Geddes, Patrick (1915) Cities in Evolution
Geddes, Patrick (1915) Cities in Evolution
Geddes, Patrick (1915) Cities in Evolution
ES IN
EVOLUTION
AN INTRODUCTION TO THE
TOWN PLANNING MOVEMENT
AND TO THE
STUDY OF CIVICS
BY
PATRICK GEDDES
MEMBER AND HON. LIBRARIAN OF THE TOWN PLANNING INSTITUTE
DIRECTOR OF THE CITIES AND TOWN PLANNING EXHIBITION
WITH 59 ILLUSTRATIONS
LONDON
WILLIAMS & NORGATE
14 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN
1915
PREFACE
FROM opening chapter to concluding summary it will
industries, as of old.
Nor is this
"
merely Utopian," though frankly
Eutopian. In matters civic, as in simpler fields of
science, it is from facts surveyed and interpreted
that we gain our general ideas of the direction of
Evolution, and even see how to further this since ;
type before the war, but not a line or word has been
altered, and only the closing sentence added since ;
PREFACE ix
process of renewal.
PATRICK GEDDES.
CONTENTS
C IAP. PAGES
1. THE EVOLUTION OF CITIES. . . . 1-24
. .. .
-
. . 25-45
INDEX 407-409
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
1.
Salisbury: Plan in eighteenth century .... PAGE
5
2.
Diagram of .... 6
,'J.
original lay-out
recovery . . . . . . . . .159
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xv
F G. PACK
40. Frankfort new showing dockers'
docks, village, with
garden, boulevards, park and lake . * . .197
41. View in Hampstead Garden Suburb .... 224
42. Parks and parkway girdle for a small American city :
Roanoke . 233
43. Plan of Cities and Town Planning Exhibition in Ghent,
1913 . . / . . . . . .271
41. Cardiff: Model of Civic Centre . . ... . 276
45. Plan of a Netherlands town (Goch) seventeenth century . 282
5.'}.
Crosby Hall, Chelsea, as rebuilt in 1909-10 . . .374
54. Garden Village, Roseburn, Edinburgh . . . .381
Example of progressive
5.5. Co-operative Tenants, Ltd.:
development in planning : ^_. .... 383
in, ill or well, and for worse if not for better, the
whole thread of his life.
point of view ;
but we reach this if we can show them,
for instance, exactly how one of
r
their favourite
cathedral cities notably Salisbury, for choice was
planned. At the exodus of its Bishop from Old
Sarum in 1220, he brought its citizens after him into
what he had laid out as a veritable garden city ;
so
that Salisbury at its beginnings six centuries ago was
THE EVOLUTION OF CITIES 7
terpretations.
Thepainter may be at first harder to deal with, for
he has as yet too seldom begun to dream how many
new subjects for his art the future is here preparing,
when our Garden-Suburb avenues have grown and
their cottage roofs have mellowed. Yet we shall
reach him too even next spring, for then our young
orchard will have its first blossoms, and the children
willbe at play in it. The builder, again, eager to
proceed with more cottages, is impatient of our civic
dreams, and will not look at our old-world plans of
temples or cathedrals. As yet he is somewhat apt to
miss, in church, and still more in the business week,
what a certain old-world aphorism concerning the
Street famous.
Aristotle the founder of civic studies, as of so
economic insight.
So bookish has been our past education, so strict
our school drill of the " three R's," and so well-nigh
complete our lifelong continuance among them, that
nine people out of ten, sometimes even more, under-
stand print better than pictures, and pictures better
than reality. Thus, even few surviving
for the
beautiful cities of the British Isles, their few mar-
vellous streets for choice the High Street of Oxford
and the High Street of Edinburgh a few well-
chosen picture postcards will produce more effect
upon most people's minds than does the actual vision
of their monumental beauty there colleges and
churches, here palace, castle, and city's crown. Since
for the beauty of such streets, and to their best
elements of life and heritage, we have become half-
&
bfl
5
CU
0,
18 CITIES IN EVOLUTION
this direction. So also the photographer, the painter,
the architect ;
their public also are following, and
may soon lead. Even open-air games have been for
the most part too confined and subjective it is
:
you have got an atlas, and used it, will you understand
Southwaleston," and
k
of us desire.
