Landscape and Urban Planning 166 (2017) 15–24

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Landscape and Urban Planning

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/landurbplan

Jaqueline Tyrwhitt translates Patrick Geddes for post world war two
planning
Ellen Shoshkes (Adjunct Associate Professor) ∗
Toulan School of Urban Studies and Planning, United States

h i g h l i g h t s

• Tyrwhitt’s editions of Geddes’ works were highly influential in postwar planning.

• Tyrwhitt’s interpretation of Geddess infused modernist discourse on urbanism.
• Tyrwhitt’s interpretation of Geddes influenced UN human settlements policy.
• Ecological urbanism discourse builds on Tyrwhitt’s interpretation of Geddes.

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Beginning in Britain during the Second World War and continuing internationally through the 1970s
Received 2 July 2015 Jaqueline Tyrwhitt (1905–83)—a British planner, editor and educator—played a key role not only in stim-
Received in revised form 16 August 2016 ulating interest in Patrick Geddes’ planning ideas for post World War Two reconstruction, but also in
Accepted 6 September 2016
formulating the Geddessian branch of the planning arm of the postwar modern movement. The range of
Available online 17 September 2016
Tyrwhitt’s contributions must be placed in the context of her efforts to reactivate transnational exchanges
of planning ideas and practices that had been interrupted by the war. Tyrwhitt’s work at various edu-
Keywords:
cational institutions in Britain and North America, as a member of the inner circle of CIAM (Congrès
Patrick Geddes
Jacqueline Tyrwhitt
Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne), as a consultant to the United Nations, and in collaboration with
Constantinos Doxiadis Greek planner Constantinos Doxiadis (1913–75) in the Ekistics movement, positioned her to insert her
Ekistics synthesis of Geddessian bioregionalism and modernist social-aesthetic ideals firmly within the emergent
Bioregionalism global discourse on sustainable urbanism.
CIAM © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Urban design
United Nations Technical Assistance

1. Introduction and members of the Regional Planning Association of America,

Patrick Geddes (1854–1932) is honored as a founding father
of Anglo American regional planning and pioneer of holistic,
community-based design (Hall, 2014), a tradition that today finds
expression in the concept of ecological urbanism (Mostafavi, 2010;
Spirn, 2012). Yet at the time of his death, Geddes’ legacy was far
from established (Meller, 1990). His publications were difficult
to obtain and hard to understand. He mainly exerted influence
through personal contact, inspiring devoted disciples (notably,
leaders of the British town planning movement including Raymond
Unwin, George Pepler, H.V. Lanchester and Patrick Abercrombie;
∗ Correspondence to: 950 SW 21st Ave., Apt. PH-F, Portland, OR 97205, USA.
E-mail address: eshoshkes@mac.com
especially Lewis Mumford, Benton Mackaye and Catherine Bauer).
People who became familiar with Geddes’s ideas before World War
Two learned about them second hand. The enduring impact of Ged-
des on planning thought is generally attributed in large part to
Mumford, who interpreted Geddes’ ideas through his own writings
(Novak, 1995).
This paper provides a more nuanced historical perspective on
the origins and evolution of Geddes’s legacy by illuminating the
key role of Jaqueline Tyrwhitt (1905–83)—a British town planner,
landscape architect, editor and educator— in stimulating the mid-
century revival of interest in Geddes’s ideas. Her edited versions
of Geddes (1947), and an abridged edition of Cities in Evolution
(1949; 1915)—appeared at a critical moment when planning was
becoming consolidated as a separate profession, academic field, and
an arm of government, and had a profound impact on planning

