HUMAN FACTORS IN URBAN PLANNING—1: poverty of urban planning
Author(s): THOMAS L BLAIR
Source: Official Architecture and Planning, Vol. 32, No. 2 (February 1969), pp. 181-182,
185-186
Published by: Alexandrine Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/43958031
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HUMAN FACTORS IN URBAN PLANNING - 1
THOMAS L BLAIR
poverty of urban planning
This is the introductory
article in a series which will
explore the positive role tasks
of sociology in the analysis,
understanding, and planning
of urban communities and
urban renewal. We hope
that the series will help to
open up a critical dialogue
among sociologists, planners,
architects, administrators,
politicians, and others
involved in the planning
process. The author of the
series, Thomas L Blair, is a
senior lecturer in sociology
at the Regent Street
Polytechnic, London.
I must confess that I believe, as did John
Madge whose experience and knowledge
encompassed sociology, architecture,
planning and social policy, that there is a Time-wasting traffic jams, noise nuisance, and visual intrusion have become almost characteristic of urban
vital need for a dialogue between these life - one example of the failure of conventional planning wisdom
expanding and complementary fields of
endeavour.1 I also believe that cities of
urban-industrial and industrialising societies, representing as they do the polar
dualities of advancement and under-
development and of obsolescence and
opportunity, can be crucial laboratories for
a new science/art/policy of planning
human settlements. This new approach
when it emerges will have at its core a
liberating idea - building for people as
humans not as fodder for the mills of
development or as the excrescence of
impersonal market forces pitilessly cast
in heaps upon the urban landscape;
building for variety, access to amenities
and for security; building strategies of
change toward that stage of history which
lies beyond mere machine-bound toil and
the socio-economic inequities that mark
so much of life today.
The question is "What shall this science/
art/policy be?" In my mind it cannot
be less than an ally of man in transition
and their desires for social reconstruction.
It will reckon its growth by the contradictions it overcomes, and its interdisciplinary practitioners will feel impelled
not only to understand, plan and replan
urban areas but to radically change them.
challenges of growth
The palaver between social theorists,
power elites, and organisers and planners
of space uses is as old as the history of
OAP FEBRUARY 1969 181
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poverty of urban planning
quacies
cannot be put right, but first they
unanticipated social effects re-form
each
must the
be revealed. Before the dialogue
day in pockets of despond to obscure
horizon of human affairs? If there is an
among sociologists, planners, architects
and new definitions of ends and values.
and
urgent necessity for large-scale renewal
ofother active agents in the planning
urban sectors, then there is also a need for
and renewal process can settle down to
Urban planning is part of the general
and
considerations" there are still
process by which industrial and industrial- an understanding of how these sectors "practical
their populations and functions interrelate
many basic questions to be asked and
ising societies generate and respond to
within the city, and how any changesanswered.
in
urgent economic, political and socioone sector affects through its linkages
cultural imperatives. Modifications of
other sectors and the city as a whole.
these key variables in the ecological
sociologist's role
At the moment there are chasms of
complex affect the spatial organisation and
need for research
distribution of land uses, capital and
ignorance which separate those who
house and enclose the activities of multiWhy are these awarenesses, sensibilities
labour - and the city is the major arena of
tudes from their clients and consumers.
and scientific approaches not already an
change. Actions and reactions on the
wider panorama of national life, and their integral part of human planning? The
These gaps, it is said, can be partially
impact on patterns of productive relations answers lie as much in social history as in
bridged with the aid of sociologists. It
and diffusion of benefits, have their
present planning institutions.
should be recognised at the outset,
corollaries on the urban scale. Urban
In Britain, what the precursors of planning however, that the sociological discipline
- Geddes,
nurtures its own ends and objectives.
problems are microcosms of regional
and Howard and Unwin - accomplished in their time now marks contem- Sociologists have many deep-rooted codes
national dilemmas. In contemporary
porary planning thought and practice atand emotional blocks which limit their
Britain, for example, one might easily
agree with the wry comment of Dr D E C its best and at its worst : an interest in built
integration into a dialogue with planners
Eversley, "The balance-of-housing deficit forms, green-belts, public housing of
and architects. Sociology is, they believe,
wage-earners in new communities, towns a science of society which seeks to
is a special aspect of the balance-ofand cities, a concern for social cohesion,
payments question".2
analyse and understand the values,
In recent years recognition of the impli- and the use of social surveys, persuasive
institutions and structures upon which
cations of planned national and regional political action, law and state intervention
individual participation in social life rests.
