"Modernism and Early Urban Planning" - Richard T. LeGates and Fredric Stout (1998)

This following post will be a brief summary and review of "Modernism and Early Urban Planning" by Richard T. LeGates and Fredric Stout. The text covers all urban planning events and ideology spanning from 1870-1940.

The introduction to the text covers the main points which are to be explored in this quite informative chapter. Stated was the early efforts of urban planning, and to be expected, they were focused on traffic management as increased automobiles appeared on the increasingly urbanized cities' roads.While the chapter travels into the 20th Century and the depression era, it was identified that urban and regional planning's growth was stunted, however, it was this prompted the urban and regional planning profession to become more diversified. It spread into other areas such as construction, advocacy and transport at the national, state and local levels. The impact on the Industrial Revolution was also touched on and how it helped shape modern urban and regional planning.  

Starting chronologically, the ideology and movements in the 19th and 20th Centuries are reviewed:

1. The Parks Movement:
This movement was one of the first in response to industrial urbanism, with the aim of "providing the congested city with 'lung'". The first urban park, Birkenhead Park, was built in Liverpool in 1844, but undoubtedly the most famous urban park as it successfully acts as an "enhancement urban space by the intervention by the artfully designed nature" is New York's Central Park.

2. The Garden City ideal:
This movement was first introduced to not only improve the depleting health associated with the heavily polluted air in cities, but also to integrate the urban and rural and to act as an indicator of modern planning as a profession and body of theory. The original thoughts behind a Garden City was that it would consist of 1,000 acres of town surrounded by 5,000 acres of green-belt. This was planned and expected to house 32,000 people. Additionally, Garden Cities would be connected by rail and canal, while being economically self-sufficient. However, all these seemingly magical benefits of this movement came at was described as a "sound investment". The first official Garden City was Letchworth, London, which was built in 1909; the second Garden City was not built for another decade.

3. Urban Aestheticism and Beautiful City Movement:
This movement, beginning in the 1890s saw increased "adornment of cities with civic design, municipal art and 'The City Beautiful' supplanted parks and public health as the main focus of planners". With aesthetics high on the priority list, good design was imperative, this led to the inclusion of "magnificent boulevards and impressive public buildings" while placing emphasis on "city planning as a comprehensive and unified process".

4. 'Progressivism' and the city efficient
The concept of 'Progressivism' was associated with the new activist philosophy before and after WW1 often represented the middle class' social and economic interest. This the saw the rise of "new social and political ethos" leading to the City Beautiful and Urban Aesthetics concerns making way for an emphasis on city functioning efficiency.

5. The Master Plan
A man by the name of Edward Bassett introduced the concept of the 'Master Plan' which "sought to define what a general plan should contain and it's relation ship to the processes of city government." This introduction of comprehensive plans led to the "professionalisation of planning" and essentially acted as the launching pad of all future planning theory and practice.

New Towns and Regionalism
- The Regional Survey - Patrick Geddes
Patrick Geddes, as well as being a major player in creating Garden City planning as the mainstream urban planning practice, he proposed that before any changes could be made "a survey would place the city within the environmental context of its region's surrounding ecosystems".

- New Towns For America
The ideals of Lewis Mumford pointed directly toward some current planning features including decentralisation. Mumford saw transportation and communication technology as permits of decentralisation of a population industry. He also developed the vision of regional planning which shied away from sprawl and favored a "more human pattern of small cities"
This then progressed, under the ideals of Clearance Perry, to thinking about how city and suburban neighborhoods could function in the automobile age. Plans included the school as the centrepiece, use of culs-de-sacs and separated streets to "harmonise transportation with living space".

Prophets of High Modernism
- Utopia modernism

      Le Corbusier's vision
Le Corbusier focused on the issues our present day cities very much need and are working towards - being compact. He envisioned a city with "un-decorated skyscrapers, evenly spaced in a park" while simultaneously focusing on decongesting cities and housing 3 million people. Le Corbusier saw "the city as the administrative centre of bureaucratic, technocratic state".

     Frank Lloyd Wright's vision
Wright's vision contrasted heavily to Le Corbusier's, and is what we typically see in major cities and are trying to address. His vision embraced middle-class urban flight and vehicle-based urban sprawl. He proposed what was advertised in Australia as the "Great Australian Dream" - single detached dwellings on at least 1 acre with no large urban concentration what-so-ever. As we can clearly see today, this urban/suburban plan dominated planning into the future.