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2016.09.011
0169-2046/© 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
16 E. Shoshkes / Landscape and Urban Planning 166 (2017) 15–24
and design theory, practice and pedagogy worldwide. Moreover, in
the course of planning for the physical reconstruction of postwar
Britain, Tyrwhitt forged and promoted an influential synthesis of
planning ideas grounded in Geddes’ bioregionalism and the ide-
als of European modernism. She exerted significant influence on
the transmission, translation, and evolution of a Geddessian line of
thought now prominent in discourses on sustainable development
and ecological urbanism.
Building on my previous Tyrwhitt-related work (Shoshkes,
2013, 2014, 2015), this paper analyzes key texts produced by Tyr-
whitt, and archival material located at the Royal Institute of British
Architects (RIBA) Library, libraries at Edinburgh, Strathclyde, and
Harvard Universities, the Architectural Association, and a private
collection of Tyrwhitt’s papers to situate those texts in their con-
temporary and current contexts. The arguments in this paper will
proceed along roughly chronological lines.
2. Jaqueline Tyrwhitt: formative years
Tyrwhitt, who was raised in London, trained for a career as a
garden designer, including a year (1924–25) at the Architectural
Association (AA)—which ran the leading school of architecture in
Britain—and practiced what is now called landscape architecture
for several years. During the Depression, wanting to do more mean-
ingful work, she studied economics, and became an organizer for
the League of Industry, a national effort to federate self-governing
industries. In 1935, in order to learn more about the integration of
industry with agriculture, Tyrwhitt took a job at Dartington Hall,
the estate rehabilitated by Leonard and Dorothy Elmhirst as an
experiment in rural revitalization. Tyrwhitt also became involved
in the Industries Group of Political and Economic Planning (PEP),
which was financed by the Elmhirsts. Organized by biologists Julian
Huxley and Morris Carr-Saunders, PEP signaled the expansion of
ecological concepts into the realm of public affairs (Anker, 2001). It
was probably at Dartington Hall that Tyrwhitt came across an out of
print edition of Geddes’s Cities in Evolution (1915), which inspired
her interest in town planning. (Geddes and his son, Arthur, had
a close relationship to Leonard Elmhirst as a result of their work
together in India.) In 1936, Tyrwhitt decided to study Geddes’s eco-
logical approach at the new school of planning that had recently
opened at AA.
The School of Planning and Research for National Development
(SPRND) opened as an offshoot of the AA School of Architecture in
1935 under the direction of E.A.A. Rowse (1896–ca. 1982). Rowse
was a great admirer of Geddes, as were several members of the
Advisory Board, including Unwin and Pepler. Geddes’s ideas pro-
vided the conceptual basis for the school’s curriculum, specifically
that a plan must be preceded by regional and civic surveys encom-
passing social and economic as well as physical factors. Tyrwhitt
enrolled in the two-year diploma course in October 1937. How-
ever, in June 1938, AA terminated its relationship with Rowse
and SPRND. Rowse managed to keep his school open until shortly
after England declared war on Germany. When Tyrwhitt passed
her exams in July 1939, she was among SPRND’s first and last
graduates—and had become “an ardent disciple” of Geddes.
3. The war years
Tyrwhitt’s ideas about planning and the education of plan-
ners crystallized during the war years, which she spent in London
as director of the Association for Planning and Regional Recon-
struction (APRR), a new organization created to carry on SPRND’s
research work. The war gave impetus to a consensus that had
been forming among planners since the 1920s and 1930s on the
broad conception of regional planning pioneered by Geddes. APRR
embarked on a broad research agenda encompassing all aspects
of regional planning, including industry, agriculture and nutrition,
population, housing and recreation, health and education, and uses
of waste. Its work encompassed multiple scales, from the flow
of resources within the global system, to the size and location
of schools, to kitchen fixtures. Research reports were published
in standardized broadsheet format to facilitate communication
across specializations. APRR also developed methods for cross-
disciplinary survey research and for displaying survey data through
a range of media, including thematic maps, reports, books, diagrams
and photographs, thereby operationalizing Geddes’s principles for
application to postwar reconstruction.
An important stimulus to formalizing this new concept of plan-
ning was the wartime correspondence course that APRR ran for
armed forces personnel. In the absence of a textbook, Tyrwhitt
compiled readings by Geddes and Geddessians, such as Unwin,
Mumford and Abercrombie, among others. To run the course, on
behalf of the War Office, she redesigned Rowse’s pre-war school
as the School of Planning and Research for Regional Development
(SPRRD), operated as an arm of APRR. Trywitt’s career as plan-
ning educator began when the first registrants arrived in December
1943. By war’s end over 1500 had participated, Ian McHarg among
them (McHarg, 1996). Hundreds more enrolled in the post-war
three-month completion course that Tyrwhitt ran for returning
soldiers who wanted professional certification, among them Percy
Johnson-Marshall and John F. C. Turner. Tyrwhitt was especially
proud that SPRRD trained a small, but influential cohort who made
significant contributions to postwar reconstruction worldwide as
they assumed positions throughout the Commonwealth, in devel-
oping nations, and as advisors to the UN, diffusing Geddes’ ideas
very widely (Meller, 1990: 323).
3.1. Forging a synthesis
Through her friendship with H.V. Lanchester (1863–1953), who
had worked with Geddes in India, Tyrwhitt became privy to one of
the few complete sets of town planning reports Geddes had made in
India between 1915 and 1919. Lanchester had tried unsucessfully to
publish a selection from these reports, so Tyrwhitt offered to help.