economic development for urban growth "for the greater good". British planning,
Carrying out these tasks requires persons
and change has stimulated public debate as summarised in one recent monograph,
capable of these activities and a society
and discussion. Questions about urban
tolerant of their labours and results.
is "Utopian, anecdotal, action-orientated,
legalistic, anti-city and anti-capitalistic".4
form and design, social communication
These assumptions do not ordinarily apply
The implications of these strengths and
and cohesion, come to the fore again.
for reasons which lie within the society
Voices are raised about the efficiency of
weaknesses ramify not only in planning
and the discipline itself.
ad hoc rehabilitation and control of "nonpractice but in education as well. UniObjective social analysis and commentary
versity-based planning researchers of a
conforming industries and activities".
expose basic contradictions in social
There is uneasiness about the wholesale
new generation when re-evaluating their
norms and practices, and this does not
demolition of urban areas without prevision
heritage claim that :
find widespread favour. To be a socioloof its effects on community social struc"In spite of the radical changes which have
gist requires some measure of alienation
occurred in the nature of the productive
tures and their external linkages.
from prevailing values and attitudes in
processes, in the character of the labour
There is also an increasing demand from
order to better understand the morphology
market,
architects, planners and administrators
for and in the pattern of communiof social dynamics. How distant can you
cations British planners are still working
sociologists to explicate and endorse
get and still have your stance and observapractical ideas and solutions, to validate on the assumptions which they inherited
tions accepted without fear for your
from the founders of the movement. Very sinecure or job ?
design and planning strategies, and to
advise on the priorities involved in phasing
little research, other than social surveys,
Furthermore, as some future study of
has been carried out in Britain, and the
implementation. But these ends massociology as an institution would surely
querading as "working briefs", proposing little that has been done seems to have
reveal, there is as great a degree of
bureaucratisation and nationalisation of
as they do the problem solutions before left the bulk of British planning practice
complex human settlements. It gathers
momentum today in the wake of new
technological and demographic changes
any questions have been raised, flow all unaffected. Lack of research has affected
sociologists as there is of other profestoo hastily from techno-bureaucratically British planning education, which remains
sions closely linked with the preservation
defined purposes and moments in time.
founded in action, architecture, landscape
of the state, social order, and "our way of
Their specificity when posed by architects and law, and contains very little research
life". For too many of them sociology is
reveal the continuing urge to "slap
material. The gaps in British planning
simply another variant on gifted amatdiagrammatic cultural poultices on the are
facethus passed to the next generation,
eurism, a benediction on mass suffering,
of the city", as Reyner Banham has realong with the advantages".
or a comfortable form of wage slavery;
marked.3
These tendencies, and the contradictions
for too few is it a scientific approach to
If urban planning, to borrow one of many
they imply, highlight the impoverishmentsocial knowledge.
current views, is the conceptualisation
of British planning. Despite its proven
Young sociologists are especially critical
of goals as well as the optimisation of
worthiness in the past, the poverty of
of excessively policy-orientated, cultureplans and scarce resources, then without
British planning lies in its lack of a
bound national sociologies and believe
scientific research basis and its failure
a scientific, self-critical, artful and synoptic
that the "sociological imagination must
vision how can planning be more than ad
to relate to a changing social reality.
find its own productive enterprises".5
hoc responses to past events whose largely
There is no question that these inadeLooked at from this point of view much of
182 OAP FEBRUARY 1969
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poverty of urban planning
the sociological involvement in planning
today, as the theoretician C Wright Mills
observed, is a ruthless abstracted empiri-
That's what cities are: meeting places.
with partnership in planning and archiYet the
the people who live in cities are often
tectural teams, or with the analysis of
dynamics of community and national
contactless and alienated. A few of them
power structures.
