The death of the urban vision?

372 zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA THE DEATH OF THE URBAN VISION? zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA John R. Gold Debate on the future city has changed greatly in the last 20 years. From visions of a distant, orderly and mobile utopia, peopled with enlightened ‘modern man’, concerns have become more sporadic and less coherent, determined by economic recession and the need to preserve existing urban social fabric rather than with the need to plan holistically for the city of the future. However, there should be no return to the earlier modernist visions, which lacked sufficient social understanding (as illustrated by failed experiments with highrise flats in the UK). Planning for the city of the future must be based on realistic societal needs. I(eywords: cities; urban forecasting; society and habitat As a prophet I have been no better than anyone else; my good fortune has been due to the fact that I kept my optimistic predictions to myself and published only the pessimistic ones, which turned out about 75 per cent accurate. zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA ANYONE WHO HAS followed the progress of debate about the future city over the last two decades will be aware that enormous changes in tone and emphasis have occurred. In the heady years of the late 196Os, the social science, planning and architectural press were full of studies* of the (then) distant future city of 2000 AD and beyond. The typical product stressed possibilities rather than The potential of technology, especially communications and constraints. building technology, would be actively embraced, producing radically changed urban forms-although opinions varied as to whether these would be highly dispersed or concentrated into huge agglomerations. The inhabitants of such John R. Gold is a senior lecturer in the Department of Social Studies at Oxford Polytechnic, Headington, Oxford OX3 OBP, UK. This article is based on a paper originally prepared for the-Annual Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Brighton, UK, 1983. 0016~3287/841040372-10$03.000 1984 Butterworth&Co (Publishers) Ltd FUTURES August 1984 Thedeathojtheurbanoision? 373 zyxwvutsrqpon sophisticated and mobile life-style, made cities would enjoy a leisured, comfortable by the fruits of a long unbroken period of economic growth. The equivalent literature of the early 1980s contrasts markedly.3 More likely to be written by academic critics than architectural or planning practitioners, these writings express the changed expectations of a world suffering economic recession and are imbued with a scepticism, even hostility, towards many of the cherished notions of urban futurists of the 1960s. The typical product of the present time focuses on the immediate future, concentrates upon known technology, and is distinctly more pessimistic about standards of living. Greater stress is laid upon the local scale and upon conserving the physical and social fabric of the city, supporting Hughes’ dicta: “ It is better to recycle what exists, to avoid mortgaging a workable past to a non-existent future, and to think small” .4 Much as these changes may be welcomed for the new foci that they raise and for indicating the need to reestablish a human scale in urban futures, it is also true that the powerful critique which they present has effectively undermined established notions of the future city without offering replacements. There are now few coherent ideas about what the city of the future will be like-its layout and structure, functions, economy, institutional framework, or quality of life. Much less is there any consensus about what the future city zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYX should be like; a serious matter given that past experience shows that the imagery of one time does materially affect the course of urban affairs in later periods. To stumble into the future without such forethought is to abandon any real prospect of meeting the potential needs of urban society, let alone solve the problems of existing cities. In seeking to improve this situation, a vital first step is to make systematic analysis of the failings of past visions of the future city and see what lessons can be learned. This point is illustrated here by a brief case study of the development of highrise public housing in the UK-an apt example, as this form of housing, perhaps more than any other aspect of the contemporary British urban scene, encapsulates both the power and shortcomings of urban futurist imagery. After outlining the rapid deployment and subsequent reappraisal of this form of housing, the nature of the underlying imagery is discussed. It will be seen that there were real deficiencies in the underlying vision of the future city; deficiencies which lay in the sociological, rather than the technological, imagination. zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA The swing of the pendulum The development of highrise public housing in the UK occurred later than elsewhere in Western Europe. Apart from central Scotland, there had been traditional prejudice against flats since they were associated with low-grade tenements. As one observer noted at the turn of the century, the English regarded them as only an “ emergency substitute for living in a private house” .5 By the 193Os, however, opinion had started slowly to change. The national slum clearance campaign that followed the 1930 Housing Act stimulated the need for more council housing, and related changes in housing subsidy FUTURES August 1984 374 The death of the urban zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA vision? zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA arrangements made the construction of flats more attractive. Further stimuli were added by the advent of new architectural theory, as discussed below, and by growing interest in examples of successful use of flats in municipal housing schemes in continental Europe. 