Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article

Cork Independent, 20 December 2012

“Technical Memories (Part 38) –The Genius of Place”

As noted last week, in March 1922, the Cork Housing and Town Planning Association was formed. In the Dictionary of Irish Biography D.J. Coakley (D.J. or Daniel John), Principal of the Cork School of Commerce became honorary secretary of the association. Under the direction of Professor Patrick Abercrombie, D.J. organised a survey of Cork city, a report on which was published as Cork: A Civic Survey in 1926. This work was built on the back of a booklet for the Cork Incorporated Chamber of Commerce & Shipping under the title Cork, Its Trade and Commerce (1919), which is said to have achieved an international circulation. As an aside D.J. was one of the five sons of John Coakley, a farmer in Donoughmore, Co. Cork. D.J. lived at 5 Newenham Terrace, Cork.

Different committees were formed to deal with different sections of Cork’s civic survey. The groundwork was headed up by a sub-committee from the Crawford Municipal Technical Institute and well known Cork Architects. All gave valuable assistance. Diagrams were prepared by Alec G. Jenson. Professor Patrick Abercrombie and Sydney Kelly, both working in Liverpool were invited and agreed to act as special advisors to the Survey. The UK National Biography for Professor Patrick Abercrombie reveals an architect whose recurrent pre-occupation was with the human side of his profession- his concept of a town as primarily the setting for human life, rather than a mere pattern of roads and land uses.  In general, his work through his career strongly emphasised the need to preserve and underpin the traditional character of each locality. Abercrombie was also influenced personally as an architect by the École des Beaux Arts in Paris and particularly by Baron Georges-Eugéne Haussmann (1809-1891) whose city planning of Paris he admired. Hence Abercrombie had an interest in creating wide boulevards and pubic squares, where the emphasis was on the public.

Abercrombie’s interests are indirectly highlighted in the introduction of the Cork Civic Survey, published in 1926. It set out it aims clearly: “One of the results of a Civic Survey should be that the genius of the place emerges, and the artificial control to which it submits is thus not an arbitrary or foreignly conceived yoke, but rather a sympathetic course of direction. To adopt another simile, the Survey is the diagnosis of the symptoms for which the Town Plan is the prescriptive remedy.”

The introduction reflects that there is a multitude of smaller forces at work in shaping the city of Cork; “it has not been progressive in the recent past; if rightly directed, should put a slow and steady growth in future years”. The survey denotes that Cork exists to fulfil a number of diverse purposes; “The creation of the Irish Free State with its impulse towards devolution, should tend to make it more markedly a provincial capital with possibilities of specialised growth”. Cork was, at the same time, a sea port, a distributing centre, market town, manufacturing city, residential area and educational centre. The Survey denotes that each of these aspects has made “characteristic impression, but without orderliness”.

On matter of trade, the Civic Survey outlines a decline in trade: “Changes in the nature of trade have for years been sapping the city’s nineteenth century prosperity, while political upheavals had a bad effect upon the city’s finances. In order to progress a greater civic self-consciousness it  is essential that a knowledge be attained of the physical facts of the city, of its blemishes and how to remedy them-in short, a proper Town Planning Scheme is needed. During the past decade many local problems have arisen.”

The introduction praises the work that went into attaining and building the Ford Factory in 1917 and how it had set the “seal of industrialism” on what had been the city’s race course known as “The Park”. The survey claims that the burning of Cork four or five years previously opened up a series or problems which the city was not equipped to meet. Street improvements might have been made if the Council had had the necessary plans and powers. The introduction outlines that the postponement of the re-building of the City Hall was fortunate as proper consideration needed to be made in relation to its position in the city. and its relation to the future development of the whole City.

The survey reveals the question of a new cattle market, which opened up a big problem of traffic and communications by rail, road, and water; “A site chosen merely by methods of opportunism, is likely to become a nuisance rather than a gain to the City”. The City’s housing problem is also set out; “Slums are the breeding ground of disease, political as well as physical. They are a source of danger and of expense to any community. To build even much better houses on the sites that are, or may become unsuitable is merely to provide a heritage of slums for the next generation. Re-housing, to be affective, must be planned on a comprehensive scale. The right sites must be found, and the right services and communications.

