Abstract
In this chapter I focus on the work of Sir Patrick Geddes (1868–1932) who saw the city as a natural geographical event and an ‘organ of human evolution’ and spent part of his career searching for a unified scientific approach to the city. Geddes’ influence extended internationally. As an example I examine some of the work of Japanese architect Kon Wajirō (1888–1973) who developed his own phenomenological method for analysing urban life. Analysing the concept of evolution put forward by Geddes and Kon demonstrates how broadly this term was understood in the early twentieth century. Following this historical example, I argue that their view of cities evolving towards cooperation helps us to think about them as more than mere sites of competition.
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Notes
- 1.
‘Neo-Darwinism recognizes just one mode of natural selection: compare a population before and after a single generation of a single species. The world stays the same. The ecological background remains the same. The population remains the same size. But individual genes increase or decrease in their prevalence within that same population, based on their average contribution to the fitness of their owners’ (Mitteldorf 2012, 90).
- 2.
Batty (2007) and Marshall (2009).
- 3.
No less a figure than Joseph Schumpeter talked about Darwinian evolution as an explanation of change being viewed by historians and ethnologists as being ‘unscientific’, ‘extra-scientific mysticism’ and ‘dilettantism’ (Schumpeter 1949, 57–58).
- 4.
Kennedy (2011, 161–162).
- 5.
Example: even among contemporary biologists the emphasis on competition and survival of the fittest as a driver of evolution is not by any means uncontested. For example Cobb (2008).
- 6.
Welter andWhyte (2002, 93, 105, 132) note numerous places where Geddes’ quest for an urban science can be identified. For example, in Geddes’ use of Ernst Haeckel’s biogenetic basic law.
- 7.
Except for the pioneering work of Izumi Kuroishi see Kuroishi (1998) Traganou and Izumi (2014), and Kuroishi (2016).
- 8.
Amati et al. (2017).
- 9.
‘Ideas, as Bergson rightly teaches, are but sections of life: movement is of its essence’ (Geddes 1915, 363).
- 10.
Amati et al. (2017).
- 11.
Welter and Whyte (2002, 20).
- 12.
Welter and Whyte (2002, 88).
- 13.
Amati et al. (2017).
- 14.
Cities and Town Planning Exhibition ‘Ui Bresail’ Catalogue T/GED/6/11/3 p 3 1911.
- 15.
‘Benefits of Expositions - Prof Patrick Geddes an ardent advocate of such fairs’ T-GED 6/6/18.
- 16.
Famously, he coined the term ‘survival of the fittest’ which was adopted by Charles Darwin.
- 17.
This synthetic, scalar, teleological view of society was shared by Bergson but the latter was fiercely critical of Spencer’s mechanistic model applied to biology and society. Bergson reserves a whole chapter of his book to critiquing Spencer’s idea of evolution (Bergson 1984, 364).
- 18.
Even though they might casually use the term evolution.
- 19.
Geddes and Thomson (1889) also see Renwick (2009).
- 20.
Renwick (2009).
- 21.
Geddes and Thomson (1889, 478).
- 22.
‘Wider relations among the members of the same species, between allied species, and finally between practically unrelated ones’ (Geddes and Thomson 1889, 480).
- 23.
Geddes and Thomson (1889) ‘[...] the measure of evolution of a species being expressible in terms of the progress of its (1) self-maintaining and (2) species-maintaining functions is equally capable of statement in biological, psychological, sociological or [...] in ethical terms’.
- 24.
Geddes and Thomson (1889, 484).
- 25.
British Western Daily Press 14/9/98 T-GED 7/1/30 Miscellaneous papers relating to the Outlook Tower activities.
- 26.
Leith Observer 23/9/98 T-GED 7/1/30 Miscellaneous papers relating to the Outlook Tower activities.
- 27.
Page (2020), Shoshkes (2016), Mumford and Geddes (1995), and Glikson (1971).
- 28.
Taylor (1998, 159). Also see Sutcliffe (1988) who describes how town planning was seen as either Garden Cities, suburban extensions to existing cities and hovering ‘more obscurely on the fringes of the debate’ the idea of a regional or national planning system.