Look now at the map of London with any friend, or,
if possible, a Progressive and a Moderate.
with two
What real difference survives between them when
"
tions ? That perhaps may serve as the necessary
word, as an expression of this new form of popula-
tion-grouping, which is
already, as it were sub-
consciously, developing new forms
of social grouping
and of definite government and administration by
and by also.
For our first conurbation the name of Greater
London is obviously already dominant beyond possi-
THE POPULATION-MAP AND ITS MEANING 35
"
FIG, 15. Clyde and Forth towns agglomerating as Clyde-Forth."
City evolution still only beginning and existing cities ever being
-
the present rate our not very distant successors will see
an almost continuous town, and of one monotonous
type as far as man can make it, for a couple of
hundred miles. Berlin has, of course, rapidly been
overtaking Paris throughout the last generation ;
it seems now
plainly destined to distance Cologne
48 CITIES IN EVOLUTION
almost as Leeds has done York. Yet the organisa-
tion and the energy of these
civic German centres so
incomparably surpass those of Yorkshire cities or
others that such comparisons can only be made in a
while have not our existing cities, for the most part,
before long to be well-nigh built all over again ?
True, town-planning schemes, as modest tackings-on,
patchings and cobblings, are being considered, even
attempted, here and there yet we assuredly need
;
" "
every other Black Country is hurrying that of a
multitudinous population at too low standards of
life ; a soil too limited for agriculture, even
WORLD-CITIES AND OPENING COMPETITION 53
polished ones ;
the former in common types and
mostly for rougher uses, the latter in more varied
types and materials, and for finer skills. The first
politics, Durham is
obviously approximately perfect. /
politicians
must be those who, by this measure or
" Welsh
(Photo, Outlook.")
a
upon scale to rival nay, surpass the past glories
of history. He will demand and create noble streets
of noble houses, gardens, and parks and before long ;
very worst.
How can this be put yet more definitely ?
Simply
74 CITIES IN EVOLUTION
" "
dissipations these so readily involve in the moral
sense ; and, secondly, through war. The crude luxury
is excused, nay, psychologically demanded, by the
starvation of paleotechnic life in well-nigh every vital
element of beauty or spirituality known and valued
by humanity hitherto. Thus to take only one of the
very foremost of our national luxuries, that of getting
more or less alcoholised this has been vividly defined,
in a real flash of judicial " the
wisdom, as quickest
way of getting out of Manchester."
PALEOTECHNIC AND NEOTECHNIC 77
shops may be grouped into their place, and sites thus left clear for
open spacing. Needed concentration of garages demolition of un- ;
is one main
aspect of the civic movement.
Since cities are thus in transition, is a defence needed
of this two-fold presentment, this sharply marked
order of Nature ;
and this, in lowered functions, in
diseased conditions, does give us disease. But, as we
improve conditions, and with them vitalise functions,
Nature gives us, must give us, health and beauty
anew renewing, it may be surpassing, the best
records of old.
The paleotechnic order should, then, be faced and
shown at its very worst, as dissipating resources and
energies of Nature ;
to the biologist and physician the
numbers "
increasing they boast as progress of popu-
92 CITIES IN EVOLUTION
"
lation are too obviously in deterioration rather than
in progressive evolution. Nor are these criticisms of
physics or of public health the sternest. The sociol-
ogist as historian has still fully to explain the
practical
man to himself. He has to analyse out the various
factors which have gone to the making of him and
his philosophy together the uprooted rustic, the
machine-driven labourer, and each as a half-starveling,
too much even of the necessary food, and yet more
of the good of life the soured and blighted puritan
"
Sentiment ! with which the would-be utilitarian has
so often increased his recklessness towards Nature,
and coarsened his callousness to art. The romantics
have too often been as blind in their righteous anger
as were the mechanical utilitarians in their strenuous
street planning, it is
landscape making ;
and thus it
forth, we
hope, to be boulevards, and even more) and
around every suburban railway station, the town
planner arranging his garden village, with its own
is
beginnings.
But beyond these mere cleansings, we need both
destructive and constructive energy. Nowhere better
shall we find the smaller open spaces and people's
small cities of our coasts : the rich and great are often
the hardest to awaken.
