planners will inspire people to change their mindsets
and behaviours in ways that will change the way we
use our planet? After all, the systems analysis approach shows that such action
will be more powerful than rules, taxes and subsidies. What can planners do?
The
need to focus on big plans, not development control
Design with nature? The industry responds to
development control constraints
Whenever I say to people that I am
interested in planning, it’s amazing how many respond with concerns about what
their neighbour has just done. Just look at that
satellite dish, or loft extension. Surely the planners should have stopped
that? Or what about that new development down the road? How was that ever
permitted? I once came back from a week advising the Hungarian government on
green belts as a way of shaping strategic development to discover Ministerial
consternation when we accidentally extended development control to garden wall
demolition.
But some people would have liked that
control in place. Because for many British people the basic paradigm is to be
against development – except of course where the development is a new extension
to their own house. By contrast, in many American cities – but not all suburbs,
I stress - people are proud of development and look forward to their
communities growing, getting richer and gaining more services.
So, how can we shift the focus?
There have been suggestions that development control and building standards
enforcement could be combined – freeing up well trained planners for proper
planning. But that’s not easy to envisage in a development control system with
lots of discretion, unlike the zoning code approach of other countries where
compliance is easy to judge from the plan.
Plan led; not necessarily plan inspired
“Putting plans first, rather than development
control…”
]
A stronger plan-led system has been
another idea. I started work on development plans and policies for the English Government
at just the point where the Minister, Sir George Young, decided that he needed
to concede to a widely held view that the planning system should be “plan led”.
The conservation NGOs had pressed for this, to guard against development in the
wrong places. And the Government of the day came around to the view that
developers themselves would benefit too – from certainty about where they would
get consents. What’s more, there were revolutionary thoughts that the plans
would also show where the infrastructure would go in to service the new
developments.
What a revolution! Planners would
lead a process, with developers engaged from the start rather than in an
opportunistic way, and with infrastructure providers having to shape their
investment plans as a result!
Enthusiasm for the new approach
caused a widespread failure of delivery. The change we made to the law was
modest; and it was backed by a change in policy. That was enough to persuade
developers that they had to get involved at the early stages of plan
preparation. Local communities dug in around every village boundary. John
Gummer coined the phrase NODAMs for those articulate
new country people who somehow felt that “no development after mine” had to be
the bit they would do for a sustainable countryside. Planning departments
struggled and eventually won the argument about the need for extra money to
make planning work properly.
There are lessons here about
strategy and delivery. Don’t promise more than there are resources to deliver.
And never underestimate how many specialist advisers today’s inflated land
prices can fund, in the race to get permissions.
Shaping
the planning system to deliver better
“Delivering better planning?”
The latest chapter in this story is
the English White Paper on planning and housing published last month. Gordon
Brown has taken a big interest in the role of planning in shaping society – but
planning has been too much on the defensive. When will we get to the point
where local communities – towns and cities, within their regions – are proud of
the plans their local councils have adopted? When will we see the positive
approach to planning communicated well here?
In
How will we see this new structure
flex to the policy imperative of our current government to reduce carbon
emissions by 80% by 2050? There is a risk that this seems just like the big
numbers in that systems analysis league table. Interesting idea, but not much I
can do about it. That won’t be good enough: we shall need the overall plans to
reduce carbon emissions to show the shaping of development that we will need.
And that has to start now.
Yet those plans will be so much more
effective if people all buy into this framework of plans and see it as a
positive vision for the future of Scottish society. When I mean “all”, that can
only be as a result of proper and enthusiastic communication.
Communicating
planning
And better communication?
Good communication is essential. It’s
not just planners who need to engage people to see what good quality
development can do for us. How many
local authorities spend time explaining their strategic plans for the area, and
how all the various agencies will be working together under their leadership to
deliver better places? If we are going to make progress, and make the world a
better place, we have to take the people with us.
We need plans that inspire – just as
Daniel Burnham’s plan of
What’s more we need land use
planning not to be an afterthought to the latest policies on schools, or
housing, or transport, or rural development, or whatever. We need it to be at
the heart – to be the key integrative mechanism that helps to ensure that the
systems in our society work well. In my view, the land use consequences of new
policies should be considered at the same time, and explained in the White
Papers and policy statements. So, for example, we should not just be saying
that we want rural development, and then finding that there isn’t the transport
infrastructure to support it; or urban regeneration in
The Green Alliance test to judge
political parties’ green credentials included one for planning
. “Value, support and develop our planning system as a democratic tool
for protecting and enhancing the natural and built environment of our
countryside and towns”. I believe that planning needs to be much more ambitious
– setting the vision and delivery arrangements for a sustainable world in which
climate change is the most significant driver to be tackled, for the benefit of
all who follow us.
For whose benefit?
Remember that the rules we are
putting in today are probably those we needed 10 years ago. So what will tomorrow’s rules be, that we should be putting in place
today?
Planners need to engage, knowing
that they are acting in the world of global capitalism – but that their values
are more likely to be the creation of sustainable communities based on
ecological literacy and the practice of ecodesign. As
Fritjof Capra has pointed out, the goal of global
economy is to maximise the wealth and power of its elites;
the goal of ecodesign is to maximise
the sustainability of the web of life. Planners need to help harness the first
to deliver the second.
The
philosopher’s approach
Lewis Mumford
predicted catastrophic dehumanization, and for that reason opposed the
imposition of the
He argued passionately for a
restoration of organic human purpose in the larger scheme of things, a task
requiring a human personality capable of “primacy over its biological needs
and technological pressures”, and able to “draw freely on the compost
from many previous cultures.”
Mankind has a special place in the
global system, deriving from our knowledge and our potential capability to work
together for the common good. We have a unique responsibility to try to restore
the natural system, including our role within it, back to reasonable
equilibrium. That responsibility is to achieve sustainable development; action
to address climate change is a big part of it.
Conclusion
– the agenda for planners, professional and otherwise
This is not a task that can be left
to politicians alone. All of us interested in planning should rally to the
cause. We need to make sure that plans for the future are realistic, fully engaged
with the new climate change agenda and seeking to encourage sustainable
development. Planning needs to break out of it own cosy
world of dedicated guidance notes; every government policy development should
surely encompass land and development issues – in a properly joined up
approach.
We need to boost some planning
personalities. Has any planner ever been on Question Time? Such leaders might
win more respect for proper planning – as distinct from the development control
that so many of the population mistake for planning. We need good communication
and inspiring leadership, based around a real sense of mankind’s responsibility
to fix the world, and working with nature.
That’s surely what Geddes would expect of us. It’s what Mumford
championed. It’s what McHarg showed so well in his
time. And it’s in what Ebenezer Howard demonstrated in the Garden Cities
movement. Maybe in Gordon Brown’s enthusiasm for “eco-cities” down south, we do
see a new champion emerging. And here, we see John Swinney
in charge of the sustainable economy, the ever more modern planning system and
new infrastructure – all together evidence of a new joined up approach.
So I end with Burnham’s famous quote:
“Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men's blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in
hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will not
die, but long after we are gone will be a living thing, asserting itself with
ever-growing insistence.”
As U2’s great track One Tree Hill
reminds us, probably not inspired by Geddes, ecology
or the Valley Section, life flows like a river to the sea.
One Tree Hill
We
turn away to face the cold, enduring chill
As the
day begs the night for mercy love
The
sun so bright it leaves no shadows
Only
scars
Carved
into stone
On the
face of earth
The
moon is up and over One Tree Hill
We see
the sun go down in your eyes
You
run like a river, on to the sea
You
run like a river runs to the sea
Planning
and the public interest in the modern world
The
Sir Patrick Geddes Memorial Lecture 2006
Edinburgh Edinburgh 9 June 2006 .
Greg Lloyd
Professor
Greg Lloyd,
Introduction
Good evening. My
sincere thanks to the Minister, Malcolm Chisholm, who now has a very ‘well kent’
face in the planning community. I
am grateful for your time when I guess that the last thing you really want is
yet another rant about (what you should be doing about) the future of land use
planning and (of course) the new world order.
