Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article

Cork Independent, 13 December 2012

“Technical Memories (Part 37) –The Surveys of Geddes”

As highlighted in a previous article, D.J. Coakely, principal of the Cork Chamber of Commerce proposed a series of reform measures for social housing in Cork City in 1918. Concluding his address he had a section entitled “What should be done in Cork”. He proposed that a ‘Housing and Town Planning Committee’ be formed in the city to consider the question of housing in its different aspects-social, economic, engineering, and legal. He wished for a detailed course of public lectures and a housing and town planning exhibition as well as a Local Government Board inquiry into the housing conditions of the working classes in Cork, similar to one held in Dublin. He also sought a report on the legal powers of Cork Corporation and the further powers required to deal adequately with the housing question.

Perhaps Coakley’s appealing proposals were that a “Civic Survey” be made of the city and that essential information be compiled for his suggested Local Government Board inquiry into the existing housing conditions of the working classes. In association with these he proposed the arrangement of a town planning competition, for which a substantial prize could be offered. The concept of a civic survey and a town plan competition was based on concepts developed by Sir Patrick Geddes. D.J. Coakley’s lecture in Cork was just echoing his work.

The UK National Biography notes that Sir Patrick Geddes (1854 –1932) was a Scottish biologist, sociologist, geographer, philanthropist and pioneering town planner. He is known for his innovative thinking in the fields of urban planning and sociology. One of his central arguments in his work was that physical geography, market economics and anthropology were related, creating a “single chord of social life [of] all three combined”. As part of that philosophy, Geddes advocated the civic survey as essential to urban planning. His motto was “diagnosis before treatment”. Such a survey could include, at a minimum, the geology, the geography, the climate, the economic life, and the social institutions of the city and region. His early work surveying the city of Edinburgh became a model for later surveys.

Geddes was particularly critical of that form of planning which relied overmuch on design and effect, neglecting to consider “the surrounding quarter and constructed without reference to local needs or potentialities”. Geddes encouraged instead exploration and consideration of the “whole set of existing conditions”, studying the “place as it stands, seeking out how it has grown to be what it is, and recognising alike its advantages, its difficulties and its defects”. Geddes’s work was adopted by the Town Planning Committee of the Royal Institute of British Architects who spread the work’s importance to town planners in Britain.

The Dictionary of Irish Architects describes that between the years 1911-1916 Patrick Geddes was heavily involved in the search for solutions to Dublin’s acute health and housing problems. In 1911, on the invitation of the Women’s National Health Association, he brought his Cities and Town Planning Exhibition to Dublin, while the Institute of Public Health was holding its congress there. The exhibition was later displayed in Belfast. In September 1913 he gave evidence on behalf of the Women’s National Health Association to the Local Government Board’s inquiry into working class housing conditions in Dublin. In March 1914 he persuaded the Lord Lieutenant, Lord Aberdeen, to give a £500 prize for an international Dublin Town Planning competition promoted by the Civics Institute of Ireland. The assessors of the competition were Geddes himself, the Dublin City Architect Charles James McCarthy and the American town planner John Nolen (1869-1937). The outbreak of the First World War delayed the meeting of the assessors, so it was not until 1916 that the first prize was awarded to Patrick Abercrombie of Liverpool University and his collaborators Sydney A. Kelly (1881-1943) and Arthur J. Kelly. Abercrombie was subsequently appointed town planning consultant for Dublin. His document Dublin of the Future was published in 1922.

Patrick Abercrombie, himself, trained as an architect before becoming the Professor of Civic Design at the Liverpool University School of Architecture in 1915, and later Professor of Town Planning at University College London. Afterwards, he made the award-winning designs for Dublin city centre and gradually asserted his dominance as an architect of international renown, which came about through the replanning of Plymouth, Hull, Bath, Edinburgh and Bournemouth, among others.

Cork’s interest in town planning was inspired by the work of both Patrick Geddes and Patrick Abercrombie. True to his proposals, D.J. Coakley worked with others especially the technical education committees in Cork in creating a series of public lectures dealing in greater detail with the different aspects of the problem as applied to Cork were given. The lectures were delivered under the auspices of the Cork Literary and Scientific Society and the Cork Incorporated Chamber of Commerce, and shipping, and by Professor Abercrombie. At a conference of the principal citizens, held at the Cork School of Art, in March 1922, the Cork Town Planning Association was formed, and subsequently Professor Abercrombie, and Sydney Kelly were invited and agreed to act as special advisors to the Association.

To be continued…

Caption:

671a. Patrick Geddes, c.1886 (source: Cork City Library)