CHAPTER VI
"
quent writers. Need of a new Hodgiad," and this in terms of Folk,
Work, and Place such
;
an interpretation of this historic depression
is largely in terms of the deterioration of housing. Essential achieve-
ment of "Industrial (i.e. Paleotechnic) Age" here defined as slum.
Slums commonly so called, their origin and their varieties. Applica-
"
tion of Veblen's Theory of Business Enterprise." Slums too much
everywhere middle-class in Semi-slums.
: Even wealthy quarters
are too much but Super-slums. Illustrations from modern cities at
their best, e.g. Mayfair for London, New Town for Edinburgh.
Cinderella and the looting of her kitchen its depression into area.
:
replied,
" We have all to live as best we can " ?
" "
this concrete way acquired of looking below wages
" wealth " to
to budget, below weal, there is of course
country and its towns, but even for our great cities.
For what but mere Semi-slums are these long
dormitory rows, to which our most prosperous skilled
workmen, our foremen and guards, even our clerks
get home at night, and between whose mean, wee
back-yards, or yet drearier and emptier school-yards,
their bairns have to grow up, and within whose narrow
limits their w omen-folk drudge out
r
all their
days.
Business, however, that surely is better off? since
is of the very essence of the
it
paleotechnic order that
the commercial process should outdo the mechanical
one. Think how fine it sounds to be " something in
the City." Yet to the descriptive naturalist-observer
of cities, rendered immune to gold-mania, as all
should be, and, as education revives, shall be through
THE HOMES OF THE PEOPLE 117
'2
I
CITIES IN EVOLUTION
storeys at least :
but, in a majority of cases, each
mansion is further cursed with its share of mews, as
together ;
with the tenement-backs orielled, balconied,
ivied, embowered ;
with mews and garages concen-
trated at a few strategic centres.
What, then, is all such improvement upon the
mess Robert Adam was compelled to make, but a
detail of thatimprovement of slums, which is as yet
only thought of and practised for the very poorest of
them, and that too partially, but which cannot fairly
be denied to these of the poor rich. Citizenship, like
justice, like hygiene (which are indeed, but details of
it), must now carry its missions, and begin its settle-
ments in the West End no less than in the East.
THE HOMES OF THE PEOPLE 125
they went off to their end of the fine old room, which
had been kitchen and hall in one, and partitioned it
"
off, as henceforth their dining-room," and then their
withdra wing-room beyond that. But how to furnish
these two new apartments ? The only thing they
saw to do was to carry off all that was worth lifting
from the old home-centre, and about the old fireside.
Hence the massive oaken table in our dining-room,
and the big dresser that we now call the sideboard ;
above all, the harp which had made all hearts and
classes one. They left Cinderella nothing save her
pots and pans, her broom but next, since for the
:
to-day.
By-and-by the proud sisters "need" the whole
floor-space of the house for their dinners and their
mother, love
may and does deliver her she escapes ;
the door and came out The padlock had rusted off;
!
"
not longer outwardly restoring," as with the
romantics and paleotects, but re-creating, as ex-
pressions of the renewing life within.
Towards the disenchantment of the politician, who
willbe more and more faithfully dealt with as the
civic movement advances, a kindred process also
appears. Indeed he has always had something of
the fairy prince though still in the stage of failing
;
But the people do not yet care for all this, it may
be said. No doubt this is in the main too true.
However, a personal anecdote may be permitted as
relevant. Looking on with the architect at the com-
pletion of a new tenement of workmen's dwellings in
the High Street of Old Edinburgh, a block modest
" "
the street You mean their working efficiency
!
"
would be increased ? " " Rather !
" Lands."
legal name of Finally, the whole matter is
put upon what are really high metaphysical grounds
" "
(which the practical man is ever so liable to wander
into). We are made to feel a certain fitness in
these things, a certain established harmony; in fact
a sort of foreordination of Scotsmen for tenements,
and of tenements for Scotsmen. Upon these tower-
138 CITIES IN EVOLUTION
principles, carried
a
degree further than older Co-
operators had yet done. And so their business has
grown; and with its tenth year (1911) the various
"
groups of the Co-partnership Tenants, Ltd.," had
well nigh completed their second million pounds' worth
of bettered houses. The leader of this initiative, the
sower of this mustard seed, Mr Henry Vivian, now
M.P., may therefore be pointed to as presenting, and
not personally alone, the proof that such democratic
and co-operative captaincy of industry may before
long fairly compare with the more individualistic
captaincy of the past, or even excel it measured by
itsown financial standards of rapid yet steady increase
of production, with reasonable direct dividend plus ;
coming citizenship.