- 29.
‘Benefits of Expositions - Prof Patrick Geddes an ardent advocate of such fairs’ T-GED 6/6/18.
- 30.
Such as in his work in India (Khan 2011).
- 31.
Geddes (1915, 362).
- 32.
Geddes (1915, 362) ‘We realise for ourselves how this dull town has had beauty and youth. We see how it has lived through ages of faith and had its great days of fellowship; how it has thrilled to victory, wept in defeat’.
- 33.
But also, necessary as much for an artist as it is for an engineer, a deep sociological investigation into the interrelation between the city and its citizens.
- 34.
Geddes (1915, 363).
- 35.
Geddes (1915, 365).
- 36.
Kuroishi (1998, 10) See Note.
- 37.
Example: see Geddes (1915, 88, 363, 253).
- 38.
Kuroishi (1998, 252).
- 39.
An analogical approach seeks to uncover the hidden context of the built environment inside apparent form, for example focusing on the evolution of the capitals of columns to draw conclusions about the historical contexts for these shifts in what others would regard as ornamentation (Kuroishi 1998, 252).
- 40.
Kuroishi (1998, 88).
- 41.
Especially the Japanese secessionists, known as the bunri-ha (2016).
- 42.
Kuroishi (1998, 216).
- 43.
Or, Kougengaku in Kanji.
- 44.
Kon and Yoshida (1930, 22).
- 45.
Notwithstanding recent archival work. There is clearly more to be done see Kuroishi (2016).
- 46.
Kon (1917a).
- 47.
‘Cities are for people as a habitat and not for nation building’ (Kon 1917b, 723).
- 48.
Welter and Whyte (2002, 60–66).
- 49.
Geddes (1915, 26).
- 50.
Welter and Whyte (2002, 132).
- 51.
Kon (1917a, 550).
- 52.
Kon (1917a, 550).
- 53.
Geddes (1915, 71).
- 54.
Kon (1917a, 552).
- 55.
‘From the small town to the rapidly growing town or all the cities that are trying to expand the contents, the transitional period of the above sadness must be passed. It seems like a growing urban faculty. In short, it can be said that there is an intervening period between village life and urban life at a very dangerous time, and it produces dangerous results for itself, such as the adolescence of life’ (Kon 1917a, 552).
- 56.
I find a resonance here with Karl Polyani’s famous work (Polanyi and MacIver 1944).
- 57.
Kon (1917b, 726).
- 58.
This figure shows beggars on wasteland at Tsukiji in Kyoubashi in June 1926. It records the temperature at 26 degrees and observation from 1:06 pm to 5:20 pm with details of their clothing, its patches and its colours. For other examples see Traganou and Izumi (2014).
- 59.
To this chapter could have been added the founder of Belgian urbanism, Louis Van Der Swaelmen (1883–1929) and the organicist planning emergent in Czechoslovakia and the work of Camillo Sitte (1843–1903) (Danneels 2019; Dostalík 2017; Hnilica 2014).
- 60.
John Ruskin was an influence on both. His writings on aesthetics and architecture caused Kon to make an argument for an enhanced aesthetics or ‘line of beauty’ to be needed to calm the frayed nerves of those living in cities (Kon 1918, 12).
- 61.
Maruyama (2013).
- 62.
Whyte (1974).
- 63.
Hairston and De Stasio (1988).
- 64.
See Mehmood (2010) for further examples.
- 65.
So called ‘Lamarck’s revenge on Darwin via human history’ (Hobsbawm 2004).
- 66.
Marshall (2009).
- 67.
See Mehmood (2010) for a description.
- 68.
Noble (2011).
- 69.
Mitteldorf (2012, 90) Margulis herself was building on the ideas of nineteenth and early twentieth century scholars such as Konstantin Mereschkowski and Hermann Reinheimer.
- 70.
Rodenbiker (2020).
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Amati, M. (2021). Evolving the City. In: The City and the Super-Organism. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-3977-7_5
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