6 The net result improved both the image and viability of flats. They were still tenements for the poor but by 1939 “ the cruder prejudices against them had softened and they were now recognizably modern flats, an accepted form of dwelling for normal and respectable families” .’ Even so flats only accounted for a small proportion of municipal dwellings by the outbreak of war and the maximum height of blocks did not exceed five or six storeys. Deployment of highrise flats in the strict sense’ belongs to the post-war era and particularly the two decades between 1955-75. In this period nearly 440 000 such flats were built to house around 1.5 million people, at a cost variously estimated at between &1 000-l 500 million.g Around 90% of these flats were constructed in the inner areas of the metropolitan cities, although there were considerable inter- and intra-urban variations in adoption rates. Table 1 conveys the extraordinary speed with which highrise flats were adopted and subsequently reappraised. lo From an annual average of 5-6s of all local authority housing in the mid 195Os, the proportion in high flats grew to 25.7% in 1966. A mere four years later this figure had fallen to 9.8%) dropping to negligible proportions by the mid 1970s. The details of this zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihg uolteface have been recounted sufficiently elsewhere to require only a brief summary here.” Broadly speaking, a complex edifice of perceived benefits and justifications for highrise public housing had been built up during the years of advocacy and development. Such housing was advocated on the basis of a mixture of planning arguments (making better use of scarce metropolitan land by building at higher density, saving agricultural land at the urban fringe, and retaining the population in the heart of the city), economic arguments (that high flats would eventually bring real savings in constructional costs-a contention often supported by appeal to continental examples), and, as will be seen later, social idealism. Reappraisal began when social problems and constructional errors were reported from some estates in the early 196Os, continued through the impact of changes in the housing subsidy system in 1967 which made high flats much less attractive and was completed when the Ronan Point disaster occurred in May 1968. Ronan Point, a system-built 23-storey block in Canning Town (London), partially collapsed after an explosion caused by a domestic gas appliance, causing the death of four people. The subsequent criticisms of the industrialized building system used at Ronan Point and other similar blocks, especially over the inadequate safety standards incorporated, caused considerable public TABLE 1. TENDERS APPROVED BY LOCAL AUTHORITIES AND NEW TOWNS IN ENGLAND AND WALES (BY STOREY HEIGHTS AS A % OF ALL DWELLINGS APPROVED) Storeys 1953-9 5-14 15+ Total Source: 6.4 0.5 6.9 Cooney 1960-4 1965 1966 1967 1966 1969 1970 1976 12.3 7.0 19.3 10.9 10.6 21.5 15.3 10.4 25.7 13.3 9.7 23.0 14.0 5.9 19.9 9.7 3.8 13.5 8.0 1.8 9.8 1.2 0.0 1.2 and Ash, see reference 10. FUTURES August 1964 concern. It was a blow from which highrise public housing in the UK never recovered. An example perhaps demonstrates the extent of the reappraisal. On 30 September 1980 two ten-storey blocks of flats on the fringes of Birkenhead Docks (M erseyside) were demolished by controlled explosion. Oak Gardens and Eldon Gardens were not old-they only dated from 1958-and &640 000 of the 2750 000 construction costs remained outstanding. Despite this, and the additional &400 000 needed for demolition expenses, the estate’s problems made the ‘clean slate’ seem preferable to the other available options. Not surprisingly the media were present in strength at the demolition. Ever since Ronan Point, a vigorous campaign had been waged against highrise public housing, usually focusing on, and generalizing from the atypical experience of the relatively small number of ‘problem’ estates. As unfair as such criticism appeared to the ‘estabfishment’ of the architectural and planning professions, I2 it struck a resonant chord with public opinion. Hence Oak Gardens and Eldon Gardens had become potent symbols; their destruction in some measure representing recognition of, and atonement for, error. As a correspondent stated in reporting the event: “ It might have been the most expensive firework display in local history, but here in Birkenhead the modernist dream has finally been laid to rest” .13 Quite apart from the disdain and grim satisfaction that this statement conveys, the choice of words is interesting. The demolition was held to be not just a judgment on highrise flats but also that broader set of ideas felt to lie behind the use of such housing-the ‘modernist dream’. zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXW The will of an epoch ‘Modernism’ itself eludes easy definition, since it refers to a way of life and a world view as well as any specific philosophy.14 Nevertheless, the term has come to be identified with an international tendency that came to fruition in the European arts and humanities in the period 1910-30; a tendency that sought new ways and understandings to embrace the spirit of the modern age and thereby help shape a better future for human society.