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M
 © Roger Johnson 1979
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication
may be reproduced or transmitted
in any form or by any means,
without permission.

First published 1979 by

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY OF AUSTRALlA PTY LTD
107 Moray Street, South Melbourne 3205
6 George Place, Artarmon 2064

Associated companies in
London and Basingstoke, England
New York Dublin Johannesburg Delhi

National Library of Australia

cataloguing in publication data
Johnson, Roger Kirk H.
The green city

Bibliography
Index 978-0-7251-0323-1

1. City planning. 2. Urban renewal. 3 Open

spaces. 4. Landscape architecture. I. Tide.

309.262

Set in Bembo by Modgraphic, Adelaide

ISBN 978-0-333-28940-2 ISBN 978-1-349-05464-0 (eBook)

DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-05464-0
Contents
Acknowledgements IV

Introduction VI

The City Today 1

The City Centre 1
The Suburbs 16
Transportation 21
Housing 27
Small Towns 59
The New Realities 68
Implications 75
The Way Ahead 77
The Way Ahead 78
Landscape-The Legacy and the Image 79
Open Space 89
Architecture 117
Colour 117
Content 121
Work 128
The Genius Loci 130
Summary 147
Epilogue 157
Appendix 159
References & Bibliography 164
Acknowledgements
This book originated in a study I carried out in Los Angeles at the end of 1976. In
that study, I endeavoured to apply so me serious thinking as to how life could be
made more enjoyable for citizens everywhere without, at the start ofthe study, my
having a preconceived idea as to where the exploration might take me.
Nevertheless, I would be the first to admit that the result takes the form it does
because of past influences on my thinking.
Such influences would include Frank Clark, who first built up my interest in
landscape design; Ernst May, the maestro of my Kenya days, for showing me that
landscape design and architecture are inseparable; Gordon Stephenson, in the
period when we worked on the University of Western Australia together, for his
search for the permanent values rather than the adoption of the merely fashionable
and, in the same place, George Munns for demonstrating that green fingers are at
least as important as a sense of design; Dick Clough, in Canberra, who has
illustrated by his quiet perseverence that good results in the design of the
environment demand continuing decisions at every point and at every scale; and
finally, Bruce Mackenzie and GIen Wilson for their lead in using native plant
material. Behind all this, is my good fortune to have had a father who had the eye of
both countryman and painter for the beauties of the fells of West Cumberland,
where I was brought up, and for the Western Isles of Scotland, where we spent
many years sailing. My insistence on nature, in the form oflandscape and planting
as a source ofregeneration ofthe spirit, certainly sterns from these early experiences.
In practical terms, I am indebted to the Council for International Exchange of
Scholars for the Fulbright-Hays research award and to the School of Architecture
and Urban Planning, UCLA, that together gave me the time and facilities from
which, in part, the book has materialised.
Roger Johnson
Canberra 1979

iv
v
Introduction
Every day more and more of us are living in cities, or more descriptively, urban
agglomerations. By the next century there will be few countries in which less than
80 per cent of the population will be living und er urban conditions.
In a very few ca ses these cities could be" said to be improving: that is, conditions
for the citizens are becoming better. In the vast majority, conditions are becoming
worse (particularly in the Asian cities where conditions for the majority are nothing
short ofintolerable). We have been reminded ofthis situation over and over again
by people such as Barbara Ward (1976) in her book The Horne of Man, and there
would be few educated people who do not feel unease about the future.
Attitudes about how we might face thc unccrtain future, generated by the failure
of our cities to perform their traditional functions, vary from the short-term
expediency ofthe politicians to the beliefthat only a compIete change in attitudes, if
not human nature, is required from every individual. The latter viewpoint found
expression at the United Nations Conference on Human Settlements held in
Vancouver in 1975. "
Others, notably the group of architects who worked in the United Kingdom
under the label of'Archigram' or the 'Metabolists' in Japan and Paolo Soleri in the
Uni ted States, have escaped into futuristic fantasies and thereby avoided facing the
immediate situation.
Meanwhile, city officials and groups of all kinds work away at effecting what
improvements they may. It is at this level that progress might best be made, for the
problems of the cities are immediate and solutions to be viable should be effective
within a ten-year period.
Let us accept that changes in human attitudes will be fairly slow; that as Lord
Beveridge used to remark, instead of a few greedy people at the top we now have,
in the 'developed' countries, the whole population indulging in the game. The
moves we can make will need to be realistic in every sense. Nevertheless it needs
only a few stubborn people with some sense of vision to effect considerable
advances.

vi
AJfection
We all know people, ifwe are lucky, who make us feel good. We are something, it
seems, in their eyes. And because of this, let it be admitted, our affection goes out to
them. It is the same with cities.
I wrote this book in Los Angeles because it was there that I thought the indicators
of future cities could be found. By the time lieft Los Angeles, I had affection for
some parts of it but it came horne to me strongly, in the first few days I was there,
what the chief failure of our modern cities is (outside the area of providing basic
facilities) .
Walking to the Water and Power Department to have the electricity in my
apartment turned on, the malaise became clear as my journey progressed. The walk
entailed crossing the eight lanes of Wilshire Boulevard which is fine if one is
sprightly but the old and infirm are caught midway. It necessitated passing huge
face-Iess buildings with nothing more exciting than a bank or an air-litle office at
street level. (It is now the fashion in Los Angeles to clad office buildings in tin ted or
reflective glass making their externals even more bland than usual.) Then the usual
parking structures which, if Dante had known of them, he would have made the

vii
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VIII
places des pas-perdus on the way to the Inferno. Finally, there were the great acres of
surface car parks surrounding other enormous buildings. Here seemed to be the
expression of what we were doing in the new and even wealthy parts of our cities:
our failure to live with the car and our disregard for the dignity of the individual;
our complete negkct of humanising qualities in remaking our surroundings.
No better illustration could I give of what I me an by this than through a
description of how Alvar Aalto designed the Paimio sanitarium, his first large
building. Apparently he once told a group ofstudents that he 'considered how each
inhabitant would use it and feel in it, from director to patient to janitor. He
imagined hirnself the director, arriving, parking his car, entering "his" hospital,
feeling proud of his role at every moment. He then imagined hirnself in the role of
every member ofthe hospital's staff, and checked his design to ensure that everyone
who used it, who worked in it, could feel the importance of his own part in the
hospital's operation. The janitor, for example, had to have his own small doset for
his work clothes rather than an impersonal hook in a locker room.' (See Spreiregen,
1965). In this is the explanation of a life's work of superb humanist quality: not
because he used beautiful materials and had a great plastic sense but because he was
concerned about thc pcople in his buildings. What greater goal could the designers
of our own surroundings have than to provide a setting in which each individual
might feel his own worth? And how different is the reality today.
It was at this time that I was re-reading Schumacher's Small is Beautiful. It
occurred to me how apt some of his statements are when applied to the urban
physical dilemma. Consider, for instance, the following ideas-
• Small is beautiful (when coupled with the concept of articulated structures that
can cope with a multiplicity of small scale units).
• People can be themselves only in small comprehensible groups.
• There is an appropriate scale for every activity.
• Transportation systems can sometimes genera te unnecessary travel.
• We need both freedom and order.
• To be humanistic a subject must make explicit its view of human nature.
• The future is made out of existing material.
• Reconciliation of man with the natural world has become a necessity.
• Beauty should be one of the goals of land management.
• Motivation is necessary for everybody.

ix
 The ramifications of these, on the face of it, unobjectionable statements, when
applied to city plans and structures, can be quite startling. Suppose we use them as a
base set of principles and add some others more specifically directed to urban
design. For instance, Schumacher quotes R. H. Tawney in his introduction to Small
is Beautiful where in his Religion and the Rise oJ Capitalism he says ' ... since even
quite common men have souls, no increase in material wealth will compensate
them for arrangements which insult their self-respect and impair their freedom'. It
is this self-respect which seems to me to be the most important of any principles we
might evolve for humanising the city: to ereate eonditions in whieh every individual ean
Jeel his own worth; where he or she ean 'step long', rather than seurry and dodge and bustle;
where a sense oJ well-being is engendered through the fitness oJ things; where there is no
overpowering by 'giantism' , clamour (aural and visual), quantity, and no enervating by
anomle.
As with human beings, cities can generate affection by imparting a sense of self-
respect to those who are involved with them: this our modern city patently does not
do. How do we remedy this, economically and in the short term? Providing
suggestions to meet this need is the basic theme of this book.
GeographicaIly, the book takes its examples from Britain, North America and
Australia. This is for the very good reason that the author has had direct experience
in these countries. As it happens these countries represent a good cross-section ofthe
problems apparent in the developed world. The 'Third World' urban problems are
even greater but although some ofthe principles enumerated he re could weIl apply,
the basic needs ofwater supply, shelter and sanitation will always take precedence
and the problem of providing these has not yet been solved. For comparative
purposes a scheme proposed by the author for Rangoon has been included.

x
The City Today
The urban crisis we face today has been brought about by a number of causes: the
movement of activities and residents (both of which provide income to the city
government) away from the city centres; the taking of their place by the poor,
either forced off the land into the cities or immigrating from poorer countries; the
strains imposed by the distance to work, the sheer non-productive business of
moving masses of people from one place to another; the growth of non-productive
occupations and so on. Readers will have no trouble in recalling the ailments.

The City Centre

Twelve years ago Victor Gruen (1964), in The Heart ofour Cities, analysed the urban
crisis and came up with the foHowing criteria for a healthy centre:
Accessibility for people as weH as goods, a variety oftransportation vehicles, good core
terminal facilities, a good transportation system, and compactness of core centre.
He then describes how the centres of New York, Cincinnati, Detroit,
Milwaukee and Boston, have had reductions in both residents and visitors, a
dwindling of retail establishments and buildings being used for productive
purposes, with a consequent reduction in assessable real property tax. The result has
been a downgrading ofbuildings and the services provided, emptiness and crime at
night and the threat of bankruptcy for the city government.
Urban revitalisation schemes have been put in hand in most cities but the main
causes have not changed. Access continues to be difficult, retail is establishing itself
even more in the outskirts, the poor move into the inner areas as the better-offleave
and crime is barely held in check.
For a variety of reasons the city centres of Britain and Australia have not been
affected to the extent of those of the United States, but the symptoms are there.
Positive effort, other than the building of office space, is necessary to keep the city
centres vital.