In 1944, she convinced Lund Humphries to publish excerpts which
she would edit and illustrate, assisted by Arthur Geddes. As she
familiarized herself with the reports she also became involved with
members of the Modern Architectural Research (MARS) Group,
the British branch of Congres International d’Architecture Moderne
(CIAM). Tyrwhitt first articulated her synthesis of Geddes’s plan-
ning ideas and modernist ideals in “Town Planning,” her article in
the first issue (1945) of the Architects’ Year Book—a journal com-
mitted to showing how European modernism could be adapted to
postwar conditions in England.
Tyrwhitt (1945: 11–12) opens “Town Planning” boldly, stating:
“Regional planning and neighborhood planning have come to the
fore.. . .[T]owns of many sizes can be countenanced, provided . . .
that, at one level, they fit into the general framework of the region
and, at the other level, they are suitably differentiated in coherent
neighborhood units.” Once a regional planning unit is determined,
a multidiscplinary team conducts a survey, their purpose being “to
see the region always as a whole and, by pooling the individual
knowledge . . .of its members to enable a balanced and dynamic
development continually to take place.” This approach is presum-
ably scientific and democratic: “The distribution of a sufficient
range of clearly presented survey maps, setting down the salient
facts of the district as a whole, would provide all interested people
with a reasonable basis for informed criticism and judgement of
local town planning proposals.”
Modern technology also demands regional planning to make
the supply of infrastructure for transportation, communications
 E. Shoshkes / Landscape and Urban Planning 166 (2017) 15–24
and other community services more efficient. Tyrwhitt (1945: 13)
invoked “the space-time scale of our generation [that] has been
grandly set forth by [Sigfried] Giedion and needs interpretation in
all forms of physical planning,” [a reference to the Swiss architec-
tural historian and CIAM general secretary’s already canonical Space
Time and Architecture (1941).
At the other end of the scale, the neighborhood, human needs
set the parameters. Tyrwhitt (1945: 14–16) agrees with Geddes that
arid garden cities are not the answer. “The life of the future needs
the two contrasts in scale expressed in the same plan: a sense of
space, freedom of movement, scope for expression, together with
closely knit neighborhood life,” which “breeds social consciousness
and civic responsibility.” This lesson was brought home by wartime
civil defense measures that demonstrated the value of “some form
of common meeting-place” in neighborhoods.
Tyrwhitt then discusses aspects of such community planning:
the location of industry; systems for the production and con-
sumption of fresh food; promotion of positive health in daily
life; integration of schools and neighborhoods; transport; enter-
tainment districts; and holiday facilities. In emphasizing the
community as the social basis of physical planning, Tyrwhitt
expanded on the four “urban functions” stipulated in CIAM’s 1933
Athens Charter (Dwelling, Work, Transportation, Recreation).
4. Post-war reconstruction
In March 1945, Tyrwhitt promoted her/APRR’s Geddessian
concept of planning on an official tour of Canada, to report on prepa-
rations being made for postwar Britain. Jacob Crane, then head of
the U.S. National Housing Agency’s International Office, arranged
for Tyrwhitt’s tour to include American cities. Crane knew Tyrwhitt
through the International Federation of Housing and Town Plan-
ning (IFHTP). Also a follower of Geddes, he wanted to strengthen
connections among like-minded planners on the eve of the UN
Conference on International Organization. The new contacts and
friendships Tyrwhitt made on this journey made it possible to
launch her transnational career and participate in the revival of
prewar networks of exchange established by progressive reformers
(such as Geddes), organizations such as IFHTP and CIAM, and aca-
demics, notably those based at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design
(GSD), where Dean Joseph Hudnut had been an early supporter of
Rowse’s School of Planning at AA.
Hudnut hosted Tyrwhitt’s visit to Harvard just as GSD was begin-
ning to implement a new Regional Planning Program under the
direction of G. Holmes Perkins along Geddessian lines. Recom-
mended by John Gaus (1864–1969) in 1943, it integrated planning
and design. [Mumford discovered when he met him in 1929 that
Gaus first encountered Geddes’s ideas while a Harvard undergrad-
uate; Mumford subsequently kept Gaus informed about Geddes’
work (Novak, 1995: 287). Hudnut arranged for Tyrwhitt to meet
with the multi-disciplinary Regional Planning advisory commit-
tee, among them Catherine Bauer (later Wurster). Connecting with
these distinguished colleagues reinforced Tyrwhitt’s determination
to continue her work promoting Geddessian planning education
and practice in Britain.
Tyrwhitt was also welcomed by émigré CIAM members in
the US, notably Giedion and Lazlo Moholy-Nagy, who shared an
ecological philosophy that resonated with Geddes’s. They also
inspired in Tyrwhitt—previously preoccupied with social and eco-
nomic aspects of planning— a new appreciation of aesthetics.
Back in England she continued her work framed by this new
perspective—which was aligned with the approach to regional
planning at GSD: “A plan is a design,” she wrote in “Training the
Planner” (1946: 210–11); “the planner must be a designer; . . . a
creative artist who not only sees what is in terms of what could be,
17
but has the power to set this down in such a manner that his vision
is shared and understood by others.”
4.1. Geddes in India (1947)
Tyrwhitt completed editing her selection of Geddes’s reports on
Indian towns in the context of her new aesthetic perspective and
international outlook. She was immersed in the spirit of utopian
optimism buoying those who converged in London and Paris to
re-establish pre-war ties in the context of the new UN organiza-
tions then being established. Both the UN Department of Social
Affairs and UNESCO were considering programs on housing and
community planning, which UNESCO General Secretary Julian Hux-
