City, Region and Regionalism

A geographical contribution to human ecology

Robert E. Dickinson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781135675837
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Urban Planning & Landscaping

This book was first published in 1947.

PART I

THE URBAN SETTLEMENT AS REGIONAL CENTRE

CHAPTER 1

THE REGION AS SOCIAL UNIT

1 THE SOCIAL UNIT

The terms region and regionalism have been widely used in recent years with reference to a great variety of problems. All demand, in one form or another, the substitution of new geographical units for existing administrative units, which, as a legacy of the past, are quite unsuited to the requirements and structure of modern society. Regional planning deals primarily with the physical planning of town and countryside, and the term is generally used in reference to an extension of town planning ; indeed, in France it is called Urban Regionalism. It may include the general planning of resources, as in the organization and work of the Tennessee Valley Authority (T.V.A.), and this aspect is becoming increasingly prominent in the planning discussions of other countries. Regionalism is also especially identified with the movement for the re-organization of local government and the devolution of administrative and legislative powers. The outstanding instance of all such aims being put into practice is in the total reconstruction of the economy and social structure of the U.S.S.R.

The term “region” is undoubtedly one of the catchwords of our day among both popular and scientific writers. To the practical man of affairs a region is just an area with certain characteristics (often mere size), in virtue of which it is a suitable unit for some particular purpose of business and administration. To the scientist, and above all to the geographer, a region is an area which is homogeneous in respect of some particular set of associated conditions, whether of the land or of the people, such as industry, farming, the distribution of population, commerce, or the general sphere of influence of a city. The main problems of regional study lie in the selection of suitable criteria for the recognition of such regional homogeneities, their representation, and the elucidation of the forces that condition their formation. Some writers conceive of “natural administrative units”, i.e. units suitable, in virtue of their being social and economic entities, to be used as administrative units. In this sense, a region is envisaged in general terms as a “natural” areal unit, natural in the sense that it is a real, existing unit, arising spontaneously from the very structure of society, in contrast to the “artificial” administrative units, which have been imposed in the distant past and are often ill-adjusted to modern needs.¹ Such a natural unit, it is argued, is the rational one to use as the basis for the organization of modern communities for any particular purpose—be it for planning town and countryside, developing resources, organizing a new system of local government, collecting statistical and census data, or for the regionalization of such public services as health and housing. In all these respects new unit areas are required, differing certainly in character and extent for particular purposes, but better adapted to their purpose than the existing antiquated administrative units. Moreover, assuming that different areas are used for distinct purposes, it is essential that there should be as close geographical co-ordination between them as is practicable.

The essence of this problem has recently been summed up in The Times² with reference to Britain, and this is typical of the problem in other countries. There is need, states a Special Correspondent, for a new “local unit” of self-government larger and more homogeneous than the parish in the country and the ward in the city, in which there are “enough persons with common interest to form a political community”. Its boundaries should be so defined as to “take account of the natural geographic area, of the historic area, of the economic area for the services, of the financial area”, so that the areas “do not substantially depart from the boundaries of natural community and corporate interest”. The same correspondent goes on to discuss the need for intermediate authorities between these local government areas and the State. Health, education, town and country planning—to name but the most important—need areas larger than those of the smaller local government areas. Indeed the country is riddled with such sets of so-called “regions”. But what is required is a comprehensive “unit of planning” as an area of intermediate government larger than the local government unit, and its administration should be in the hands of “a joint or federal authority of which the local government authorities would be the constituent members”.

Such intermediate areas (he continues) exist as ad hoc areas governed by ad hoc bodies, but this current tendency “breaks into fragments the field of intermediate government”, increases the hold of bureaucracy, and reduces the field of responsibility and interest of the local government authorities and thus of the electorate. “The trend, therefore, to a multiplicity of units must be reversed, and the lessons of the last two centuries learned again.”

To sum up, the future of local government must be seen in association with new forms of intermediate government. Local government cannot itself sustain the role of large-scale scheme-making regional authority without departing from its own proper nature. Local authorities cannot be “upgraded” into huge primary units of regional administration without ceasing thereby to exemplify the self-government principle which gave them birth. The field of intermediate government must rather be integrated by new forms of intermediate authority. It is suggested that these should be federal in composition and, so far as possible, compendious in function.

This is the essence of the problem that faces all the larger countries of Europe and the United States. The concern of this book is not its political aspect, but rather the natural fabric of community-interests upon which the delimitation of new local government and major federal units of intermediate government must be based.