1
 The conclusion one is forced to is that we have four choices. First we can do little
about our city centres and continue to spread the suburbs much as in the present
pattern. We are fa miliar with the effects of such development -the difficulty of
providing adequate public transport, the reliance on the car and the effect of this on
roadworks and resources, the eating-up of rural land, and so on.
The second choice is to build new towns. However, even with the reduced
estimates of world populations now current, the number needed would be
astronomical. (It has been estimated that in the Uni ted States alone 100 new towns
of 100,000 population and 10 of 1 million would be required by the year 2000.)
The third possibility is to build new towns and redevelop city centres, a policy
adopted with greater or less determination by a number of countries.
The fourth possibility is the one advocated in this book as the long-term strategy:
the rehabilitation of existing cities, city centres and selected suburbs, the whole
possessing a built-up and open-space system with consistency from the town up to
the regional level.
The reasons for coming to this conclusion would require a closer-knit argument
than can be presented here. The importance of such a conclusion for the theme of
this book is that it would seem to be as reasonable a long-term strategy as any other
that has been put forward and would provide a framework in which the shorter-
term suggestions embodied he re can contribute. Experience teIls us that even the
broadest long-term strategy will be altered over time, so the strategy itself must
have in-built ftexibility. Should the long-term strategy be altered, any work
completed would still be a long-term gain to the community. Urban proposals
which have neglected this principle have come to grief. Half a linear city does not
work too weIl, nor one New Town as Ebenezer Howard so perspicaciously told uso

How development can be directed in the inner city

Most of the proposals in this book depend on the assembly of land, whether for
open-space use in the city, for 'vest-pocket' parks, for path systems, for cycle tracks,
for recreation, for conservation of wet-Iands, or for other uses. The problems
brought up by the need to assemble land vary considerably but essentially all come
down to compensation. They used to say in those happy days for the transportation
engineer back in the sixties, that ifland was required for freeways it was invariably
found.

2
 Compensation is of little help, however, if the funds are not there or if, as is
usually the case, returns from the project are far distant in time. The clue then lies in
the various methods of using the time-honoured quid pro quo method to avoid these
costs. In inner-city development where the City Planning Authority is backed by
the Council, there are a variety of incentive schemes available.

Open-spaee aequisition
In the wider area of open-space acquisition I would direct readers to the many
detailed examples given in that excellent book -edited by Charles E. Little and
John G. Mitchell (1974) -Spaee Jor Survival. The examples generally are in the
United States but the principles may be applied elsewhere with suitable
modifications.
The interesting aspect of these examples is that ultimately everyone benefits. Such
an idea immediately arouses suspicion but the results would seem to be proven. We
can make our own checks of the rateable value of properties adjoining parks and of
office rents in buildings that have given away possible floarspace far either open-
space or other mixes of use. Equally we can see how weIl cluster housing is faring:
planning as exemplified by the British New Towns has shown that it is profitable.
Notwithstanding this, means have to be found to spread the load of rehabilitating
the decaying inner areas of cities. It will be a long-term process before these become
self-supporting but if they do not have successful open spaces, we can be sure that
financial equilibrium will never be achieved.

How development ean be directed in the inner city

A lot of progress has been made in the last ten years in persuading developers in the
city to produce buildings that contribute to the city as a whole, through providing a
mix of uses, or open space, or pedestrian systems or so me other function. In the
forefront of the action has been New York City which, in spite of its financial
troubles, had had a great deal of success in this area. Undoubtedly this was due to the
leadership of Mayor John Lindsay and the people he grouped around hirn. One of
these,Jonathan Barnett (1974), who became the city's first director of urban design,
has described what they were able to do in his book Urban Design as Publie Poliey.
His concern was to evolve a methodology for anticipating the consequences of
urban growth and change and to turn these to positive effect. He accepts that 'the

3
form of the city is not accidental, only unintentional, a produ€t of decisions made
for single, separate purposes, whose inter-relationships and side effects have not
been fully considered'. He concludes from that that if designers are to influence the
shape of the city, they must be present when the critical design decisions are being
made:
When he found hirnself in such a position he was able to initiate some notable
actions. For instance, by allowing a bonus of floor area for offices it was possible to
persuade the developer of the old Astor Hotel si te on Times Square to build a
theatre into the new development. The creation of a special zoning district has
already resulted in the completion of four theatres at no expense to the public.
He describes three techniques for using zoning regulations, which exist in one
form or another in most cities, for obtaining greater public benefit from private
development. The first, Planned Unit Development, is often used for cluster housing.
Instead of meeting the ordinary zoning regulations the developer is allowed to
produce a plan which retains the overall stipulated density but produces higher-
density clusters of housing and much more open space than anormal spread-out
layout. This plan, when approved, then becomes the development regulation for
that property.
The second technique, called Urban Renewal, is more applicable to areas which
are already built-up. In this method the right of eminent domain, or compulsory
purchase, by the city government is exercised to acquire land for a public purpose. It
is a technique that is fa miliar in Britain and Australia as weIl as North America. It
has had its critics, such as Jane Jacobs, because in so many cases it has lead to the
wholesale destruction of communities.
The third technique, which unlike the second, can be applied to areas other than
those which are run-down, is called Incentive Zoning. In New York City it used to
be possible, for instance, to provide a 20 per cent increase in the permitted floor area
in certain high-density districts if a plaza was included.
In Canberra it was used to tempt office developers to include some residential
accommodation in their buildings and to contribute towards an upper-Ievel
pedestrian walk-way system. Other cities have used it to create continuous arcades.
It relies on the normal allowable floor-space limits being set somewhat below what
it is considered the zone can stand.
In larger development areas the owner can receive a bonus for contributions to
improvements unconnected with his property. This is especially useful in

4
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5
connection with open space. An owner who is persuaded to give up his building for
replacement with open space can be recompen'sed in a share ofthe increased value of
an adjacent property.
In the Fifth Avenue district a special zoning district was applied that allowed the
developer a floor-space bonus in return for upper floor residential use and street-
level shopping arcades. The introduction of residents assures twenty-four hour use
which is not only an economical arrangement but also contributes to safety and
liveliness. Such types of mixed development are a key to the rehabilitation of city
centres now sliding downhilI.
The opportunities for the transfer of air rights, rather similar to the open-space
situation mentioned, became an important point in the Grand Central Terminal
Development. It is a key aspect in any question of retention ofhistoric buildings. In
many cases, because of the low physical profile of older buildings, the air rights over
those buildings can be transferred to adjoining properties and the historic building
owner participate in any benefit.
Barnett also had useful experience in community involvement in housing
renewal. The starting point in each ca se was
to choose sites for new housing that minimized relocation of residents and jobs.
Sound older buildings were left alone, salvageable buildings were designated for
rehabilitation. Sites for new schools were incorporated into the plan, and every
effort was made to preserve existing neighbourhood patterns by not interrupting
shopping streets, and by keeping proposals for new buildings in scale with what
was there already. (Barnett, 1974, page 95)
Each plan was ratified by each of the community groups that had participated in
its production, before being approved by the official Planning Board for each
district.
Apart from the fact that ways were found to make community participation
work, the most interesting aspect from the vlewpoint of this book is the way in
which the new was made to integrate with the existing buildings and spaces.
Another side-aspect worth noting is that the New York experience, both in these
projects for low and middle income housing and in the various efforts at
introducing 'vest-pocket' parks, seems to support the view that trees can be
established in 'tough' areas despite so me inevitable set-backs.

6
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15
The Suburbs
The spread to the suburbs
The middle class of most of the cities of the countries discussed in this book started
moving out to the suburbs in large quantities between the W orld Wars. Originally
triggered offbefore the First World War by the suburban railways and trams, the
movement has increased since the Second W orld War through the increasing
availability of the motor-car. The extreme example of the resulting dispersal of
population is Los Angeles but in terms of the time that it takes to drive through the
metropolitan area, London is on a par. (Recently I drove through both in the off-
rush period: in each case it took a little over an hour and a half. This, in fact, is not so
much longer than other cities. It takes an hour to traverse Brisbane, a city of 1
million people.)
Unless greater incentive can be found for creating housing in city cent res we can
be sure that this spread will increase over the next twenty years for, despite the
decline in population growth, today's children will be needing houses over that
time.

Changes in the suburbs

Early suburban development was very much structured by the road pattern and
this, as the result of the 'City Beautiful' movement in the United States and the
Garden Cities in Britain, was inclined to follow a curvilinear pattern. In the United
States and Australia the dominant housing type has been the individual house on a
quarter acre or smaller plot. In Britain the 'semi-detached' was a popular suburban
variant: houses faced roads and had garages attached, entered usually from the
front.
Despite a great deal of terra ce or row-housing built in the post-1946 period as
public housing in Britain, and a much lesser amount in the Uni ted States and
Australia where it has been adopted for higher-cost private development housing,
the individual house on the separate plot of land is still the predominant style of
suburban housing.
This kind of housing has its protagonists and detractors. The former maintain
that there can be pride in the ownership of an individual house, that one can express
oneself and, up to a point determined by the by-Iaws, 'do one's own thing'. Given

16
time, they say, the planting matures and the whole becomes a congenial place in
which to live.
Its detractors decry its monotony. Pleasant although so me suburbs might be,
there is a sameness to be found everywhere. They point to the worst examples ofthe
search for individual expression and demonstrate the lack of visual coherence
thoughout. Questions are raised about the social and psychiatrie problems
attributed to the suburbs, in particular to suburban anomie. Privacy, they say, is
difficult to obtain and the provision of services and roads, costly.
The interesting experiments of the thirties, designed to offer greater benefits to
the suburb an dweller, have not been followed through with any great enthusiasm.
Without doubt the one radical proposal was that embodied in Clarence Stein's and
Henry Wright's Radburn developmcnt. For the first time the car was made part of
the equation. Rather than have a network of roads, 'superblocks' were created and
served by culs-de-sac. Garages and service were off these service roads. The houses
grouped around the culs-de-sac opened on their other side to a common park strip
along which the cyde tracks and pedestrian walks led by underpasses beneath roads
to schools and community facilities.

