Planning history I: A story of Utopia

A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not even worth glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing. And when Humanity lands there, it looks out, and seeing a better country, sets sail. Progress is the idealisation of Utopias (Oscar Wilde, 1891, The Soul of Man Under Socialism, 34)

Readings

• Hamnett, S. and Freestone, R. (2000) The Australian Metropolis: A Planning History, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, Chapters 1-5.

• Waitt, G., McGuirk, P., Dunn, K., Hartig, K. and Burnley, I. (2000) Introducing Human Geography: Globalisation, Difference and Inequality, Pearson, Sydney, pp. 269-332.

• See also Howard in The City Reader

Planning as design for power

• The avenue, temple, garden and palace

• Privatisation - from 99-999 year leases to freehold

• Subdivision - sale of individual lots and blocks without regard for uses, conditions or needs

Egypt 2nd millennium BC

Ninevah 6th c. BC

Geometry

Levinus Hulsius, Theory and Practice of the Geometric Quadrant, 1594

Geometry and Glasgow geography:

It is a well known axiom of Euclidean geometry that parallel lines meet at infinity. However, my recent move to Charing Cross in Glasgow has lent evidence to a different claim. You need only look at a map of Glasgow city centre to realise that Argyle Street and St. Vincent Street are parallel. Nothing too surprising there. However, if you walk up St. Vincent Street past Charing Cross and into Finnieston, what do you find? Why, Argyle Street and St. Vincent Street merge! Now, I can't quite be sure of the exact point at which this insult to orthodoxy occurs but from a careful analysis of the environs I reckon it must be somewhere between PC World and the BP garage. I conclude from this observation, that the well known and accepted tenet 'parallel lines meet at infinity' is, in fact, a corruption (possibly dating back to Ancient Greece) of the true state of affairs: 'parallel lines meet in Finnieston'. I advise all mathematicians to revise their calculations accordingly. http://www.phobia.u-net.com/general.htm#Geometry

Renaissance planning

This rare and unusual print of London shows the extent of the great fire of 1666 and the plan proposed for its rebuilt, usually ascribed to Robert Hooke. It originally appeared in the Theatri Europaie published in Frankfurt by the Merian heirs in 1677.http://www.microcolour.com/uk_maps.htm

The unplanned/misplanned?

Hogarth: Beer Street, 1751 Hogarth: Gin Lane, 1751

Glasgow, 1870

• Town founding and design– Light’s Adelaide

• South Australian Association

• Utilitarianism

• Utopianism

Colonial town planning

• Public infrastructure– Public health reforms

• The Australian Health Society

• SA Public Health Acts

The Garden City Movement

• Ebenezer Howard (1850-1928)

• Tomorrow - a Peaceful Path to Real Reform (1898) … Garden Cities of Tomorrow (1902)

• Push-pull factors in urban development

– town magnet

– country magnet

– town-and-country magnet

1000 acre centrally located citygrand central park and civic core5000 acres of permanent agriculture and parklandnew towns connected by rail

The garden city

Letchworth and Welwyn-Garden Cities

Built