This informative chapter by LeGates and Stout is quite interesting, it shows that the changing philosophies and ideologies of key players throughout time had a great impact on the development of the urban and regional planning as a profession and basis of theory. These changing philosophies are also evident in modern cities today, and these have had positive and negative impacts on modern society.

"Fifty Theses on Urban Planning and Urban Planners" - Raphael Fischler (2012)

The following is a brief summary/analysis of Raphael Fischler's essay titled "Fifty Theses on Urban Planning and Urban Planners"

Fischler begins the essay and carries a common theme throughout, this is the fact that "urban planning as a field is ill defined in contents and in scope, and the public hardly knows what to expect of its practitioners". By doing this he is somewhat highlighting the broad and complex nature of the Urban Planning profession, but also possibly noting the potential difficulty he underwent when writing this paper.

The one introductory sentence, as stated above, creates the basis for many of Fischler's 50 theses. Fischler breaks his theses into six areas: General Thesis, the Meaning and Origins of Urban Planning, the Substance and uses of Urban Planning, on Good Planning and Good Plans, on Urban Planners and on Planning Education and Research.  

Fischler's General Thesis follows on nicely from his introductory statement. Here he explores the lengthy 18 contradictions, paradoxes and tensions involved in planning - including urban planning as a political activity and it as a technical activity, urban planning as a practical achievement or it as an ideological claim and urban planning as the exercise of power or it as a service to the powerful. These again highlights not only the profession's in depth complexity but the struggles planners face when defining their field.


Under the heading of 'Meaning and Origins of Urban Planning' the depth and evolution of planning is specified.

"5. Urban planning as a social activity has existed since cities have appeared... Urban planning as a professional activity originated in the industrial era

6. Modern urban planning is the progeny of a marriage between science and utopia"

With the field so subject to change and it evolving seemingly with the world - i.e. from industrialisation to the present social era - it seems as though it there's no wonder the profession is ill defined.

With the theme that planning is 'ill defined' with 'the public hardly knowing what to expect' it would make sense that the next section, 'the Substance and Uses of Urban Planning' covered a range of ideas. Guess what, that'd exactly what it does.
"11. Urban planning is a design activity
12. Urban planning is a political activity
14. It aims to increase freedom, but it interferes with individual liberties
15. Urban planning can be a force of good but also a force of evil"
All these points build to the generalised statement which can ultimately be used to sum up the entire essay - "16. Urban planning is a focused multidisciplinary field".

With all this in mind coming into the next sections 'Theses on Good Planning and Good Plans' and 'Theses on Urban Planners'  you may be excused to think good planning must be near impossible to achieve and good urban planners must be impossible to come by, however, Fischler explores the fact that good plans and good planners have a few basic characteristics. Good plans are ones that are effectively planned, have a clear goal, can be realistically achieved and are time effective. While good planners, although they play the roles of "architects, managers, mediators, advocates, educators and facilitators" are generally: critical thinkers, passionate people, respectful, transparent and effective communicators.

This leads to the final section labelled 'Theses on Planning Education and Research'. This quite predictably states that for more successful planners to be produced, like producing more successful anything, they need to be taught the skills and attributes young. Therefore planning specific schools and planning educations are most effective in gaining this goal.

In conclusion, the essay is an extremely comprehensive overview the theses of urban planning and planners, however it generally maintains a similar tone throughout communicating a general message - urban planning is a very complex and in depth profession and planners must be well trained and educated in order to succeed in the field.

This has been a general summary and analysis of Raphael Fischler's essay "Fifty Theses on Urban Planning and Urban Planners" - 2012 by Brad Maxwell, feel free to leave a comment and join the discussion!

Introduction

Hi,

My name's Brad Maxwell and I'm in my first year of studies of a Bachelor of Regional and Urban Planning at the University of Canberra. This blog has been set-up in conjunction with my course in order for our class to connect virtually, to work as a team and share our ideas and perspectives on relevant issues which develop over the course of the second semester. 

As mentioned, this blog will allow our class to share ideas which develop and conjure as the course progresses. This will allow all class members, and  my personal knowledge and perspective of current and relevant planning issues to prosper and in turn will better enable us to critically analyse planning issues in the future.

I look forward to reading everyone else's analyses and perspectives and working together with my fellow class mates through the semester.

Thanks,

Brad Maxwell