CHAPTER VII
* - 1 :3$ittt pv** -
- *
I
&
B!
THE HOUSING MOVEMENT 147
stewardship !
5. From
these Scottish examples of standardised
building uses.
6. The construction of workmen's dwellings
proper,
upon a better hygienic standard, i.e. of modern
cottages, in streets of ordinary bye-law type, or even
of more
or less suburban character, with gardens and
involves minimum
population, and correspondingly
lowered land-values, per acre accordingly. Here and
there private enterprise has shown that it can accom-
something
plish ;
Alderman
while, thanks to the late
boroughs.
7. A type which might have been mentioned
earlier in this series is that of workmen's dwellings
built by benevolent and far-sighted employers, since
THE HOUSING MOVEMENT 153
,-;
among colliers.
8. The note of social idealism, and in practical yet
most disinterested form, has been especially struck by
Mr Ebenezer Howard in his famous Eutopia, as we
Culpin ;
whose experience as at once business
style ;
but such general initiatives cannot be followed
too widely, if due regionalism and individuality of
design be assured, as in the best cases it is ; as, for
instance, at Ruislip.
How the atn* EstaU I* Wanned under Co-parnrKlp Methods by the Harbornv ^
1a-
"o
160 CITIES IN EVOLUTION
Neec and uses of travel for civics and citizenship. Travellers in classic
:
planner must, however, above all, acquaint himself with the cities
of modern Germany.
way : it to
is time now
be fitting ourselves to help
more fully in that vast reconstruction which must
follow. For that purpose let us betake ourselves to
what has always been one of the greatest factors of
education, both of the individual and of the world,
and see what is being done in other cities and
countries. For the uplift of Citizenship, the renewal
of cities, in which we have each a part, no experience
of past or present cities can be too great.
Children as we are of an age which was as much
161 11
162 CITIES IN EVOLUTION
its youth with their tales, the world owes, for good
164 CITIES IN EVOLUTION
and evil, the Crusades, and that they imply.
all
" "
growing Co-partnership Tenants (Limited) were
out in force also. The Hampstead Garden Suburb
and other village schemes throughout the land of
A TOWN-PLANNING TOUR IN GERMANY 179
allow.
In Cologne, from its Cathedral to its boulevards,
186 CITIES IN EVOLUTION
Bi I
FIG. 40. Frankfort new docks. Note specialised havens, railway lines to
industrial quarters; also dockers' village, with garden boulevards, park
and lake.
its revenges ?
yet always in its own way and upon its own founda-
tions. Thus the renewed art of Town Planning has
to develop into an art yet higher, that of City Design
a veritable orchestration of all the arts, and corre-
local life ;
and on this historic foundation, and on a
corresponding survey and constructive criticism of
our actual present, go forward to plan out a bettering
future with such individual and collective foresight
as we may.
From Germany, when we come home again, we
are naturally asked Well, what are we to do here ?
The answer is not easy there are so many answers.
;
206 CITIES IN EVOLUTION
Learn from Germany ?
yes Imitate
Certainly !
and with this how much wealth and time, health and
happiness, might have been saved ? Not but that
there were already beginnings of town plans, even
partial realisations
of them indeed, far earlier ;
GERMAN ORGANISATION AND ITS LESSONS 209
depot ;
and from its essentials, too, of family dwell-
Eutopia in progress :
developments of recent years in England,
Germany, etc.
beginning of 1914.
In Germany garden-city estates are of late being
developed, some ten or thereby up to 1912. In
Ulm the combination of great municipal enterprise
in land purchase, with corresponding regulation of
town extension on garden- suburb lines, and exclusion
of land-speculators accordingly, is rapidly making this
one of the most well-developed of modern cities.
