Transcript The City in the Region

The City in the Region
The Birth of Regional Planning:
Edinburgh, New York, London,
1900-1940
Downtown Manhattan as
seen from the Empire State
Building, 1931.
Edinburghshire, Edinburgh,
Princes Street in 1903
• Patrick Geddes(1854-1932)
• Lewis Mumford(1895-1990)
• The Regional Planning Association of
America (RPAA, 1923)
• The RPAA vs the Regional Plan of New York
• New Deal Planning (1931-1945)
• The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA, 1932)
• The Real Success: Greater London Plan
• Introduction of the region planning concept and
survey method
• The importance of regional survey and analysis of the
relationship among ‘human, land and workplace’
before planning
• It is necessary to analyze the interdependent
relationship between urban and regional
environment from a ecological perspective
• An introduction to pioneers who initiated the study of
greenbelt community and ecological urban planning
such as Clarence Stein and Lewis Munford.
• catalyst for today's eco-city and sustainable city
movement.
Patrick Geddes(1854-1932)
• A Scottish biologist
• A Social Evolutionist and
pioneering City Planner
• Geddes' work on
regional surveys, cultural
evolution, and urban
sociology has become
even more noticed since
his death.
Patrick Geddes: Emphasis on the human scale and purpose.
Geddes and the Anarchist Tradition
• He was a fan of Kropotkin’s
“anarchistic communism
based on free confederations
of autonomous regions”
• He believed in the earth as a
cooperative planet where
people should be taught how
to properly treat their
environment
•
Peter Kropotkin(1842-1921), a
Russian zoologist, activist,
philosopher, economist, writer,
scientist, evolutionary theorist,
geographer and one of the world's
foremost anarcho-communists.
Patrick Geddes(1854-1932)
• Buddies with Lewis Mumford, who
took Geddes’ somewhat rambling
concepts, combined them with
Ebenezer Howard’s concepts, and
turned them into something
actually implementable
Patrick Geddes(1854-1932)
• Ideas of natural region,
human response creating a
cultural landscape (PlaceWork-Folk), and finally
survey before plan from
French philosophers Reclus,
Vidal and Le Play
Patrick Geddes’ Surveys
• Begin with“valley” section
from mountain to sea
• Archeology of ancient cities
provides understanding of
environment as “motor force
of human development”
• Planning must start with a
survey of the resources of
such a natural region, of the
human response to it and the
resulting complexities of the
cultural landscape
A Total Reconstruction of Social
and Political life
• Geddes’ re-creation of regions was intended to
provide the basis for a total reconstruction of social
and political life, and renew life as in earlier eras and
orders. He used the terms:
• Paleotechnic: crude introduction of technology (the
Industrial Revolution)
• Neotechnic (Geddes’ vision, made possible by the
automobile, electricity, etc.): possibility for
conservation of resources, positive evolution through
conscious planning of a Utopia based on
neighborhood cooperatives, organized into larger
and larger federations stretching all the way up to a
global level. In this same vein he argues the League
of Nations should actually be a league of cities.
Cities in Evolution (1915)
• The most coherent collection of his thoughts
• Identifies neotechnic technologies’, such as
the combustion engine’s, potential to
change urban dynamic form from one of
conglomeration to one of dispersion
• Coins term “conuburation,” to describe
city-regions or town aggregates – this would
be termed Megalopolis (large city) 50 years
later
Cities in Evolution (1915)
• Geddes draw attention to the fact that the
new neotechnic technologies were already
causing the great cities to disperse and thus
to aggregate
• Seeks correct method of growth, to bring the
country to the spreading urbanity; like
Howard but on a REGIONAL level (i.e.
Geotechnic – geography in planning)
• Geddes emphasized preservation of historical
traditions, involvement of the people in their
own betterment and the rediscovery of past
traditions of city building
Geddes’ Impact
Geddes influenced the urban planning
movement in many different ways.
Geddes’ Impact
• His work on regional
surveying influenced Lewis
Mumford and numerous
others.
• His method of considering
social implications in city
planning has carried over
to the sustainable city
projects of today.
What is Regional survey?
to an archaeologist, it involves inspecting large
tracts of land for traces of past behaviors that
are visible on or near the ground surface.