In one
practicality, and heralds the growth of
a of the most urbanised countries in
live in a state of endless inner loneliness.
cism wedded to bureaucratic and illiberal
are physically lonely: almost all of them
the world, urban sociology is not part of They have thousands of contacts, but the
contacts are empty and unsatisfying . . .
the curriculum
in many schools. Few
gists are ambivalent. They are not
taught
sociologists according to a recent survey These phenomena are facets of a single
to be eriga gee; Max Weber's "ethical
objectivity and neutrality" is the password. of the membership of the British Sociolo- complex syndrome : the autonomy -withgical Association list urban communities, drawal syndrome ... an inevitable byThe most self-aware bow to the gods
of Mammon only with great difficulty, theory or methodology as their major product of urbanisation and . . . society
can only recreate intimate contacts among
holding back real thought, and returning areas of interest. It is openly acknowledged that there is "a current of opinion its members if they overcome this
to an inert state in their psychic olive
against what is perceived as the danger of syndrome". He asks the question :
groves of academe as soon as the "dirty
tasks" are done. Some feel these deWhat physical organisation must an urban
'methods-men' taking over the subject,
area have, to function as a mechanism for
and reducing it to 'computerised trivia' ".7
fensive mechanisms, despite their schizoid
The
potential contributions of sociologists sustaining deeper contacts?, and proqualities, are justified. "Sociology is
not
should
yet in the stage where it can provide
a be judged, therefore, not so much ceeds to answer it in geometric, physical
on the
safe basis for social engineering", said
a empirical work they have done but and pseudo-sociological terminology.
on what they can do to formulate theoreti- Vulgar physicalism is a major cul-de-sac
notable mass media consultant and probarring the evolution of architectural
fessor, Paul Lazarsfeld, when he raised the
cal approaches and models of behaviour
which may have utility if applied within thought and practice. Alexander's thesis
alarm some years ago. "If we expect
raises many questions about the sociolothe planning context. Vast amounts of
quick solutions to the world's greatest
problems", he said, "if we demand of it
data, much of it gathered by well-meaning gical works and theories - that attract
architects. The present vogue among
nothing but immediately practical results, amateurs and of questionable value, is
them is to refer to social scientists who see
no substitute for sociologically derived
we will just corrupt its natural course".
facts.
all ways of life and personality types in
Those of us who are interested in estabdisabilities
terms of grand dichotomies: folk-urban,
sacred-secular, and primary-secondary
Karl Mannheim, who trained generations
lishing a dialogue deplore this situation.
of social theorists, felt that the disabilities
The feeling is that there is too great angroup relationships. Durkheim is an
emphasis on descriptive, social-account-obvious favourite, as is Louis Wirth of the
of national sociologies (American,
American "Chicago School"; both are
ing and too little concern with general
British, French, Russian, etc) lie in their
theories, conceptual models and urbancited affirmatively by Alexander. Wirth
blind acceptance of assumed homothought that three factors - size, density
geneous norms and values against which social systems analysis. From my knowand heterogeneity - explained urban social
the social problems they zealously studyledge of the current thoughtways in urban
organisation and caused urban dwellers
and advise upon are seen as pathological sociology I think it can be said that the
to create and maintain cohesion through
deviance to be resolved in the public good.days of raw empiricism and misplaced
bureaucratic social science. Sociolo-
concreteness are numbered. The failures
a unique pattern of institutions and
This sort of work, says Mannheim, "tends
to segregate single phenomena from the of the past and the complexity of newattitudes called "urbanism".
"Urbanism" as a theory of urban ways of
challenges have decreed it. Social
social fabric with which they are interwoven
life assumed that the responses of urban
systems are the real stuff of urban
thereby disintegrating the whole of social
dwellers were the opposites of folk and
sociology.
life". (One ought not to be lulled into
pre-industrial societies. The intimate facebelieving that these observations have no
to-face relationships of folk communities
importance in the context of our dialogue. vulgar physicalism
When a more critical sociology turns its are replaced in the city by disintegration
Sociologists are justifiably wary of inattention away from itself and planners and alienation. Sociological appraisals of
volvement in the "policy sciences" who
towards architecture it becomes immeWirth's work have highlighted the inse^k improved knowledge of human
adequacies of his theories, however.9
rc ations to aid policy-makers in this agediately apparent that there is a widespread
Primary relationships exist within the city.