For here we may set out below the great cathedral
spire which is the city's historic centre, ramble out-
wards in well-nigh every direction through surviving
medieval and renaissance beauty, and thence pass
onwards into the growing area of modern town plan-
ning, without finding those zones of more or less paleo-
technic character with which we are so familiar. Such
a city must thus rapidly overtake those of earlier and
HOUSING AND TOWN PLANNING 227
staff are still for the most part but serving their
CF.NERAl. PLAN
KliMl'DKUM : < >F HO \\OIU:
Fid. 42. Parks and parkway girdle tor a small American city: Roanoke.
first by the
danger-points, trebly compressed willing-
ness of the new colonist to " a
rough it bit," so train-
engineering ;
and further, an urban civilisation far
more hygienic and more finely skilled, better organ-
ised in its mechanical, electrical, and manufacturing
industries, in its commercial and financial order,
in its education and culture, its administration and
"
among its own was formed a Cities Committee, to
promote the Survey and Investigation of Cities, and
the study of Civics," and this " in the first place by
Academy ;
and leading town planners,
architects,
and active associations came forward, and were
cordially aided from the Continent and America.
Thus a
large and instructive exhibition was got
purpose. The
exhibition was opened by Lord Pent-
land, then Minister for Scotland, and by the Lord
Provost, each delivering an address. Success far ex-
ceeded anticipation. It was visited during its three
weeks by 17,000 persons, including workmen in the
evenings and school-classes in the forenoons. Thence
it was invited to Dublin, as part of a general exhi-
bition organised by the Women's Health Association
of Ireland, from which it went to Belfast to co-
operate with the Sanitary Association's meeting,
under the auspices of the Corporation. Through the
active interest of the Viceroy and of the Countess of
"
first Congres des Villes," with its
international
members drawn from many cities Aberdeen to
Bucharest, Stockholm to Naples, indeed from San
Francisco to Calcutta, and which was of interest in
both its sections, of Town Planning, and of City Life
and Administration.
At this stage we may set forth the scheme and
aims of the Cities and Town Planning Exhibition
as it more developed (though still too
appeared in
incomplete) form at Ghent in 1913, and state these
essentially as they were presented to the members
of the Congress of Cities, and at times to later groups
of visitors.
Let the reader think of big International
this
value from each other, and from his city's past. Each
garden suburb is not merely an escape from the
noxious squalor of the merely Industrial Age, or from
the dreariness of the merely commercial one, to
healthier individual lives, to brighter family existences :
and State, there lies the Family but here the City
;
more is this the case with the gallery into which this
one immediately opens, that of " Medieval Towns and
TOWN PLANNING AND CIVIC EXHIBITIONS
FIG. 45. A Netherlands town (Goch) early in seventeenth century, still unspoiled
by war. Note surviving medieval walls, internal gardens, and spacious out-
lying ones (much reduced).
HoN-xthcCa
l.ik.nln vimKiiM-.if
-All
Mill'.,)
* MONS
FIG. 47. Mons, as fully fortified, in eighteenth century.
"
and we of the " Exposition des Villes and its
associated " Premier Congres International des Villes
"
growth, and advance its progress, it must surely know and under-
stand its city. To mitigate its evils, it needs diagnosis before
treatment. To express its highest ambitions, it must appreciate and
share them. Hence town planning and civics must be advanced
together. Arguments against their separation, general and particu-
lar, and from cities ancient and modern.
awakening of citizens.
done ;
and are accordingly remembered to this day
as "prophets," even to the predominance of the
ingly reappears.
What is it that we most value in our Occidental
civilisation ? Recent writers, of the Prussian school
EDUCATION FOR TOWN PLANNING 303
city, is its quest, its task, its coming art with which
" "
our politics will recover its ancient and vital civic
intercrossing of flowers.
How, then, may this enhancement of social life be
effected? that is the question. The_4*aleoechnic
economists, to do them justice, have^elaborated the
conception of the division of labour and it has long :
How best can we set about the study of cities? Personal endeavours of
the writer, as examples of the many approaches to civics with an ;
adequate. An
escape from libraries -and lecture-
rooms, a return to direct observation is needed and ;
criticising or it
advancing it, in many simpler fields of
action say, engineering or medicine for choice. It is
with civics and sociology as with these. The greatest
historians, both ancient and modern, have been those
who took their part in affairs. Indeed with all sciences,
as with the most ideal quests, the same principle
holds good we must live the life if we would know
;
citizenship.
In each occupation and profession there is a free-
CAMERA.
PROSPECT.
EDINBURGH. 1
SCOTLAND.
LANGUAGE.