ley considered “human ecology.” Tyrwhitt wanted to demonstrate
the relevance of Geddes’ work in India to the worldwide task of
reconstruction: realization of the new world order based on cooper-
ation. Mumford—who visited APRR in 1946, as did Holmes Perkins
and Bauer Wurster—agreed to write an Introduction to Tyrwhitt’s
book.
To create Patrick Geddes in India (1947) Tyrwhitt essentially
crafted a new text. She reviewed 24 planning reports and culled 73
(small) pages of text from 9 of them. She then organized her selec-
tions in chapters, each beginning with a bibliography of extracts.
Tyrwhitt acknowledged she also rewrote some passages to elim-
inate verbal obscurities while conserving Geddes’s “picturesque
style.” Arthur Geddes (1947) assured her: “PG would be grateful,
I’m sure, to you for pulling this off.”
Tyrwhitt (1947a: 6) chose “passages that clearly illustrated the
practical application of those town planning principles for which
Patrick Geddes stood.” These included: “diagnosis before treat-
ment,” (survey before plan); “conservative surgery,” (rehabilitation
rather than removal); and especially, “bio-regionalism,” (people
and place are inseparable). That is “what makes this book par-
ticularly apt and timely for the days ahead,” Mumford (1947: 9)
affirmed. “[O]ne cannot appreciate Geddes’s regionalism unless one
also appreciates his internationalism, his universalism.”
Tyrwhitt also highlighted Geddes’s thoughts on political decen-
tralization, civic responsibility, voluntary cooperation and personal
development. Moreover, through Geddes’s words, Tyrwhitt urged
Westerners to learn about aesthetics from the “wisdom of the East,”
namely, the importance of seeing “life as a whole” (1947: 26). “As
a result, civic beauty in India has existed at all levels, from humble
homes and simple shrines to palaces magnificent and temples sub-
lime.” Tyrwhitt (1947a: 6) underscored this message with striking
photographs, by Anthony Denny, of daily life in Indian villages and
towns to illustrate “the persistent loveliness and vitality Patrick
Geddes so much admired.”
Coinciding with India’s independence from Britain, and the
UN’s preliminary technical assistance program, the publication of
Tyrwhitt’s book had significant impacts; it was certainly read by
many more people than had read Geddes’ original reports. Amer-
ican architect Albert Mayer, an advisor to Jawaharlal Nehru on
community development projects, reviewed Geddes in India enthu-
siastically in a Bombay newspaper. Encouraged by Bauer Wurster,
Tyrwhitt sent a copy to Nehru. In his report as leader of the first
UN expert mission to South East Asia in 1950, Jacob Crane quoted
extensively from Geddes in India to illustrate an “‘organic’ process
of village improvement” to be emulated. Turner (2000) credits his
encounter with Geddes in India as the inspiration for his work in
Peru. Johnson-Marshall (1985: 416) considered it among “the most
significant books of the time.”
4.2. Planning education: linking theory and practice
Determination to build a new social order in Britain led to leg-
islation including the 1947 Town and Country Planning Act, which
18 E. Shoshkes / Landscape and Urban Planning 166 (2017) 15–24
codified Geddes’ “survey before plan” mantra. To meet the urgent
need for comprehensive data Tyrwhitt expanded APRR’s Infor-
mation Service, offering bimonthly abstracts of APRR’s work and
“matters of interest in the planning world,” as well as data visual-
ization and compilation services. A monthly Reference Sheet listed
acquisitions by APRR’s library and featured an annotated bibliogra-
phy organized according to APRR’s own index—an adaptation of
the Universal Decimal Classification (UDC) system (designed by
Geddes’s collaborator Paul Otlet). APRR’s index arranged the main
topics of physical planning and related subjects from a planner’s
unique perspective to facilitate synoptic study of city regions.
In “Training the Planner in Britain,” Tyrwhitt (1947b: 212-13)
presented her pedagogical approach to an international audience:
“lecture (the theory of planning), survey (the discovery of the prob-
lem), analysis (the appreciation of the problem), designing the
plans (the solution of the problem) and implementing the plans
(realization of the ideal) are part and parcel of one process” [empha-
sis added].
4.3. Town and country planning textbook
Tyrwhitt’s last contribution to APRR, before its closure in 1950,
was to serve as general editor of its Town and Country Planning
Textbook (1950). Tyrwhitt (1950a: xv) explained that the “remark-
able success” of the Correspondence Course convinced APPR “that
the general publication of such a course would meet the grow-
ing demand.” Producing this textbook—the first of its kind in
England—involved supplementing Correspondence Course lectures
with new chapters on geography, law and economics, addressing
requirements established by the 1947 Act.
APRR’s decision to publish the Textbook was probably also
triggered by formation of the Schuster Committee on the Quali-
fications for Planners, in May 1948, to assess the scope of town
and country planning and the role of planners in order to guide
universities that were building programs. The Schuster Report was
published in October 1950, around the same time as APRR’s Text-
book, and recommended a similar approach—echoing Gaus’ (1943)
proposal— concluding that planning was “primarily a social and
economic activity limited but not determined by the technical
possibilities of design.” APRR’s textbook attempted to define the
curriculum, and organize the related parts of this new field of exper-
tise, at a critical juncture in the history of the profession, when
planning practice was being consolidated and planning education
standardized.
Tyrwhitt explicitly framed the contents of the Textbook as
combining Geddes’s triad, Place-Folk-Work; and CIAM’s doc-
trine of “living, working, developing mind and body, circulating.”
She presents that synthesis in her contributions—“Society and
Environment: A Historical Review,” “Surveys for Planning,” and
“Bibliography”—which together present a view of modern physical
planning as:
• grounded in an evolutionary macro-historical theoretical per-
spective;
