The Future of Cities

Andrew Blowers, Chris Hamnett, Philip Sarre

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781135683955
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• Subtopic: Geography
• Index: Geography

This collection of readings draws on material from a wide range of sources - from the past and present and from literature and technology - and is concentrated on the areas which seem most relevant to the planning of the future city - what is happening to the city and what we can do about it. The readings have been selected and organised to present the planning of the future city.

This book was first published in 1974.

1. The future city as seen in the past

Introduction by Philip Sarre

This section needs little in the way of introduction since the essay by Meyerson considers the relevance of Utopian thinking to city planning. He, like us, is not primarily concerned to dwell on the details of the Utopian genre but to derive from it ideas which may be useful to those concerned with the planning of the future city. There is an apparent paradox in looking to the past for a view of the future. We do so not to enquire who was the first author to forecast particular inventions but in recognition that many themes which are of vital relevance to the future, particularly those relating to social goals and the quality of life, originated in the Utopian literature.

We were, of course, faced by an appalling problem of selection because the number of relevant works is astronomical. In fact, in a Reader with an emphasis on future orientation, there was no real possibility of being representative of the genre and we would refer any readers interested in it for its own sake to Armytage (1968), or the references of the Meyerson paper (1.1). We restricted ourselves to two early works. More's Utopia almost chose itself as the work which gave the genre its name and we decided to balance its optimistic assumption that human nature and society were perfectible by a more sceptical extract. We might have used Samuel Butler's Erewhon as a source but preferred part of Gulliver's Travels because it anticipated the theme of Section 4.

Most of the literary Utopias concentrate on the state of society and give little attention to the city. As our primary interest is the city, we have given equal weight to extracts from works in the tradition of Utopian design. Here the quantity of material is not so great and the selection problem simpler: the two authors we have chosen demand mention in any discussion of twentieth-century urban design. Finally, since any ideal future city must combine social and physical organization, we include an excerpt from a work which did much to synthesise the two Utopian traditions and translate them into a practical programme.

The first extract from the literary tradition is from the work which gave the genre its name—More's Utopia. It consists of two books, the first of which lays bare the evils of sixteenth-century society. The second book presents an alternative ideal community. It has been variously interpreted as a socialist manifesto or a blueprint for a reformed Christianity. More's central concept is the community of property in which only necessities are produced and the welfare of all is ensured. In such a situation, competition for personal advancement is absent, money is irrelevant, and economic equality prevails. Although a system of direct democracy has been instituted, a paternalistic rule is exercised and individual freedom is constrained by communal surveillance and a strict moral code. The chief goal of Utopian society appears to be the pursuit of happiness which consists in 'every motion and state of the body or mind wherein man hath naturally delectation'.

In Book 2, the philosopher-traveller Raphael Hythloday describes Amaurote the capital city of Utopia which is designed to encourage individual families to participate in the communal life. He then explains the economic system of Utopia and some aspects of its social organization. He ends his discourse with the extract we have reproduced which compares the virtues of the Utopian commonwealth with the selfishness and exploitation that characterises contemporary (that is sixteenth-century) society and, one might add, that of our own day.

The second extract from the literary tradition is pessimistic where More was optimistic. Where More believed in man's ability to improve his society and environment, Jonathan Swift, in this excerpt from Gulliver's Travels, emphasises man's incompetence. Swifts 'projectors', armed with 'a smattering of mathematicks' and intending to improve every sphere of human activity, actually lack the technical ability to reach their goals and achieve only destruction. It is always worth asking whether city planners are really more successful than the projectors.

The first of our two extracts from the architectural school of Utopian design is indeed based on mathematics and would involve a good deal of destruction before it could be built, Le Corbusier based his early thinking about cities on an almost metaphysical devotion to the straight line and right-angle. For him, rectilinear patterns were associated with purpose, order and efficiency and contrasted with the curved patterns originated by the pack-donkey. His design was also based on ideas about urban transport, a conviction that cities had to be rebuilt in situ and the belief that industrialised building would drastically reduce costs. Although there are numerous doubts about Le Corbusier's arguments, doubts which are reinforced by his ultimate shift to an anti-urban position, his Contemporary City was a major landmark in planning thought and remains strikingly fresh after half a century.