17
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18
 Radburn today is a much sought after place in which to live. William Whyte
(1968, page 248) finds it too leafy, too 'smothered in foliage' , and prefers it in Spring
but this is a matter oftaste. It shares a weakness with most other Radburn Schemes:
there is doubt about which is the front door and the children insist on playing in the
service courts and streets rather than in the common space where they are expected
to play. But these points have been observed for years and it seems to me that,
properly carried out, the Radburn system offers still the best solution for family
housing layouts.
It is difficult to distinguish any other innovations in the suburb~n scene until
comparatively recently. Some eight years ago an overdue experiment was tried in
Australia (Mt Ommaney, Brisbane) whereby a group ofhouses shared the cost and
maintenance of their access road. The effect of this was two-fold: the unnecessarily
high standards of road design laid down by the Council were a voided and both the
road and landscape could be designed at the same time as the housing rather than, as
is usually the case, the houses following a pre-designed road. Such a simple device
can effect an astonishing improvement in the appearance of a place. The same kind
of thinking has led to the concept of 'cluster' housing which appears to be the real
break-through in suburban planning. The visual improvement over thc usual
layout is substantial because the dwellings can be designed as a group and there is a
worthwhile open space area that can be used to form alandscape structure. With
good design, other advantages can be in the provision of really private courts,
terra ces or gardens with each house and the common pooling of the other open
space, which would otherwise be provided with each house as a garden or back-
yard, into a really useful recreational and relaxing area.
Happy though the architects might be with the cluster housing concept there
could be some problems yet to solve for the occupants. One of these is to give the
user the same ftexibility he has on the usual suburban block ofland to do what he
wants. The other is to create an involvement between the users and the common
land. If the latter has a single-use, often a golf course, or is maintained by others, as
it usually is, there will not be the interest in it that is necessary to produce real
affection for place. It will be worth watching to see if this proves to be the case.
In considering changes in the suburbs it should be mentioned that these days it is
fairly in frequent that new suburban lot divisions are made without relation to
schools and other community facillties, as has been the case in the past.

19
Consequently one finds a hierarchy of grouping related in the smaller scale to the
creche and primary school and then to the various forms of secondary schooling.
Perhaps the most important change here is the reduction in importance ofthe small
shopping centres in favour ofthe growth oflarge shopping centres accessible, in the
main, by car. Another change is in the realisation that, although friendships are
formed through school and community participation, the old neighbourhood
concept is not quite what it was believed to be. For the moment, although this could
change again, mobility has meant that kinship groups could be spread over a whole
city area.
Accepting that there will be more suburban growth, we should be looking also at
the way in which the existing suburbs might be improved. The constraints in that
area are likely to be resistance to change of any sort by the inhabitants, particularly
to any suggestions for an increase in density. There could be inhibitions in the by-
laws and, in some places, with services, but on the wh oIe the main problems will be
political ones.

20
Transportation
No discussion of urban constraints could possibly ignore transportation. It used to
be popular to liken the city to the human anatomy with the transportation routes as
the arteries and veins. The analogy usually concluded with the observation that
congestion in these arteries would result in the death of the city.
I shall not enter any more deeply into these lists than to point out that in the time-
scale we are concerned with, the next twenty years, we shall see changes in city
transportation patterns only if fuel shortages eventuate. These will effect dramatic
changes and they could weIl take effect in this period.
At the moment of writing, that most expensive of all acts-of-faith, the Bay Area
Rapid Transit system, in San Francisco, looks as if it could have been done with
buses just as weIl and at a fraction of the cost (Webber, 1976). This conclusion could
be premature and, in any case, is not necessarily an indictment of rapid-transit in
general but of the particular system chosen for adoption. It does mean that other
cities, especially if they are spread-out cities, will be very cautious ab out embarking
on similar systems. It would seem to prove, yet again, that the car-driver will be
tarn from his car only by the direst me ans, particularly if he has to make two or
more changes on his rapid-transit journey.
The conclusion I draw is that the principle of subsidised bus services will become
generally accepted ifit is not already. We shall see more buses and bus rights-of-way
and that, failing a fuel crisis, there will be a continuing increase in car usage and
increasing traffic congestion. It would seem as if traffic management techniques in
which British transportation planners put so much hope, have contributed as much
as they can.
What I am not so sure about is how much more road construction will be
embarked on and tolerated. I fancy not too much, although in California I have
heard one planner talk quite happily ab out putting another deck on so me freeways!
This view is meant to be objective. From the resource-use, health, pollution and
noise point of view it is a direction which cannot be supported. Even without the
inevitable fuel shortage ahead it is to be hoped that nations will plan for a reduced
consumption of fossil-fuels as this will ultimately benefit both producers and
consumers alike. Should this not happen we may at least expect so me increased
efficiency in motive power.

21
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57
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60
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64
65
66
67
The N ew Realities
So far we have sketched a picture of some of the more obvious aspects of the city
today suggesting that all is not well and that there might be ways of making city life
more pleasurable. We must now decide what are the new realities of urban life
before proceeding further.

Mobility
Mobility is one. At one extreme, international cammuting is a reality for a few:
certainly nation-wide air travel has produced a new net-work for face-to-face
contacts though existing communications systems may well reduce the need for
air travel for business purposes. Places formerly visited only by explorers-
Katmandu, the upper Amazon, Macchu Piccu, the Mackenzie River, Ayers Rock
-are now on the tourist itinerary. This fact has an effect as much on what people
will require oftheir immediate environment as on the location ofpeople's work or
living places. Governments are concerned already at the loss of precious foreign
exchange and could conceivably wish to support projects for making their own
ci ti es more attractive. Travellers return, as they have done for centuries, with fresh
eyes as to the possibilities of their horne cities.

Dispersed urban pattern

At the city scale transportation patterns are the most influential determinants of
growth pattern. It is important that no planning is embarked upon that does not
bring land-use and transportation routes together.
The location of a factory or shopping mall or any one of a hundred other types of
building is determined as much as anything else by the ease of access or the cast of
transportation from suppliers and to the markets. The other determining factors are
site costs and rents.
In most cities private-movement costs have increased in the city cores and have
improved in the suburb an areas so eliminating the old economic advantages for a
centrallocation. The investment in these suburban transportation improvements
certainly suggests that the dispersed urban pattern will increase rather than decrease.
At the moment we appear to be getting islands of development linked by
68
transportation facilities. It is important that we accept that the spatial aspects of the
city region are defined by the economic structure of the urban community and by
the processes of urban society. As human interaction becomes more complex so will
the structure reflect this complexity.

Tight money
Twelve years ago Secretary ofDefence McNamara was quoted as saying 'Building
or rebuilding our ci ti es is not a question of money. We can afford to defend our
country and at the same time rebuild it beautifully. The question is one ofthe will of
the American people.'
In 1976, presidential candidate Jimmy Carter, when pressed in a pre-election
debate, admitted that in all priorities defence had to come first. The conviction that
the richest country on earth has the means to do everything it wishes has been
replaced by the more careful attitudes of the mid-seventies. Such attitudes have to
apply to an even greater degree in Britain and Australia, in common with most
countries in the present recession, treads a careful path.
The New Deal, with projects such as the TVA schemes, made some attempt to
deal with these problems. The Australian Labor Government initiated a re-
distribution of employment scheme in 1975 which was successful in utilizing a
potential work-force left idle by economic events. One hesitates to look forward to
years when such schemes are necessary but they are surely of more use to the
community than paying out social security money (despite common accusations of
waste oftaxpayers money). I say this with knowledge ofthe debates in Britain on
this subject where similar proposals have founded on the apparent necessity of
paying more than the unemployment benefit wage, and therefore more than
government can afford. With suitable community involvement, not a few of the
projects discussed in this book would lend themselves to realisation by such a labour
force.
Short of action of this sort, the mobilisation of financial backing for large works
may be difficult to co me by for so me years. If there is any benefit in this it is that it
could ensure that projects stern from a 'grass-roots' level and are in scale with small
community activity. All that is then necessary is to have the co-ordinating rationale
that will piece the small activity into the larger whole.
Ten years ago we were all talking happily of a more numerous, affluent, mobile,
leisured and better-educated urban society. Today the affluence is not quite what it

69
looked like becoming, the many who undertake two jobs to keep a household
together or the husband and wife who both work might laugh at the idea of
increased leisure, and some say that our present crop of young children might in
some respects be more poorly educated than previous generations.
Despite this, we can do a great deal if we know what our objectives are.

Resources
The most dramatic change in recent years has been that resulting from the Arab oil
embargo. No clearer indication could have been given to the people in the
remainder of the world of our dependence on the products of oil. The hope that it
might have led to intensive research into the use of other forms of energy such as the
wind, tides and the sun, would appear to be diminished when one observes Britain
apparently mortgaging her future through reliance on the future products of the
North Sea oil fields.
An objective appraisal of the present situation is that a few only of the sensible
things that might be done to conserve resources are likely to happen in the next
twenty years: some increased use of public transport would be one of these; more
use of the bicycle, another; more economical cars and other forms of car motive-
power; solar heating in buildings and more appropriate design for climate. Service
to the mass market will become more efficient. (The trend he re is weIl iIlustrated by
a store in Los Angeles which sells furniture. Its premises are not related to shopping
centres but to freeway off-Ianes. They take the form of minimal factory enclosures.
Some hundreds of specimen rooms are on display and the customer, having decided
what he wants, then goes to a vast space where a fork-lift truck picks the furniture
off racks.)
The computer has had its effect already on the use oflabour and the ramifications
in the world of cybernetics are multiplying.
Water, that most important resource, has become a critical issue. What will be a
critical point of argument in the future will be the respective priorities of industrial
and agricultural development against the conservation requirements of recreational
land uses. This particular issue is being strongly argued at the moment in California.
Should all the water, which comes from the north, be used for further development
in Southern California or should part of it be retained to prevent salt-water
encroachment into the swamp areas around the Sacramento River?

