Utopian ideas and the planning of London

Abstract

Utopianism provides a radical perspective of the future, designed to show how much better it can be than the present. The problem is that what is a dream of perfection for some may well be a nightmare for others. Thus, in the case of London, views of the city’s future can be represented in one of three contrasting models. There is first, the Utopia of metropolis, an idealization of the large modern city – a source of enthusiasm for some but anathema for others. A second model is the Utopia of anti‐urbanism, envisaging the disintegration of the metropolis in favour of small settlements in the countryside. Finally, there is a model of suburban idyll, enjoying the benefits of the city centre yet, importantly, cherishing the bucolic delights of leafy avenues. This paper presents the main features of each of these models, from the end of the nineteenth century until the present, showing how each, in turn, evokes its own opposition as well as advocacy. It sees merit in Utopian perspectives but also pitfalls.

Notes

* Dennis Hardy is a Pro‐Vice Chancellor and Director of Development Strategy at Middlesex University. He is also a Research Professor, specializing in urban planning and Utopian history. His publications include the two‐volume official history of the Town & Country Planning Association (London, 1990) and Utopian England (London, 2000). He is series editor of Routledge’s Planning, History & Environment and President of the International Communal Studies Association.

T. S. Eliot, The Rock. London: Faber & Faber, 1934, p. 19.

See, for instance, a discussion of the ‘urban Anti‐Christ’, in Dennis Hardy, Utopian England. London: Spon, 2000, pp. 55–60. Acknowledgement is also due (on this and various points throughout the paper) to Peter Hall’s Cities of Tomorrow: An intellectual history of urban planning and design in the twentieth century. Oxford: Blackwell, 1988.

Anthony Sutcliffe, Urbanization, planning and the giant city, in A. Sutcliffe (ed.) Metropolis 1890–1940. London: Mansell, 1984, Chapter 1, p. 16.

H. G. Wells, Tono‐Bungay. London: Odhams, 1909; undated edition, p. 73.

See, for instance, Peter Hall, Metropolis: 1890–1940: Challenges and Responses, in A. Sutcliffe, op. cit. [3], pp. 19–66.

H. G. Wells, The Sleeper Awakes. London: Collins, 1899; 1954 edition, p. 52.

Ibid, p. 70.

H. G. Wells, The Modern Utopia. London: Collins, 1905, p. 32.

Ibid, p. 33.

Wells explores the future of the city, notably, in fictional terms in The Sleeper Awakes, op. cit. [6] and as a scientific forecast in Anticipations of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon Human Life and Thought. London: Chapman and Hall, 1902.

Chesterton was fiercely anti‐authoritarian and resented what he saw as the bureaucratic interventionism of municipal government (such as the London County Council, formed in 1889) and the new socialist movement. Forster also took a pro‐individual stance, which he believed was threatened by just the kind of machine‐led world that Wells described. A quarter of a century later, both Huxley and Orwell focused their concerns more directly on a growing threat of political and social totalitarianism.

G. K. Chesterton, The Napoleon of Notting Hill. London: Bodley Head, 1904; 1961 edition, p. 9.

Ibid., p. 200.

J. R. Gold, The Experience of Modernism: Modern architects and the future city. London: Spon, 1997, p. 21.

Ibid, p. 12.

Ibid, p. 10.

Thomas Sharp, cited in J. R. Gold, op. cit. [14], p. 161.

Jerry White, London in the Twentieth Century. London: Viking, 2001, p. 47. This view is endorsed by Nick Bullock (Ideals, priorities and harsh realities: reconstruction and the LCC, 1945–51. Planning Perspectives 9 (1994) 87–101), in his observation that there was a ‘ring of inevitability’ about it: it ‘seems to be all of a part of that gradual adoption of the modern movement as the chosen style for the New Britain, that was to be achieved by the end of the first post‐war decade’, p. 97.

Rev. Canon Rawnsley, The garden city. Garden City 1, 2 (February 1904) 9.

William Morris, News from Nowhere. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1890; 1970 edition, edited by James Redmond, p. 55.

Ibid, pp. 57–8.

Ibid, p. 60.