Whereas Le Corbusier emphasised the central area of his city, although most of the population lived in satellite Garden Cities, Frank Lloyd Wright, our second representative of the design-utopia school, emphasised the home. He foresaw the ability of technology, especially car and telephone, to allow decentralization of cities and a blending of urban and rural amenities. His insistence on low densities, with each family enjoying an acre of garden, is often seen as purely a desire to live near nature. Wright does indeed emphasise the organic, but he is willing to use advanced technology to give people access to it. Although he does not make the point explicit, provision of acre gardens would involve a substantial redistribution of wealth: many people even today cannot afford to buy a house at all, let alone a new house on such a large plot. If Broadacre City looks less original than the Contemporary City to the modern reader, it is because some of its features, for example low densities and 'wayside markets', are already commonplace in the newer and more affluent suburbs in the USA.

The final view of the future city as seen in the past is taken from Ebenezer Howard. His book Garden Cities of Tomorrow spans the two schools of Utopian thought and has been the inspiration behind the building of the New Towns. The book concentrates on the economic and political arrangements which would allow ordinary people access to both urban and rural amenities but also includes sketch plans of layouts. The central idea was for a town of limited size, with a green belt. This was to be achieved by municipal ownership of land so that growth, usually inspired by private landlords seeking capital gains, could be controlled. In this way rents could be kept low and standards of living improved. Our extract explains how growth can be channelled into a 'constellation' of small cities linked by railways to permit access to facilities typical of large cities without losing access to the country. Howard envisaged such constellations drawing population out of the large cities and thus reducing rents and allowing improved amenities. The spatial form he chose introduces the argument of Section 3, but the fact that his ideas, though widely adopted, have not been as dramatically successful as he suggested reminds us that society contains more constraints and trends than he catered for.

Reference

ARMYTAGE, W. H. G. (1968) Yesterday's Tomorrows, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul.

1.1 Utopian Traditions and the Planning of Cities Martin Meyerson

In 1516 Sir Thomas More published Utopia, thus kindling for the Renaissance as well as for our own times a literary tradition describing an ideal future society and by implication criticizing the society already in existence. A half-century earlier, two Italian architects, Leone Battista Alberti and Filareti (the pseudonym of Antonio Averlino), kindled a parallel Utopian tradition of designing the ideal city. Alberti's proposals and Filareti's Sforzinda (a scheme for such a city, dedicated to Francesco Sforza), like More's Utopia, initiated other efforts to depict a desirable pattern for future living—but without saying how to achieve it. Curiously, these two traditions did not influence each other but developed apart. The literary Utopias constructed a desirable future in terms of altered social organizations and institutions. The design Utopias portrayed a desirable future in terms of altered artifacts and the organization of space.

C. P. Snow has censured the division of contemporary intellectual life into two separate cultures, that of the humanists and that of the natural scientists. Yet that division is no more marked than is the intellectual division between verbal and visual culture. The verbal or social Utopias, if they have dealt at all with elements of physical environment, have done so but superficially: the forms and interrelations of housing, workshops, facilities for education and recreation, and the distribution of open land, have followed, as afterthoughts, alterations in property, in family, in political and other institutions. Conversely, the Utopias of visual design have ignored class structure, the economic base, and the process of government in the desirable future they present.

Despite their mutual isolation, these two traditions have some remarkable similarities. Most of the creators of social Utopias believe that man will be happier, more productive, or more religious—or 'better,' according to some moral criterion, if the institutions of society are altered. Most of the creators of the physical Utopias imply that men will be healthier, more orderly, more satisfied, more inspired by beauty —better in some other way, if the physical environment is appropriately arranged. In both cases, Utopia has a strong environmental and moralistic cast: if men are only placed within a proper setting (whether social or physical), they will behave as the creators of Utopia believe they should behave.