70
Awareness oJ nature
There has been a renewed understanding and insight into the workings of nature in
recent years. The result of this is that planning authorities and those that manage
communications, roadworks, power and drainage works, no longer have carte
blanche to do what ehey wish. The environmental impact statement, for better or
worse and in one form or another, is likely to be here to stay. Development ofthis
understanding in a useful way depends much on the science of ecology and its
influence on the decision-making processes. I am encouraged by Rene Dubos (1968)
when he says:
At heart we still worship nature, but with a sense of guilt. We realise that by
despoiling the earth we jeopardise not only our biological future but also the
whole system of natural relationships which are the basis of human values.
Vaguely, we feel the biological need of re-establishing a harmonious accord
between man and nature.

Pressures on land
Despite the drop in birthrate in the three countries used as examples we still have to
house more people. The pressures on land in the metropolifan areas will become
more intense. This means that we shall have to use every square metre of land
efficiently, by doubling up on its usage if necessary.

City structure
The structure of existing cities has been determined already by the transportation
lines and the topography. Anything that can be done now will be a modification of
what exists: this, in itself, is no small opportunity. It is, however, unrealistic to
imagine new city structures.

Different land ownership patterns

This has been referred to already in relation to cluster development. In place ofthe
rigid demarcation ofprivately-owned properties and open-space maintained by the
Council, the house owner has a much smaller privately-owned space and an interest
in a larger common space.
In the very interesting Sea Ranch development north of San Francisco designed
by MLTW jMoore-Turnbull, architects, which deserves to be included in this book

71
as a fine example of a group ofbuildings exploiting the genius loci, an inter mediate
zone has been included. Outside each fence bounding the private land belonging to
each unit is private land restricted to natural vegetation, and then the common land
owned by all the property owners. Because the emphasis of this development is the
relationship of the buildings to the very exposed site, which would be lost with the
softening effect of gardens, this was a necessary provision. On less unusual sites I
believe there is more to be gained by allowing the individual owners to express
themselves in planting around their houses but it demands an architecture and site
layout that can take it.

Transferred development rights

There is likely to be more use made of air rights in the city. A similar idea has been
put forward by lan McHarg (1969) to produce a more sensible use of undeveloped
land in which landowners pool the development values of an area in a syndicate.
The profits made in selling the rights to development on one portion would be
shared by those whose land is to be kept for open-space use. Something of the sort
was at the basis ofthe British 1947 Town and Country Planning Act. To include it
as a new reality is not entirely correct but I do believe we shall see ventures of this
sort in the next twenty years. The easy way is to follow the Canberra model where all
the land is in public ownership and is sold on aleasehold basis. But this seems to be a
possibility in new towns only and then only in countries like Britain where there is
some tradition of the nationalisation of land. Since the 1974 Land Act in that
country the whole question of development rights has been very confused,
although recent proposals offer promise of some simplification.

Increased densities
If we are being realistic, I think we should have to admit that. where strong planning
controls do not exist, most ci ti es will take the easy way out and accommodate their
increasing numbers by spread. It is patently madness in that it necessitates
enormously costly services, increases in transportation costs and reduces the
opportunity of a city to provide accessibility to all the things that make a city. (For
the last ten years, Melvin Webber in Berkeley has been putting forward the
opposite case. If we are willing to increase our road capa city to serve the dispersed
metropolis, he will have been proved right.) As William M. Whyte (1968) has

72
pointed out in The Last Landscape the problem with cities is that their density is too
low. There is unused space in parking areas, in one-storey industrial plants and one-
storey shopping centres, in reserves for high-tension wires and other utilities, in
cemeteries, reservoirs, railway yards, development under and over highways, and
of course, all those 'left over' spaces between roads, bridges, water-channels and
buildings.
In-fill building is notoriously difficult from the point of view oflocal politics. No
inhabitant of a suburban house is likely to support more housing being inserted into
his suburb. Somehow we have to show that he has something to gain thereby and it
may be that that something is so me really worthwhile open-space and planting; or
it may be the chance ofbetter public transport services or community facilities; or, a
useful bait, he will gain financially. It will be a hard batde but a necessary one. We
can hope, I fear, for success by gradual stages only.

Zoning
The mark of city plans from the British Town Planning Act of 1909 and the N ew
York zoning regulations of 1916, has been the rigid zoning of the activities of the
city into compartments. As usual in these matters, it was an over-reaction to the ills
of the moment. With hindsight it would have been sufficient to have had controls
over the siting of noxious industry and noise-producing activities. Many ci ti es are
taking a new look at their zoning ordinances to allow the kinds of social and
functional mix that are necessary for urban vitality. As with the increasing of
densities, the problem is intensified in the suburbs. Regulations governing the use of
buildings in the suburbs are designed to protect values.
There is an irony in the situation where the psychiatric disorders recorded in
residential-only suburbs reach chronic proportions when the one solution that
might give these suburbs a more balanced twenty-four ho ur life might be the
introduction of other uses: offices, craft and other light industries, for instance. Such
changes are imminent if not realised by many people as yet. Pressure on the roads, if
nothing else, will point out the foolishness of moving people and goods from one
zoned city compartment to another, usually at the same time.

Professional change
Whilst the principals of the large architectural offices rarely deal with clients who

73
are not committees there is a need of another intermediary. Paul Goodman (1968),
who has written with so much sense on these matters over the years puts it this way.
Another method of guaranteeing freedom from excessive planning brings me
back to my first point, the revival of old-fashioned professionals responsible to
clients and the immediate community rather than to society and social trends.
Unless people become things, they will always live in the small scale as well as the
big scale, and more intensely in the small scale than in the big scale. It is theroie of
their professionals, whom they ought to be able to hire and fire, to articulate,
interpret, and design for them their small-scale needs in education, medicine, law
and housing. These will inevitably include spontaneity, individual differences,
personal response, local options, and the need for freedom. Big-scale planners
and social engineers will then have something articulate to cope with.
In some sens es this may be the new breed ofprofessianal who now assembles the
brief, or programme, far clients who are not sure what they want. But I think that
what is nearer to that which Goodman had in mind is a very healthy trend which is
emerging with so me of our young architectural, planning, and sociology graduates
who spend time warking closely with community groups and caming to grips
with the small-scale and individual problems. It is a movement which offers great
pro mise far the future.
I have listed some of the realities and trends I see will provide our parameters in
the cities over the next twenty years. They are by no means comprehensive and
every reader, I imagine, can add some more. But they provide a patte.rn.

74
Implications
It is when one tries to reconcile this sketch of the realities of the city today and the
means available to us for change, against the principles postulated in the
Introduction, that we come to the real implications of the book.
It is elear that the spread-out city is here to stay. Even if we have a fuel shortage
there will be no reversal of the pattern as the investment in the dispersed infra-
structure is substantial.
The supply of fossil-fuels is certainly not limitless and in any case it is likely that
the oil-producing countries, for their own good, will reduce supplies. It is essential
that cities, the great majority of which are now excessively dependent on the
private car as a means oftransportation, prepare a 'fall-back' position for themselves
the better to cope with an unknown future.
One way of doing this is by the introduction of rapid-transit systems but these are
expensive. Another is by subsidising efficient bus services. A palliative is the
universal use of fuel-miserly cars. Yet another way is through areturn to the use of
our two legs, by walking or cyeling. 'Pedal power' has caught on to such an extent
these days that the suggestion does not receive the scorn that it would have met ten
years ago.
Should there be no fuel crisis, congestion on the roads will necessitate
alternatives. My own guess is that public opi~ion and the public purse will not stand
for the continuing expansion of traffic arteries that would be necessary to ensure
free-flowing traffic.
Almost certainly we have aperiod of tight money ahead, perhaps for all the
twenty years which is the longest period considered acceptable for effecting these
changes in this book. We are forced, then, to make the most of every single urban
space, not only to reduce the costs of acquisition but to reduce the outward spread of
the city. Spread, as we should all know, brings with it enormous costs in services
and transportation facilities.
Should there be areversal in the direction in which cities have developed over the
last fifty years, we can expect changes in land-use as weIl as transportation systems.
Fuel may be available (or affordable) for week-end car use only. As a consequence
the supermarkets may become offices or factories and we would see the growth of
the local shopping centres. An open-space system could structure the suburbs,

75
whose densities would be increased, into communities of five hundred or so people
(the maximum number for cohesion and recognition, pace those who use any
variety of much larger numbers).
At this small-scale pattern, the open-space structure might, in places, be nothing
more than the width of a wind-break or cycle track, say six or seven metres. The
larger scale would be that of the secondary down-town centres which would
provide all the services that used to be provided by the old city centres, including
some industry. That wise planner, Hans Blumenfield, has been suggesting for many
years now that these centres serve populations ofhalf a million, and when one looks
at Los Angeles one can see that something of that sort is beginning to take place. It
should be noted that proposals for open-space structuring are not, in themselves,
proposals for low-density living. The city centre does not suffer because it is served
by a good public transport system. There will doubtless be so me areas of the three
hundred persons per acre (120pp hectare) advocated by those who believe that it is
only at these densities that one can get a viable city.
Many of the choices that are available to us today would be lost. A new job
would most likely mean a house in another location. Car trips would have to be
carefully planned. We would lose the convenience of a moving arm-chair to
transport us from place to place. In theirstead there could be the pleasure of riding
or walking through trees and parks and getting to know people at meeting places
along the way. There would be fewer heart-attacks. For those who live in places
like Saskatoon I have nothing to offer other than to suggest they leave for a warmer
climate (which is the main reason for California's rapid growth over the last twenty
years).