• based on empirical research, using the survey method both as an
analytic tool and as a means of civic engagement in the planning
process; and
• a holistic process that integrates social, economic and environ-
mental factors.
In “Society and Environment,” Tyrwhitt’s (1950b: 96) history of
town planning—conceived in ecological terms as “the study of man
in relation to his environment” —begins with an analysis of “univer-
sal needs of the community life” and “considerations under which
communities develop a high type of civilization,” i.e., evolve. She
surveys western civilization from ancient Mesopotamia to indus-
trialized Britain, and connects this past to a vision of the future:
designating the Geddessian approach as the way forward for mod-
ern planners, as distinct from the place-less Garden City tradition.
Tyrwhitt includes a long citation from Geddes’s Cities in Evolution
(1915: 397), emphasizing the planner’s role as a designer: “each
true design, each valid scheme should and must embody the full
utilisation of its local and regional condition and be the expres-
sion of local and regional personality.. . . which it is the task of the
planner, as master-artist to awaken.”
Tyrwhitt (1950b: 139–40) argued that since 1900 planning
exponents tended to fall into two camps: “The first link Folk and
Work. They believe that the best life can be lived in a new town of
limited size closely related to sufficient industry to provide its pop-
ulation with their daily bread.” This tradition gave rise to Britain’s
1946 New Towns Act. “The second link Folk, Work and Place. They
are convinced of the inter-relation of history and environment with
man’s daily life and the problems of congested, unhealthy, over-
grown cities can only be solved when these cities are considered
as a whole, in their regional setting.” Tyrwhitt finds expression of
this outlook in CIAM’s statements, citing several, notably the 1947
redefinition of CIAM’s aims as: “To work for the creation of a phys-
ical environment that will satisfy man’s emotional and material
needs and stimulate his spiritual growth.” In conclusion, Tyrwhitt
quotes Giedion, articulating a version of Folk-Work-Place, thus des-
ignating him as an heir to the Geddessian tradition.
The modern town planner is not primarily concerned with archi-
tecture. He seeks to discover how the town came into being and
how it has reached its present state of growth. He wants to know
as much as he can of the site and of its relations to the surround-
ing district and the country as a whole. Above all he studies the
different categories of people who have to be accommodated, each
according to their manner of life (from Space Time and Architecture
p. 540).
Detailed guidelines for planners to use transparent thematic
map overlays that Tyrwhitt presented in the Textbook were widely
adopted in Britain and became a standard feature of ecological plan-
ning practice (Collins, Steiner, & Rushman, 2001). Significantly, she
also reiterated Geddes’ ideal, that by collecting, coordinating and
visualizing information, the survey method could make “commu-
nity planning a truly democratic process. . .. The community must
see that its varied problems are inter-related and it must study
many of them concurrently” Tyrwhitt (1950c: 146-47).
4.4. Cities in evolution (1949)
While working on the Textbook Tyrwhitt was also producing an
abridged edition of Geddes’s Cities in Evolution (1915, 1949 ed.).
The impetus for the reissue of this book—then out of print for more
than a generation—arose when Arthur Geddes shipped back to Lon-
don the second Cities and Town Planning Exhibit (which Unwin,
Pepler and Lanchester assembled to replace the original after it
was lost at sea). Tyrwhitt served as “general editor” of the new
edition, which she produced with Pepler on behalf of APRR, and
in collaboration with Arthur Geddes. They hoped the book would
again serve—as Geddes had intended it would on the eve of World
War I—as a guide for post-war reconstruction and renewal. Here,
Geddes spelled out his utopian realism: “Eutopia . . . lies in the city
around us; and it must be planned and realized, here or nowhere, by
us as its citizens—each a citizen of both the actual and the ideal city
seen increasingly as one.” Tyrwhitt (1949a: x) explained: “Perhaps
it is only now . . . that the time is really ripe for the reprinting of
this book. Now that simultaneous thinking—a process that seemed
almost magical when demonstrated by Geddes with the aid of his
folded papers—has become insisted upon in the popular writings
of every philosophical scientist.”
 E. Shoshkes / Landscape and Urban Planning 166 (2017) 15–24
In an apparent reference to the debate on planning education,
Tyrwhitt (1949a: xi) reiterated the Rowse/APRR mantra that appli-
cation of Geddes’s principles “can probably only be achieved by the
gradual development of a ‘composite mind’ . . . carefully cultivated
by a close co-operative training between equals at a post-graduate
level.” But she emphasized that Geddes “was far more concerned
that the ordinary citizen should have a vision and a comprehension
of the possibilities of his own city.” To that end, she stressed “the
need for a Civic Exhibition and a permanent center for Civic Studies
in every town. . .. This is something that with all our discussions on
the need for and value of ‘citizen participation’ in town planning
has yet to be given a trial.”
Underscoring this message, Tyrwhitt’s edition featured a selec-
tion of documents from the second Cities and Town Planning
Exhibit, with text drawn from Geddes’ original Catalogue. This
material, along with three Appendices selected by Tyrwhitt, effec-
tively replaced five chapters that, considered dated, were omitted.
In welcoming this enriched edition, Mumford (1950: 82) wrote:
“for a generation that hardly knows Geddes, except at second hand,
these additions more than make up for the losses.”
One appendix, “The Geddes Diagrams,” featured an essay by
John F.C. Turner, one of Tyrwhitt’s former soldier students then
studying architecture at AA, analyzing Geddes’s Notation of Life
“thinking machine” diagram as “an early general systems” model
(Fig. 1). (Tyrwhitt sent Turner’s draft to Giedion, who offered his