Certainly, the sharpest intellectual contributions have been critical even when recommendatory, nor have they been attempts to portray the proposed future. Karl Marx tried systematically to demolish bourgeois society and to demonstrate the inevitable downfall of capitalism, but he said almost nothing about the future conditions of society under his brand of socialism. He (and Engels), scorning other socialists as 'Utopian,' dismissed their proposals for the good society as unrealistic but he offered no substitute. Socialism, it was thought, would develop its own logic, its own rules and dialectic of change. Apart from some vague predictions that the potentialities of man's creativity would be freed when socialism is achieved, Marx did not indicate what pattern of life would emerge. In a like sense, Freud systematically attacked the prevailing views of human personality and detailed a process by which man might rid himself of his psychic impediments, but he did not indicate what the successfully analyzed personality would be like, or what the form of a society of such personalities.

The greatest contributions of such minds came through their analyses rather than through the development of normative imagery. They were committed to change; their subtle and complicated minds rebutted the static in the human condition. They were not inclined (or were unable) to detail the end products of the changes they desired. Yet the power of their critical and analytical systems revolutionized men's ways of thinking and behaving. David Riesman (1947), in his brilliant essay on Utopias, calls for a revival of Utopian thinking as an intellectual challenge, precisely because it takes more courage to deal with what might be than with what is, and because it is more difficult to pose great alternatives than to choose among lesser evils. Without revolutionary changes in society, changes that demand substantial sacrifice, substantial gains in human well-being will not be made; to aim at lesser goals, he believes, may make for a real waste of human talents, since the goal least likely to be achieved is the maintenance of the status quo. It is not the motivational value of Utopia, however, that I am affirming so much as its potential contribution to planning—specifically, to the planning of cities. The attributes of the Utopian caricature, if they are recognized as caricature, can be extremely useful in posing potentially desirable ends and then in testing these ends with a logical model. Would such ends, if carried out consistently, result in a desirable state of affairs or not? Utopia specifies a desirable future state without detailing the means of achieving it. City planning is charged with specifying a desirable future state and also the means of attaining it.

City planning as a vocation has become widely accepted in the last few decades, particularly in English-speaking countries. The literature of city planning claims as one of its purposes and competencies the preparation of long-range, comprehensive plans for communities. In practice, however, city planning has either ignored the means (while still not proposing fundamental changes) or it has concentrated on the efficacy of means to the exclusion of ends.

As city planning clarifies its theory and sharpens its methodology, it will be faced with the choice of relinquishing the Utopian elements now residual in its ideology or of capitalizing on them. I suggest that city planners ought to recognize the value of Utopian formulations in the depicting of the community as it might be seen through alternative normative lenses.

City planning, in portraying a future state of affairs, tries to link economic and social policy with physical design to solve such urban problems as housing and transportation. The two separate traditions of Utopia, that of artifact and that of institutions, can simultaneously be drawn upon for this objective. By developing alternative Utopias of the community, both in physical or material terms and in social and economic terms, city planning would not remove the element of caricature. Instead, it would give that element meaning, since caricature would sharpen the scrutiny of the consequences of following alternative sets of ends and means.

It is the Utopian process—the sketching out of the implications of altering certain fundamental features of society and environment— that should be emulated, rather than the Utopian product. Indeed, since Utopias are so diverse in their portrayals of the good life (or, in the case of the anti-Utopia, the evil life), as Raymond Ruyer (1950) observes, the process...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Original Title
• Original Copyright
• Contents
• General Introduction Philip Sarre and Andrew Blowers
• 1. The future city as seen in the past
• 2. Trends and Constraints
• 3. Future Urban Forms
• 4. Planning the future city
• 5. Life in the city of the future
• Index