To be continued in the new year…Happy Christmas to all readers of this column and thanks for the support during the year, Kieran Mc

Caption:

672a. Professor Patrick Abercrombie, c.1944 (source: National Biography, UK)

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)

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,

Cork Independent, 22 November 2012

“Technical Memories (Part 36) –Future Housing Debates”

At the opening of the 1917-18 session of the Cork Municipal School of Commerce, the Principal D.J. Coakley, delivered a lecture on the “General Principles of Housing and Town Planning”.  A large portion of his paper was concerned with tenement housing and the need to plan for the future for proper housing in the city.

In referring to the tenement houses in Cork City, Coakley’s lecture stated that some of them were so old and dilapidated, and so structurally bad, that repairing them was out of the question. As a consequence, 38 to 40 houses were closed some years previously as being unfit for human habitation. There were several instances of where the father and mother, and sons and daughters over 20 years of age, all slept in the same apartment. Of 12,850 houses in Cork, 1,300 were unprovided with back yards, nearly half of which were situated in the city centre. Coakley noted that if the Corporation of Cork were to demolish all the houses in the city which are absolutely unfit for human habitation and those on the border line, it would mean dispossessing 16,000 people, or one fifth of the population.

In Cork much attention had been given to the subject of poor housing in the previous thirty years. A committee of the Corporation of Cork had been formed to deal with the issues and it was continually pressing for a State grant for housing. The Corporation had, during the previous thirty years, expended £81,000 in clearing unhealthy and dilapidated areas, and providing some 532 houses, and 11 houses of 33 flats for the labouring classes. Since 1906 the Corporation had spent over £51,000 in re-surfacing the streets. The question of widening certain streets was also under consideration. Improvements had been carried out at Friary Lane, French’s Quay, and Windmill Road.

D.J. Coakley proposed a number of considerations, which in time were to become part of a wider strategy to deal with slums in Cork City in the 1920s to 1940s. Firstly, he proposed that unsanitary houses could be removed at the expense of the rate-payers and the building of others in their place. He gave the example, in London of Bethnal Green, where 15 acres of slums had been cleared at a cost of £280,000. Between the years 1893 and 1897, 5,719 inhabitants were displaced there. Similar but smaller schemes had been carried out in cities such as Birmingham, Edinburgh, Leeds and Manchester. The Corporation of Liverpool had replaced over 500 unsanitary back to back hovels by healthy well planned tenement blocks opening on to wide courts. The disadvantages of Coakley’s method, he noted himself, were numerous- the high price for land, the compensation to the slum owners, and the high working expenses. In general during a clearance the slum dwellers were driven into some other part of the town where new slums could be created. He noted: “The rents in the district where they go are forced up, which causes the compensation price for the latter to be increased when it comes to be cleared. Indeed, that method of dealing with our slums has encouraged the development of the buying up of property in unsanitary areas in order to reap a rich harvest of compensation from the municipal pocket”.

A second method, proposed by D.J Coakley included the mending or ending of unsanitary houses at the expense of the owners. It was generally impossible according to Coakley, to achieve this end without removing one or more of the adjacent buildings, because the most unsanitary houses of all were generally found in thickly built neighbourhoods. For houses unfit for human habitation, notice was served on the owners to repair them at their own expense. If repairs were not carried out the magistrate could make a closing order. They could then be closed until repaired or demolished. The cost of replacing hovels with good cheap houses under the second method worked out in Liverpool at £7 per house of five persons. This was cheaper than the average £50 per head for the first method of creating a new house. The second method was in force in Birmingham, Sheffield, Birkenhead, Northampton, Cardiff, Hull, Liverpool, Warrington, and York. Liverpool followed the first method up to 1905, when they found it too expensive. In Birmingham the owners received every encouragement to carry out the repairs. When notices to repair or close their houses were sent to owners their local authority frequently told them what was exactly required, to save them expense, in many cases supplying them with specifications of the work required.

Coakley’s third proposal consisted of the construction of new houses in the suburbs, under proper town-planning arrangements. In that case, there was no heavy expense for compensation to the owners and for clearances, and the price of the land was smaller than in the centre of the city. According to this method a cheap but well-built house, with a quarter acre garden or at least a fair-sized courtyard could be obtained. In time, this scheme was adopted more so than Coakley’s first two proposals in green areas such as Turners Cross in the late 1920s.

To be continued….

Caption:

668a. Cornmarket Street, 1890 (source: Cork City Through Time by Kieran McCarthy and Dan Breen, 2012)