Many of the most vital problems of modern society find their common ground in the basic concept of the Region—what kind of area it shall be, what purpose it shall serve, how it should work. Regionalization as a fact, if not Regionalism as a movement in the French sense, is a fundamental feature of the organization of our national life. Business has long recognized its indispens-ability. From the standpoint of government, each of the countries of Western civilization is faced with two main problems of internal reconstruction and planning, alike centred in the problem of Regions : first, the need for a new hierarchy of local government areas ; and secondly, the need for new areas for the planning of town and countryside, not as so many isolated fragments, but as parts of a complete nation-wide pattern, comprising a number of organized units. It is upon these two aspects of regionalism that public attention has been concentrated in recent years in all the Western countries. In the words of Lewis Mum-ford in his Culture of Cities (London, 1938) : “The re-animation and re-building of regions as deliberate works of collective art, is the grand task of politics for the coming generation.” All these varied problems have a common denominator, namely, the demand for a new unit in place of the existing local government unit, one which shall as far as possible have a social and economic foundation, with the contained settlements as nuclei of life and organization. The same basic idea is found in the notion of the “social unit” indicated by the late Mr. Frank Pick as the essential basis of physical planning. In order to plan for the future, he wrote, it is essential not only to undertake demographic surveys, but also to arrive at “some understanding of the social unit upon which democracy is to be built”. For this purpose

the integration of society demands a special study.... A social unit must be devised—rather must come to birth—not too large to destroy personal contact and not too small to fail to afford variety and diversity. And the social unit must involve all classes and carry within it no class distinction. How much preliminary thought is needed here, for if the unit is not rightly and naturally conceived, the social structure will never be securely built up. The town, the city, the metropolis itself and finally the region will be aggregates of social units differentiated and combined to fulfil ever higher and broader conceptions of the good life.¹

This is a timely restatement of the concept of Regionalism which had been elaborated frequently on broad philosophical lines by such scholars as the late Patrick Geddes and, in more recent years, by Lewis Mumford, but which still requires much more attention from the social scientist. It is essential to realize that the community unit is a geographical area with a considerable measure of unity in its services and organization, surrounding and including a focal settlement in which these services are integrated. It is, in other words, an area of common living.

2. THE HIERARCHY OF SOCIAL UNITS IN THEORY

The concept of the community group occupying a geographical area of a certain size and enjoying the facilities and amenities that are essential for a healthy social life is prevalent in recent discussions on planning and is a main basis of the County of London Plan (1943). Inherent in this concept are a service centre in which the social institutions are clustered, a population adequate to support these central institutions, and a residential area grouped around and within easy access to the centre. The Royal Institute of British Architects in its recent publication Rebuilding Britain (1943) suggests a hierarchy of social units at which the planners of town and country should aim as their practical yardsticks—in respect of the size of populations of community groups, the density, type and arrangement of buildings, the general lay-out, and the kind and size of service of institutions to be provided—including under this head not only social or public services but commercial and other facilities as well. A residential unit of 1,000 people is suggested as the smallest unit, supporting a small café, a public house, a nursery school, a crêche and a few retail shops for everyday needs. The next grade of unit area would be the neighbourhood unit with 5,000 persons and containing five residential units. Its centre would have a few more shops for occasional weekly demands, a restaurant, places of worship, a library, community centre, medical centre and schools. The borough unit would contain in its centre all the essential amenities for a fully-fledged town—a theatre, cinema, hospital, specialized shops, public hall and an accessible railway terminus, and it would serve about 40,000 people containing eight neighbourhood units. The district unit would be made up of six borough units with, in its centre, specialized services such as technical schools, exhibition and concert halls and special hospitals. It would have about 240,000 persons, the whole forming one urban aggregate. Larger cities, it is stated, may be a combination (as in fact all the big cities are) of several district units, separated from each other by green belts with a central city area for business, finance, entertainment, and administration. An essential feature of this community structure, as suggested in the County of London Plan, is that the community area should be compact, the neighbourhood unit, for instance, with its 6,000 to 10,000 inhabitants, being housed on 50 to 100 acres. The size and area of this unit are based on the optimum size of a junior elementary school reached by children without danger of being run over on main roads.¹ Moreover, to ensure the cohesion and unity of the community most of the service institutions should be centrally located in the area, while the main highways, railways, industrial quarters and open spaces should not cut across community areas, but form the physical boundaries between them.

The same approach is advocated by the R.I.B.A. for town and country planning. As in the case of cities, it is suggested that there is a hierarchy of units in the wider countryside,

beginning as the village grouped around its social services, then the market town which is the focus of several villages and which provides more complicated services, and so on, up through various stages. Much of this structure is actually in being already, but it needs new sorts of buildings, and conscious guidance with national, regional, and local plans if it is to yield the maximum benefits all round.

The ideal hierarchy of community associations, centred in village, town, city or city sub-centre, is not to be thought of as something drawn out of the blue by the planner or the architect. It does really exist in the fabric of our society, and the geographical structure of this soc...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Title Page1
• Publisher
• Contents
• Listoffigures
• Acknowledgments
• Preface
• PART I. THE URBAN SETTLEMENT AS REGIONAL CENTRE
• PART II. THE STRUCTURE OF THE CITY
• PART III. THE CITY-REGION
• PART IV. REGIONALISM AND THE REGION
• INDEX