‘5 From our point of view, the most significant of the component movements within modernist thought was the Modern Movement in architecture. Despite the best endeavours of architectural historians to depict the Modern Movement as the inevitable outcome of a continuous process of evolution,t6 the reality was somewhat different. Initially centred in Germany and, to a lesser extent, France and Italy, the Modern Movement developed from a set of parallel, but distinct, movements and not “ a neat chain of causes of effects, nor . . . a simple strip cartoon that proceeds tidily from frame to frame” .” These sub-movements-Futurist, Constructivist, Expressionist and the rest-often disagreed on points of philosophy, political orientation and priority, but had common approaches and areas of interest and shared a new conception of the role of the architect. The last point needs to be amplified. The architects of the Modern Movement espoused a broader field of concern than was conventional in architecture, embracing the wider scale of town planning, the management of the everyday environment and, in particular, the question of mass housing. The FUTURES August 1984 376 zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA The death of the urban uision? image was propagated of architecture as an heroic adventure and of the architect as a tough-minded pioneer. l8 Architecture was to be “ the will of an epoch translated into space: living, changing, new “ ,” with the architect as the interpreter of that will. And it was held that the will of the epoch was for change. The social and human problems of the time were regarded as largely the products of a false and deficient environment and man’s condition could be improved through a new architecture which represented true and fundamental meanings. ‘O What sort of city could meet such requirements? The answer can be found in the architectural press of the 1920s and 1930s as well as the more avant-garde popular media of the day, especially films. 21 There was no single vision of the modernists’ future city, of course, any more than there was one blueprint for its achievement. Rather it is more realistic to recognize a ‘constellation’ of imagery, after the manner of the Manuels, with “ reasonably well-marked time-space perimeters and common elements that are striking enough to permit framing generalizations while still repeating the concreteness of the individual (case).“ ‘* Working on this basis, the following composite picture emerges of the structure and physical appearance of the future city (hereafter referred to as ‘physical imagery’). 23 The city would be created by harnessing the potential of new materials (steel, reinforced concrete and glass), advanced technology (especially industrialized building techniques), and secondary sources of energy (particularly electricity). It would be planned according to a comprehensive, rational schema, normally involving single purpose land-use zones interconnected by sophisticated and efficient transport systems. The challenge of traffic would be met by channelling movement into huge traffic arteries, rapid transits and pedestrian walkways, often vertically segregated from one another. Aviation, like electricity an important symbol of modernity, was actively encouraged, with provision commonly made for central city airports or heliports. Certainly drawings invariably showed the skies dotted with flying machines of all descriptions. The portion of the city usually depicted in most detail was the central business district or commercial centre, with the tendency towards colossal buildings separated by the restless traffic arteries. Other types of land use, as noted above, would be segregated into their own distinct areas, although the patterning varies sufficiently to make generalizations unreliable. The industrial workforce were normally housed in estates containing blocks of flat-roofed, unornamented, purpose-built blocks of flats, situated so as to allow each dwelling the maximum of sunlight and air. The blocks of flats would be placed in landscaped grounds, giving rise to the expression ‘the city in the park’, but there would always be ready access to workplace, shops and communal facilities. Similarly industry would be found on its own estates, where possible housed in light and airy single storey buildings. Full use would be made of electricity and of processes of automation. Everywhere in the modernist’s future city would be symmetry and order. With the hindsight of some 50 years, it is not difficult to see how many of these ideas have become tarnished. Quite apart from highrise public housing, urban motorways, airports close to city centres and single-purpose land-use FUTURES August 1994 The death of the urban vision? 