76
The Way Ahead

77
 The Way Ahead
A superficial but, I hope, accurate picture has been painted of the urban situation in
the seventies. The new realities have been faced and the implications assessed. It
remains to draw together the possible solutions. How best can we meet that
principle so boldly stated in the Introduction? How to 'create conditions in which
every individual can feel his own worth. Where he or she can " step long", rather
than scurry and dodge and bustle. Where a sense of well-being is engendered
through the fitness of things. Where there is no overpowering by "giantism",
clamour (aural and visual), quantity, and no enervating by anomie.'
This is where I throw myself to the academic wolves. Here you will find no
hypo thesis, closely-reasoned argument and elegant synthesis. Frankly, I have not
noted that any such theses have been able to affect the urban conditions very much.
Wh at you will find here is a map of action that stems from a philosophy acquired
from some quiet reflection on our contemporary urban ailments, itself based on
some years of experience in the field of urban design. For professionals who have
forgotten what it is they are trying to do and for non-planners, it isjust possible that
these proposals will find a receptive chord and generate action. Should this happen
perhaps my opinionising and polemics will be forgiven!
My first proposal for meeting this principle is, simplistic although it may sound,
to bring some of nature back into the urban scene .
For some reason the osprey has lodged in my mi nd as the symbol of this idea.
Possibly because I have long been fascinated by this bird and watch it wherever I
can. I find it one very good reason for living in Australia.
The osprey, like some other birds ofprey, appeared at one time to be doomed. It
is at the end of the food chain and chemical pollution was making its egg-shells
increasingly fragile.
Like the osprey we are creatures of the world of nature. When we shut out nature
by making a huge built-up sprawl of our cities-cities so large it can take an age to
be clear of them and, having done so, frequently to find the country and seaside
~ - spoilt -there is a danger that we lose touch with the roots of our existence. We are
.;.,: -:= -- ')"'-.
- ,., doomed with the osprey, not through infertility, but through the barren-ness of the
..- --- -
----::
,'/~
incomplete psyche.
'--- .....
-" So important is this idea to the theme of the book that it is worth digressing a
little on the background of such a concept.
78
Landscape-The Legacy and the Image
Our grratest tool
Watch the Australian desert after a rare wet season. From a barren and sun-baked
landscape there arise a great expanse of wild-flowers, growth that in normal times
one would not conceive could ever be.
Wait all night for the cactus that flowers on ce in the year, and then at night.
Africa has such cacti.
Walk through the beech woods ofEngland in autumn and experience the golden
wet-earth smell glory. Sit under the big-Ieafed magnolia in California and watch
the patterns of sun and shade.
Climb up the mountain streams, swim in mountain tarns, fee! the ling under
foot.
Stand by an estuary at dusk and see the wild-fowl alight. Hear the wind in the
rushes and the lap of water.

.. . ... . .

. . .. ,.-
.~
~-

79
 Sit at a pavement cafe in summer and be shaded by plane trees. See the first spring
blossoms. Smell the leaves after rain. Watch the children play in the parks and the
girls parade. W ork at a wisteria-surrounded window.
All these are the pleasures of the landscape. They are both a legacy and a living
thing.
Some are part and parcel of our daily experience, some we appreciate on holidays
only, whilst there are people who experience few of these pleasures in a whole
lifetime.
The whole field of environmental perception and appreciation is only now
beginning to open up. It has been delayed by our preoccupation with specialisation.
It needs a person of wide range and powers to encompass it. Such a person is Yi-Fu
Tuan whose Tl~pophilia (1974) is a unique attempt to bring together all our attitudes
to the environment. Another is J. B. Jackson, wen known to many Berkeley
students of environmental design and for a long time editor of the quarterly
Landscape.
Nature, in one aspect or another, has been the source of much art, drama., poetry
and literature since time began. It is worth considering a handful of influences.

80
The paradise garden
'If there be paradise on earth, it is here, it is here.' This inscription on the Black
Pavilion in the Shalimar garden in Kashmir expresses an attitude central to the
tradition of Islam, in turn taken from Persia, before that from Babyion and
stemming originally from the Garden of Eden of Genesis (see Jellicoe, 1970).
Whether it takes the form of a sweet water canal running through shaded courts, as
in the Tamurid gardens of Herat, or the allotment of the British workman in the
thirties, the garden has represented the escape from daily strife.
Essentially the paradise garden was an oasis. A cool place of water in the desert. It
was also a symbol representing the four rivers of Eden. The Chinese garden was a
symbol of the outer world of nature seen through the eyes ofTaoism or Buddhism,
the Khymer palace-garden represented the cosmos. The Japanese garden often
suggested the 'Isles ofthe BIest' and drew much from Shinto and Zen reverence for
rocks.
Symbols no longer have the same importance in modern life although we would
be wrong to underestimate man's continuing need far symbolic acts in his everyday
life. Symbolism has the power of transforming the matter-of-fact to a thing of
meaning (seejung, 1964). The aspect ofrefuge is, of course, completely topical. The
popularity of Paley Square, that tiny sitting space in lower Manhattan, may be
attributed almost entirely to it being a haven from the bustle and noise of the city.
There have been other forms of paradise gardens where gardens have been the
scene of social activity of the kind that needed pleasurable surroundings. Hadrian's
palace at Tivoli might be regarded in this light although it was used for political
discourses-it suggests a useful way ofimproving our present-day political debates.
Versailles certainl y was one of these.
Then there are the various attitudes to the wider landscape.

Attitudes to nature
Attitudes to nature appeared to und ergo a radica~ change in the nineteenth century,
at least in the West. The Romantic Movement of the eighteenth century depicted
the Alps, for instance, as 'awesome' and it was not, perhaps, until Whymper
climbed the Matterhorn that the idea was dissipated. In China and Japan the Zen
Buddhist monks had come to terms with untamed nature long before this but even
there the uncultivated areas were beyond the direct experience of the general
populace.
81
 Fram the time of the bubonic plagues and particularly with the coming of the
industrial revolution, astrang literary tradition was built up that compared the
iniquities of the ci ti es with the wholesomeness of the country. In fact, the tradition
was older than this and goes back at least to Horace and Catullus (see Highet,
1957; Marx, 1968; Tuan, 1974). Wordsworth, Richard Jefferies, Hawthorne,
Thoreau, Twain, Thomas Hardy and up to Hemingway and Henry Williamson in
our own day, are some of a long list of writers who, in one way or another have
supported this concept.
Attitudes are more complex these days. There are doubtless many urban dwellers
1J..L ~~ ~ who are, indeed, uneasy away from their tight urban confines. The countryside, the
~~ t>(- ~~ 'middle-ground' as it were, between city and the 'natural' areas, is seen in a
somewhat ambivalent way. As the land tilled and husbanded by man it is an image
MUt ~ N.L" pl4M~ idealised by many townspeople. Those who have experienced living alongside the
~'i14.L ~~ new intensively mechanised agriculture with its use of fertilisers and insecticides are
not so sure.
~...,\ Au,v ..
The conservationists are concerned ab out encroachment onto 'wilderness' areas.
p~ shw.~~ So much so that some national parks are in danger ofbecoming museum pieces for
fear of what might happen if the inhabitants were allowed to do what they want.
r.ft.H~ "M~·~. There has been a great awakening to the limits of our natural resources, including
the wilderness areas and other land of scenic value.
Week-end movement out of the cities is mainly for recreation, to the coast or
lakes in summer and to skiing in winter where it is handy. In Britain, where the
countryside is more accessible than in most other countries, there is a fair amount of
movement into the country, for walking or riding or visits to the various country
houses and parks open to the public. Indications are that the city-dweller will travel
into the country where he can and, of course, with the mobility now offered to so
many people by the car, the tranquil corner that was sought after usually has been
pre-empted. With many, the reaction has set in and rather than face week-end or
holiday traffic, they prefer to stay at horne. The implications of that will be
examined later but it is patently a trend that will increase, encouraged as it is by the
practice of TV viewing. Without doubt the next twenty years will see increased
congestion on the roads and our cities certainly will not decrease in size.
Pt1.~ Pa.vfc., ~ y~ People live in cities because their livelihood is there or that is where they hope the
(~ ",8~\ job opportunities are. The young will live there to advance themselves in a
particular field or because 'that is where the action is'. How many people live in the
~~ AKMJt.c.I-s)
82
 ~~. 'AI'.- • • Go:.... .... .. .
I •. ~....... - 4 - . . . . . . . . . - '• .e ... - ...

city for preference might be worth a survey but certainly the number would be not
inconsiderable. They include the rich who can afford town houses and those whose
work is in the evening -the press, critics, entertainers and workers in service
industry. Many intellectuals, artists and professionals prefer city life. In the more
favoured cities of the world, say Salzburg or Graz, life might be so attractive that
the suburbs would be a poor alternative. The poor in the cities have little choice.
Poverty deters mobility; there is usually housing at a cheap rent even if it is sub-
standard.
On the other hand, life in the country is available to a very small part of the
population. Even if we are freed from living near our work-place most countries
are becoming more particular about the way rural land is sub-divided for houses. In
Britain the cost of country cottages has sky-rocketed. In North America and
Australia it is still possible to move out into the desert or the 'bush' but the people
who do this are aminute fraction of the whole.