My deep felt
thanks to the Royal Town Planning Institute in
It is also
daunting to follow in the footsteps of Jonathon Porritt
and Raymond Young. In their
commemorative lectures, both gave enormously refreshing insights into how land
use planning, property development and environmental management still have
substantive roles to play in enhancing the wellbeing
of
That is essentially
the remit of what I would like to touch on with respect to the public interest
both as a concept and its content for land use planning. I believe that the public interest is the
forgotten dimension to the modernisation of land use planning – and it goes
much further than simply stating and re-stating the purpose of land use
planning in a modern world. As Geddes stated:
As in all true progress, we must not only
comprehend and transform the environment without but develop our life within.
Jonathon Porritt’s recently published book – Capitalism as if the
world really mattered – asserts an optimism about the
state of nature, the relationship between the business world and the
environment, and the perceptions and willingness of societies, communities and
individuals to engage with current agendas.
This evening I will present a rather more contrary view – one that is much more
pessimistic, declinist and even dismal in
nature. My fear is that we now live in
an ever more dynamic, dangerous and uncertain world. I fear that without an unambiguous
re-assertion of the public interest (in general) and for land use planning (in
particular) we will not get to grips that that uncertain world.
In his book - The
Great Unravelling: Losing Our Way in the New Century, the US economist
Professor Paul Krugman states A lot has happened these past times…..-stock market decline and
business scandal, energy crisis and environmental backsliding, budget deficits
and recession, terrorism and troubled communities. To which I would be
tempted to add climate change, sectarianism, racism, community violence, ill
health, political complacency, personal greed, conspicuous consumption,
collective myopia and the disenfranchisement of individuals and neighbourhoods.
Paul Ormerod in his recent book (Why Most Things Fail) questions
why government designs interventions, measures and policy initiatives which
seek to mimic the perceived (and artificial) business economic model. This itself is flawed, and does not work
perfectly, as indeed it is assumed to do. If the model does not work, why try
to replicate it? It is clearly time for
land use planning to be seen to be different, and to deal with the intricate
and complex land use planning and development issues and relationships in a more
realistic manner.
In populist terms
we could call these prevailing conditions as indicative of the ‘post-modern’,
and yet with the land use planning system as we have it today (and even with
land use planning modernisation) we are attempting to manage change and
conflict using a model which was forged in the age of modernity. This would
suggest a very fundamental tension in practice.
Whilst the land
use planning reforms are an exciting re-configuration of what was already in
the land use planning system – the National Planning Framework, development
hierarchy, development management and the opportunities for greater civil
engagement – these mimic the apparatus which was already in place. The invocation of a needed culture change is
new, and needed but is it enough? I
would argue that we need to re-invent a much deeper thinking around the public
interest concept and shopping list to guide the new land use planning system.
The importance of context
My presentation
is based on a personal celebration of 30 years of being fortunate enough to
live and work in Scotland, engaging with ideas associated with land use
planning and development, of observing and having the privilege of meeting and
working with a vast array of challenging people – across and within very
different communities, in professional practice and policy communities, and in
the planning academy – and I will draw on these diverse influences in my
presentation.
Indeed, I should
declare that notwithstanding my very pessimistic outlook, I would point to many
examples of innovation in land use planning practice in the last 30 years in
Scotland: the introduction of National Planning Guidelines, which represent a
considerable innovation in devising a strategic approach to land use planning
practice and priority setting, joined up strategic spatial planning in areas as
diverse as the Highlands and Islands, the North East of Scotland and the West
Central belt, and the reliance on robust forecasting led land use planning in
areas of growth. Indeed as Urlan Wannop
showed in his learned discussion of regionalism in west central
Early in my
career, I was fortunate enough to work alongside Professor JB McLoughlin – an Olympian in terms of developing ideas and
thinking around land use planning – and his early death robbed us of a
philosopher par excellence about the changing spirit and purpose of land use
planning in contemporary society. Brian
taught me never ‘not to contextualise’. He argued that we always need to position
land use planning in the bigger picture, and that will enable us to understand
the individual ‘episodes’ that take place.
This position is
confirmed by the work of others. Professor Sir Peter Hall (in his magisterial
book Cities in Civilisation) demonstrates there is always a need to maintain
cognisance of the bigger picture, particularly with respect to the very
pressing shifts in technology, economic structures, ideas and governance
arrangements. All these dynamic changes
impact on our attempts as a society at large to devise a land use planning
system which is, in the words of Jim McKinnon, ‘fit for purpose’.
Criticisms of land use planning
There can be
little doubt that the land use planning apparatus, processes, outcomes and
operation are criticised from all quarters – from within government, by
government agencies, by the private sector, by the business community, by think
tanks (often in very graphic language), by academics, by community groups, and
by the public at large.
What are the
grounds for this criticism? Essentially
it rests on the perceived under-performance of the land use planning in
practice. The critiques rest on a
shifting composite of deficits around efficiency, effectiveness, equity and
performance. Yet these are very
different perspectives about land use planning practice, and may well be
missing the point. Is a delay in getting
development onto the ground the result of a procedural delay, of political
interference or a lack of an available infrastructure resource? Or is it a failure to ensure that land use
planning is in a position to ‘join up’ key decisions? These are very different
things and have to be addressed in very different ways.
This confusion
about the role of land use planning is not new of course. As JK Galbraith observed
wryly: For a public official to be called
a planner was less serious than to be charged with communism or imaginative
perversion, but reflected adversely nonetheless.
In light of this
barrage of criticism, frustration and exasperation with land use planning I
would like to examine the changing role of the public interest. This is the
hidden dimension of land use planning practice.
My argument is a simple one. The villain of the piece is not the land
use planning system itself although that does not negate the need for modernisation, it is the lack of a clear understanding and
articulation of the public interest to which it is working.
The erosion, dilution
and labile nature of the public interest has isolated
land use planning from its principal economic and social purpose. To regain a
sense of what land use planning is trying to do, we need to re-assert the
public interest, and arguably only once we have achieved this can we then
engage in a meaningful modernisation of land use planning.
Today, I will
argue that our overly focussed concern with the mechanics of land use planning
is in danger of missing that big canvas.
Land use planning cannot be disentangled from the wider forces of
change. nor can land use planning and its modern
idiom, spatial planning, operate effectively in a vacuum where there should be
a public interest.
We must beware
then of making instrumental changes and responses and seek the opportunity for
a more transformative outcome. We should also be cautious about ‘reinventing
the wheel’ and perhaps take the time to critically reflect on insights from the
past. Action is imperative in deciding on
the role of the public interest, and what is really is. Only then can land use planning do its job
for the wellbeing of us all.
Towards a new public interest?
My
colleague and friend Professor Mark Tewdwr Jones, in
a recent paper discussing the planning films of John Betjeman,
referred to the term’ planning wizards’.
As Welshmen we are both drawn to the imagery. He has assured me that he did not invent the
term, but we both agree that it is an appropriately evocative term to inform
the current debates about the future of land use planning, and the real purpose
that we would wish it to serve.
In order to
consider the nature of the new public interest, I will draw on some selected
ideas of 3 very special planning wizards.
They offer some sobering and reflective ideas about the nature of the
public interest and land use planning today – Patrick Geddes,
Jane Jacobs and JK Galbraith.
Helen Meller, a biographer of Geddes,
suggested that he was someone who “pioneered
a sociological approach to the study of urbanisation; discovered that the city
should be studied in the context of the region; predicted that the process of
urbanisation could be analysed and understood; [and] believed that the
application of such knowledge could shape future developments towards life
enhancement for all citizens’.
What can we learn
from this? Essentially, Geddes had a sense of the public interest even though he
may have expressed it a rather more individualistic way. Furthermore he was operating in very
particular economic and social circumstances, and specific political
conditions. Individualism was the
dominant ideology in society at that time, and it permeated all facets of
economic, community and political debate. His influence was profound, across a
range of fields that are relevant today – such as the close reciprocal
relationship between social and spatial structures and processes, the potential
of city regionalism and the need for evidence based land use planning (the
regional survey).
In the context of
city-regionalism, for example, he stated in 1904: What is the vital element which must complement our provincialism? In a single word, it is regionalism – an idea
and movement which is already producing in other countries great and valuable
effects.