This is explored in, for example, Jan Marsh, Back to the Land. London: Quartet Books, 1982.

Ebenezer Howard, To‐Morrow: a peaceful path to real reform. London: Swann Sonnenschein, 1898. Revised and republished as Garden Cities of Tomorrow, 1902.

Robert Beevers, 1988, The Garden City Utopia: A critical biography of Ebenezer Howard. London: Macmillan, p. 54.

E. Howard, Garden Cities …, op. cit. [24], London: Faber & Faber, 1965 edition, p. 156.

Ibid.

Fabian News (December, 1898), cited in E. Howard, Garden Cities …, op. cit. [24], p. 11.

Cited in Dennis Hardy, Alternative Communities in Nineteenth Century England. London: Longman, 1979, p. 214.

Dennis Hardy, From Garden Cities to New Towns. London: Spon, 1991, pp. 148–9.

Ibid, p. 150.

W. R. Hughes, New Town: A proposal in agricultural, industrial, educational, civic and social reconstruction. London: Dent, 1919.

For a fuller account of this episode, see D. Hardy, op. cit. [2], pp. 84–97.

‘A Hundred New Towns’, The Times (February 24, 1934) 8.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Trystan A. Edwards, A Hundred New Towns for Britain. London: Simkin Marshall, 1933.

Patrick Abercrombie, Greater London Plan 1944. London: HMSO, 1945.

Mr Pooter’s Diary, in George and Weedon Grossmith, The Diary of a Nobody. Harmonsworth: Penguin, 1892; 1965 edition, p. 19.

Jan Marsh, op. cit. [23], p. 247.

Gillian Darley, Villages of Vision. London: Architectural Press, 1975, p. 92.

Ibid., pp. 56–60.

The Ballad of Bedford Park, in ibid., p. 59.

Aileen Reid, Brentham: A history of the pioneer garden suburb, 1901–2001. London: Brentham Heritage Society, 2000.

The main proponent of co‐partnership at Brentham was the trade unionist and future Liberal politician, Henry Vivian.

Dame Henrietta Barnett, cited in G. Darley, op. cit. [41], p. 95.

Alan A. Jackson, Semi‐Detached London. London: Allen & Unwin, 1973.

Ibid., p. 98.

Ibid., p. 100.

Ibid., p. 118.

This vision was later epitomized in the ultimate suburban Utopia, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Broadacre City. For an effective analysis of Wright’s plan, see Robert Fishman, Urban Utopias in the Twentieth Century. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1982.

Alison Ravetz, Council Housing and Culture: The history of a social experiment. London: Routledge, 2001.

Mark Clapson (Invincible Green Suburbs, Brave New Towns. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998), explains how an understanding of the real quality of these estates is often obscured by an instinctive dislike amongst intellectuals of the suburb.

J. B. Priestley, English Journey. London: Heinemann, 1934, p. 401.

Ibid.

Clough Williams‐Ellis, cited in D. Hardy, Arcadia for All. London: Mansell, 1984, p. 39.

See, for example, Frank Delaney, Betjeman Country. London: Granada, 1985.

Ibid, p. 202.

E. H. Nesbit, Fortunatus, Rex and Co., cited in D. Hardy, op. cit. [56], pp. 35–6.

Thomas Sharp, cited in D. Hardy, ibid., p. 40.

C. E. M. Joad, The Untutored Townsman’s Invasion of the Country. London: Faber & Faber, 1946, p. 187.

Anonymous journalist, quoted in Daniel Meadows, Nattering in Paradise. London: Simon Schuster, 1988, p. 18.

Mayor of London, The Draft London Plan: Draft Spatial Development Strategy for London. Greater London Authority, June 2002.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

DENNIS HARDY *

* Dennis Hardy is a Pro‐Vice Chancellor and Director of Development Strategy at Middlesex University. He is also a Research Professor, specializing in urban planning and Utopian history. His publications include the two‐volume official history of the Town & Country Planning Association (London, 1990) and Utopian England (London, 2000). He is series editor of Routledge’s Planning, History & Environment and President of the International Communal Studies Association.