83
 The population of the world is now overwhelmingly an urban one. An urban
population that in so me cases remembers life in the country, in so me cases
occasionally experiences such a life but a vast majority of which is shut off quite
completely from the country. For some this is no hardship, for others it means the
loss of what Leo Marx (1968) described in these words:
Our best writers ... show us again and again that withdrawal from society in the
direction of nature makes possible moments of emotional release and integration,
a recovery of psychic equilibrium comparable to the release of repressed feelings
in dreams or psychotherapy.
The beneficent effect of the countryside has been the generating force behind
many schemes for model towns and for much of the Victorian municipal park
building. One of the most important of these models was Dr Benjamin
Richardson's 'Hygea' which stemmed from Chadwick's well known report of1842
(see Jackson, 1976). The most famous was Ebenezer Howard's 'Garden City'.
Much of Howard's thinking has since been lost sight of but implicit in his plan
was the concept of the countryside within walking distance. It was with this end in
mind that he provided a sixty hectare public park in the centre.
The common misconception has been that his proposal was for a 'garden-suburb'
which, to a large extent, Letchworth and Welwyn have become. In fact he was
proposing a fusion oftown and country. Town was town and country was country
and they were in dose proximity to each other.
This larger image, of a healthy countryside available to all, as opposed to the
image ofthe private paradise garden, in fact took a more positive form in the public
park movement. It is interesting to note, in relation to proposals put forward in this
book in respect of city centres and the suburbs, that Victoria Park, the first public
park resulting from the 1832 Reform Bill was formed in the congested East End of
London 'to improve the overall social climate'.
Professor Norman Newton (1971), in his book Design on the Land, has this to say
about Victoria Park:
To support their plea the Reformers needed only to point out the effect quite
correctly noted in residential areas about the Royal Parks in the West End.
Especially cited - with incontrovertible logic but also neat political acumen-
was the section where in 1811 the Prince Regent, as a real-estate venture, had

84
 caused a portion of the ancient royal hunting park of Marylebone to be laid out
by John Nash, with 'terrace houses' around the open space thereafter known as
Regent's Park. Nearing completion in the 1830s, its salutary effect on the entire
vicinity was obvious. If this could be true for the affluent aristocrats of the West
End, the Reformers asked, could not a similar device be beneficial to the poverty-
ridden masses of the East End?
The philosophy was expressed more clearly by the Commissioners responsible
for the 1843 Birkenhead Park who, again in Newton's words,
... conscientiously felt it only right for working men, especially those so
I ..
;
recently from farming occupations, to have their version of the landed
Gentleman's Park; the congestion and drudgery of factories and docks would in
some measure be offset by an open place reflecting country-type scenery. So was
born in the brains of a few forward-Iooking men the phenomenon to be known
within a few decades as the 'country park'. The park could have around its edges
plots ofland for sale as horne building sites to purchasers who would recognize
the value of facing an open area. The income would accrue to municipal coffers,
helping defray the costs of construction and maintenance. Good precedent
existed for the economics of such a plan, though on a private rather than public
basis, in the successful development of Regent's Park.
This is the principle of course, that we see reflected in the recent growth of golf-
course condominiums.
These two images, the paradise garden and the health-giving park have a firm
basis in our consciousness. In combination with the 'great outdoors' of the
mountains, forests and sea-coast, they have provided an important contact with
nature that few of us have not experienced. I believe it is our own experience that
tells us that the fears of Edward Hall (1968) could weIl be true when he says that
'deprivation from such contact could develop a citizenry so uniformed as to permit
the destruction of its own biotope'.
I dare say that up to now I have been expressing reactions which are common to
most readers. However, I have one more image to discuss that is of importance to
my theme and I have much less confidence that the experience is a universal one.
My last image is of landscape and the city.

J""'-r-".[
Let me recount a very few of my idyllic images oflandscape and the city and see

85
how they compare with yours. Better still, recollect your own before reading any
further.
The circuses of Bath, Princes Street, Edinburgh, the views out of both Central
Park, New York, and St James Park, London, the 'backs' of Cambridge, the
Oxford quads, Harvard yard, Regents Park canal, many parts of Paris, the three
squares of Nancy, the town places of Provence, the Kiyomizu area of Kyoto.
Venice must be included because the water is its landscape. The same applies to the
Sydney Opera House. On top ofthis very hackneyed list I have endless city corners
which conjure up for me the particular magic ofbuildings and what Le Corbusier
would have called 'verdure'. Nevertheless, the list is probably hackneyed because,
although we have many good examples ofbuildings in landscape, we do not have a
large repository of great examples of the integration oflandscape and city building.
How this list would compare with that of, say, arecent Puerto Rican immigrant
in New York, I can only guess. His list would be limited perhaps to experience of
the slums of San Juan. My list includes much that makes up our 'civilisation' .
Moreover, our reactions are conditioned by different associations. I enjoy the sun-
dappled gravel under the plane trees ofProvence as a sensual experience, certainly,
but also because Van Gogh saw them before me. Do Australians rhapsodize about
upper Collins Street because it is the most pleasant part ofMelbourne, or because it
is rather like Paris or could be out of an impressionist painting? No doubt a Cyril
Connolly would have a few hundred more associations than I could conjure up.
We have to be careful of inflicting our own predilictions onto others, but
differences though there will be, we do have to consider this third image as part of
the idyllic triad that makes up our reaction to the world oflandscape and the city;
the triad of paradise garden -the refuge; beneficent countryside and city park; and
the city of buildings and landscape.

The concept of the green-wedge path system

The 1960s saw an effiorescence ofliterature and action in support of open-spaces in
and surrounding our cities. Much of this stemmed from the urban riots of 1967 in
the United States, a lot ofit was related to areaction against bureaucratic decision-
making in the field ofthe physical environment and a great deal arose from a disgust
at the rate at which we were desecrating the existing landscape.
This book in some ways may be regarded as part of a second wave of action.
Many of the battles of the sixties and early seventies have been fought and won:

86
there are now many successful ways of accumuIating land for open space, new
housing types are being built, small parks have been inserted into the cities, tree-
planting campaigns have produced results, many more areas have been protected-
the list is long and impressive. We are also in the middle, or possibly the beginning
of a long period of economic recession and it is a useful time to pause and do some
exammmg.
My own examination has led me to conclude that we do many things badly that
we might do better. I find myself agreeing strongly with the views of Serge
Chermayeff & Christopher Alexander (1963) expressed as long ago as 1963 in
which they say that 'any further attempt to design in the conventional way,
without a careful fresh look at the problem and the help of some defensible basic
principle, will do litde more than add another set of shapes to the growing
catalogue of architectural millinery'. They were writing about housing but I would
extend the warning to the design of the whole urban area.
The Green City as a tide has been used, as will have been appreciated, in the sense
that Charles Reich (1971) used his tide of the Greening oJ America. In many cases the
advocacy may be against the use of grass as an urban material but if there is one
single aspect of our physical environment on which there is some accord, it is
verdure. If we introduce open space, trees and other plant growth into our urban
areas and then our cities develop in so me way as yet not envisaged, we shall
nevertheless be left with something of value. We know from our existing parks that
this is so.
The 'greening' is, of course, a humanising action. It encompasses a sense offitness,
a comprehensibility; what Leo Marx (1968) has described as 'that sense ofbelonging
to an orderly pattern oflife which has for so long been associated with the relatively
unspoiled naturallandscape'.
The action of the sixties was remarkable but one cannot be satisfied with the
result. I believe we have to start a second wave of action now which shows how
numerous small forward moves can be integrated under' one banner, leading to a
whole much greater than the parts. Patrick Geddes (1915) had it all there in 1913:
The Neotechnic order, ifit means anything at all, with its better uses ofresources
and population towards the bettering of man and his environment together,
means these as a business proposition -the creation, city by city, region by
region, of its Utopia, each a place of effective health and well-being even of

87
 glorious, and in its way, unprecedented beauty, this beginning here, there and
everywhere-even when our Paleotechnic disorder seems to have done its worst.
lan McHarg (1969), in splendid fashion, put forward the large-scale approach to
regionallandscape planning but few related this scale with, say, what was
happening in the vest-pocket parks. Lacking a comprehensive viewpoint which
could be understood by everyone and handicapped, I suspect, by presentation, a
great opportunity has not been grasped.
I have the strong reaction that two such excellent books as Whyte's The Last
Landscape (1968) and Space 10r Survival edited by Little & Mitchell (1971), would
have been so much more effective if they had been fully illustrated. (Most of us are
too busy or too lazy to read all we should.)
The catalyst that I see for this wave ofhumanizing action is dearly the landscape.
In essence, the book is a paean to landscape; to the shaping of earth-form, to the
beauty and variety of trees, to the contrasts of water, to rock, sand and gravel, to
dimbers and ground-cover, creepers and vines, and the effect these have on people
and the built environment.
In spite of some asides, the limits of the book are set by this approach. How to
make life in the cities more pleasurable by the use oflandscape. This theme is not the
result of adecision that landscape should be used to improve our cities. It is a result
of analysing the present direction or urban growth and by conduding that of the
few possibilities open to us to meet this aim, it is the one that offers the most chance
ofsuccess. So obvious does this seem to me that I am convinced that the message has
to come over loud and deaL By nature I am not a crusader but I believe we need a
crusade. Not a 'beautification' campaign, not even 'tree planting' exercises, but an
all-out attack for the Greening ofthe City. This time it is 'greening' in its total sense
of enrichment. Not only for visual beauty but for control of temperature, air
quality and sun glare; for recreation and as a movement and land-use system.

88
Open Space
Many existing city parks are past maturity, induding most London parks, and new
planting is necessary. Others could benefit from re-vamping, usually towards
simplified designs anti perhaps using earth mounding. Traffic, in many cases, has
made so me smaller parks virtually inaccessible. In such cases, every effort should be
made to effect the dosure of at least one street. One edge of a city park abutting
directly against buildings offers all sorts of opportunities and can revolutionise the
use and appearance of a park.
The opportunities of opening up parts of city centres are very limited although
the run-down inner areas of many cities do have possibilities. There are still the
many 'left-over' spaces, the vacant lots that have already been taken over for
adventure playgrounds and pint-sized parks, the unnecessary car-parks, railway
yards, the edges of freeways, the streets that could be dosed, old cemeteries, road
medians, and above all, the water-courses where these have not been put
underground.
Every city planning department should, if it has not already done so, indicate all
these possible areas on a map. It should then be possible to see where linkages could
occur, either now or in the future.
Heavily planted with trees such linkages give a visual structure to a city and city
region but unless the terrain is hilly this will not be apparent at eye-level. The object
of creating such a park system is primarily a functional one -to form continuous
cyde and pedestrian ways. It is essential that we reduce our dependence on the car
for limitedjourneys in reasonable weather; both cyding and walking offer effective
alternatives.
Some cities have such systems already. Eliot and Olmsted created the Boston
Parks system from marshes, connecting the Boston Common to Franklin Park with
tree-planted driveways and a linear landscaped area.