377 zyxwvutsrqponm zoning are all issues that now can raise hostile comment. Nevertheless, one must not lose sight of the “ pristinity of this vision” 24 nor minimize the impact that this imagery had in the 1930s. To those used to the haphazard squalor and impoverished environment of many existing cities, the clean, efficient and comprehensively planned modernist city of tomorrow clearly had its attractions -if only as a point of comparison. The attraction was boosted by the fact that the physical imagery was accompanied by a powerful imagery of the society who would live there (social imagery). The social imagery may also be pieced together to provide a composite picture. The basis of the imagery was a normative model of man which may be termed ‘modern man’ (a cliche that is repeated endlessly in the writings of modernists). Modern man was a creature of his time, although presented as a model for all future times; a recognizable member of the 1930s’ proletariat upon whom had been grafted the values and enthusiasms of the Modern Movement themselves. Thus modern man was depicted as an enlightened individual with a ‘deepening sensitiveness’ to the machine aesthetic of his age.25 He had liberated himself from the constraining beliefs of conventional society and grasped the potential of new technology to transform his life style (especially with respect to the automation of work giving him greatly increased leisure time). Modern man had been ready and willing to adopt the values of the dawning age-speed, convenience, mobility, novelty and modernity for its own sake-and expected these values to be imparted to all aspects of life. Above all, he demanded (never ‘requested’) that “ new structures should take the place of the old, modern in idea and thoroughly up-to-date in planning and equipment” .26 Modern man and his family were truly at home in their flat and on the estate of which they were part. They appreciated the labour-saving devices which freed them from tiresome chores of house-keeping and maintenance and were pleased not to have to look after a demanding garden. The flat afforded them the privacy they required; the fine views from its windows affording a focus for thought and meditation. However, the flat was far from being a cocoon against the world, for the modern family also valued the strong and vibrant sense of community that had developed in the locality of the residence. That sense of community was fostered partly by the children going to kindergarten and primary school together on the estate, but was enhanced by far-sighted provision of social and communal facilities to which the family looked to spend their enhanced leisure time. The estates would include cafe’s, meeting rooms and community centres to supply nuclei for informal social life, with free availability of sports facilities to allow everyone, young or old, to participate in organized and socially productive games. Good urban design thus laid the basis for a healthy society. Relationships between zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFED social and physical imagery The last point is the key to the matter. The future city of the Modern Movement belongs to a long (and extant) tradition of ideal city planning that has sought to bring about a better society through manipulation of the physical design of towns and cities. 27 As with other such exercises, the Modern FUTURES August 1994 3 78 The death of the urban zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA vision? zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA Movement’s preoccupation lay with the technological imagination; in creating the physical form and structure of the future city, given known or possible developments in technology. Whatever intrinsic merits might lie in the social imagery as an expression of the modernist’s vision of the new age, there is no doubt that this imagery was put together piecemeal to legitimize the already existing physical imagery. As such there were two basic requirements for the social imagery. First, it had to lit the overall physical design of the future city, with any activity that would give rise to an incompatible land use being tactfully proscribed. To give an example, one is frequently surprised at how much space was devoted by the theorists of the Modern Movement to invective against the private garden and the activity of gardening. 28 The reason in all probability had little to do with anxieties over whether gardening was an appropriate activity for modern man. Simply, provision of private gardens was a use of land irreconcilible with the notion of the ‘city in the park’ with its sweeping zyxwvutsrqponml public open space. Second, the social imagery needed to be sufficiently alluring to ward off criticism. The Modern Movement’s ideas came under fierce attack in the early years, with critics arguing that the gleaming future city could easily be the recipe for an oppressive and regimented society. It was essential therefore to portray the society who would live in this city as liberated rather than fettered, living in flats that could be compared to cabins on ocean liners rather than to barracks,” and voluntarily, indeed joyously, participating in community life. The vision of the society that met these requirements is, as noted above, recognizably a product of the 1930s and contains an amalgam of ideas that clearly date from that period. Strong traces are present of (then) contemporary social thought and political ideology. For example, the implicit notion that society could be easily constructed and reconstructed sits comfortably alongside ideas about ‘mass society’30 and the prevailing deterministic cast of the logic of the social sciences. One may also note the influence of the persistent misreading of trends in leisure time 31 that was common in the inter-war period as well as the general enthusiasm for a radical, but loosely-defined, reconstruction 32 But the society is also portrayed as being regulated by values, of society. which, as mentioned earlier, resemble remarkably the latest thinking of the Modern Movement on the matter. The starkest expression of this trend was the concept of modern man itself. Modern man did not exist other than as an abstraction coined by the Modern Movement and occasional suggestions that he might exist in due