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Abstract
In her lifetime Florence Taylor was celebrated as an advocate of town planning reform in Australia. Based in Sydney, she trained as an architect but spent most of her long professional life as a publisher and trade journalist, developing strong ties with the building industry. Unified by a strong environmental determinist position, early preoccupations with eradicating slums segued into numerous practical suggestions for improving city efficiency, focusing on urban renewal and traffic planning. Taylor was nonetheless often critical of planning in practice. As a businesswoman, she became antagonistic to planning as an activity of the modern state because of its apparent privileging of the public sector and over-regulation of private enterprise and everyday life. This ideological tension became acute in the 1940s as planning moved from its early foundation in propaganda and voluntary advocacy towards statutory oversight. While Taylor's life and career continued to be celebrated by her professional and social peers into the 1950s, her identification with mainstream town planning declined. This paper explores the contradictions in Florence Taylor's encounters with planning in shifting from advocate to antagonist.
Acknowledgements
An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 15th International Planning History Society Conference in Sao Paulo, Brazil in July 2012. My thanks also to Bronwyn Hanna as a collaborator in this research project, to Mark Clapson for commentary on the draft revised paper, and to the referees for their empathetic critiques.
Notes on contributor
Robert Freestone is Professor of Planning and Associate Dean Research in the Faculty of Built Environment at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. He is a former President of the International Planning History Society. His latest book is Exhibitions and the Development of Planning Culture (Ashgate, edited with Marco Amati, 2014).
Notes
1. Quoted in Ashton, “Empire's Most Remarkable Woman”, 36.
2. Light, Forever England, 11.
3. Freestone and Hanna, Florence Taylor's Hats. See also Freestone, “Florence Taylor”; “Women in the Australian Town Planning Movement”.
4. See Giles, 50 Years of Town Planning.
5. Larkham, “Hostages to History?” 487–91.
6. Howe, Slums and Suburbs.
7. Hall, Cities of Tomorrow.
8. Roe, Nine Australian Progressives, 185–209.
9. McGregor. Grand Obsessions.
10. Taylor, “The Home or the Flat,” 125–7.
11. Spearritt, Sydney's Century, 69.
12. Anon, “Post War Planning and Reconstruction,” 163.
13. Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, see especially 261ff (‘the need for concentration’) and 581ff ('suburbanized messes’).
14. Freestone, Cities, Citizens and Environmental Reform, 9.
15. Freestone and Park, “The Limits to Nationalism,” 32–46.
16. Sandercock, Cities for Sale, 19.
17. Taylor, “Vale: Francis Graham Hood,” 69–71.
18. ‘Sydney of To-Morrow’ in Giles, 50 Years of Town Planning, 2.
19. McMahon, “Urban Design,” 294–330.
20. Quoted in Freestone, 2009, Cities, Citizens and Environmental Reform, 329–30.
21. Freestone and Park, “A New Planning Landscape,” 313–41.
22. Ward, Planning the Twentieth-Century City, 157.
23. Troy, Accommodating Australians; Coombs, Trial Balance.
24. Bunning, Homes in the Sun.
25. Barnett et al., We Must Go On.
26. Cook et al., “A Springtime Journey to the Soviet Union,” 810.
27. Pemberton, “The Middle Way,” 48–63.
28. Klosterman, “Arguments For and Against Planning,” 5.
29. Pemberton, “O Brave New Social Order,” 35–47.
30. Ibid., 45.
31. Goodchild, Homes, Cities and Neighbourhoods.
32. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom, 240–1.
33. Mullan, Stevenage Ltd.
34. Cowan, “The People's Peace,” 73–86.
35. Parker, “The Control of Town Planning,” 7.
36. Burt, “National, Regional and Local Planning,”143–53.
37. Edmunds, “Town and Country Planning and Democracy”.
38. Hanna, “Edmunds, Rosette”.
39. Taylor, “Meditations and Reflections,” 5.
40. Giles, 50 Years of Town Planning, 43.
41. Teather, “Fascism and Australian Town Planning Propagandists,” 335–50.
42. Murray, “Pirouette and Pose”, 305. On Vaughan see Eather and Cottle, “Capital's Foot Soldiers”.
43. Taylor, “About Ourselves,” 68.
44. Moore, The Right Road.
45. Sandercock, Cities for Sale.
46. Taylor, “Two Ways of Planning,” 29.
47. Taylor, “What can be Done about Housing,” 36.
48. Giles, 50 Years of Town Planning, 71.
49. Taylor, “Around Australia,” 11.
50. Taylor, “My Blood Boils,” 25, 29.
51. Taylor, “What can be Done about Housing,” 36, 38.
52. Maegraith, “The Taylors of Loftus Street”.
53. Giles, 50 Years of Town Planning, 15.
54. Taylor, “Advertising Town Planning,” 46–8.
55. Freestone, “Florence Taylor,” 12.
56. Taylor, “Industry,” 81.
57. Freestone and Hanna, Florence Taylor's Hats.
58. Taylor, “Home Building Section,” 83.
59. Quoted in Freestone and Hanna, Florence Taylor's Hats, 108.
60. Taylor, “Governments Must Do This and That,” 49.
61. Goodchild, Homes, Cities and Neighbourhoods.
62. Taylor, “What can be Done about Housing,” 36–40.
63. Freestone, Urban Nation, 146–8.
64. Taylor, “Two Ways of Planning,” 29.
65. Freestone and Park, “A New Planning Landscape,” 313–41.
66. Taylor, “Industry,” 83.
67. Ibid., 81.
68. Ibid., 85.
69. Ibid., 81.
70. Ibid., 86.
71. Ashton, “Industry Mourns,” 1
72. Freestone, “Women in the Australian Town Planning Movement,” 259–77.
73. Light, Forever England, 17.
74. For a general review see Sager, “Neo-Liberal Urban Planning Policies,” 147–99.