EUROPE.
WORLD.
FIG 50. Outlook Tower in diagrammatic elevation, with indications of uses of its
storeys as Observatory, Summer School, etc., of Regional and Civic Surveys ;
with their widening relations, and with corresponding practical initiatives.
THE STUDY OF CITIES 325
How are civic inquiries and city surveys to be made more general,
thorough, and efficient? An appeal to City Museums and Libraries,
with examples of beginnings in small towns and great. School
Surveys as educational processes and products examples from
;
accordingly.
Like other
professional bodies, the Museum
Curators of Great Britain have their Annual Con-
gress : took place in Dundee in 1907 and was
this ;
town -
house, the registrars, and so on, so that
THE SURVEY OF CITIES 831
applicable elsewhere :
"
That it is desirable to establish a Civic Museum
for the City, wherein may be illustrated among other
but the less time now lost the better for advancing
it locally and in execution. Even apart from the
urgency for civic development, for town planning
and housing already emphasised, every curator and
librarian knows how increasingly hard it becomes
"
salem ! will never fail of echo and response through-
out the ages.
CHAPTER XVI
CITY SURVEY FOR TOWN PLANNING PURPOSES,
OF MUNICIPALITIES AND GOVERNMENT
All these surveys are but preliminary to action upon the municipal and
the national scale. Limitations of recent "Land Report" and
kindred literature of surveys, now increasingly of political influence
and approaching application indications of needed fuller develop-
;
apart from
its past history, even as
regards the
problems of poverty and of irregularity of employ-
ment which seem so modern. With fuller space, of
a chapter for each city, it would be possible to justify
this criticism for city after city in detail. In Edin-
burgh or in Dundee, in Belfast or in Dublin, in
Bruges or in Ghent, it is easy to see and prove the
persistence of historic factors, in each case widely
which profoundly modify the local situation,
different,
and which are, to the contemporary factors upon
which Mr Rowntree so ably specialises, as differing
warps to similar woofs and thus give us different
;
Hallucinees."
Such regional geography has long been familiar
in French science, literature, and political discussion,
and has been aiding those increasing measures towards
decentralisation, of which the renewal of French
comprehensive studies ;
not only of countries and of
towns separately to-day, in which Mr Rowntree
is so far a master, nor even of their
past in relation
to their present, and conversely: it4s-4he stud^of
town and of country
in country, in town, and these
through past and present alike. It is the appeal of
We come now
to the need of City Surveys and
Local Exhibitions as preparatory to Town Planning
Schemes. It may but bring our whole argument
together, and in a way, we trust, practically con-
Requirements, etc.
FIG. 52. Birmingham in 1832, with its Parliamentary boundary (daik line).
As
the scheme has to be approved by the L.G.B.,
their inspector will have the benefit of the mass of
material collected in this exhibition, with correspond-
rivalry also.
j
V. OUTLINE SCHEME FOR A CITY SUIIVEY
AND EXHIBITION
The incipient surveys of towns and cities, above
referred to, are already clearly bringing out their local
POPULATION :
(a) Movement.
(6) Occupations.
(c) Health.
(d) Density.
(e) Distribution of Well-being (Family Conditions, etc.).
TOWN CONDITIONS :
(b) RECENT :
Particularly since 1832 Survey, thus indicating
Areas, Lines ofGrowth and Expansion, and Local
Changes under Modern Conditions, e.g., of Streets,
Open Spaces, Amenity, etc.
(c) Local Government Areas (Municipal, Parochial, etc.).
(<7) PRESENT Existing Town Plans, in general and detail.
:
(a) Areas.
(b) Possibilities of Town Expansion (Suburbs, etc.).
A fuller
outline for city activities in detail would
exceed our present limits moreover, it will be found
;
After our Civic Survey and Exhibition are undertaken, and the prepara-
tion of our Town Plan begun, what next ? Each is but a beginning,
a preparatory study of the city, a draft towards its improvement and
extension. Both in these ameliorations which are more or less needed
by our modern towns at present, and beyond these, we have to
all
realise and keep in view the spirit and individuality of our city,
its personality and character, and to enhance and express this, if
we would not further efface or repress it.