Small village in coastal Shandong Province, China
Implementing Regional Survey
Bronze age settlement on low hill above reservoir in coastal Shandong
Gary Feinman on top of the large Han tomb at the site of Liangchengzhen
Regional Survey in China
Map of the Shandong Survey Area
Field Methods in Regional Survey
Data Analysis in Regional Survey
Further Reading in Regional Survey
Bibliography of Regional Analysis, continued
Geddes’ Impact
• Geddes was already identifying the
connections between society and
spatiality, method and outlook, as
being at the heart of integrated
public policy understanding and
implementation.
• His understanding of the connection
between the individual and the
environment, as described in his last
major work, Life Outlines of General
Biology, constitutes the core of
modern planning.
Geddes’ Impact
• Geddes's great achievement in life
has been the making of a bridge
between Biology and Social
Science
• Geddes was keenly interested in
the science of ecology, an
advocate of nature conservation
and strongly opposed to pollution.
Because of this, some historians
have claimed he was a forerunner
of modern Green politics.
The Regional Planning
Association of America
(RPAA, 1923)
What is RPAA?
• It was established in 1923 by a small, informal group of
visionary planners, architects, sociologists and foresters.
• A group of planners destined to burn brightly but short
lived, the RPAA included Lewis Mumford, Clarence Stein,
Benton MacKaye, Catherine Bauer, Charles Harris
Whitaker, as well as Wright, Ackerman, and others.
• The RPAA 5-fold program:
• Garden cities in regions
• Trans-Atlantic connections (especially with Geddes)
• Appalachian Trail projects
• Collaboration with American Institute of Architect’s
Community Planning committee to propagate regionalism
• Survey of key areas (Tennessee Valley)
Survey magazine -- RPAA’s
manifesto
• They laid out an agenda for building and rebuilding
American cities and metropolitan regions, and for
preserving rural and wilderness areas.
• Included Mumford’s article on phases of migration
in America. The 4th migration – based on neotechnic
technologies can be planned;
• Intervention is necessary to correct gross
inefficiencies of system; otherwise dinosaur-like older
cities will be passed by.
• Regional production and consumption, mildly
socialist, harkens back to Athens, seeks regional
ecological balance
The Fourth Migration
• The Fourth migration – based on “the technological
revolution that has taken place during the last thirty
years – a revolution that has made the existing layout
of cities and the existing distribution of population
out of square with our new opportunities”
• In Mumford’s view, dense urban development
patterns at that time were tied too closely to free
market development and not to sound social policy
• Lewis Mumford on the city
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5b_59mls4M
"The City“(1938)
• The film features the ideas of Lewis Mumford and
others who articulated RPAA's values and visions.
• Many parts of the story showcased in the film have
been realized: the automobile has become a
dominant means of transportation; the nation's
housing has been upgraded significantly; and many
open spaces have been protected.
Lewis Mumford(1895-1990)
• Mumford is still regarded as the
leading 20th century authority on
cities — their history, design and
communal purpose.
• Mumford believed that society
could be improved through rational
and ecologically sound planning
• Mumford contributed concepts of
“a dispersed yet concentrated
urban culture integrated with
nature” which were integrated
along with MacKaye’s concepts
into the RPAA’s later projects.
•
Lewis Mumford Centre
http://mumford.albany.edu/mumford/chron
ology_lm.htm
Master-Pupil
• One of Geddes' best known
'students'
• The young Mumford saw Geddes as
his mentor and most important
teacher, someone who prompted an
intellectual awakening, while also
offering an important intimacy.
• “Geddes gave me the frame for my
thinking: my task has been to put
flesh on his abstract skeleton”
• A strained relationship
• Their much-discussed 'collaboration',
however, was abortive, partly owing
to their incompatible learning styles,
temperaments, and habits.
Also at the time – Southern
Intellectuals
• Southern agrarians who reject North’s
industrialism (Vanderbilt)
• Howard Odum: leader of Southern
Regionalists – supports decentralized wealth,
regenerating natural resources that had been
exploited (UNC)
• Combined in The New Exploration (MacKaye,
1928) – seeks to conserve indigenous over
metropolitan America by green motorways
which extend metro, and wilderness preserves
which check urban growth
The RPAA
vs
the Regional Plan of New York
• Thomas Adams, a businessman’s planner, was hired by
the Russell Sage Foundation to head up the Regional Plan
of New York. He believed in the art of the possible and
mild controls.