This is a
salutary insight for those engaging with devising a city regional canvas for a
modern
JK Galbraith (who
died recently) also offers insights into contemporary land use planning
practice. In perhaps his most famous
work, The Affluent Society, he demonstrated the importance of investment in
infrastructure to support development in the public interest, and the
development of the public interest. He
argued that private business "creates" consumer wants (through
advertising) and artificial affluence through the production of commercial
goods and services. As a consequence
leading to the “private wealth – public squalor” duality. Systematic attention to the infrastructure
resource then becomes important for the public interest at large. Again lessons for today.
Jane Jacobs (who
also died earlier this year) celebrated the need to encourage individualism
within a planning framework. She
advocated organic development of cities and neighbourhoods, and the nurturing
of community based social capital. For
her, land use planning was an essential pre-requisite for the assertion of
individualism, diversity and plurality in a modern society.
These individuals
were critical analysts, deep thinkers, brilliant communicators, creative
dramatists and active popularisers who sought to
bring the issues alive to what was (at different times) probably a
disinterested and even hostile self satisfied society and polity. A strong resonance with the
challenges and issues today.
Their ideas did not go uncontested. Jacobs was held to be impractical,
and not reflect the reality of urban politics, which are controlled by real
estate developers and suburban politicians.
Galbraith was held to be anti-business, and it was suggested that he
sought to restrict consumer choice. Geddes is
criticised for being apolitical, and for not recognising the power relations
then prevailing in his specific life world.
I would suggest
that all are of real relevance to present day debates about the future of land
use planning in a post modern and fragile world. Ideas are important. As John Maynard Keynes
declared in his very famous book, The General Theory of Employment, Interest,
and Money: “sooner or later, it is ideas,
not vested interests, which are dangerous”
Planning and the concept of the public interest
In practice, the
public interest refers to the "common well-being" or "general
welfare". The concept and its
content is central to policy debates, politics,
democracy and the nature of government itself.
While nearly everyone claims that aiding the common well-being or
general welfare is positive, there is little, if any, consensus on what exactly
constitutes the public interest. Indeed,
the concept and articulation of the public interest is not only crucial, it is
a poorly defined concept in political thinking.
The public interest involves a range of issues around political
thinking, legal theory, welfare economics and mediation. I will not be able to do all these justice
this evening – and I apologise for my blatant reductionism.
John Dunn in his
history of democracy traces the development of democracy through the maturing
of political thinking and argument, the evolving forms of political
organisation and the associated struggles.
He notes the sophisticated articulation of our form of democracy and its
relationship with free market capitalism, the articulation of private property
rights, and its expression in representative and participative forms. What we mean by the public interest was and
is forged in this cauldron of societal and individual change, power and
influence.
There are
different views on how many members of the public must benefit from an action
before it can be declared to be in the public interest. Does an action have to
benefit every single member of society in order to be in the public interest?
Can an action benefit some and harm none and be considered to be in the public
interest? Welfare economics, for example, allows for a compensation test to be
applied to demonstrate a ‘net’ gain to society. in practice, this compensation test has only to be
demonstrated to exist, it does not necessarily follow that it will be.
The public
interest is often contrasted with the private or individual interest, under the
assumption that what is good for society may not be good for a given individual
and vice versa. The
public interest is bound up with the prevailing and inherited culture in
society, with the mediation and expression of power, of the construction of
knowledge, of ideology and political thinking, of property rights, an rules of law – all of which make it difficult to pin down
exact definitions of the concept. Indeed
some observers have suggested that other issues like gender, class, race have rendered the very notion of the public interest
untenable.
How do we
articulate the public interest in practice?
There are a number of different options here (Here I follow Campbell
& Marshall, 2002). First, the
virtual representation approach that the public interest can be distilled
through political processes and rational deliberation. This demands a robust set of procedures, and
assumptions about vested interests and ideologies. Second, the liberalism approach to the public
interest is associated more with the
The content of the public interest for land use
planning
If
the concept has changed then what of its content? How has the public interest fared in the
transition from land use planning as part of the modernist agenda to the post
modern context.
First, in 1947,
for example, land use planning was tangible, recognised and able to be
articulated. It was a formidable part of
the welfare state. It was intended to serve the concept of the public interest
as then understood and to define it in practical terms. What was its content? These were pressing maters. Slum clearance,
new housing at higher standards, rebuilding of towns and cities, construction
of industrial estates, council housing and community facilities, full
employment, regional industrial policy – carrots and sticks – roads and
infrastructure, community health and education provision, new towns, national
parks (in England and Wales), environmental designations.
It was put into
place in that period where social democratic ideas were paramount. Government
was characterised by rationalism, bureaucratic processes and hierarchical
arrangements (Weber’s iron cage). These
which were top down, and have been described as dirigiste
and assertive. It was driven by the
activities of Mark Tewdwr Jones’ wizards with: “vision, rationality and the desire to bring
about change for the good of society”.
It was also
driven by a public interest concept that acknowledged that markets alone would
not secure full employment, nor achieve that across national economic
space. It also recognised that public
expenditure was required to lead the market, and to provide key facilities such
as infrastructure. Regulation was also accepted as the means of controlling
business where it imposed wider social costs which were not absorbed in market
prices.
It was enabled
too by the relatively limited rights of the citizen. Yet these were very
particular times and the public interest could be set out in such practical
terms. There was a confidence in asserting that form of social construction of
the public interest. The citizenry was
relatively passive, and the results were evident.
Arguably, by the
1960s, this very tangible, and visible concrete action
agendas was well on the way to completion. This and the particular economic
conditions (the long post war boom) now created very different conditions. The land use planning system and its
processes of change were now being criticised.
Perhaps land use planning had been too successful in that particular
form.
A number of
observers were critical of the way in which land use planning acted, and which
appeared not always to be in the public interest. Commentators included John Rex and Robert
Moore – 1967 – “Race, Community and Conflict”; Norman Dennis -1970 - 'People
and Planning”; Jon Gower Davies – 1972 – “The Evangelistic Bureaucrat”; Norman
Dennis - 1972, “Public Participation and Planners”; and Robert Goodman – 1972-
“After the Planners”. Heady stuff!
Perhaps the most
famous study of them all – by Michael Young and Peter Wilmott
observed that: Yet even when the town
planners have set themselves to create communities anew as well as houses, they
have still put their faith in buildings, sometimes speaking as though all that
was necessary for neighbourliness was a neighbourhood unit, for community
spirit a community centre. If this were
so, then there would be no harm in shifing people
around the country, for what is lost could soon be regained by skillful architecture and design. But there is surely more to a community than
that.
This was an international
experience. In
We must not
forget the wider changes taking place – in economic conditions, in changing
political and policy ideas about planning at large and for regions and cities,
the social shifts and the rise of an articulate environmental lobby. Here, the public interest became less
concrete as a concept, and indeed its content began to be questioned. Indeed the state itself has been described as
over-crowded. How this came about is
important.
The rise of
public participation, the powerful surge of neo-liberal thinking, the commodification of land and property and its associated
values, the lack of interference with that landed windfall, economic growth and
a very dysfunctional spatial economy have all contributed to the demise of the
very concept of the public interest, and a very blurred understanding (as a
result of competition over the public interest) of what it should be in
practice.
My
thanks to John Watchman at this juncture for reminding me of Patrick McAuslan’s study of the ideologies of planning law. This identifies the competing ideas around
the competing ideologies underpinning land use planning practice. The traditional common law approach to
protect private property; the orthodox public administration approach to
advance the public interest; and a relatively more ‘populist’ approach which
seeks to advance public participation as a countervailing force against the
other ideologies. The latter has also
matured from process to more substantive concerns. At the time of writing (1981) the public
interest was clearly acknowledged a role in land use planning practice.
Along the way
there have been important shifts in emphasis.
On the one hand, public participation as an ideological practice has
become much more complex. It has matured from a simple opportunity to
participate in the decision making for the future land use planning context for
a locality. We can see this by looking
at the intellectual threads in public participation. These ideas are set out by Heather Campbell
and Robert Marshall (2000), and I paraphrase here.
