GEDDES VISION OF THE FUTURE
Perhaps today, we are better able to understand what Geddes meant by an inter-disciplinary approach organic and inter-related simultaneous thinking. Only now we are beginning to appreciate his concern with our dependence of non-renewable energy sources.
Much has changed since his life time. The speed of technological advance has accelerated dramatically. Geddes could not have imagined the microchip, personal computers and instant communication or nano-technology, but he recognised that great technological change was coming.
Even the view and perception of our planet has drastically changed. We have seen the Earth, for the first time, from outer-space by satellite. It brought the realisation of how small our place is in the wider universe. It made us aware of our collective responsibility towards the preservation of our home in space. Maybe now we can understand why Geddes tried to steer us towards a new era which would bring about the integration of all aspects of men’s lives and stimulate their highest impulses. Maybe now we will understand the importance of his message.
In his book Cities in Evolution, published in 1915, Geddes took the reader through the development of history in three acts or phases. With his penchant for inventing terms, he called these: Eotechnic, Paleotechnic and Neotechnic.
The Eotechnic, or Life in Balance, is a long period of man’s history perhaps as late as the 18th century, in which mankind lived an organic existence using wind, water, and wood, as its main energy sources (this term was added later by Geddes’ disciple and interpreter, the American writer Lewis Mumford).
The Paleotechnic or Life Threatened, starts about the second half of the eighteen century, reaching its height about 1870 and continuing into the first part of the twentieth century, the new sources of energy were coal and steam (Geddes would have included oil in this period had it began to be exploited on a large scale in his lifetime). Technological progress at this stage consisted in substituting the organic for the mechanical.
In the nineteenth century this substitution brought about a new kind of city which Geddes calls a monstrous agglomeration, chaotic, dirty, wasteful. The Paleotechnic man is described as “seeking mostly short-term gain, his outlook is highly competitive, his pleasures ‘unreal’ or at best merely consolatory”. Money, the symbol of wealth, is mistaken for wealth itself with the consequences that people tended to accumulate and hoard money at the expense of the real wealth which for Geddes is a healthy environment.
In contrast with this gloomy picture Geddes sees a bright future in the last act in which Life will again surge triumphant. He held the view that machines do not determine human consciousness, but are the product of it.
There will be in the end a return to nature, but a return with a difference. This will be a return with a new technology based on new sources of energy, clean, unpolluting, efficient, with a new analytical knowledge acquired on the way. Not a return to an imagined perfect rustic past, but an advance beyond the present.
In Geddes’ Neotechnic Age the ultimate goal is a healthy environment in its full meaning. Even in strictly pragmatic terms this would mean the creation of happier and more productive men and women.
Nature conservation becomes a priority, indeed, a necessity, not merely to provide a temporary escape from the rigours of the work place, but as an intrinsic part of peoples’ lives. Hills and moorlands between cities need to be preserved, not only to provide a clean source of water but to be accessible to everyone.
For those who for some reason cannot visit the countryside regularly, cities must also preserve some evidence of the natural and the unspoiled: every city garden for example could leave a clamp of nettles to attract butterflies. A section of the garden could be left in its natural state to preserve some wild species of plants and animals.
Geddes offers a way of countering social alienation expressed in crime and antisocial behaviour by creating a network of inner city gardens. The restoration of Geddes’ gardens could include the following elements amongst others:
- Part of a network. The value of a Geddes garden lies in being part of a network complementing others and also complementing the system of local parks and ultimately the green belt and the countryside.
- Biodiversity. They should contribute to biological diversity. That is, a section of the garden has to include species of wild plants and small animals.
- Accessible and welcoming. They should allow users direct contact with nature and nature’s processes.
- Artistic leisure activities. They should foster leisure activities through all forms of art: music, open air theatre, sculpture, pottery and dance.
- Peaceful and educational. The gardens should displace violent and destructive uses (war, drug and alcohol abuse, crime etc) by creating new green areas with peaceful and redeeming uses. (e.g. meditation and calming areas, spaces for open air concerts, etc spaces for children to cultivate their own plants).
The commercial quarters of the Neotechnic city should be interspersed with interconnecting city parks, streets should be lined with trees and greenery should be in evidence as much as possible.
If the Paleotechnic created the big city agglomeration of the machine age or Megalopolis, the new era of the Neotechnic will bring about a healthier environment. This, coupled with high technology tools, will cause the disaggregation of formerly large towns and mega-cities into smaller units surrounded by green cultivated or wild areas.