or "nuclear giants and ethical infants").6 fallacy of thinking among architects
British sociology suffers to a large extentwhich I have called vulgar physicalism.
from these ambivalences and short-
Physicalism is the view that particular
physical
forms cause universal and directly
comings. But, in addition, there are
other
related social responses. Vulgar physicalism holds that the architect can create
portance to British planning. Sociology
disabilities which are of immediate im-
in Britain will require a new outlook, a
refurbished set of techniques and theories,
Secondary relationships do not diminish
an individual's interaction in primary
groups. Secularisation and disorganisation do not necessarily follow upon rapid
urbanisation. While Wirth's ideas, ex-
tremely interesting in other respects, have
and build into physical forms precisely the
been shelved in the museum of sophomore
devices which will call out new directly
related emotive behaviours and social
sociology classes, the mystical traces of
responses. One example selected at
and wider community before it will be able
"urbanism" and vulgar physicalism which
and an enhanced status in the academic
random illustrates this latter point.
to participate effectively in the planning
Christopher Alexander, an architectprocess. As of the moment, with some
notable exceptions, it has little experience mathematician-environmentalist, dogin theoretical research on macro-com-
matically states :8
"People come to cities for contact.
munities, with controlled experiments,
misrepresents it, lingers.
One of the classic criticisms of this naive
view has been made by Michael Young
and Peter Willmott. They conclude their
important study of family and kinship
OAP FEBRUARY 1969 185
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poverty of urban planning
among working class residents of Bethnal
Green with a poignant question about the
whole process of urban renewal and new
town development.10
"The physical size of reconstruction is so
great that the authorities have been
understandably intent upon bricks and
mortar. Their negative task is to demolish
are not immediately apparent. It is not at
In this context, a new urban sociology
all difficult for him to believe that the
can relate to many issues within, and withimportant determinants of human action
out, the architectural and planning traditions.
are not available to touch or to look at;
and he is frankly suspicious of anyone who,I have no doubt that even the most minute
in his view, is so simple-minded as to
points raised in the dialogue will always
equate what is visible with what is
relate to definitions, priorities, objectives,
influential".
values, interests and consequences, for
slums which fall below the most eleProfessor Guttman sees his role in the
this too is the stuff of sociology. Urban
mentary standards of hygiene, their
posistudio
as that of a questioner, analyst
planning, like other forms of planning, is
tive one to build houses and new towns
and adviser concerning the manifest and a multi-dimensional political act. It sets
cleaner and more spacious than the old.
latent aspects of design problems and the values in motion towards specified ends
Yet even when the town planners have set
relationships between spatial environment and benefits. It also involves ordering the
themselves to create communities anew
and human behaviour. But he is not
relationships among socially differentiated
as well as houses, they have still put satisfied
their
that this role is understood
by
populations,
spaces and productive forces.
faith in buildings, sometimes speaking
as
Planners and architects are, therefore,
architects,
and hence hastens to say :
"Architects seem not to realise, for instance, not outside the play of social forces; they
though all that was necessary for neighbourliness was a neighbourhood unit,
that sociology is the name of a particular are part of the continuing pattern of
for community spirit a community centre. scholarly discipline and sociologists trad- conflicts and co-operation involved in the
If this were so, then there would be no
itionally have been members of learned
competition for space and access to the
harm in shifting people about the country,societies rather than professional assobenefits of urban society. The real
for what would be lost could be regained ciations. Academic rewards do not go to
dialogue, therefore, is about the ideoloby skilful architecture and design. But
the sociologist who plans or builds a
gies, goals, methods and manifold effects
there is simply more to a community than society on the basis of fragmentary know-of organising and distributing social and
that. The sense of loyalty to each other
ledge about human needs, social structure spatial structures in cities and urban
amongst the inhabitants of a place like
and technology, but to the sociologist
societies, and it should take place not only
Bethnal Green is not due to buildings. It who studies an important problem in a
among social theorists, power elites, and
is due far more to ties of kinship and
new way, or who develops a theory which members of the planning professions but
friendship which connect the people of
explains a variety of apparently unrelated also with the human communities in
one householdjo the people of another.
facts. Many sociologists are members of whose names they serve.