course merely served to show how remote certain modernists were from the industrial working classes whose cause they championed. Its real significance, however, lay in its convenience as a cornerstone for social imagery. Armed with this concept, any number of unchallengable pseudo-sociological and -psychological assertions could be put forward; all the more unassailable for not being based on any evidence in the first place. Moreover, the concept of modern man played a vital role in insulating the whole edifice of modernist imagery from criticism. The built forms were derived from application of rational and moral principles. Cherished ideas about design could be legitimized by reference to the putative needs of the future urban society, which the theorists of the FUTURES August 1984 The death of the zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedc urban uirion? 379 zyxwvutsrqponm Modern Movement themselves specified. Only time and experience could cast doubt on the initial premises. zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHG Vision and choice Images of future cities can inspire, appall, excite or amuse, but do not have the power in themselves to transform unless the social climate is right for their adoption. This was precisely the condition that prevailed in the UK after World War II. In the aftermath of war new ideas that symbolized a break with the past and a shining new future, yet, curiously, could also be fitted alongside existing architectural and planning traditions, were at a premium. Initially the limited available resources had to be channelled into industrial reconstruction, but in the early 1950s the opportunity came for a major effort to increase and improve the nation’s housing stock. It was this period that marked the start of the saga of highrise public housing. That this form of housing was acceptable was due in no small measure to the vividness and seeming plausibility of modernist urban imagery, but the word acceptable must be stressed. While there were local authorities that enthusiastically adopted high flats for municipal housing schemes, far more looked upon them as a necessary evil. As Dunleavy points out, the attitude of many city architects was distinctly fatalistic, “ typified by the production of hundreds of schemes for highrise which made no pretension to any significant architectural qualities. This strand of design reached its zenith during the industrialised when architects in many cities relinquished any real building campaign, control over the building design and concentrated only on layouts and landspacing. “ 33 What tended to happen therefore was the aping of forms, as if all that mattered was to supply the physical fabric of highrise flats and the desired social consequences would appear by some alchemy. Herein lay the dangers of the imagery-that it could be used as a licence to build without having to consider social factors. Moreover, the normative character of the social imagery made it possible for subsequent generations of architects and planners to tack on elements of new social imagery at will in order to justify their own schemes. In light of these tendencies, some writers34 have claimed that the problem was not necessarily due to any gap between imagery and reality but to distortion of the underlying ideals by less gifted practitioners. Whatever the truth of this argument, nothing should deflect from the fact that there were serious deficiencies in the imagery in the first place. As seen above, modernists were preoccupied with creating the physical imagery of the future city. On the basis of that imagery and by dint of a specious model of man, they generated a further body of imagery of a modern society fully content with its new surroundings and life-style. At no time were the actual wishes of potential users taken into account. The results speak for themselves. With our current proximity to the events, it remains difficult to judge how significant the episode of highrise public housing will be in influencing the long-term course of urban planning and architecture. Highrise flats are far from the only issue that has aroused fierce criticism and would have to take their place on a list that would include the destruction of historic buildings and neighbourhoods, protest against urban motorways, concern about the use of FUTURES August 1994 380 The death of&he urban uision? zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA comprehensive redevelopment policies and anxiety over environmental quality to name but a few. Nevertheless, it seems undeniable that highrise flats were the issue that initiated public concern with the whole direction of urban planning and the underlying vision of the future. In the face of the subsequent mood of public disillusionment, professional architects and planners have virtually ceased to work on questions relating to the future city, other than with regard to the immediate future. With the tone of academic work being mainly critical of error rather than forward-looking, there is little appearing that serves to make any impact on the current vacuum in our knowledge about the future city. Whether this vacuum represents the death of the urban vision or whether the situation can be retrieved will depend on the response that is made. A prerequisite is to stimulate debate on the matter, for, as Polak notes, “ To choose our vision, we first have to have visions7’.35 Yet debate will not do much if it simply takes the same lines as previously; creating elaborate schemes of cities that would be possible given certain assumptions about technology. The whole lesson of the failure of the modernist vision indicates the need for a more balanced approach, considering both society and technology. In other words, it is as important to know the range of options open to society as to know the potential range of city forms available. To date, the question asked has been “ what sort of city?” If we are to make effective choices about the city of the future the question should be “ what sort of city for what sort of society?” zyxwvutsrqponmlk Notes and references ofLewis 1. M. zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA R. Hughes (ed), The Letfers Mum~rd zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONM and FredericJ. Osborn, (Bath, Adams and Dart, 1971), page 97. 