• The resulting regional plan:
• wide scope, volumes of survey (OK with RPAA)
• philosophy not OK with RPAA – form of region fixed,
incremental change, Corbu-esque skyscrapers, recentralization into center and only small movement of
industry to sub-centers, no fixed plan on where people go
(like garden cities), acceptance of growth
• Mumford condemns plan as “badly conceived pudding”
New Deal Planning (1931-1945)
• Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a fan of the
RPAA program: mass return to the land,
cooperative planning for the common good,
industry to periphery, distribution of
population.
• 1933 Public Works Bill: resettlement on land,
creates Resettlement Administration, Green
Belt Towns go nowhere (Rexford Tugwell,
Stuart Chase sponsors)
• Agencies proliferate: National Resources
Planning Board, National Planning Board,
National Resources Committee – stay neutral
on decentralization
The Tennessee Valley Authority
(TVA, 1932)
• The greatest achievement of New Deal planning
• Combined RPAA and Southern Regionalists but results in
little actual regional planning; aims to improve navigation,
develop power sources, arms production, control floods to
help Appalachia (one of the nation’s poorest regions).
• The “Dream Team”:
• A.E. Morgan – Utopian planner (chair)
• David Lilienthal – public power developer
• Harcourt Morgan – Agricultural extensionist
• A triumphant example of “grassroots democracy; still
seen as success
The Real Success:
Greater London Plan
• Thomas Adams, Unwin, Geddes, Ebenezer Howard applied
American (RPAA) theories in Britain, but Patrick Abercrombie was
the man behind the plan.
• 1927: Greater London Regional Planning Committee and 1933
report – weak, largely advisory, zoning still in infant stage;
parkways, green wedges
• 1932: Town and Country Planning Bill – weak and Unwin leaves for
US
• 1944: Greater London Plan – stronger
– Abercrombie comes through, but still not enough for the diehards
– Neighborhood units, road hierarchy, fast traffic highways,
concentric rings of decreasing population, open space structure,
green belt around city
– Mumford: “Single best document on planning”
– Eight satellite New Towns build by the mid 1960s
– Flexible, adaptable despite fixed character
– Absorbed into political and economic processes
The London Plan, 2011
• “the London Plan is only a decade old, the
debate engendered by this document proves
that Londoners understand its importance,
and are serious about ensuring it
provides a framework for their city to
develop in ways that meet their needs
and aspirations.”
•
---Boris Johnson, “THE LONDON PLAN,
Spatial Development Strategy for Greater
London”, July 2011
Mayor of London, Boris Johnson
Regional Planning in Taiwan
• Laws & Regulations
• Regional Planning Act（區域計畫法）
• Article 1 This Act is enacted to promote conservation and
utilization of lands and natural resources, and reasonable
distribution of population and industrial activities, so as to accelerate
economic development, improve living environment, and enhance
public welfare.
(為促進土地及天然資源之保育利用，人口及產業活動之合理
分布，以加速 並健全經濟發展，改善生活環境，增進公共福
利，特制定本法 )
• Article 3 A regional plan referred to in this Act means a regional
development plan formulated according to the mutually depended
and common-interest relations between geography, population,
resources, and economic activities.
(本法所稱區域計畫，係指基於地理、人口、資源、經濟活動
等相互依賴及 共同利益關係，而制定之區域發展計畫 )
台灣地區計畫體系圖
┌──────────┐
│台灣地區綜合開發計畫│
└──────────┘
↓
┌────────┐
│台灣南部區域計畫│
└────────┘
↓
┌──────────────┐
┌─────┴─────┐
┌────┴───┐
│ 非都市土地使用計畫 │
│ 都市計畫 │
└─────┬─────┘
└────┬───┘
└──────────────┘
↓
┌─────────┐
│ 都市化地區 │
│ 山 坡 地 │
│ 環境敏感地 │
│ 海 岸 地 區 │
Afterthought
• The Fifth migration - From real world to
virtual world?
• The Sixth migration - From the earth to
the universe?
Afterthought
• The definition of "region" needs some
rethinking?
• In the days of the RPAA, there were only
six regions in the nation. Today, every
city-suburb pair seems to be calling
itself a region.
Questions
• Can social problems be "solved" by
manipulating physical form? especially
since the agendas of 60 years ago and
today are not the same