Participation can
be based on instrumental participation (to secure individual self interest);
communitarian participation (to secure a collective well being, and based on
rights and responsibilities); consumer politics (to exercise rights as a
consumer and the facilitate choice); politics of presence (for social
exclusion); and deliberative democracy (open dialogue and shared
solutions).
I would argue
that the instrumental participation and the concern with consumption have
asserted themselves. Over time, however, changing political ideas, the
remorseless rise of individualism, commercialism, materialism and expectations
at large have transformed the concept of the public interest.
I am reminded of
a Vivienne Westwood T-shirt slogan “Be Reasonable – Demand the Impossible”!! Changing times!
On the other
hand, the public interest has been subject to capture. Greater competition
between private property and public participation has taken place for the
public interest, along with the sublimation of the public interest in
general. Arguably then, public
participation in land use planning has made the concept of the public interest
even more complex and layered. It has also rendered the content of the public
interest more difficult as new agendas are asserted in a competitive manner.
What is the
result? Sir Donald Mackay has helpfully
drawn attention to the shouting loudly syndrome, which extends not only to the
private sector but to the fragmented and congested elements of the public
sector as well. Essentially the public
interest is now invisible. It has been desiccated and filleted and to all
intents and purposes does not now exist.
Essentially the
public interest is now invisible. It has been desiccated and filleted and to
all intents and purposes does not now exist.
As Mr. David Blunkett recently asserted: Too often people demand rights, without
understanding the corollary of developing a sense of duty, a way of thinking
which takes them beyond the satisfaction of their immediate personal needs into
supporting their family and the broader community.
What of its content?
In a recently
published and very perceptive essay, for example, Jill Grant very usefully
explored the changing basis of the public interest for land use planning She argues that, at the present time, land
use planners view the public interest as an abstraction. It is now a concept that is necessarily
fluid, tenuous and very context sensitive.
Land use planning
has been divorced from economic policy for regional and urban
regeneration. There is a lack of a
spatial redistribution policy so land use planning does not have a role to play
in preparing the way for new patterns of economic activity. The recent
introduction of community planning completely separate from land use planning
simply served to destroy the vast experience that the land use planning system
had developed with respect to community engagement.
Land use planning
has been made the conduit for wider social goals, but this is done in a ad hoc
manner – witness the ongoing debates for the provision of affordable
housing. Infrastructure, especially
water and sewerage is a separate matter.
Land use planning
is saddled with very complex ideas which only serve to pander to the
smokescreen of democracy, and only serve to raise expectations, and the
interest in Good Neighbour Agreements, Mediation and Third Party Rights Of Appeal all suggest an abject failure of the public
interest to be articulated.
Society sits on a
cleft stick – it has blurred consumption with politics, or choice. Richard Sennett
points to the creation of the new economy, which is based on short termism, expediency, potential ability rather than
achievement, a willingness to discount or abandon past experience. No critical reflection. He suggests this is indicative of ‘enfeebled
culture’.
Thus society
wants its cake and wants to eat it - to be technologically connected but not to
have to live with mobile telephony masts; to be comfortable but to contest
pylons, or being to travel but not to have to tolerate motorway extensions; to
be able to fly but no extra runways, thank you; to have cheap energy, but not
wind-farms; to enjoy a high environmental premium but leave our green belt
alone, and we are not minded to have marine national parks; to be assured of a
quality of life but not to locate water and sewerage facilities.
Thus planning is
not able to look forwards as we are confused about the concept of a public
interest, and we cannot devise what it should be in practice. Thus land use planning is always looking over
its shoulder, or glancing furtively sideways and it is certainly always moving
backwards.
Indeed even in
the utilitarian strand of thinking, Richard Layard in
his recent book dealing with happiness argues that measuring happiness is the
new science as notwithstanding our material wellbeing,
we are less happy. Layard
argues that we have lost that measure of happiness and that as a result people
are calling out for a new articulation of the common good: “the greatest happiness of all…….to care for others as well as
ourselves”
This is a
metaphor for devising a new sense of the public interest to guide society at
large, and activities such as land use planning. Maybe there is a wider awareness of the need
to articulate a new agenda for change.
Conclusions
The public
interest is essentially the common good, or the common weal, or the community
stake in a well ordered society. Thus,
the intended outcomes of land use planning centre on guiding and regulating
land and property developments in order to serve all our best interests. Importantly, it is acknowledged that the
public interest is greater than the sum total of all the individual interests
in society. This is not an easy task,
but it does sit at the core of contemporary state-market-civil relations.
Today, a very
real concern with devising appropriate arrangements for a land use planning for
the modern world is in danger of being an instrumental response to the
criticisms of planning. There is a need
to re-assert, to re-discover the public interest, to define what we want for
society at large and how land use planning can go out and achieve it. What is needed?
Will Hutton
(2005) in an elegant essay about land use planning stated: that, in turn, requires a richer national conversation in which all the
phenomena that connect - insecurity, inequality, distrust of the new, disbelief
that private ambitions can have public benefits and scepticism about the
effectiveness of any public action - are openly talked about and resolutions
sought. That requires politicians prepared to dare and citizens prepared to
respond.
Richard Layard in his study of Happiness adds:
Human beings have largely conquered
nature but they still have to conquer themselves. We still have a long way
to go, particularly if we recall JK Galbraith who observed: Faced with the choice between changing one's
mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everybody gets busy on
the proof.
Today the public
interest is much more layered, atomistic, contested and is something competed
over by various different interests. In short, the public interest is difficult
to define and assert, and this is where the problems for land use planning
begin.
Thank you for
your patience – you have been very kind.
Greg Lloyd
References
Blunkett Dundee (2003) Active
Citizens, Strong Communities – building civil renewal.
Campbell H & Marshall R (2002) Utilitarianism’s
Bad Breath? A Re-Evaluation of the public interest
justification for planning. Planning Theory 1(2), pp
163-187.
Dunn J (2005) Setting the People Free – the story of democracy.
Galbraith JK (1958) The Affluent Society.
Geddes, P. (1904) City
Development: A study of parks, gardens, and culture institutes. A report to the Carnegie Dunfermline Trust. Bourneville, The St George Press.
Grant J (2005) Rethinking the Public Interest as a
Planning Concept. Plan
Hall P (1998) Cities
in Civilisation: Culture, Innovation
and Urban Order.
Hutton W (2005) Save the Lakes from stagnation The
Swiss have shown us how to regenerate the
Jacobs J (1961) The Death
and Life of Great American Cities.
Krugman P (2003) The Great Unravelling:
Losing Our Way in the New Century. New York, Norton & Co. Inc.
Layard R (2006) Happiness
- lessons from a new science.
McAuslan P (1981) The Ideologies of
Planning Law.
Mackay D (2004) The Planning Famine. Reforming Land Use Planning in
Meller H (1993)
Patrick Geddes: Social Evolutionist and City Planner.
Ormerod P (2005) Why
Most Things Fail: Evolution, Extinction and Economics.
Porritt J (2005) Capitalism
as if the world really mattered.
Purves G (undated) Scottish Environmentalism – The
Contribution of Patrick Geddes Available: http://www.ballaterscotland.com/geddes/britain.htm
Sennett R (2006) The
Culture of the New Capitalism
Tewdwr Jones M (2005) “Oh, the planners did their best”:
the planning films of John Betjeman. Planning Perspectives 20,
pp389-411.
Wannop U (1995) The Regional
Imperative: Regional Planning and Governance in
Young M and Wilmott
P (1957) Family and Kinship in
Cities
in Devolution
The
Sir Patrick Geddes Memorial Lecture 2005
Glasgow 16 September 2005 .
Raymond Young
Chair
Architecture and Design
Introduction
It is a privilege - and a somewhat daunting
prospect - to be asked to give this lecture. As an architectural student in the
1960’s I came across Cities in Evolution and it had an important
impact on me - Geddes one of the inspirations behind
the
This is not a lecture on what is in Cities in Evolution. I want to look at the relevance of some of his
ideas in the book to
I should admit right away that I am not a
planner; I am not an economist; I am not an urban designer, and I am certainly
not a botanist! I am an architect by training but not by practice! (I am still
a member of the RIAS, and now as chair of Architecture+DesignScotland)
I am basically a housing and community regeneration policy person. And in some
ways Geddes can be considered as one of the founding
fathers of a community based approach to regeneration.
