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The Modern Urban Landscape: 1880 to the Present
Why do the cities of the late twentieth century look as they do? What values do their appearance express and enfold? Their sheer scale and the durability of their materials assure that our cities will inform future generations about our era, in the same way that gothic cathedrals and medieval squares tell us something of the Middle Ages. In the meantime, our urban landscapes can tell us much about ourselves. For E. C. Relph, the urban landscape must be envisioned as a total environment―not just streets and buildings but billboards and parking meters as well. The Modern Urban Landscape traces the developments since 1880 in architecture, technology, planning, and society that have formed the visual context of daily life. Each of these shaping influences is often viewed in isolation, but Relph surveys the ways in which they have operated independently to create what we see when we walk down a street, shop in a mall, or stare through a windshield on an expressway. Two sets of ideas and fashions, Relph argues, have had an especially important impact on urban landscapes in the twentieth century. An "internationalism" made possible by new building technologies and more rapid communications has replaced regional style and custom as the dominant feature of city appearance, while a firm belief in the merits of self-consciousness has imposed logical analysis and technical manipulation on such commonplace objects as curbstones and park benches. "As a result," writes Relph, "the modern urban landscape is both rationalized and artificial, which is another way of saying that it is intensely human."
Paperback
First published August 1, 1987
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February 8, 2017
Relph ascribes the contemporary city to two 20th century changes: new engineering technologies which reinforced an "international style" in architecture and town planning (which chap. 8 says erroneously was taken seriously only after 1945; and "a firm belief in the merits of self-consciousness," which is not convincingly documented in his book.
The book however omits two contributing causes that seem primary. One is the "development industry" dating from at least the middle 18th century, when big landowners like the dukes of Westminster and Bedford (or public servants designing new cities, notably L'Enfant), because they designed and ultimately invested their capital on the basis of estimating future returns of rent. This is why (for example) London and New York developed differently in the 19th century, even though both were growing as fast as current technology allowed.
Secondly the book omits changes in "social thought," measurable in two respects. The simplest is the recognized profession of social worker, which did not exist when L'Enfant laid out Washington. The other is housing for the poorest classes, and where responsibility for this housing was agreed to lie. In 1800 this was an exclusively private matter, whether of the poor tenant or the profit-seeking landlord, and no business of the state: in the early 20th century the housing of the poorest classes became a public responsibility, and thus the political business of city governments and national governments. Relph mentions this only in the postwar years and mainly when discussing the architecture (and unlivability) of high-rise public housing built in the 1960s. He does not consider why some cities had slums and others did not, although this was at least after 1945 an important political topic, about which municipal politicians differed -- with visible consequences in their different cities.
This reader is biased because my very first job was as an office boy in the library of the Architectural Association, one of the two rival architectural schools in London in the 1950s; and, being bookish, I read a lot as well as listened to what the influential teachers said. They were besotted with theory (principally the doctrines of Le Corbusier, an author not technically qualified as an architect, who wrote much more about buildings and cities than he actually built.) This book (produced early in the author's career) is similarly oriented more to the (truly fascinating) library about architecture than to the actual cities the author then new, and notably not to those authors (notably Lewis Mumford, but they go back as far as the Romans) who earlier attempted to tell us why cities developed and how they came to be so different. Relph was writing just when the postwar builders began to admit many of their prewar theories failed in practice: but there was then no literature that matched the prewar publications but proposed anything different. He cites Jane Jacobs (1961) but she told us what failed, and why, without attempting to tell us what might both tackle contemporary problems and generate a livable or lively city.
If this can be written, it would probably have to reckon with both the economics and the politics of building today: and experts in these topics (if there are any) seem not to have time to write books.
The book however omits two contributing causes that seem primary. One is the "development industry" dating from at least the middle 18th century, when big landowners like the dukes of Westminster and Bedford (or public servants designing new cities, notably L'Enfant), because they designed and ultimately invested their capital on the basis of estimating future returns of rent. This is why (for example) London and New York developed differently in the 19th century, even though both were growing as fast as current technology allowed.
Secondly the book omits changes in "social thought," measurable in two respects. The simplest is the recognized profession of social worker, which did not exist when L'Enfant laid out Washington. The other is housing for the poorest classes, and where responsibility for this housing was agreed to lie. In 1800 this was an exclusively private matter, whether of the poor tenant or the profit-seeking landlord, and no business of the state: in the early 20th century the housing of the poorest classes became a public responsibility, and thus the political business of city governments and national governments. Relph mentions this only in the postwar years and mainly when discussing the architecture (and unlivability) of high-rise public housing built in the 1960s. He does not consider why some cities had slums and others did not, although this was at least after 1945 an important political topic, about which municipal politicians differed -- with visible consequences in their different cities.
This reader is biased because my very first job was as an office boy in the library of the Architectural Association, one of the two rival architectural schools in London in the 1950s; and, being bookish, I read a lot as well as listened to what the influential teachers said. They were besotted with theory (principally the doctrines of Le Corbusier, an author not technically qualified as an architect, who wrote much more about buildings and cities than he actually built.) This book (produced early in the author's career) is similarly oriented more to the (truly fascinating) library about architecture than to the actual cities the author then new, and notably not to those authors (notably Lewis Mumford, but they go back as far as the Romans) who earlier attempted to tell us why cities developed and how they came to be so different. Relph was writing just when the postwar builders began to admit many of their prewar theories failed in practice: but there was then no literature that matched the prewar publications but proposed anything different. He cites Jane Jacobs (1961) but she told us what failed, and why, without attempting to tell us what might both tackle contemporary problems and generate a livable or lively city.
If this can be written, it would probably have to reckon with both the economics and the politics of building today: and experts in these topics (if there are any) seem not to have time to write books.
Displaying 1 of 1 review