Metropolitan scale
At this scale the aim should be to create as many areas of pleasant contact with
nature throughout the day: in the horne, from horne to work, school or shops, at
work and in the leisure moments.
For those who live in the city there should be parks for recreation. For all users of

89
the city there should be parks or spaces for meetings, trysts, as quiet refuges, as places
to see other people, for reading and public speaking, for listening to music and for
exhibitions and special occasions. They are the places where people can see the sky,
hear birdsong, smell the flowers, get away from the noise and enjoy the greenery.
Trees, water and grass are the best basis for any park. Rocks, as in New York's
Central Park can be used to good effect. Underground car-parks that necessitate the
planting oftrees in boxes are to be avoided. Ifthe extra cost involved in supporting
the soil to grow trees cannot be afforded, unexcavated areas should be set aside for
clump planting. A park such as Perishing Square in down-town Los Angeles,
although not to be scorned, is hardly worth the name with its boxed trees and
diagonal paths. (Often there is no alternative to placing trees in planter boxes but it
is a poor substitute for trees in the ground.)

90
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116
Architecture
It is a cause for rejoicing when the architecture of the cities has an addition which
can be compared with the great examples of the past. So much that has been built
has been hum-drum and banal. No doubt much will continue this way for
architecture is but a reftection of the society in which we live.
lt requires, however, quite modest effort to provide a more humanistic
architecture. Let us explore a few ideas:

Colour

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120
121
Content
Mention has been made earlier of the failure of modern architecture to express
content. More than ever with the use of tin ted and reflective glass we are presented
with bland, expressionless facades behind which we can only guess what goes on.
Admittedly there may not be much that is worth expressing but with most uses
there is something to be gained by opening upa building to views in from outside.
Pedestrian ways, arcades, galleria, can all penetrate buildings.
Some architects have expressed functional aspects of a building: Kahn's division
of spaces into the 'service and the served', for instance, or Portman's celebration of
the elevator through making it transparent. (A device very much in line with the
thinking expressed in this book.) At least, how the building is used becomes more
explicit.
Signs and symbols are poor things compared with what they might be. Much
could be learnt from the way Charles and Ray Eames put over a message in visual
terms. Large scale signs should be part of a building's design and they need not be
the insipid or crude initials of insurance companies only.
Ifthe user can adapt his building over time, that building will certainly take on an
expression of use. In the new town of Monarto, in South Australia, a building
design has been developed that can be used for housing or offices. If the building
were used for both, one could see the expression of use even though the structure
would be the same throughout.
Planting, as one knows, can emphasis the character ofbuildings. Urban buildings
in city centres require formal planting to bring out their urbanity.
Residential areas need a more informal expression.
At the moment large interior spaces filled with planting, as exemplified in
Portman's hotels and in the Ford Foundation building in New York, speIl prestige
because they are all expensive buildings. But where enclosure is necessary, and in
most climates it is not, we can expect to see more general use oflarge internal spaces
for they need not be as expensive as they look. Such spaces may then come to
represent any space where a pedestrian is welcomed.
If one groups these, in my mind, desirable elements -interpenetration of inside
and outside, articulation through accretion of small-scale building units, the helpful

122
and pleasurable aspeets of signs, the maximum but seientifie use of day-light, the
possibility of expressing eontent, views out by all building oeeupants and pleasant
aeeess from ear, eyde or bus -one begins to see an arehiteeture rather different
from the normal urban strueture. It might look something like this:-

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123
 The interesting thing about this approach is that it does not require the acqisition
of a whole city block to make it work . Architecturally, it benefits by the inclusion
of buildings built at other times. Most, but not all, cities have awakened to their
architectural heritage. Re-use of old buildings combined with transferred
development rights, can make this sort of thing possible:-

It could be that a constructional system might be used that would allow for
growth by accretion. Computers are allowing us to build structures that foilow
biological growth systems. Many of these are based on a Fibonacci series which, in
turn, has much to offer in designing urban growth systems.

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124
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~ A. ~~ ~,~ ~ ~.

127
Work
Schumacher extüls the benefits üf the small, cümprehensible, business cüncern and
it is interesting tü nüte that it is the small businesses in Britain that are achieving
success at the müment.
By far the müst stimulating, beautiful and würkman-like würking space I knüw
is that üf Charles and Ray Eames in Venice, Califürnia. Für thirty-five years they
have würked in a small, anünymüus-lo.üking factüry building, designing and
making furniture, games, exhibitiüns and films. There are a variety üf spaces but
müst can be cümprehended früm any üne area at a time. The man würking ün a
new chair-müunt is as much apart üfthe team as the researcher tracing the influence
üf the Japanese print ün the French Impressiünists.
Admittedly aB the übjects in this unpretentiüus building are superb but the basic
physical requirements for güüd würking conditiüns are there and they are nüt
expensive: güüd lighting, büth day and artificial lighting (üne üffice building in
fifty has lighting which dües nüt prüduce fatigue thrüugh glare); süme view tü the
üutdüür, even if it is ünly intü a smaB cüurtyard; free-flüwing flüor space allüwing
great flexibility für change; private withdrawing rüüms tü gü with the üpen space;
jüyful cülüurs; individual cüntrül üf climate (easy in this case with the Süuth
Califürnia climate). Burülandschaft ür 'üffice landscaping' aBüws aB these desirable
elements tü be übtained in large üffices with the advantage üf keeping peüple in
small cümprehensible grüups.
The 'greening' üfbuildings is part and parcel üfthe greening üfthe city.1t wüuld
be ni ce tü think that the things that make a building pleasurable tü the user wüuld be
in cümmün use früm nüw ün. The Camerün üffice cümplex designed by Jühn
Andrews Internatiünal für Belcünnen in Canberra illustrates müst üf these, in my
mind, desirable übjects:

128
 •
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129
 The Genius Lod

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130
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132
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sfa,A'u{ M
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133
 Griffith University illustrates another theme relevant to this book. It is sited on a
hill covered in ironbark eucalypts with a beautiful understorey of xanthorrea and
banksia collina. As the University planner, I decided the best way to keep this
sensitive native landscape intact was to group the buildings in a compact form and
to use such devices as changes oflevels, if necessary, to deter people from trampling
through the undergrowth. Already one can see the effect ofthe urban built-form in
immediate contrast with the ancient 'bush' landscape and, to me, it is rewarding.
On the whole I prefer to see the minimum of 'moderation' between building and
setting such as one sees in the quads ofOxford where the buildings rise straight out
of the grass or paving, or, in this case, the relatively untouched native landscape.
Although I do believe that a rich clothing of trees and creepers would be the right
treatment for many parts of our cities and buildings, I would not like anyone to
think that I an advocating this for universal use. If anything, I am supporting the
concentration of richness against a plain background as one finds in both Islamic and
Spanish traditional architecture. I have purposely refrained from including such
general rules of design in this book. It is important to seize on anything that might
reflect the genius loei and such a thing might contradict every rule.
It certainly seems sensible to me to use plant material that is native to a region.
Apart from purely functional reasons there is a fitness about it-it looks right and
may weIl be part of the genius loei. This is not to say that exotic material should not
be used but if it is, it should be used with great care if it is to be combined with the
indigenous. PracticaIly, maintenance problems alone will dictate that in the dry
climates, native material should be used in the linear park strips pn1posed in this
, '.' book. In Australia, we have more work to do to find the right grass types but in any
• r
event, the most that should be needed in the grassed areas is rough mowmg .
Children will appreciate the wet areas left to grow wild.
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135
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137
HOW 1'() MAK.E 5~AC.E~ APPEAFt 10 8E J..AR.fA.EIt. "THAW THEY AR.E

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138
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139
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140
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141
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142
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143
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144
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145
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146
Summary
Here, then, are the twelve easy ways to make our cities more enjoyable. It goes without
saying that they could be increased manyJold. All that is necessary is Jor people to think how
best we might achieve the guiding principle stated in the Introduction.
1. to meet possible shortages oJJuel and other resources, to diversiJy our means oJ
transportation through the introduction oJ pedestrian and bicycle paths, linked to other
Jorms oJ trarlsportation;
2. to tie these paths to an open-space system;
3. to ensure that each step oJ open-space acquisition should contribute, where possible, to a
long-term pattern or system oJ city open-space-such systems would be both visually
structuring systems as weil as Junctional systems;
4. to emphasise the 'city-ness' oJ the city, the 'country-ness' oJ the country and the 'wild-
ness' oJ the wildemess, as distinct spheres oJ the environment;
5. to give the same attention to the spaces between buildings as in buildings, utilising
open-space as a commodity oJ,value;
6. to enjoy architecture once more through buildings that we can relate to, that are
comprehensible alld articulated;
7. by the judicious illtroductioll oJ colour;
8. by plantillg designed with the buildings, alld appropriate to the place and climate;
9. through acknowledgemellt oJ the climate as somethillg to be used alld appreciated;
10. through desigll Jor sociability and privacy;
11. by variety alzd di versity, adaptabi tity, mixes alld choice, oifered ill the appropriate
places; .
12. by exploitillg wherever possible, the genius locj.

147
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148
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149
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150
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151
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152
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153
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154
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155
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156
Epilogue
In the forties and fifties an exceptional Englishman by the name of Bennett
organised a co-operative for the marketing of the coffee grown by the Wachagga
tribe in what is now Tanzania. Every evening, at sundown, he and his friends would
meet on his verandah overlooking Mt Kilimanjaro and no word was spoken, or
drink taken, for the ten minutes prior to the sun's setting.
It is a ni ce idea. Ifwe cannot arrange a view ofKilimanjaro we can at least make
sure we see the sunset each evening. For to do this properly we need roof gardens,
terraces, parks, views from the road, an outlook from the office, factory, hospital
and classroom. It is not a bad check point for the greening of the city.

157
Appendix
The Green City low-energy movement system applied to a typical Australian city
For possible use by city and shire councils I append here a blueprint for action,
taking as an example two randomly-selected and less-attractive sections ofSydney
and Melbourne.

Basic data
1. Indicate the likely routes for express bus systems or other public transport
routes and stops, where these exist. (Assume that the removal of commuter
cars will provide faster buses even on existing routes.)
2. Delineate existing open spaces, council land and land used for cemeteries,
dumps or other similar land which could be developed into part of a park
system.
3. Trace water-courses both natural and in culverts. Locate areas that could be
used for flood-control lakes.
4. From a building-use plan indicate those buildings that would !end themselves
to a frontage on the open-space system. These would indude pubs, eating-
places, schools, community halls, warehouses that could be converted to other
uses, squash courts, swimming pools, shops, flats and areas ripe for
development.
5. Make an assessment of those streets that might be crossed by the park system
and thus converted into culs-de-sac, or streets which could take a median or
verge pedestrian and cyde track.
6. In addition to this physical data the more information that can be obtained on
sociological and economic factors the better. (It should be emphasised that the
actual physical possibilities of re-structuring will play the largest part in
determining the open-space plan but in many cases there will be options and it
will be these other factors that determine the choice.)

