a city for today and tomorrow

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A city for today and tomorrow? Rowland Atkinson, Department of Urban Studies and Planning, University of Sheffield

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Page 1: A city for today and tomorrow

A city for today and tomorrow?

Rowland Atkinson, Department of Urban Studies and Planning,University of Sheffield

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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.

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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…

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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

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Lets focus on three important aspects of the city...

1. Its relationship to progress against inequality

2. Its knowledge resources

3. Its future

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What we owe to the dead

I

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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

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University

Railway station

Minster

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• 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!

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Building a new community

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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

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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"

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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…

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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

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New gowns in the town

II

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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

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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

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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.

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‘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

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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

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These next few slides show images of the university in the 1960s and the same views today to show how the campus has changed

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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

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The quality of ‘memorableness’

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The city to come…

III

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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?

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Proposed extension of municipal offices with riverside promenade, from

1948 plan

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1948 City Plan: Inner ring road

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Architects proposal for modernist housing, Walmgate Bar, Yorkshire Evening Press,

1972

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Castle Gate

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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

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York City Beautiful, 2010

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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

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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

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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