2. A few examples from a large literature would include R. Eells and C. Walton (eds), Man in the City uf the Fudure, (London, Collier-Macmillan, 1968); D. Lewis, “New urban structures”, in K. Baier and N. Rescher (eds), Values and the Future, (New York, Free Press, 1969), pages 320-335; J. G. Pickles, “Ideas for future cities”, Architectural Reuiew, 14.5, 1969, pages 349-352; P. Cook, Experimental Architecture, (London, Studio Vista, 1970). 3. S. S. Birdsall, “Alternative prospects for America’s urban future”, in S. D. Brunn and J. 0. Wheeler (eds), The American Metropolitan System, (London, Edward Arnold, 1980), pages 201-211; G. Gappert and R. V. Knight (eds), Cities in the Zlst Century, (London, Sage Publications, 1982); B. S. Maitland, “The future townscape”, in R. L. Davies and A. G. Champion (eds), The Futurefor the City Centre, (London, Academic Press, 1983), pages 61-81. 4. R. Hughes, The Shock oj the Nezu, (London, BBC Publications, 1980), page 211. 5. H. Muthesius, The English House, (London, Crosby Lockwood Staples, 1979), page 9. (Originally published in German in 1904 as L)ns Eng~~scheHaus). 6. E. Denby, Europe Re-housed, (London, George Allen and Unwin, 1938). 7. A. Ravetz, “From working-class tenement to modern flat: local authorities and multi-storey housing between the wars”, in A. Sutcliffe (ed), Multi-Storey Liuing: the British Work@-Class Experience, (London, Groom Helm, 1974), page 125. 8. The definition used here is the same as that used for official statistics in Great Britain, viz five storeys or above. 9. Figures from P. Dunleavy, The Politics of Mass Housing in Britain, 1945-75, (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1981). 10. Figures compiled from two sources: E. W. Cooney, “High flats in England and Wales since 1945”, in A. Sutcliffe, op tit, reference 7, page 154; J. Ash, “The rise and fall of high-rise housing in England”, in C. Ungerson and V. Karn (eds), Consumer Exp&mce of Ho&q, (Famborough, Gower, 1980), page 111. FUTURES August 1984 The death of the urban zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihg uision? 381 zyxwvutsrqponm 11. Besides works cited above, see L. Esher, zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIH A Broken Wave, (London, Allen Lane, 1981). 12. For example, “ Swing high, zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCB swing low”, editorial in AmUctaml Review,144, 1968, page 239. 13. Correspondent, ITN News, 30 September 1980. 14. K. Rowland, A History of the Modern M~v~~t~ (New York, Ginn, 1973). 15. M. S. Bradbury, “ Modernism” , in A. Bullock and 0. Stallybrass (eds), The Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought, (London, Fontana, 1977), page 395. 16. For example, N. Pevsner, Pioneers of the Modern Movement, (Harmondsworth, UK, Penguin Books, 1960). 17. R. Banham, The Age of the Masters, (London, Architectural Press, 1975), page 65. 18. L. Brett, Parameters and Images, (London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1970), page 28. 19, Mies van der Rohe, quoted in P. C. Johnson, Mies van der Rohe, (London, Seeker Warburg, 1978), page 188. and 20. C. Norburg-Schulz, Meaning in Western Architecture, (London, Studio Vista, 1974), page 359. 21. J. R. Gold, “ Images of future past: film visions of the future city, 1926-39” , in J. Burgess and J. R. Gold (eds), Geography and the Media, (London, Croom Helm, 1984). 22. F. E. Manuel and F. P. Manuel, Utopias Thought in the W&em World, (Oxford, Basil 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29, 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. Blackwell, 1979), page 13. Much fuller treatment of this material is to be found in J. R. Gold, The Urban Vision: Modernism and Twentieth Centuly Images of the Future Cip, (London, Croom Helm, forthcoming). Esher op tit, reference 11, page 30. J. L. Martin, “ The state of transition” , in J. L. Martin, B. Nicholson and N. Gabo (eds), Circle, (London, Faber and Faber, 1937), page 218. G. Broadbridge, “ The one-room flat” , Architectural Reuiew, 75, page 41. H. Rosenau, The Ideal City, (3rd ed) (London, Methuen, 1983). As an example, see Le Corbusier, The Radiant City, (London, Faber and Faber, 1967). Originally published in French in 1933 as La Ville Radieuse. A frequent allusion of the time, the ocean liner cabin being a symbol of luxury and modernity, yet ideally fitted for the function that it served. S. Giner, Mass Socie~, (Oxford, Martin Robertson, 1976). See S. Parker, The Sociolo~ of Leisure, (London, George Allen and Unwin, 1976), page 147. J. Willett, The New Sabri@y, 1917-33, (London, Thames and Hudson, 1978). P. Dunleavy, op tit, reference 9, page 57. J. M. Richards, Memoirs ofan Unjust Fella, (London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1980). F. L. Polak, The Image of the Future, (New York, Oceana, 1961), page 367. FUTURES August 1984