Producing the plan

7. Superimpose on tracing paper a one kilometre grid on a sheet map on which

158
 the information called for in 1-5 has been indicated. (Two scales are useful at
this stage; a 1:75,000 and a 1: 10,000 plan.)
8. Using the grid as a desirable objective whereby the maximum distance from
any one place to a public-transport stop is one kilometre, rough in routes
which make as much use of the 1-5 material as possible and, conversely,
require the minimum of change to the existing physical fabric.
, Ik~
9. The points of intersection between the open-space circulation system and the
public transport routes become the interchange points with small shopping
centres and other facilities establishing themselves there. Here will be the
storage spaces for the various low-energy vehicles, including bicycles, used on
r--~
I
the open-space circulation system by those who do not wish to walk.
Although the shopping centres will be sm all it is assumed they will be open 18 ~---o-
hours a day and that bulk purehases will be delivered by electric van.
Those using bicycles will be likely to cycle to the fastest public transport
stop which could be three kilometres away. ,
10. Several rough layouts will then be evaluated in order that a short-list of
options may be exposed for public comment.
11. Meanwhile, ifthe section under examination is part ofa metropolitan region,
liaison is maintained with the Planning Authority to ensure that the plan fits
the regional strategy of transportation and open-space routes.

o 0 00
159
 ....... .•.........
0
.:

···
• •
··•
····
·,•
~

··

•
··•
··•
•

, ··
•
·
·
:
-I

160
Implementation
12. Implementation will then follow the normal planning procedures. Market
forces will raise va lues at the interchange points but to a less degree than
already is happening at present where people without transport have no
option but to find a Bat near a railway or bus station.
Individual or localised protest should be small because the action will be all
to the residents' advantage. In the very few cases where a building has to be
acquired for demolition the possibility of re-housing occupants in new or re-
cycled buildings fronting the open-space will in most cases be there.
13. Timing should be such that within ten years a workable system should be in
operation. In some cases Councilland, given increased value by the open-space
structuring, might be sold to defray construction costs. The work would lend
itself to the use of unemployed labour. Resident organisation and labour
should be used to the full as should the educational value be exploited. This is
particularly so with the nature of the planting to bc used. Some of the notions
of the 'Urban Forest' concept might well be incorporated to reduce
maintenance costs. A range of resource saving ideas such as wind power to
maintain water levels would be very applicable.

161
APP~ICA -not.! 1"0
Pt TY Plc..~ J-
A-lJ ~ -rR. A 1-1 J; N
c../TY

e.}(p~s~ bv.s rDCI';eS

o
-- nc:>de~
n~w open .~p~ lInkS
~)( I Sh t1 9 open sp" C4.
N

--.I~_ _
°1-1 2.1-1_ _ ~:.s-I---;1 k.W\
I: 75'000

162
 e r"QiI1ll4\i 'rl1hcmS
o-- l'Iodc..~
bus I'1'vhts.
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163
References & Bibliography
ADAMS, R. M. (ed) The Fitness of Man's Environment (Washington: Smithsonian Institution
Press, 1968). I have made several references throughout this book to this collection of
papers delivered at the Smithsonian Institution Annual Symposium in 1967, because it
was an outstanding group of participants and is an outstanding collection of papers.
BARNETT,Jonathan Urban Design as Publie Poliey; Practieal Methodsfor Improving Cities (New
York: Architectural Record Books, 1974).
BLUMENFIELD, Hans The Modern Metropolis; Its Grigins, Growth, Characteristies and Planning.
Seleeted Essays (edited by Paul D. Spreiregen, Cambridge, Mass.: Massachusetts Institute
ofTechnology Press, 1971).
CANTER, D. V. Transactions of the Bartlett Soeiety Vol. 6, 1967-68 (University of London,
School of Environmental Studies).
CHATTO, Beth The Dry Garden (London: J. M. Dent, 1978).
CHERMAYEFF, Serge & ALEXANDER, Christopher Community and Privaey; Toward a New
Arehitecture of Humanism (New York: Doubleday, 1963).
CULLEN, Gordon Townseape (London: Architectural Press, 1961).
DUBOS, Rene 'Man and his environment: adaptations and interactions' in Adams, The
Fitness of Man's Environment, op. eit.
FRIEDBERG, M. Paul with PERRY BERKELEY, Ellen Play and Interplay; A Manifestofor New
Design in Urban Recreation Planning (New York: Macmillan, 1970).
GEDDES, Patrick Cities in Evolution; An Introduetion to the Town Planning Movement and to the
Study of Civies (London: Williams & Norgate, 1915).
GOODMAN, CharIes & ECKHARDT, Wolf von Life for Dead Spaees: The Development of the
Lavanburg Commons (New York: Harcourt Brace and World, 1963).
GOODMAN, Paul'Two points ofphilosophy and an example' in Adams, The Fitness of Man's
Environment, op. eit.
GRUEN, Victor The Heart of our Cities; the Urban Crisis: Diagnosis and Cure (New York:
Si mon & Schuster, 1964).
HALL, Edward T. 'Human needs and inhuman cities' in Adams, The Fitness of Man's
Environment, op. eit.
HIGHET, Gilbert Poets in a Landseape (N ew Y ork: Alfred Knopf, 1957).
]ACKSON, J. B. 'The sanitary awakening' in 'A' Magazine, Summer 1976 (UCLA
Architecture students magazine).
JELLICOE, G. A. Studies in Landseape Design, Vol. III (London: GUP, 1970).

164
JOHNSON, Roger K. H. Design in Balance: Designing the National Area ofCanberra 1%8-72 (St
Lucia, Queensland: University of Queensland Press, 1974).
GriJfith University Site Planning Report, n.p., 1973.
JUNG, Carl Man and his Symbols (London: Aldus Books, 1964).
KAHN, Herman & WIENER, Anthony J. The Year 2000: A Frameworkfor Speculation on the
Next Thirty-three Years (New York: Macmillan, 1967).
KASSLER, Elizabeth B. Modern Gardens and the Landscape (New York, Museum of Modern
Art; distributed by Doubleday, Garden City, New York, 1964).
KING, Alec The Unprosaic Imagination (edited by Francis King, University of Western
Austraha Press, 1975).
LAURIE, Michael An Introduction to Landscape Architecture (New York: American Elsevier,
1975).
LITTLE, Charles E. & MITCHELL, John G. (eds) Space for Survival: Blocking the Bulldozer in
Urban America (New York: Pocket Books, 1971).
McHARG, lan Design with Nature (New York: Doubleday, 1969).
MADDI, Salvatore R. & FISKE, Donald Winslow Functions ofVaried Experience (Homewood,
III: Dorsey Press, 1961).
MARX, Leo 'Pastoral ideals and city troubles' in Adams, The Fitness of Man' s Environment, op.
eit.
MEYERSON, Martin Face ofthe Metropolis (Sponsored by ACTION, the National Council
for Good Cities; New York: Random House, 1963).
NAIRN, lan The American Landscape; a Critical View (New York: Random House, 1965).
NEWTON, Norman T. Design on the Land; the Development of Landscape Architecture
(Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1971).
REICH, Charles A. The Greening of America (New York: Bantam, 1971).
SEYMOUR, Whitney North (comp) Small Urban Spaces; the Philosophy, Design, Soeiology and
Politics of Vest-pocket Parks and other small Urban Open Spaces (New York: New York
University Press, 1969).
SPREIREGEN, Paul D. Urban Design: The Architecture of Towns and Cities (New York:
McGraw-Hill, 1965).
TUAN, Yi-Fu Topophilia: A Study ofEnvironment Perception, Attitudes and Values (Englewood
Chffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1974).
WARD, Barbara The Home of Man (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976).
WEBBER, Melvin Report on BAR T by UCB Study Group, October 1976.
WHYTE, William H. The Last Landscape (New York: Doubleday, 1968).
WINGO, Lowdon (ed) Cities and Space: The Future Use of Urban Land; Essays from the Fourth
Resourcesfor the Future Forum (Baltimore: published for Resources for the Future by Johns
Hopkins Press, 1964).

165
WURMAN, Richard Saul and others The nature oJ recreation: A Handbook in Honour oJ Frederick
Law Ofmsted, Using Examplesfrom his Work (Cambridge, Mass.: Massachusetts Institute of
Technology Press for the American Federation of Arts, 1972).

Urban economics and pofitics-a Jurther reading list

ARTLE, Roland 'Public policy and the space economy of the city' in Wingo Cities and Space,
op. eit.
FAGIN, Henry 'Social foresight and the use of urban space' in Wingo Cities and Space, op. eit.
FRIEND,]. K., POWER,]. M. & YEWLETT, c.]. L. Public Pfanning: The Intercorporate Dimension
(London: Tavistock, 1974).
PERLOFF, Harvey S. (ed) The Quafity oJ the Urban Environment-Recovery Jor the Future
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1969).
SCHUMACHER, E. F. Small is Beautifuf-Economics as if Peopfe Mattered (London: Harper &
Row, 1973).

The author and publishers are indebted to the following for permission to reproduce copyright
material in this book:
Jonathan Barnett and Architectural Record Books for the use of extract from Urban Design as
Publie Poliey: Praetieal Methods for Improving eities which appears on page 6.
Paul Goodman and Smithsonian Institution Press for the use of extract from 'Two points of
philosophy and an example' in R. M. Adams (ed) The Fitness of Man's Environment which
appears on page 74.
Norman T. Newton and Belknag Press of Harvard University Press for use of the extracts from
Design on the Land: The Development of Landseape Arehiteeture which appear on pages 84-5.
Kevin Roche, John Dindeloo & Associates for use of photographs on pages 125 and 126.
Richard G. Stein for use of the photograph on page 114.

166