Housing cannot be looked at in isolation – when
we set up ASSIST in 1970 in Govan we were immediately
bombarded with planning, legal, social and economic questions, so we learnt
very quickly that interconnection or what Geddes
would describe as ‘Holism’ was essential - place /work/ folk was very
important.
And through my time in Scottish Homes, I became
more aware of the need of considering place not just as the built environment,
but more in terms of sustainability. Last year in this lecture Jonathan Porritt looked at Geddes as the
father of sustainable development. I will try and avoid that area!
And although I now live in a small village of
under 1000 population, and have a particular interest in rural housing and
rural development, I have lived and worked in Glasgow (lived in Govan for 20 years), worked in Edinburgh and has had
working relationship with the other cities.
I have also worked in
It is through that experience that I look at
cities, and through these eyes that I reread Geddes.
So this is by way of an apology that I will only make passing reference to
issues about city regions and conurbations which Patrick Geddes
vividly describes in Cities in Evolution, and to some of the town
planning issues that members of the RTPI hold dear.
Even rural dwellers like me recognise
that
Cities in Evolution
Before getting into the subject in more depth, I
would like to make a couple of comments about the book itself. It was published
in 1915; although it was mainly written before the War (Curiously it has major
chapters on
In his introduction Geddes
explains what he is trying to do in the book: It is ‘not a technical treatise for the town planner or city councillor, nor a manual of civics for the sociologist or
teacher… nor is it solely an attempt at the popularisation
of the reviving art of town planning, of the renewing science of civics, to the
general reader… He
appeals to his readers ‘To enter into the
spirit of our cities, their historic essence and continuous life.
It was aimed at a wide audience – effectively an
introduction to Civics. This remains a challenge for us in
It is a book that is full of optimism. Geddes was an internationalist and a Eutopian
– not with a ‘U’ of Sir Thomas More that implied an idealised
‘no place’ but Eutopia with an ‘Eu’
– that Geddes believed could be achieved through
local and international co-operation. It is essentially an ideal of consensus,
of cities and communities where everyone shares common goals. ‘Essential harmony of all these interests and aims’
But can it be considered as too naïve? This kind
of consensual approach ignores the socio-political context of the time - e.g.
demand for universal suffrage, growth of trade unions, of the new left, Marxist
inspired, like the ILP, and other ‘bottom up’ struggles that were brewing
through the late Victorian and Edwardian periods. It is intriguing to think of
some of the key events that were happening as it was published – e.g. Mary Barbour
and the rent strikes in
It is as if planning can be separate from
socio-politics. Indeed there is some evidence that Geddes
was not fond of politicians, although in Cities in Evolution he thinks that ‘A better attitude in town and county councils has
been arising. Old councillors are improving or
retiring; and new ones are coming in who may be as yet immature, and only
semi-articulate, but are more awake to public and civic interests, to the
condition of the people and their need of improved housing’.
Murdo Macdonald in his essay Patrick Geddes: Environment
and Culture suggests
that Geddes was interested in anarchy as a political
philosophy as it proposed a co-operative self-government based on a minimum of
vested power –
not the anarchy of bombs but
that of thoughtful social reformers. In our modern parlance is this devolution and subsidiarity?
The Geddes vision and the importance of
housing to it
Besides optimism, the other key thread that
comes thru’ Cities in Evolution is that of vision – of seeing and promulgating
a new world. As a disciple of Huxley, Geddes was an
evolutionary Visionary – a believer in the cooperative development of life’s
processes towards equilibrium rather than the barren struggle of
• The Paleotechnic age: which he describes as life threatening – the exploitation of coal,
steel, oil and people in the growth of the grimy industrial city, which ignores
the natural world to satisfy human greed.
• The Neotechnic age: which he describes as life insurgent – the transition to a
healthier environment using new cleaner energies (mainly electricity), in which
nature conservation becomes a desirable imperative; with people being valued, a
balance struck between work and leisure, and the natural environment becoming a
necessary part of people’s lives.
Where, one might ask, 90 years later, does
Among Geddes’ visions
for the future, housing played a critical role. He has ideas to propose about
how housing systems, layout and design should be altered and the impact that
these would have upon the Neotechnic city. As ever,
he has learnt from abroad. And he is concerned that
Thus was created the basis of housing policy
that determined the main thrusts of city development in
Geddes was an enthusiast for the
Garden City Movement. He advocated them strongly in Cities in Evolution – an antidote to overcrowding; the separation of home from grimy
workplaces; an opportunity for people to be close to nature; of ‘social co-operation and effective good will’. And of course they
required proper town planning. But he stresses that such suburban development depends on good transportation systems, and emphasises that the development of suburban railways, trams
and now buses allows for the growth of suburbia.
What, one wonders, would Geddes
of made of suburbia as it has become? Closely packed rows of virtually
identical houses, grouped not round the village green as Howard and Unwin would have anticipated, but round the car.
Cul-de-sacs designed to ensure that through traffic is kept to a minimum;
indeed some people have suggested that the greatest influence on modern
suburban layouts are not planners, but a mixture of insurance companies and the
police, for whom ‘Secured by Design’ appears to mean trying to see how close
one can get the car to the living room, and to ensure that any stranger feels
unwelcome walking around the place, and therefore stays away. It is a complete
contrast to ‘chumminess’ of Geddes’ vision of the
Garden City, of the cooperativeness and what later Jane Jacobs would describe
as the ‘eyes in the street’ approach of mixed communities.
And of course, Geddes
would have expected developments to be properly serviced by public transport.
One suspects that he would have been horrified by the way we approach the
transportation issue now; our dependence on the car and the impact that it
makes both on climate change and on city center congestion. He would have
lauded the example of
While there are exceptions to the modern
suburban layouts – e.g. the Drum – the majority come nowhere near the criteria
developed in the Scottish Executive’s placemaking
policy statement Designing Places:
• Contributing to a
sense of identity
• Creating safe and
pleasant places
• Creating easier
movement
• Offering a sense of
welcome
• Contributing to
adaptable places
• Making good use of
resources
In the introduction to Designing Places, we are
reminded that Sam Galbraith (then Minister) asked the question ‘Where are the
conservation areas of tomorrow? And it’s back to Geddes.
Geddes did of course advocate not
only Garden Cities, but the regeneration of older town centres
and the conservation of buildings that are part of the story of the development
of our cities.
And while Cities in Evolution may be the book which inspires and sets out the vision of Eutopia; the Geddes that has
always intrigued and inspired me personally has been his approach to the regeneration
of the
With the creation of the New Town (what would
now be regarded as a kind of posh suburb), the more prosperous folk moved out
leaving the poorest people in the Old Town – a stinking, unsanitary place. No
wonder that it was said in the 18th century that
you could smell the
Geddes was appalled by the living
conditions. He may have drawn our attention to the conditions of the working
class in Cities in Evolution, but unlike many other commentators, he was also
prepared to do something about it. 6 months after marrying Anna, the Geddeses moved into
Geddes was not just about
improving the conditions of the poor. He clearly believed that socially and
economically mixed communities were essential for the wellbeing
of the city – and to encourage the better off to come back he developed
And then there was the creation of a series of
self-governing student hostels, including Riddle’s Court.
But Geddes was not
just concerned with the social and built environment. He had set up the
Environment Society to improve and renew the
Then of course there was the Outlook Tower –
taking over the Short’s observatory and camera obscura
and turning it into a place of information and of study – not just for aspiring
professionals (particularly women) but for the general citizen who was to be
enthused and excited about how cities have developed and the possibilities for
the future – both here and abroad and to understand their own potential.
Education was clearly fun!
Of course the amount of physical change that Geddes was personally able to achieve in the Old Town was
small, but he inspired and set in motion an approach of combining the
improvement of living conditions with building conservation, with (what we
would now call) environmental improvements, with a socially mixed community.