In such a district community spirit does the teaching profession, but this is somenot have to be fostered, it is already
thing else; in their role as sociologists
footnotes
there. If the authorities regard that spirit
they are researchers, students and ana1, John Madge was Deputy Director of Political
as a social asset worth preserving, they lysts. Judgements about their competence and Economic Planning and honorary Research
will not uproot more people, but build
Associate at the Bartlett School of Architecture,
as sociologists are made privately, by
the new houses around the social groups
other sociologists rather than, as is often University College London; his most important
works are The Tools Of Social Science and Origins
to which they already belong".
the case in architecture, by clients, users
of Scientific Sociology. 2, Eversley DEC, "The
Many of my colleagues have asked me :
and tourists who are not expert in the
Economics of Regional Planning", Report of the
"When a sociologist and architect face
subject of building. Sociologists are not
Proceedings, Town and Country Planning Summer
School, University of Keele, September 1966.
each other across the drawing board,
compelled to serve social purposes im3, Banham, Reyner, "Vitruvius Over Manhattan",
what do they say?" I think the most
mediately or to provide solutions to
New Society, 7 December 1 967. 4, Cowan, Peter
succinct answer to this question has been problems on short notice".
and others. The Office - A Facet of Urban Growth,
offered by Professor Robert Guttman who
Joint Unit for Planning Research, University College
London and London School of Economics, 1967,
spent a year in residence at the Bartlett
opening up a dialogue
Sponsored by the Nuffield Foundation, 2 volumes,
School of Architecture.11 He believes
The introduction into planning and archimimeo. Chapter I, Introduction, p5. The quotation
that a real dialogue can only begin whentecture of systematic sociological theory which follows in the text is from the same page.
both groups working together learn to
and methods will generate conflict initially 5, Stein, Maurice and Vidich, Arthur, Sociology On
overcome, or to benefit from, their
with those professionals who suppose
Trial, New Jersey: Prentice- Hall, Inc., 1963, p2.
The references to Mills, Lazarsfeld and Mannheim
differing professional-rearing practices.
that sociology is merely a method of
may be found on pages 12, 4 and 5 respectively.
The architect dealing as he does with the
investigation rather than a set of theoreti- 6, See Lerner, Daniel, and Lasswell, Harold D, The
world of form, hé says, "tends to anthropocally based arguments. But these conPolicy Sciences, Stanford University Press, 1965,
Foreword. 7, Carter, Μ Ρ, Report On A Survey of
flicts can be overcome once it is understood
morphise them, to endow them with life,
and to search out their possible social
that while empirical enquiry is essential, Sociological Research in Britain, mimeo. distributed
by the British Sociological Association, 1967, p6.
significance. The architect finds it diffi- its conception and direction must be
8, Alexander, Christopher, "The City As A Mechanism
cult to accept the fact that phenomena
governed not only by the immediate
For Sustaining Human Contact", in Transactions
with such potent qualities do not have an
interests of policy and the demands of of the Bartlett Society, vol. 4, p95. 9, See Reiss,
important immediate influence on patterns architectural and planning practice but A J, ed., Louis Wirth On Cities and Social Life,
University of Chicago Press, 1964, in which Wirth's
of social action. The sociologist, on the
by a wider theoretical interest as well.
original essay appears; and Morris, R N, Urban
other hand, devotes himself full time to
At this strategic conjuncture in the
Sociology, London: George Allen and Unwin,
inferential activities; since values, norms,
evolution of urban sociology, architecture1968. 10, Young, Michael and Willmott, Peter,
Family and Kinship In East London, London :
statuses and classes cannot be perceived
and planning there is an opportunity for the
Pelican, 1967, pp198-199. 1 1, Guttman, Robert,
by the eye, he develops a capacity to
initiation of fundamental sociological and"The Questions Architects Ask", Transactions of the
guess at their existence even though theyinter-disciplinary research and thinking.Bartlett Society, vol 4; see pp 78 and 80.
186 OAP FEBRUARY 1969
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