advice, providing an example of how they created a transnational
system of knowledge that sparked creative cross-fertilization of
Geddes’s ideas among their students.) This Appendix also included
an excerpt of a talk by Geddes explaining how his Notation of Life
diagram models a process of urban evolution. Additionally, since
the book makes frequent reference to the Valley Section—one of
Geddes’ key concepts—Tyrwhitt concluded her Introduction with
her transcription of Geddes’ description of it, from a lecture he
gave at the New School for Social Research in New York in 1923. In
publishing these texts, Tyrwhitt sparked new interest in the con-
temporary relevance of Geddes’s notational language, as well as in
his planning ideas.
If, as Geddes biographer Helen Meller (1990: 321) argues,
Cities in Evolution is Geddes’s “most significant publication after
his death,” this is largely due to Tyrwhitt’s widely read edition.
Notably, McHarg, who returned to Scotland in 1950, read that edi-
tion (along with APRR’s Textbook), as did Israeli architect-planner
Glikson (1955) and British anarchist Ward (1983: 137), who cited
Tyrwhitt’s clarion call in her Introduction,“that the ordinary citizen
should have a vision and a comprehension for the possibilities of his
own city.” Giedion referred to her Introduction in his first lecture
to the Urban Design Seminar at Harvard in 1954 (Shoshkes 2013:
169). Thus it was Tyrwhitt’s presentation of Geddes’s texts that sup-
plied the foundational ideas and inspiration for the development of
ecological urbanist concepts incorporating regional planning, civic
engagement and holistic urban/community design.
5. Theorizing: a Geddessian line of modern planning
thought
By 1950, Tyrwhitt had embarked on her new career as a transna-
tional actor. Her thinking evolved significantly as she engaged in
a range of activities: teaching a course on utopian traditions in
town planning at Yale; writing the introduction to an issue of the
UN’s new Housing and Town Planning Bulletin; producing one CIAM
book—A Decade of New Architecture (1951) with Giedion and devel-
oping another on town plannning with CIAM president Jose Luis
Sert. As she searched for her own voice she continued to find inspi-
ration in—and speak through—Geddes’ words.
19
5.1. The Valley section
While Tyrwhitt had conveyed her views silently in Geddes in
India, distilling the meaning of his reports, and quietly in Cities in
Evolution, pruning and fortifying the text, in her article, “The Valley
Section: Geddes’ World Image,” she uses excerpts of his lectures
to articulate her interpretation. Tyrwhitt’s (1951: 6) stated aim
was to remind planners—for whom Geddes’ phrases “survey before
plan” and “place-folk-work” had become commonplace—that Ged-
des’ “real contribution to planning thought and practice was to
link these two concepts indissolubly both with each other and
with Comte’s theory of ‘Peoples and Chiefs: Intellectuals and
Emotionals”’— the archtypical “carriers” of a culture. She dug
deeply in Geddes’ lectures going back to 1881 to find passages that
clarified the inter-relationship between the Notation of Life and
Valley Section diagrams (Fig. 2).
Among the many ideas on display in this article, Tyrwhitt
shows that the Notation of Life grid and Valley Section together
operated as a model for systematic thinking about guided social
evolution: social learning operating in space and time at multiple
scales. From this perspective, city/region, part/whole, subjec-
tive/objective, past/present/future, are inextricably related. This
model provided a framework for comparative, historical study of
human settlements; and, an analytic approach to urban problems
arising from complex interactions of functionally interdependent
parts and developmental processes. The key to planning for the
future is to understand—and raise awareness about—trends and
their consequences. Hope for the future lies in our ability to set
goals and follow a course of action: imagine a future, grounded in
the realities of a particular place, and choose a path, among alterna-
tives, to realize it. Therein lies the connection between the regional
survey, an imaginative plan, and civic design.
Tyrwhitt strategically timed publication of “The Valley Section”
in January 1951, to influence debate within CIAM on urban plan-
ning and design. In June 1950, Sert had asked Tyrwhitt to reconcile
two competing themes for the 8th CIAM congress. The MARS group
wanted to focus on the urban Core: centers of civic life. Swiss
architect Le Corbusier wanted to use a grid his ASCORAL (Assem-
blée de constructeurs pour une rénovation architecturale) French
CIAM group had devised as a framework for discussing projects and
developing CIAM planning principles (Fig. 3). Tyrwhitt’s solution
to this conflict was to modify Corbusier’s Grid to examine the Core
at five ‘scale levels’ of community: housing group, neighborhood,
town or city sector, city, and metropolis—essentially, the hierarchy
of social units represented in Geddes’ Valley Section. Her formu-
lation was labelled the MARS Grid (Fig. 4). Her article, “The Valley
Section: Geddes’ World Image,” provides a theoretical underpin-
ning for the MARS Grid, based on her explication of how Geddes’
Valley Section and Notation of Life Diagrams work together.
The group of young architects known as Team X later adopted
Geddes’s Valley Section as a humanistic alternative to the for-
malistic Corbusian line of CIAM town planning ideas; their
understanding of the Valley Section was based on reading Tyr-
whitt’s translations of Geddes’ texts and conversations with
Tyrwhitt, who advised them. But Tyrwhitt used Geddes’ ideas to
enrich CIAM discourse, not subvert it.
5.2. The core and the urban constellation
Tyrwhitt applied her understanding of Geddes’ “world image” in
developing Geddes’ idea of the conurbation into what she termed
“the urban constellation:” the dynamic equilibrium of cities, vil-
lages and towns organized around “a vital city center.” At the
8th CIAM Congress, held outside London in June 1951—and in the
accompanying book, Heart of the City (1952)—Tyrwhitt presented
the urban constellation as an organizing principle for the Core at
20 E. Shoshkes / Landscape and Urban Planning 166 (2017) 15–24