As an aside, while considering the Old Town of
Edinburgh, what would Geddes have made of the
Scottish Parliament at the foot of the
Lessons
And what of Geddesian
lessons for us in the early 21st century?
There are three particular ones I want to draw out.
1 The centrality of the citizen in regeneration process
Cities are made by citizens; we in the design
professions provide a framework or backdrop to their actions. Whatever we do as
design professionals, as citizens we alter, adapt and change our built
environment. In our new
Several years ago, Charles MacKean,
then the Secretary of the RIAS, coined the phrase the ‘Medicis
of Maryhill’ to describe the Community Based Housing
Association movement. They may not be the totally self help build groups that Geddes may have had in his Eutopian
vision, but in many ways they are the natural successors to his co-operatives
and to his Edinburgh Social Union. They have been concerned with housing
conditions, have masterminded the regeneration of whole districts, have
pioneered new urban housing, and are at the forefront of sustainability with
attempts to both reduce fuel poverty and carbon emissions.
Perhaps, however, their major achievement has
been as vehicles for community empowerment. Associations have undertaken social
and economic programmes that have created communities
of confidence. They have provided the basis for many people in so called
‘deprived neighbourhoods’ with the opportunity to
manage change in their own communities, and to grow in self confidence. This
fits very strongly with the Scottish Executive’s regeneration policy ‘Better Communities in Scotland: Closing the Gap which talks about community
empowerment as a key component of transforming areas of social inclusion: ‘a higher priority on providing individuals and
communities with the skills and confidence necessary to take advantage of
opportunities and to play a full part in the life of their communities‘.
One of the key things that have helped in this
area of community empowerment is that of commissioning and working with design
teams – particularly architects. There are a lot of young architects who have
developed their skills in conjunction with local people in housing associations.
Working with architects, with surveyors and contractors is a crucial empowering
process. Communities are proud of having been involved in the process – “I was
involved in that development; I have made a contribution to my community” I
recently enjoyed a morning with Committee members of Community Based Housing
Associations who were very keen to talk about how they were involved in design
issues.
However, the pressures on the housing
associations and on their regulator and paymaster – Communities Scotland – are
such that efficiency drives (in other words – can we get more houses for the
same or less amount of money) are proposing to reduce the number of developing
associations, so that smaller (and community based) may have to buy their
houses from a larger (and probably more professional) supplier.
So what does this say to people in these kind of
communities – you can only have the cheapest houses, you are not to be
encouraged to take charge of the process (buy your houses from ‘experts’?),
being a client is too complex a task for you? Are community based associations
only to be regarded as capable of managing houses and not commissioning them?
And if the design process is a major part of empowering people – what price is
put on that?
We are about to have a modernised
planning system. Much is made in the Consultation paper about the planning
system becoming more inclusive – especially by front loading the process. This
is clearly a sensible approach, but requires a cultural change amongst all
stakeholders, including councillors and the public.
To make the new planning system work, we need to equip people to engage
effectively – what in regeneration terms has been called capacity building.
And capacity building applies equally to the professionals
who have to develop new skills to work in new ways with stakeholders. How do we
do this? Will there be sufficient resources made available for training?
2 Promoting good architecture and design
This leads me to my second point. I believe that
21st century Scottish citizens are becoming more and
more interested in planning, architecture and design. They are aspiring to
higher quality buildings. This month thousands of Scots will pour through
buildings of all shapes and sizes, old and new as part of Doors Open Days. The
most unlikely people (like my local over 50’s club) are queuing up to see round
the new Parliament and are being stimulated by it – they may not all like it,
but there is a debate going on. How do we capitalise
on this interest?
There is a question of whether the planning
system that we have encourages or could encourage better design. Close to where
I live a little bungalow is being redeveloped – into a three storey mock Tower house, with numerous extensions. Friends
ask me – how did it get planning permission when we (admittedly in a
conservation area) have to match 19th century
windows at an extension at the back of the house? Or are required to put up
chimney stacks in a new all-electric house? There is some attraction in the notion
of shifting away from asking the question – is this good enough to approve? (that is: ‘it will just do’) to the question is it bad
enough to reject? (it will just not do!) But there is circularity
here – it is back to the question – the critical question - of capacity
building and training.
The general interest in architecture
particularly may also have been stimulated by the appearance on our turf of
some of the architectural superstars – like Foster, Gehry,
Hadid. And how good are we
at promoting our own talent? Tonight
So where are the correspondents in our national
papers on architecture, planning and the built environment? Do new buildings
and planning proposals not deserve to be reviewed (and perhaps given stars!) as
other parts of the creative world – and not just reviewed in the professional
magazines? How about a few less makeover programmes,
and few more programmes that look at current
developments both in the
3 Sustainability is not just about economics
Geddes was first and foremost a
Botanist who became a renaissance man. ‘A lad of pairts’. His triad - place/work/folk – is in that
order because he believed firmly that folk could only be understood when work
and place had been studied thoroughly. When folk chose their work they could
shape the place according to their needs.
We live in generation that puts economic (work)
at the top of the agenda. For our cities to thrive, they must be economically
viable. That becomes the driving force. Scottish Cities are vitally important
as our economic powerhouses, as the major meeting places for people, and for
tourism. But the quality of our cities, the quality of places, is fundamental
to the quality of life we can offer to our citizens. The Executive has recognised the importance of placemaking
- “The quality of
There is a new confidence growing in
Geddes was a botanist and for him
a garden and green space was critical. The whole question of the status of
landscaping and public spaces within regeneration is still to be accepted in
And finally
I want to finish with a suggestion –
particularly relating to the issues of capacity building and the participation
of citizens in our place making activities. Mention the name of Patrick Geddes to many people and after they have stopped saying
‘Think Global, Act Local’, ‘Place, work, folk’, and ‘sympathy, synthesis,
synergy’, will say ‘
We need to ‘up our game’, not just as
professionals, but as citizens. And the
• An education
centre – for schools and for the general public; with
potential relationship with local colleges and university
• A history of how the city has evolved
• The plans
for the city
• A huge model
of the city (whatever happened to the
• Awareness raising on issues such as sustainability, environmental
protection
• Capacity
building for the new planning system
• An
opportunity for citizen participation in future planning
• A place for
visiting exhibitions on placemaking (like the
Bavarian exhibition)
• A base for
more formal courses for professional groups
• Design
advice
• Local
planning aid
• A 21st century form of Camera Obscura
– using CCTV technology!
Such a series of local arrangements should be complemented
by national programmes including study visits abroad.
And we need to see placemaking and the citizens’ role
therein as a fundamental part of developing the new
Raymond Young
Key references:
Geddes, P., (1915) Cities in Devolution Ernest Benn
Ltd,
by Percy Johnson-
Welter, V.M., Lawson, J., (Eds) (2000) The City after Patrick Geddes Lang,
Stephen, W., (2004)Think Global, Act Local Luath Press,
Scottish Executive (2001) Designing Places
Sustainable Development Past and Present
Sir Patrick Geddes Commemorative Lecture
Jonathon Porritt
I feel deeply honoured
to have been invited by the Royal Town Planning Institute and Saltire Society to give the first Patrick Geddes Commemorative Lecture on the 150th Anniversary of his birth. Unbeknownst to those rash enough to extend this invitation to me, I have
for a long time been a great admirer of Patrick Geddes,
and believe him to be one of the most important of those early pioneers of what
we now know as sustainable development.
I discovered his work by chance, more than ten
years ago, when running a course at
One star in my galaxy at
I subsequently came across an extraordinary book
edited by Frank Novak called “Lewis Mumford and
Patrick Geddes: The Correspondence”, which provides a
compelling account of this lopsided relationship conducted almost entirely through
correspondence over seventeen years. Mumford was
quick to recognise the principal sources of
inspiration for Patrick Geddes’s work, particularly
Thomas Huxley, Frederic le Play, Peter Kropotkin and
Ernst Hãckel (whose “_kologie”,
published in 1869, is seen by many as the first major ecological text). In
“Cities of Tomorrow”, Sir Peter Hall comments on the way in which Mumford built so successfully on this body of work, using
it to underpin his own regional planning association in America – and if you want
to know where the contemporary notion of bio-regionalism came from, look no
further than the work of Mumford and Geddes.
