Main entry:

Hysler-Rubin, Noah.

Title & Author:

Patrick Geddes and town planning : a critical view / Noah Hysler-Rubin.

Publication:

Abingdon, Oxon ; New York : Routledge, 2011.

Description:

xiii, 207 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm

Notes:
Includes bibliographical references (pages 183-2010 and index.
Machine generated contents note: 1. The Town Planner as a Miracle Worker: Patrick Geddes, 1854-1932 -- 2. 1940's-1960's: Geddes' Role in Reconstruction -- 3. The Humanist Perspective: The Return of Geddes, 1970's Onwards -- 4. The Appreciation of Patrick Geddes as a Planner Today -- 5. Discussion: Geddes' Historiography as a Reflection of the History of Town Planning -- 6. Geddes' Urban Conceptual Framework -- 7. Geography and Education: The Planning Tools -- 8. Geddes' Planning Theory: Critical Evaluations -- 9. The Cities and Town Planning Exhibition: Success and Failure -- 10. Surveys and Surgeries: Narratives of Old and New -- 11. The Regional Analysis: Rehabilitating the Mediterranean Basin -- 12. The Garden in the City: Civic Revival in Indore and Tel Aviv -- 13. Civic Centers and Cultural Institutes: Enhancing Local Traditions -- 14. Incipient Universities in Indore and Jerusalem: Cloisters between East and West -- 15. Patrick Geddes and Colonial Town Planning -- 16. The Colonial Planning Gambit: In the Service of Imperial Societies?

Summary:

Patrick Geddes is considered a forefather of the modern urban planning movement. Patrick Geddes and Town Planning: A Critical View studies the various, and even opposing ways, in which Geddes has been interpreted up to this day, providing a new reading of his life, writing and plans.
Relying on Geddes' extensive writings, the book also provides scholars of planning and related subjects, for the first time, a much-needed, long overdue model of his urban theory. Rebutting earlier appreciations of Geddes' sensitive planning, the scheme is presented as a formative and a deterministic paradigm in which City and Society became the subjects of a mutual transformation towards a predefined 'ideal' city and 'civilized' society. Current perspectives in geography and postcolonialism are used to examine the practice of this theory through Geddes' greatly celebrated-yet hardly studies-work in India and in Palestine. Studying Geddes' plans for such different cities as Edinburgh, Calcutta and Tel Aviv, the book suggests a critical reading of Geddes' colonial work, offering a valuable contribution towards the concretization of the theoretical frameworks and to local historians as well.
Geddes' scrutiny is finally presented as a case study for town planning as a whole. Tying together for the first time key concepts in cultural geography and colonial urbanism, the book proposes a more vigorous historiography, exposing hidden narratives and past agendas still dominating the disciplinary discourse. Written by a cultural geographer and a town planner, this book offers a rounded, full-length analysis of Geddes' vision and its material manifestation, functioning also as a much-needed critical tool to evaluate modern town planning as an academic and practical discipline. --Book Jacket.

ISBN:

9780415578677 (pb ; alk. paper)
0415578671 (pb ; alk. paper)
9780415578660 (hb ; alk. paper)
0415578663 (hb ; alk. paper)

Subject:

Geddes, Patrick, Sir, 1854-1932.
City planners Great Britain Biography.
City planning Great Britain History.
Urbanistes Grande-Bretagne Biographies.
City planners.
City planning.
Great Britain.

Form/genre:

Biography.
Biographies.
History.

Holdings:

Location: Library main 273439
Call No.: BIB 207072
Notes: pbk.
Status: Available