“Free cities and regions”—Patrick Geddes’s theory of planning

Abstract

Patrick Geddes is a recognized founder of urban and regional planning. Despite this accolade, a review of US planning programs reflects Geddes’s work largely absent from planning pedagogy. Recently interest in Geddes has revived in several fields. However, many researchers, particularly in planning, still criticize his ideas as lacking a coherent theoretical framework or as obsolete in addressing the power relations in contemporary cities and social movements. In this paper, I seek to augment recent work on Geddes as well as explore criticisms of his approach. I examined published and archival manuscripts dealing with Geddes’s approach to planning. I argue Geddes did, across his voluminous output, frame a consistent planning theory valuable for contemporary environmental planning and social movements. I conclude by calling for wider reintroduction of Geddes’s ideas into planning education and research.