Although it’s true that a lot of Geddes’s writing is opaque, he was a dab hand at the odd
sustainable development soundbite! I much enjoy
pointing out to sustainable development activists that one of their favourite catch phrases, “Think Global, Act Local”, did not
emerge from that crucible of catchphrases, the 1992 Earth Summit, but rather
from Patrick Geddes’s “Cities in Evolution” in 1915!
Beyond that, he was constantly seeking to provide snappy summaries of his ideas
– often in the form of verbal troikas! His educational troika, “Head, Heart and
Hand”, remains one of the best known of these, and I shall be touching on that
at the end of my Lecture, just as I shall be returning to his concept of
“Place, Work, Folk”.
My own favourite,
however, lies in his three Ss: Sympathy (for all people and for the natural
world); Synthesis (of the different parts of a system); and Synergy (the combined,
cooperative actions of people working together to make their place a better
place). It’s clear that Geddes would have been a
great champion of today’s “stakeholder approach” to getting things sorted out,
let alone of the “Planning for Real” movement!
Enough history! Here we are now in 2004, giving
new voice to many of those earlier insights, picked up and amplified through
the increasingly influential concept of sustainable development. I must of
course declare a vested interest here: as Chairman of the Sustainable
Development Commission it is my job to extol both the intellectual authority
and the convening power of sustainable development, and to go on pointing out
to those in politics still flailing around to find a genuinely “big idea” to
match the massive challenges of the 21th Century, that it’s already right there under their noses - and it’s
called sustainable development.
As we know, some of those challenges are
environmental – climate change, overfishing, water
shortages, deforestation and so on. Some are social – security issues, poverty,
growing wealth disparities and so on. And some are economic. But what is more
important than any one of those challenges in its own right is the degree to
which its impacts on all the others. It’s for that reason that the main
principle used by the Sustainable Development Commission is “putting
sustainable development at the centre”: “Sustainable
development should be the organizing principle of all democratic societies,
underpinning all other goals, policies and processes. It provides a framework
for integrating economic, social and environmental concerns over time, not
through crude trade-offs, but through the pursuit of mutually reinforcing
benefits. It promotes good governance, healthy living, innovation, life–long
learning and all forms of economic growth which secure the natural capital upon
which we depend. It reinforces social harmony and seeks to secure each
individual’s prospects of leading a fulfilling life.”
With that in mind, I sometimes despair when I
hear of politicians talking about “joined-up politics”. Joined-up politics
really isn’t a question of improved crossdepartmental
cooperation in policy-making, but of a completely different way of looking at
what we now have to do to build a secure, equitable and sustainable future for
human kind.
That’s not a prospect available to us today with
any of the “business–as-usual” models of progress advocated by mainstream
politicians. The degree of institutionalised denial
remains astonishing. To give but one example, it’s all but impossible to
discuss the blindingly obvious reality that the growth in human numbers between
1950 (when our population was around 3 billion), 2000 (around 6 billion), and
2050 (likely to be around 9 billion) is probably the single most important
reality that we have to take stock of in coping with today’s interlocking
crises. Yet such an assertion is so politically incorrect that I’m not even
sure I should be uttering it in my capacity as Chairman of the Sustainable
Development Commission!
But let’s get a little bit more logical about
this. With climate change, for instance. After twenty
years of painstaking research and sophisticated computer modelling,
mediated for the most part through the impeccable authority of the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, we now know that climate change is a
demonstrable phenomenon, in our midst right now, and threatening increasingly
severe disruptions in the future. Even the benighted administration of George
Bush would now appear to have accepted that reality.
We’ve heard over the last few weeks that
The most serious policy contender for this next
phase of climate change diplomacy goes by the name of “contract and converge” -
requiring the nations of the rich world dramatically to contract their
emissions of greenhouse gases to allow nations of the poor world to grow their
economies in part through an inevitable increase in the consumption of fossil
fuels. At some stage, (still to be defined, but a lot closer than a lot of
politicians imagine), we must then move towards a situation where every human
being, (be they in
You don’t have to be a mathematical genius to realise that it’s going to be a lot harder to get that
sorted out with 9 billion people claiming an equal share of this particular
finite resource than it would be with 6 billion – let alone 3 billion (which is
where human numbers were just fifty years ago). All those who continue to think
that we are somehow immune from the operations of the Laws of Nature are as
sorely deluded today as they have been at any other point in history. As
Patrick Geddes himself once
put it: “what was decided among the prehistoric Protozoa cannot be annulled by
Act of Parliament”.
For Geddes, by contrast
with today’s “wise leaders”, was firmly of the opinion that humankind should
indeed be following the same core rules of nature as other organisms do. The
relationships may be different, the complexity that much greater, but the goal
is the same. I can’t help but think that he would approve of the Sustainable
Development Commission’s second main Principle:
“We are and always will be part of Nature,
embedded in the natural world, and totally dependent for our own economic and
social wellbeing on the resources and systems that
sustain life on Earth. These systems have limits, which we breach at our peril.
All economic activity must be constrained within those limits. We have an
inescapable moral responsibility to pass on to future generations a healthy and
diverse environment, and critical natural capital unimpaired by economic
development. Even as we learn to manage our use of the natural world more
efficiently, so we must affirm these individual beliefs and belief systems
which revere nature for its intrinsic value, regardless of its economic and
aesthetic value to human kind.”
It is the speed with which this is all happening
that understandably leaves today’s politicians floundering. We’re finding it
incredibly difficult to get a proper sense of perspective on this – which is
where planning comes into the frame! For all sorts of reasons, planners now
find themselves on the front line of delivering sustainable development for
real people in real life situations. And I guess my principal message this evening
is to suggest that there is now a unique opportunity to bring about the most
significant reform in the Scottish planning system for a very long time to help
improve performance against that lofty mission.
As I understand it, a new Planning Bill is anticipated
in the next Parliamentary Session. We very much hope that the Scottish
Parliament will seize that opportunity to define a formal purpose for planning
– namely, “to deliver sustainable development”. Such a purpose was originally
supported by Lord Falconer as the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Bill was
under consideration in Whitehall, but by the time Parliamentary Counsel had had
its way, not only did this purpose disappear, but the sustainable development
duty which has now been laid on all plan-making bodies in England and Wales had
somehow slipped to Clause 38! Great that it’s there at all (and we are now
hoping that the new Policy Planning Statement 1 (due out in the near future),
will provide the clarity of guidance about planning for sustainable development
that has been so lacking in the past), but it would have been so much better if
he’d stuck to his original guns.
In that respect, there is now a gathering
consensus about what “planning for sustainability” means in practice. In broad
terms, it should:
• focus on
specific sustainable outcomes and improving quality of life
• promote the
highest quality development and most beneficial land use in the most
appropriate locations at the right time
• prevent
inappropriate development
• ensure prudent
use of natural resources
• integrate
social, economic and environmental benefits – win-win outcomes
• provide a
longer term perspective
• protect
critical natural capital; avoid, or if not possible, minimize environmental
damage
• include new techniques
for assessing and calculating the longer term impacts of development
• be better
resourced, with better training for planners and local councillors
• be based on
a strong national framework
This year, the Scottish Executive published its
own National Planning Framework – a welcome first step. In terms of sustainable
development, the Framework says a lot of the right things, but is somewhat
limited in scope and was subject to a very late and very limited form of
Strategic Environmental Assessment. In addition, Scottish Planning Policy 1
(“The Planning System”) specifically states that planning should encourage
sustainable development in all sorts of different ways.
Perhaps the single most important thing emerging
from all of this is that planning for sustainable development is not about
trade-off but about integration – putting extra effort into solutions that
deliver win-win outcomes, and not accepting mediocre schemes as “good enough”.
Trade-off process is common in the lexicon of planners, but it is only OK so
long as it means that all issues have been properly and robustly assessed, that
they are based on as full an understanding as possible, that all alternative
solutions have been explored first, and that the best location and development
option has been chosen. If, on the other hand, trade-off means arriving at the
solution that does least harm to each interest, then it is not acceptable and
should be resisted.
