Class cities: Classics, utopianism and urban planning in early twentieth-century Britain

Abstract

This article examines the intellectual background to debates in the town planning movement in early twentieth-century Britain. The movement drew heavily on two traditions, that of the anarchists, who provided much of the theory, and that of the philanthropists. The reception of the Classical city influenced these debates through the provision of key paradigms. These paradigms were predominantly sociological rather than architectural and related to the ‘ideal’ societies to be generated by the new cities. The article argues that urban planning followed a path parallel to British sociology in adopting Classical ideas and forming itself around particular Classicising imaginings of society. Whereas the anarchist tradition exploited the Classical cautiously, differentiating the cities of Rome from the Classical poleis of Greece and finding in those Greek traditions the possibility of radical associative democracy, town planners in the British tradition came to engage with the Classical in a very different way. Through figures such as Patrick Geddes, the influence of Classicism served to divest British urban planning of its political radicalism and the Classical polis was used to offer a utopianism which was hierarchical and conservative.