How may this spirit be brought out and expressed ? Our survey
may be helpful to the city's Pageant, beyond this to its more inter-
pretativeMasque, while beyond this again literature and all the arts
combined must utilise our civics and sociology towards its veritable
Epic. In every way, then, a School of Civics is needed in every city,
and in some this is already arising.
Of the spirit of cities, and the bearing of a perception of this
towards the discernment of their respective possibilities, concrete
examples are needed. Single example here chosen for brief and
partial outline, that of Chelsea Past and Possible.
life ; above
then, city-life
all, and
region-life. Ideas, as
Bergson rightly teaches, are but sections of life move- :
it is rather a wonder it is so
good and even if we
;
dainty figures ;
we have now in progress, and
but in
sense, which finds in the past not only fruit but seed,
and so prepares for a coming spring, a future harvest.
FIG. 53. Crosby Hall, Chelsea rebuilt in 1909-10 for University Hall
:
of residence.
itmay be
fairly hoped that as these advance together
their substantial fruit may become as manifest as that
of the association of wise practice with sound theory
on simpler levels of science, both pure and applied ;
position,
or are they not ? Let us see.
" St
George's Guild," though unsuccessful, was none
the less a project whose ideas and ideals are still
suggestive.
Return to the early hygienists, Simon, Parkes, and
others, whom we have to thank for pure water, public
- GCocres
owe !<***$*
upon its modern spiral but this does not delay the
;
PL&N OF MPROVEMENTS ON
FT-
U^-ESTATE GROUND BW8TLY DEVELOPED ON
OLDER CONVENTIONS LINE3-
II
My
i;
FIG. 56. Harton Estate, South Shields. Example of changes from conventional
plan and lay-out of former years ; type easily adaptable to bye- law streets
anywhere.
386 CITIES IN EVOLUTION
regional renewal.
If further economic considerations be desired, one
more may be and with no less confidence and
offered,
^- ^,- -
ECONOMICS OF CITY BETTERMENT 391
voting apparatus.
There conveniently follows here a chapter (VIII.)
on Housing and this especially as culminating in
;
personality ;
and with this shows some unique
elements a personality too much asleep it may be,
but which it is the task of the planner, as master-
artist, to awaken. And only he can do this who is
in love and athome with his subject truly in love
and fully at home the
love in which high intuition
heights of achievement.
Such are the Eutopias already dawning here,
there, everywhere. Despite the present set-back, of
European war, with its more than materially destruc-
tive consequences, the generation thus coming into
THE reader should begin (1) with his own city or borough, and
with any others familiar to him in youth, in holiday or in travel;
(2) with historic and modern cities which for other reasons,
historic, economic, cultural, may interest him. For each, its
guide-books and other literature, old and new, should be sought
for. Old plans, engravings, photographs, etc., should be col-
lected. Teachers will find their pupils profit, and even help
beyond their anticipations.
GENERAL READING
The Public Libraries now collect civic literature. General
and works of travel and architecture, of exploration and
special
excavation, rich in illustrations of ancient and classic, medieval
and Renaissance cities, are needed to form one's mental gallery
of the cities of different periods. For the spirit of cities,
Ruskin on Venice, Florence and Amiens, and R. L. Stevenson
on Edinburgh, etc., have furnished examples and impulse to
many later writers.
The Magazines, especially the American, now increasingly
deal with civic questions, and such articles are often well
illustrated.
The publications of the Fabian Society contain papers and
suggestions of value. Their "New Heptarchy Series" (No. 1,
Muiiicipalisation by Provinces) partly anticipates the sugges-
tion of Chapter II.
403 26*
404 CITIES IN EVOLUTION
HISTORICAL STUDY
standard example.
TOWN SURVEYS
HOUSING
GARDEN CITIES
" now
Eutopia," actively continued by the Garden Cities and
Town Planning Association, with its excellent monthly journal
of that name. Mr Culpin's Garden Cities Up to Date may
here be recommended.
TOWN PLANNING
HorsfalPsExample of Germany (Sheratt & Hughes, Is.). Of
notable stimulus to opinion and municipal action and legislation,
Nettleford's Report (on German cities) to the Town Council of
*4 HENRIETTA STREET
COVENT GARDEN, LONDON
DO NOT REMOVE
PLEASE
CARDS OR SLIPS FROM THIS POCKET
Art A
Geddes, Patrich
Cities in evolution.