Iconic Planned Communities and the Challenge of Change eds. by Mary Corbin Sies, Isabelle Gournay, and Robert Freestone

Abstract

Reviewed by: Iconic Planned Communities and the Challenge of Change eds. by Mary Corbin Sies, Isabelle Gournay, and Robert Freestone Nathan Burtch Iconic Planned Communities and the Challenge of Change. Mary Corbin Sies, Isabelle Gournay, and Robert Freestone, eds. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019. Pp. vii+488, color plate pictures, illustrations, maps; black & white pictures, illustrations, maps. $49.95, hardcover, ISBN 978-0-8122-5114-2. A favorite part of teaching about urban planning for me is the topic of urban utopia: the idealized place in which a visionary uses design to create physical and social perfection along their predilections and idiosyncrasies. Cities and communities are formed by millions of decisions by individuals, institutions, and bureaucracies, working in concert or conflict, creating our quiet residential neighborhoods and cacophonous metropolitan regions. The concept of the urban utopia conceptualizes that a single vision can also produce place. If a place is planned to be just right, what are the implications of the place's inevitable change and evolution? Iconic Planned Communities and the Challenge of Change explores what happened to planned residential greenfield communities after the halcyon days, when the implementation of vision is faced with decades of economic, demographic, development, environmental, and cultural change. This volume, edited by Mary Corbin Sies, Isabelle [End Page 132] Gournay, and Robert Freestone, focuses on "iconic" rather than "utopian" communities, but many of the communities used as case studies have a direct connection to Ebeneezer Howard's garden city, among other utopian visions. The volume is not a census of all planned residential greenfield communities, but it compiles an impressive array of examples. In the course of nineteen chapters, the interdisciplinary collection of authors provides case studies of twenty-three different iconic planned communities. The chosen communities span the globe and include widely known examples in the Global North like Letchworth Garden City, Welwyn Garden City, Radburn, and Seaside, along with Global South representation in Menteng (Indonesia), Pacaembu (Brazil), and Soweto (South Africa). These twenty-three communities also provide a wide breadth of place typologies: low-density and medium-density, working-class and elite communities, purely residential and mixed-use, diverse and exclusive. While contributing authors used their own disciplinary and multidisciplinary lenses for methodological inquiry, the editors asked each to use a SWOT analysis with several questions in common to bridge a connection between case studies. Contributors worked to understand each community as a holistically planned place that links social dynamics with physical design. The editors note that their view of iconicity centers on places known by "widely circulated visual representations encapsulating their social and design tenets" (15), which clearly links to the coupled physical/social idealism of urban utopias. A strength of the volume is the inclusion of these specific visual representations that go toward the editors' definition of "iconic." A twentieth chapter has Gournay detail how "visual representations matter" toward making these communities iconic and recognizable as place (436). Images of the master plans of communities and images of residents using the physical place within the chapters and as included color plates provide iconic texture to the written analysis. Iconicity, while defined by visual representation within the volume, is also related to each community's spirit and sense of place. Gournay's solo chapter, and more amply R. Bruce Stephenson's afterword, connect the term "icon" to its religious roots. Many of the noted iconic planned communities, in their utopian roots, are attempts at building a metaphysical spirit into secularized space. These places are well argued as having sacredness imbued within them despite not being religious in [End Page 133] nature. This secular sacralization of place occurs through the power of visionary place: the goal of social enlightenment through physical and social planning as created by the visionary planners of these communities. This volume's focus on iconicity adds to the literature of not only planning and design but also sacred spaces and topophilia. Though the sense-of-place aspect of this volume is a pleasant emphasis, as the title implies a more consistent thread through the case studies is how these communities deal (or not) with change. Though an iconic place may suggest to the public at large a belief...