A city for today and tomorrow
-
Upload
rowland-atkinson -
Category
Education
-
view
325 -
download
0
Transcript of A city for today and tomorrow
A city for today and tomorrow?
Rowland Atkinson, Department of Urban Studies and Planning,University of Sheffield
PreambleUse the cursor keys to click through the slides but do wait for the ‘transitions’ to get the full effect!
This is the web version of a public lecture I gave in October 2012. I have inserted a few additional commentary slides to add an interpretive framework for what is predominantly a very visual talk. The talk was designed to raise questions about what we want the city to be like and to see how, at key moments in the city’s past, social reformers have a) made plans for a better city and b) sought to assist excluded communities. Those plans and designs remain influential, both within the city and more broadly. A key argument of the lecture is that the university should be strongly engaged in these debates, as a major part of the local economy, but also as a place that produces ideas, research and also as a place in which public conversations can be brokered.
Utopia: any imaginary place, state or society of idealized perfection (Chambers dictionary)
But we also know that how we imagine the future will help to influence it…
OverviewYork is a little like a social laboratory: – It has been the site of
pioneering social studies – It has also been a place in
which people have pioneered techniques of social planning and housing development–These aspects of the city
have been globally influential• In social research• In the development of ‘ideal’ and
mixed communities
Lets focus on three important aspects of the city...
1. Its relationship to progress against inequality
2. Its knowledge resources
3. Its future
What we owe to the dead
I
The Rowntree legacyRowntree chocolate factory began in 1862, key members of the corporation:– Joseph Rowntree– Benjamin Seebohm Rowntree:
conducted extensive surveys in the city and published the 1901 study Poverty: A Study of Town Life
– Both were involved in the positive treatment of workers, including the provision of pensions
– Both were involved in programs to improve the city through planning and housing development
University
Railway station
Minster
• Map from Seebohm’s study• Note the use of colour to mark areas of social distress and poverty• Note also the red dots which mark the location of the city’s pubs!
Building a new community
New Earswick• A planned community,
1902-1904• Designed to
accommodate a wide range of people – – A mixed community,
like a rural village– Range of services – Folk
hall, doctor, schools
Can you tell who lives here?
"I do not want to establish communities bearing the stamp of charity but rather of rightly ordered and self governing communities"
The legacy of New Earswick• Unwin and Parker, the architects and planners of the
garden suburb, went on to manage the creation of Letchworth garden city, the first of its kind in the UK
• A highly successful example due to its investment in good space standards and gardens
• Houses were designed to prevent the possibility of socially ‘reading’ who lived there
• Has continued to influence planning ideals in the UK and beyond for socially mixed neighbourhoods as a more sustainable model, as with Derwenthorpe on the next slide…
Derwenthorpe, Joseph Rowntree Housing Trust
• 540 new homes and a new community, planned in a similar way to New Earswick• A mixed community, like New Earswick• Community heating from sustainable wood
New gowns in the town
II
The beginnings of a university…
• Plans for a university were rejected in the mid-1940s by the University Grant Cttee
• Civic Trust reassembled with an Academic Development Committee and two projects that would demonstrate capacity to run such an institution– A Summer School of Architectural Studies–What is now the Borthwick Institute for
Archives
Summer School of Architecture
• Ran in King’s Manor from 1949
• From 1952 was formalised the Institute for Architectural Studies
• When the university was created in 1962 this became the Institure for Advanced Architecural Study
• Critical to the development of national approaches to building preservation techniques and historic conservation
Borthwick Institute
• First housed in St Anthony’s Hall, 1950
• Accommodated the Minster’s diocesan records
York Summer School of Architectural Study
• Held annually since 1949• Organized by the Academic Developmnt Committee
of York Civic Trust• Students lived in a ‘collegiate building’• York was seen to have buildings of all ages and
constructional materials• Ran courses on Protection and Repair of Historic
Buildings• Foundation of York Institute of Architectural Study,
1953, which then ran the summer school– From Singleton, W. (1954) Studies in Architectural History,
York: St Anthony’s Press.
‘It is a strange thing that the great City of York, with its ancient tradition of learning and culture, should have been so long without a university’
Foreword to: Derbyshire, A. University of York: Development Plan 1962-1972
Planning for the ethos of the university
• The campus was designed so that no destination was more than 10 minutes away
• Design was to be for university halls, nor fully autonomous colleges – but a combination of these approaches
• In 1963 the first 200 students began their courses, mostly arts and social sciences because of the time taken to build the buildings for the natural sciences
• A 14 acre lake was created to help drain the site• IN 1972 there were 2,550 students, now there are 15,000
students (11,000 undergrads, 4,400 postgrads)• Space structures social relations – centralised timetabling
was used to create ‘random encounters’ on the campus
These next few slides show images of the university in the 1960s and the same views today to show how the campus has changed
What is a university for?‘many wish to live in or near a beautiful city, as they have spent their lives in suburbia or industrial towns, and this is a desire which may well be borne in mind by those who maintain that new academic institutions should be related to the ‘real’ life of an urban environment’,
Speech by Lord James of Rusholme, first VC of University of York to the
Manchester Statistical Society
The quality of ‘memorableness’
The city to come…
III
These next set of slides are designed to get you thinking about what a future ‘utopian’ city of York might be. I have taken contemporary pictures of the city from the very same perspective as the wonderful sketches used in J. B. Morrell’s book The City of Our Dreams (1954) to highlight visions of the future city from sixty years ago – the contrasts are interesting! • What do you think of these ideas? • What would make the city a better place today? • Can York continue to inspire planners and reformers
today?
Proposed extension of municipal offices with riverside promenade, from
1948 plan
1948 City Plan: Inner ring road
Architects proposal for modernist housing, Walmgate Bar, Yorkshire Evening Press,
1972
Castle Gate
Towards a city beautiful• 1909 Burnham plan
for Chicago– Economic
development– Civic pride– Role of design
• The point here is the need to link public and private sectors to achieve progress
York City Beautiful, 2010
Other utopian aspects:• The Retreat and Tuke Centre• Edible York• Transition Town• Joseph Rowntree Foundation• Civic Trust• York Festival 1951• Georgian Society• Institute for Advanced Architectural Studies
Restating the relationship of the university to the city, and to return to the question of progress and
inequality….
• York Lab: Social studies of the city• York School: Review of all social
studies of the city, 1899 to date• York Inequalities study: Linking
Rowntree surveys to more recent records
• A Department of Geography
Conclusion• York has been at the heart of critical debates about
poverty, social inequality and the ways in which we might plan to combat these social evils
• Research at the university remains relevant to and engaged with these debates, in York and more widely - the creation of a discrete campus facilitates such work but perhaps also militates against local participation, we need to work hard to ensure we engage with these questions
• Exciting visions of a future York continue to be discussed though the traction of these ideas has often proved limited, concerted action will be required to realise the idea of a civic park, to take just one example
Find out more: www.york.ac.uk/sociology/[email protected]