The Death of Urbanism. Marcus White

Cerdà is noteworthy not only because of his systematic analysis but because of his holistic multi-disciplinary approach to design.

       Figure 15: Street cross-section showing central rail network, horse and person-drawn cart lanes, pedestrian paths, stormwater drainage and sewerage, gas and water lines, light pole locations, with tree locations and sizes. Source: Museu d’Historia de la Ciutat, Barcelona (Cerdà, 1859).

      Another influential urban designer concerned with urban health that came after Cerdà was Ebenezer Howard in the UK, who published To-morrow: a Peaceful Path to Real Reform in 1898 (reissued in 1902 as Garden Cities of To-morrow) in response to the ‘great stink’ and health problems of UK cities. What was needed was through-ventilation, the provision of parks to act as lungs for the cities, and ‘a general process of cleansing’ (Daunton, 2004).

      Howard’s Garden City zoned a mix of country and city life, proposed a radial boulevard layout, central parks bounded by public buildings, encircled by the ‘crystal palace’, a kind of elongated glazed arcade shopping mall opening onto the park for shopping in ‘most doubtful of weathers’. All this ‘near to every dweller in the town’, within ‘600 yards’ [550 metres] from the furthest home. Moving out from the crystal palace was more discrete zoning, with a ring of schools and churches, with the industrial zone making up the outer ring surrounded by agriculture.

      Unlike Cerdà’s manifesto which was extraordinarily detailed and tested on the specific site of Barcelona as a ‘case study’, Howard’s proposition was less resolved and included a disclaimer stating that the proposal was a ‘diagram only’ dependent on the eventually chosen site. This site unspecific aspect of Howard’s proposal ‘gave a new dimension to the town plan; a versatile freedom during its creation’ (Lucey 1993).

      Howard used the city of Adelaide, Australia as an example of how to deal with garden cities that grew beyond their capacity, by adding a satellite separated by parkland as is suggested by Colonel William Light’s 1837 Adelaide plan (Howard was however mistaken, as both communities were laid out simultaneously) [Figure 16]. In 1903, English urban planner, Raymond Unwin put Howard’s plans into practice with the town of Letchworth, the United Kingdom’s first Garden City. Howard’s plans were subsequently adopted around the world, seen as a new alternative to high-density cities, however much of the intent of the Garden City plan was over-looked or misinterpreted, resulting in new suburbs that did not have walkable access to civic buildings, parks, shopping or workplaces. His Crystal Palace mutated into what is now known as the shopping mall. Ironically, the idea of building on a green-field site was used to expand the cities of Britain devouring the countryside with the emphasis on low-density settlement being at least in part one of the major causes of ‘suburban sprawl’ (Laurence, 1993). We will come back to the concept of ‘sprawl’ in the next chapter.

      Modern city planners also adopted the use of detailed city studies to make strategic recommendations to improve urban health and population movement. Scottish planner Patrick Geddes (1854-1932) is associated with the influential mantra of ‘survey-analysis design’ (SAD), an analogue precursor to Geodesign. The approach drew from the scientific method and involved conducting a detailed survey of a site, and through analysis of the data, the design would appear as a kind of scientifically determined outcome.

      Geddes advocated ‘diagnosis before treatment’, considering the urban survey as indispensable to urban planning. Though there is still great support for engaging with site contexts, the approach has been criticised as too deterministic. University of Greenwich academic, Tom Turner, suggests that the Geddes SAD method produced sad results. It should be ‘put out to grass like a poor old tired horse’ (Turner, 1991).

       Figure 16: Noli plan by Tianyi Yang of The City of Adelaide, map data: Mapbox and OSM.

       …the result of a pseudo-scientific, clean-hands, drawing-board-rooted designmethod. […] One conducted a semi-scientific survey; one analysed the results(usually on drawings with jagged lines andarrows); then one performed a creative leapand produced a design. More often thannot the design had little relationship to thesurvey and analysis. The method was not asuccess (Turner & Watson, 2000).

      Geddes’ approach was more sensitive than Haussmann’s or Le Corbusier’s. Geddes preferred to engage in minor ‘constructive and conservative surgery’ making minor incisions in cities to improve the living conditions within poor quality housing, for example, widening narrow closes into the courtyard to enhance sunlight and airflow (Tyrwhitt, 1947). We will return to the wholistic diagnosis and treatment approach of Geddes towards the end of the book.

      In contrast, to the more aggressive major amputations, bypass, or full organ transplants suggested by the ‘urban surgeons’ of the modern movement (see Haussmann’s Paris or Le Corbusier’s unrealised plans for Paris). They encouraged major renewal emphasising sterile repetition for efficiency and ‘cleanliness’, particularly in response to the postwar housing crisis. This architecture had a social conscience; it aimed to provide for all the inhabitants a social, an economic and above all, a democratic city, planned for all the people (Laurence1993). Their version of the scientific determinist urban design approach involved many testing speculative studies on the maximisation of housing capacity against minimisation of amenity loss. Gropius, Le Corbusier and Hilberseimer each used the design technique of physical models as well as drawn plans and sections with solar tables to work out their buildings effects on solar amenity – overshadowing [Figure 17].

      The modernist urban design and architecture movement reflected a hopeful attitude in the face of adversity which was, as Kübler-Ross suggested, pervasive in other fields such as science and medicine:

       And there were good reasons to beoptimistic. Startling breakthroughs inphysics, chemistry, engineering, and—tomost people most important—medicinewere occurring almost daily. Curesfor hitherto lethal conditions such aspneumonia, sepsis, kidney failure, and severetrauma had become commonplace. Diseasewas increasingly seen as a problem to besolved. The sense was that medical sciencemight soon be able to arrest aging and(subconsciously at least) possibly conquerdeath itself (Kübler-Ross, 1973).

      This was the point at which many failures of modern planning were placed squarely upon modernist architects. Until this moment architects had been seen as infallible, able to solve all urban problems using modern architecture and urbanism, just as the best physicians, during this same period, had been seen as those who could forestall death using modern medical treatments.

       Figure 17: Walter Gropius solar analysis for a variety of urban form arrangements redrawn by Tianyi Yang.

       In this culture, the best doctors werethe ones who could always find anothertreatment to forestall death. In the 1950sand 1960s, doctors rarely admitted whentreatments weren’t working and commonlyfailed to tell patients when furthertreatments would do more harm than good.Physician culture epitomized the never-say-die stance (Kübler-Ross, 1973).

      But in 1973, the critical social eye that was turned on these extremely confident physicians and their procedural ‘mistakes’, was also turned on Modernist architects. The absolute trust of those pushing the modernist agenda had eroded. Individualistic genius architects like those epitomised by the Howard Roark character in Ayn Rand’s 1943 classic novel The Fountainhead were no longer to be trusted in quite the same way as they once were, as all-knowing visionaries at the top of the decision-making tree.

      Almost at the same time that cities were investigating consolidated urban growth, the concept of high-density living was also being questioned. Modernist housing tower blocks that responded to mass housing shortages were being blamed for several social problems (Gallagher, 2001). The end of the long post-war boom heralded the start of