Thinking organic, acting civic: The paradox of planning for Cities in Evolution

Abstract

Patrick Geddes articulated the growth and design of cities in the early years of the town planning movement in Britain using biological principles of which Darwin’s (1859) theory of evolution was central. His ideas about social evolution, the design of local communities, and his repeated calls for comprehensive understanding through regional survey and plan laid the groundwork for much practical planning in the mid 20th century, both with respect to an embryonic theory of cities and the practice of planning. But Geddes had a much wider agenda that town planning per se. He sought after a philosophy of life that went well beyond Darwinism verging almost on the spiritual at times. Yet his personal approach and the limits he imposed on his formal thinking meant that he was never able to establish his big picture in a way that later generations could easily grasp and build upon. He left us with enticing ideas, evocative phrases, and a practical philosophy of doing planning and building communities that has indeed survived as something more than a footnote in history. In this essay, we identify the key paradox of modern planning which seeks to intervene in systems that have enormous complexity, growing and evolving rather than being designed in any top-down fashion. We illustrate this paradox through Geddes’ own career and life in which this tension between bottom up and top down was always to the forefront. We then sketch his influence on practicing planners and key intellectuals of the mid to late 20th century—Abercrombie and Mumford, Jacobs and Alexander. We bring this history of Geddes’ influence up to contemporary times when the complexity sciences with all their focus on evolving systems, now permeate our thinking, suggesting various ways in which we might examine the history of the planning in the last 100 years in a new light through the lens of Geddes’ arguments and principles