Fig. 1. Geddes’ Notation of Life Diagram.

Fig. 2. Geddes’ Notation of Life Superimposed on the Valley Region.

the five ‘scale levels’ of community. In defining the Core as “the
gathering place of the people. . . a physical setting for the expres-
sion of collective emotion,” Tyrwhitt assigned it the position in
the evolutionary process Geddes described in the Notation of Life:
where “the voice of the people at its best — morally and emotion-
ally” is heard, expressing the civic consciousness that gives rise
to the “flowering of cities” (in Tyrwhitt 1951: 58). The “cure for
our. . .amorphous modern cities” was not decentralization but “the
creation of new Cores—new concentrations of activity—by a visual
emphasis upon centers of integration rather than upon bands of
separation,” Tyrwhitt argued (1952: 103–4).
 E. Shoshkes / Landscape and Urban Planning 166 (2017) 15–24 21

Fig. 3. Le Corbusier’s CIAM Grid.

Fig. 4. “The MARS Grid”.

Summarizing the resolutions of CIAM 8, Tyrwhitt concluded
that the Core as a means for the “animation of spontaneous
nature. . .seems a heritage that our group, after twenty years’ work,
can now hand on to the next generation. Our task has been to
resolve the first cycle of the work of CIAM by finding a means to
transform the passive individual in society into an active participant
of social life” (“Short Outline of the Core” 1952: 168). Tyrwhitt had
succeeded in establishing a Geddessian line of thought within the
planning branch of the post war modern movement.
6. Tyrwhitt in India
The impetus for the next stage in the development of Tyrwhitt’s
evolving set of Geddessian ideas was her appointment, in spring
1953, as director of a UN Technical Assistance (TA) mission to
advise the Government of India’s International Exhibition of Low
Cost Housing, and direct a concurrent UN Seminar on Housing and
Community Improvement in Asia and the Far East. By then Tyrwhitt
had already had an impact on UN policy, via Jacob Crane, as noted
above. Published in 1951 Crane’s report, with its extensive excerpt
from Geddes in India as an appendix, guided the UN’s subsequent
activities in Asia and the Far East.
6.1. “The village center”
Tyrwhitt adapted a “CIAM-inspired Core” for the UN’s contri-
bution to, and centerpiece for, the Indian Government’s housing
exhibition: a working model of a village center set amid experi-
mental houses (Shoshkes, 2014). Tyrwhitt (1957b: 70) explained
that her intent was to demonstrate an integrated approach link-
ing rural housing policy to the revival of village life, which “in its
fullest is based primarily upon the restoration of responsibility to
the village panchayat—a restoration of . . .self-reliance and pride.”
Her account of this project, “The Village Centre,” was published in
the proceedings of IFHTP’s first South East Asia regional conference,
which was held following the UN seminar and involved many of the
same people. She successfully employed this project as one means
of embedding her Geddessian approach into UN discussions at this
critical initial stage in the evolution of the TA program and commu-
nity development policy that formed the basis for global discourse
on sustainable design.
22 E. Shoshkes / Landscape and Urban Planning 166 (2017) 15–24
Fig. 5. Doxiadis’ Ekistics Grid.
Tyrwhitt’s concept of the village center emphasized the sit-
ing, design, and function of community facilities, including: a
multi-purpose school, health clinic integrated with environmental
sanitation initiatives, crafts workshop, communal seed store, and a
plant for collecting methane gas from cow dung to be used as fuel.
This ensemble embodied “the integration of mind, body, hands and
the good earth” as a “living actual reality” in the villagers’ living
environment (Tyrwhitt 1957b: 220). The construction, operation
and use of these buildings employed self-help techniques, coop-
erative methods and appropriate technology using local materials
and skills available in the average village. Moreover, those activi-
ties and services aligned with local traditions of self-government
and the teachings of Gandhi, whose spirit infused the project, and
whose presence was enshrined there in a replica of his hut.
6.2. UN seminar on housing and community improvement
Planning education was one of the main topics discussed at the
UN seminar—which was attended by six alumni of SPRRD now
working in the region. The delegates affirmed the importance of
comprehensive physical planning, and the particular signifiance of
regional planning—as pioneered by Geddes—in South East Asia. Tyr-
whitt helped UN staff translate recommendations that emerged
from the seminar into proposals to governments in the region.
One proposal was to create a planning school in South East Asia
(which she later helped establish). Other recommendations for
comprehensive housing and community improvement programs,
encouraging mutual self-help and participatory practices within a
regional planning framework that integrated economic, social and
physical concerns, were incorporated into the Long-Range Inter-
national Program of Concerted Action in the Field of Housing and
Related Facilities, adopted by the UN in 1959. Tyrwhitt was among
the small group who helped steer UN policy in this Geddessian
direction. Tyrwhitt’s disciple John F.C. Turner later built on her
legacy.
7. Urban planning and design education at Harvard and
beyond
From 1955 to 1965 Tyrwhitt’s concepts of the Core and the
Urban Constellation came to the fore when she helped Sert, as
Dean of Harvard’s Graduate School of Design (GSD), launch a new
program in urban design as the “meeting ground of architects,
landscape architects and city planners.” Tyrwhitt instilled her Ged-
dessian line of CIAM planning thought into the discourse at the
Urban Design conferences she organized, in the seminars and stu-
dios she taught, and in her participation in Giedion’s seminars.
Ultimately, Sert’s narrower vision of urban design as “big architec-
ture” prevailed at GSD, however. When current GSD Dean Moshen
Mostafavi cited Sert’s Urban Design (UD) program as a precedent
for Harvard’s new focus on Ecological Urbanism—as an overarch-
ing framework for the design of resilient cities—he missed the role
Tyrwhitt played in shaping the broad, Geddessian vision that invig-
orated the early UD program in its early, short-lived, heyday.
Tyrwhitt gained a significant ally when Martin Meyerson—a stu-
dent of both Bauer Wurster and Gaus—joined the GSD faculty in
1957. In collaboration with Meyerson, and in partnership with the
UN, Tyrwhitt played a major role in establishing a new school of
Regional and City Planning within the Institute of Technology in
Bandung (ITB), Indonesia. The Bandung curriculum followed Ged-
des in its use of surveys, the region as the planning unit, and
