Patrick Geddes

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Patrick Geddes : biography

2 October 1854 – 17 April 1932

Sir Patrick Geddes (2 October 1854 – 17 April 1932) was a Scottish biologist, sociologist, geographer, philanthropist and pioneering town planner (see List of urban theorists). He is known for his innovative thinking in the fields of urban planning and sociology.

He introduced the concept of "region" to architecture and planning and coined the term "conurbation".* CASA News:

An energetic Francophile, Geddes was the founder of the Collège des Écossais (Scots College) an international teaching establishment in Montpellier, France.

Work in Palestine before 1948

Geddes collaborated with his son-in-law, architect Sir Frank Mears, on projects in the Middle East. In 1919, Geddes was commissioned by the British Mandate to draw up a masterplan for Jerusalem.Gideon.An Empire in the Holy Land: Historical Geography of the British Administration in Palestine, 1917-1929, St. Martin’s Press, New York & Magnes Press, Jerusalem, p. 216. In 1925, he also submitted master plan for developing Tel Aviv, called "The Geddes Plan (Tel Aviv)" . It was adopted by the city council led by Meir Dizengoff. Tel Aviv is the only known city whose core is entirely built according to Geddes’ plan.

Published works

  • (1863) with J.A. Thomson, Harper & Brothers, London.
  • (1889) with J.A. Thomson, W. Scott, London.
  • City Development, A Report to the Carnegie Dunfermline Trust (1904), Rutgers University Press.
  • (1915) Williams & Norgate, London.
  • (1920) Longman, London.
  • Biology with Thomson (1925) Williams & Norgate, London.

Influence

Geddes’ ideas had worldwide circulation: his most famous admirer was the American urban theorist Lewis Mumford who claimed that "Geddes was a global thinker in practice, a whole generation or more before the Western democracies fought a global war".

Geddes also influenced several British urban planners (notably Raymond Unwin), the Indian social scientist Radhakamal Mukerjee and the Catalan architect Cebrià de Montoliu (1873–1923) as well as many other 20th century thinkers. For Geddes’ influence on these thinkers, see Meller,(pgs. 220,300-3) 1993, and Varieties of Environmentalism: Essays North and South by Guha and Juan Martínez Alier,Earthscan Publications, 1997.

Geddes was keenly interested in the science of ecology, an advocate of nature conservation and strongly opposed to environmental pollution. Because of this, some historians have claimed he was a forerunner of modern Green politics.See Modern Environmentalism: An Introduction by David Pepper, Routledge, 1996, and Environmentalism: A Global History (pgs. 59-62) by Ramachandra Guha, Longman, 1999.

Key ideas

"Conservative surgery" versus the gridiron plan

Geddes championed a mode of planning that sought to consider "primary human needs" in every intervention, engaging in "constructive and conservative surgery" rather than the "heroic, all of a piece schemes" popular in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He was to continue to use and advocate for this approach throughout his career.

Very early on in his career Geddes was to demonstrate the practicality of his ideas and approach. In 1886 Geddes and his newly married wife purchased a row of slum tenements in James Court, Edinburgh, making it into a single dwelling. In and around this area Geddes commenced upon a project of "conservative surgery": "weeding out the worst of the houses that surrounded them…widening the narrow closes into courtyards" and thus improving sunlight and airflow. The best of the houses were kept and restored. Geddes believed that this approach was both more economical and more humane.

In this way Geddes consciously worked against the tradition of the "gridiron plan", resurgent in colonial town design in the 19th century: “The heritage of the gridiron plans goes back at least to the Roman camps. The basis for the grid as an enduring and appealing urban form rests on five main characteristics: order and regulatory, orientation in space and to elements, simplicity and ease of navigation, speed of layout, and adaptability to circumstance.” However, he wished this policy of "sweeping clearances" to be recognised for what he believed it was: "one of the most disastrous and pernicious blunders in the chequered history of sanitation".