Planners therefore need to be able to take time
to negotiate and improve schemes - go the extra mile – with all the consequent
problems that this raises in terms of meeting government determination
deadlines. They might in this respect be mindful of something that Patrick Geddes stressed throughout his life: “planning requires
long and patient study. The work cannot be done in the office with ruler and
parallels, for the plan must be sketched out on the spot, after wearying hours
of perambulation”.
And isn’t that still one of the key elements in
a fairer planning process? In a speech at the Sustainable Communities
Conference on September 3rd this year,
Margaret Curran (then the Minister for Communities) picked up on the Geddes axiom of “Place, Work, Folk” and added a fourth item
- namely, fairness. She went on to say : “We know that for regeneration to work
in the long term – for it to be sustainable – then the local community has to
be at the heart of the process.
This is because we can’t expect local people to
have full ownership of regeneration issues if they haven’t been involved in
them from the outset. And we may waste valuable time and resources - and risk
setting up ineffective schemes – if we don’t make sure we are focussing on the true priorities for local people. A key
part of environmental justices is making sure that everyone –
not just the “usual suspects”, or the privileged few – has the chance to
influence decisions that affect their day to day lives.”
The Sustainable Development Commission wholly
concurs with that vision. But at the moment, as you know, applicants for planning
permission have a right of appeal if their application is refused under the
current planning system. In contrast, there are very limited rights of
challenge for individuals, communities or NGOs if a development is approved. Is
this fair? Many developments are granted consent despite being contrary to the
Development Plan. Is this fair? And those who are least able to represent their
own interest as are most likely to suffer from unwanted developments. Again, is
this fair?
What we need is a modernised
planning system that ensures public engagement thoughout
the process – sustainable development depends upon participation and trust, by
all parties, on a level playing field. In order to deliver this, the Commission
believes that the introduction of a widened Right of Appeal is essential as
part of the overall programme of modernising
the planning system.
I appreciate this is a controversial
recommendation – as evidenced by the response to it from the CBI in
I also appreciate that this is not the view of
our hosts for this evening, the Royal Town Planning Institute in
Based on that, I have one specific idea for the
Scottish Executive: why not apply the “Patrick Geddes
test “ to this particularly vexed question? If Patrick
Geddes were able, from the grave, as it were, to
contribute a rather late submission to the ‘Widening the Right of Appeal’
consultation, how do you think it would read? To take that a little bit
further, perhaps the Patrick Geddes Memorial Trust,
as part and parcel of its admirable work to restore the work of Patrick Geddes to its rightful place, might launch a competition
for the best “in his own words” submission to the consultation, drawing on his
lifetime’s work and key ideas. Though I would not in any way claim to be a Geddes scholar, I can’t honestly imagine how he wouldn’t be
strongly in favour of some kind of third party rights
of appeal. Otherwise, what does this mean: “Town planning is not merely
place-planning, nor even work-planning. If it is to be
successful, it must be folk-planning.”? To use such a quote,
is, of course, a little unfair. (Almost as unfair as the wonderfully robust
debate currently raging in the
And in that spirit, let us try to imagine what
Patrick Geddes might have said on today’s highly
controversial debate about wind power. Here again, I have to admit that I’m a
little biased, not only in believing that wind power is capable of making a
critical and substantial contribution to our overall energy needs (which is now
very much part of orthodox government thinking), but also in perceiving wind
turbines to be objects of compelling physical beauty, capable of enhancing as
many landscapes as they may impair. (Not such an orthodox view!). The
Sustainable Development Commission is currently undertaking a new piece of work
to review the current range of arguments for and against, to expose them (on
both sides) to some kind of “truth test”, and to come down hard on those guilty
of peddling misperceptions or deliberately mendacious propaganda (on both
sides), and to make some recommendations to Whitehall, the Scottish Executive
and the Welsh Assembly Government as to ways in which the quality of this
debate might be improved.
So here’s the Patrick Geddes
test on this one: would he have been putting in a planning application to erect
a number of mini-turbines alongside the Camera Obscura
on the top of the
Geddes was a systematically
holistic thinker, believing that one can only make sense of things by seeing
them as parts of a bigger system. As regards the concept of “Place”, he thought
in terms of what might be described as “nested layers”, with each spatial layer
critical in its own right, but only properly comprehensible (and therefore “plannable”, as it were) by reference to those other spatial
layers nested in it or in which it was nested. As you know, this was taken
fairly literally in his layout for the Outlook tower, where visitors were
required to start at the top, with the Camera Obscura
allowing for a survey of the surrounding area, and then work down from displays
about Edinburgh on the fifth floor, Scotland on the fourth floor, Great Britain
on the Third floor, Europe on the second, and the world on the first.
Thinking of this in context of the wind power
debate, I couldn’t help but speculate how useful it would be to be able to take
the different protagonists involved in any planning dispute to a latter day
equivalent of the
renewables!
By the same token, a visit to the
And that of course puts planners right back in
the hot seat – which from my perspective, is exactly where planners should want
to be! For if we know one thing for certain about Patrick Geddes,
it is this: that if we applied the Patrick Geddes
test to the whole question of the state of planning and the planning profession
today, one can’t help but conclude that he would be a disappointed man. Indeed,
there are some who have argued that there is now so little of the radicalism
and holistic thinking of Patrick Geddes left in
contemporary planning practice as to cause the father of modern town-planning
to disown it all together. One such critic, Michael Small, puts it as
follows: “Geddes
has been hijacked by the planning fraternity, who have,
in preserving his name from oblivion, also narrowed it into a space in which it
cannot breathe. Gone is the pioneering ecology, the arguments for self
management, mutual aid and decentralisation, and in
its place an insipid and technocratic paternalism. The glaring contradiction
between Geddes’s vision and the crimes that have been
done by planners, who still claim Geddes is their
inspiration, is breathtaking”.
That, I suspect, would be considered by most
people in this audience to be an excessively harsh viewpoint. But others would
certainly concur with a less inflammatory viewpoint that one of the reasons why
the standing and the reputation of the planning profession as a whole would
appear to have become somewhat shrunken is that it has lost that inspirational
purpose that drove Patrick Geddes throughout his
life.
Tonight is certainly not the kind of occasion to
try and do justice to such a complicated area of enquiry, but let me give one
oblique but I hope still relevant example of what I mean, drawing on the canon
of Patrick Geddes’s work that still has such
relevance to us today: should there not be a presumption, in every plan-making
process and every individual planning decision (where relevant), to maximise the opportunities for people to be in contact with
the natural world – physical, sensory, tangible contact? At the heart of Patrick Geddes’s
anxiety about the direction the world was taking in the early part of the 20th Century, was the phenomenon he described as
“nature starvation”. He despaired of one-off, piecemeal decisions that
gradually stripped out nature from town and city centres,
claiming on one occasion that: “since the Industrial Revolution, there has gone
on an organised sacrifice of men to things, a
large-scale subordination of life to machinery”. He found it impossible to
imagine sound educational systems that didn’t constantly place children in
nature, rather than reading about nature from afar or looking out on it from
behind safe windows and walls. He hated two-dimensional maps, and scorned those
educationalists who supposed that one can “read the world” through a map: “The
child’s desire of seeing and hearing, touching and handling, of smelling and
tasting are all true and healthy hungers, and it can hardly be too strongly
insisted that good teaching begins neither with knowledge nor discipline, but
through delight.” I would argue that most of us are still suffering from
chronic nature starvation, and that this is as much a challenge for planners
today as it was when Geddes was alive.
So let me end with a very Geddesian
assertion; that if we really want to save the world, then we must be constantly
in the world, celebrating the indivisibility of all living matter, and bravely
owning the oneness of life on Earth.And I much look
forward to seeing how that pans out in the new Planning Bill!
(May I add, as a brief post script to this
written version of the Lecture originally given on 1st October 2004, that I’m
hugely indebted for some of the quotes from Patrick Geddes
that I have used here to the authors of a brand new book: “Think Global, Act
Local: the Life and Legacy of Patrick Geddes”. I can
only say that this would have been a much better Lecture had I had access to
the book before rather than after delivering it!)
Jonathon Porritt 2004
NUMBER 13 of the 25
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