Nature will be available for first hand inspection and thus for education, not merely for contemplation from afar. This organic and inter-related city and region in harmony he saw extended to all the nations of the world.
Geddes’ intention was not merely to change the natural environment, but to change men and women too. Mankind could not merely go along as before, unchanged in the improved environment, as if completely unaffected by it. Nature in the Geddesian world will be shaped into continually improving forms in which ideas and personalities can achieve their best expressions. In this ideal world of emerging humanity, experience amends ideas and behaviour. Thus Geddes’ motto: ‘Vivendo discimus’ (By living we learn).
“Nature and her forms of plant and animal life constitute the earliest environment for human activity and experience and these are constantly associated with their progress. Hence, each new up-rise of civilisation, each great cultural advance has to be associated with a ‘Return to Nature”
From: Dramatisations of History. Patrick Geddes. 1923
A painted ceiling and an inscribed arch in Riddles Court are fragments of evidence that Geddes flourished there. Within a few minutes’ walk are to be found surviving examples of his didactic art on his former students’ hostels and on the Castle Esplanade, Ramsay Garden. The Outlook Tower still has a role in the social mixing of The Royal Mile and teaching about the environment. Johnston Terrace Garden still forms a little island of green in the mass of stone and concrete.
But Geddes’ main legacy is a legacy of the mind. Pelican in the Wilderness (1956), Silent Spring (1962), Blueprint for Survival (1972), Small is Beautiful (1974) all challenged the squandering of Earth’s resources and the brutality of modern planning and architecture. Geddes was rediscovered, with his mantra ‘Think Global, Act Local’, in time for the Rio Earth Summit of 1992 and he is now the secular saint of the environmental movement.
His legacy is now a general commitment to careful and detailed survey of the problem, to the generation of an individual solution to an individual problem, to the genuine involvement of the people affected, in the planning and execution.
Geddes himself assessed his legacy when he said: ‘I am the little boy who rings the bell and runs away’.
Peaceful and educational. The gardens should displace violent and destructive uses (war, drug and alcohol abuse, crime etc) by creating new green areas with peaceful and redeeming uses. (e.g. meditation and calming areas, spaces for open air concerts, etc spaces for children to cultivate their own plants).
The commercial quarters of the Neotechnic city should be interspersed with interconnecting city parks, streets should be lined with trees and greenery should be in evidence as much as possible.
If the Paleotechnic created the big city agglomeration of the machine age or Megalopolis, the new era of the Neotechnic will bring about a healthier environment. This, coupled with high technology tools, will cause the disaggregation of formerly large towns and mega-cities into smaller units surrounded by green cultivated or wild areas.
Nature will be available for first hand inspection and thus for education, not merely for contemplation from afar. This organic and inter-related city and region in harmony he saw extended to all the nations of the world.
Geddes’ intention was not merely to change the natural environment, but to change men and women too. Mankind could not merely go along as before, unchanged in the improved environment, as if completely unaffected by it. Nature in the Geddesian world will be shaped into continually improving forms in which ideas and personalities can achieve their best expressions. In this ideal world of emerging humanity, experience amends ideas and behaviour. Thus Geddes’ motto: ‘Vivendo discimus’ (By living we learn).
“Nature and her forms of plant and animal life constitute the earliest environment for human activity and experience and these are constantly associated with their progress. Hence, each new up-rise of civilisation, each great cultural advance has to be associated with a ‘Return to Nature”
From: Dramatisations of History. Patrick Geddes. 1923
A painted ceiling and an inscribed arch in Riddles Court are fragments of evidence that Geddes flourished there. Within a few minutes’ walk are to be found surviving examples of his didactic art on his former students’ hostels and on the Castle Esplanade, Ramsay Garden. The Outlook Tower still has a role in the social mixing of The Royal Mile and teaching about the environment. Johnston Terrace Garden still forms a little island of green in the mass of stone and concrete.
But Geddes’ main legacy is a legacy of the mind. Pelican in the Wilderness (1956), Silent Spring (1962), Blueprint for Survival (1972), Small is Beautiful (1974) all challenged the squandering of Earth’s resources and the brutality of modern planning and architecture. Geddes was rediscovered, with his mantra ‘Think Global, Act Local’, in time for the Rio Earth Summit of 1992 and he is now the secular saint of the environmental movement.
His legacy is now a general commitment to careful and detailed survey of the problem, to the generation of an individual solution to an individual problem, to the genuine involvement of the people affected, in the planning and execution.
Geddes himself assessed his legacy when he said: ‘I am the little boy who rings the bell and runs away’.