emphasis on research. The UN regarded this school as a pilot for
a global system of research and training institutes. Tyrwhitt spent
six months in Bandung in 1960 getting the program up and running.
She was greatly assisted by the UN resident adviser in Djakarta at
that time, Ken Watts, a SPRRD graduate. Watts (1997) considered
Tyrwhitt a mentor, and her Geddes editions as guides for his work
in Asia.
7.1. Ekistics
Tyrwhitt was able to further develop and disseminate her evolv-
ing synthesis of Geddessian ideas through her collaboration with
the Greek planner Constantinos Doxiadis, whom she had met at
the UN seminar in India, when he was just launching his interna-
tional consulting firm. In 1955, she began publishing a newsletter
for Doxiadis’s far-flung staff as well as U.N. TA personnel; that
was the beginning of the journal, EKISTICS, Doxiadis’ term for a
new “science of human settlements.” Tyrwhitt (1957a: iii) used
her editorials to promote her view of ekistics as human ecology,
“the inter-relation of man and environment, including the systems
of human settlement.” She saw the journal as a means of defin-
 E. Shoshkes / Landscape and Urban Planning 166 (2017) 15–24
ing this emerging field by organizing existing knowledge and ideas,
scattered world-wide. In 1964 Doxiadis asked Tyrwhitt to adapt
a grid he had devised as a system for classifying the contents of
the journal (Fig. 5). Tyrwhitt (1965, 10) recognized the connection
between Doxiadis’ Ekistic grid and two previous attempts to design
such “grids of inter-relations, each one building to some extent
on the last”— Le Corbusier’s CIAM grid and Geddes’ Notation of
Life diagram. She refined her analysis of these three diagrams over
the next decade, demonstrating that ekistics was grounded in Ged-
des’ evolutionary perspective and a further development of CIAM
urbanism.
Tyrwhitt also used her editorial voice to promote the contin-
uing relevance of Geddes’ own “essentially ekistic. . .approach to
past, present and future needs” to “today’s emerging town planning
practice—with its suspicions of ‘master plans’ and its emphasis on
continuous investigations, re-programing and the incorporation of
feedback mechanisms” (Tyrwhitt, 1966: 146).
Perhaps the most influential way in which Tyrwhitt introduced
her synthesis of Geddessian and modernist ideas into discourse
on ekistics was through the important role she played in the ten
annual Delos Symposia which Doxiadis hosted aboard a ship cruis-
ing the Aegean beginning in 1963; Tyrwhitt served as the sole
rapporteur and published the “official report” in EKISTICS. It was due
to the consensus that emerged from the discussions on Doxiadis’
“floating think-tank” and related meetings that the UN resolved to
convene a Conference on Problems of the Human Environment in
1972 in Stockholm. In preparation for this conference, and what
was to be the final Delos Symposion that year—Doxiadis used
the Greek spelling “symposion” to convey an informal meeting
(The Delos, 1963: 205)—Tyrwhitt and Gwen Bell compiled Human
Identity in the Built Environment (1972), an anthology of EKISTICS
articles. Fittingly, Tyrwhitt introduced this collection by reiterat-
ing her comparison of the grids used by Doxiadis, CIAM and Geddes,
reminding readers of the foundational significance of Geddes’ sys-
tematic approach.
The Stockholm conference paved the way for the UN Envi-
ronmental Program, and the first UN Conference on Human
Settlements (Habitat I) in 1976. By then the origin of this grow-
ing global consensus on sustainable development in Geddes’ ideas
was well known. In 1976 Colin Ward and Geddes biographer Philip
Boardman circulated “The Patrick Geddes Proposal for Habitat I”
to urge delegates to adopt “Geddes’ goals and practical methods of
planning,” and “examine his ‘early ecological warning,”’ a proposal
that Tyrwhitt (1976) heartily endorsed, and arguably, had paved
the way for.
8. Conclusion
Tyrwhitt was on her way to Delos 3 in June 1965 when she lec-
tured at AA on grids used by Ekistics, CIAM and Geddes. Both she and
Delos 3 clearly had an impact on one AA student at that time, archi-
tect Rem Koolhaus. In his keynote speech at a conference launching
GSD’s emphasis on Ecological Urbanism, Koolhaus (2010, 62) cited
Delos 3 as an exemplary event where “intellectuals discussed at a
high level the issues we are discussing today,” producing diagrams
“we barely know how to do now.” Yet like Mostafavi, Koolhaus also
missed Tyrwhitt’s role in both orchestrating that event, and ensur-
ing that Geddes’ ideas and diagrams were at the heart of those
discussions, which so inspired his generation in conceptualizing
Ecological Urbanism.
Tyrwhitt played an essential role in establishing Geddes’ legacy,
through her editions of his writings in the 1940s, and through
her formulation and promotion of a Geddessian line of theory and
practice in the planning arm of the postwar modern movement.
This involved acts of translation, both rewriting Geddes’ original
23
texts and organizing them to be relevant to the architects and
planners at mid-century who were dealing with rebuilding the
postwar world. Tyrwhitt’s translations and synthesis of Geddes’
ideas became part of the canon through her publications; they
were disseminated globally through her work with CIAM, the UN
and Ekistics, among others; and they were institutionalized in the
new academic programs for urban planning and design she helped
established, notably at Harvard and in South East Asia. The con-
temporary discourse on ecological urbanism builds on the legacy
of Tyrwhitt’s Geddessian translations.
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Ellen Shoshkes is an architect and planner based in Portland Oregon. She is currently
on the faculty at the Toulon School of Urban Studies and Planning, Portland State
University (PSU), where she teaches courses on Urban Housing and Development,
and Community and the Built Environment. Prior to relocating to Portland she ran
a consultancy based in New Jersey. In that capacity she served as the director for
two national school design competitions. From 2000 through 2001, as Senior Urban
Designer, at the NJ Office of State Planning, she helped lead a campaign to raise
public awareness about the opportunity to leverage the state’s spending on new
urban schools to serve as a catalyst for revitalization, by supporting the creation of
schools that serve as community centers. Ellen has written widely in academic and
professional journals on housing, community development, and topics in the history
of urban planning and design. She is the author Jaqueline Tyrwhitt: A Transnational
Life in Urban Planning and Design (Ashgate 2013). She holds a Ph.D. in Urban Planning
from Rutgers University, and a Masters of Architecture from MIT.