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Cities and city planning
Rook
121
Reviews
The Project provides a range of sanitation improvements. The sewerage, sewage treatment and effluent disposal works are to be extended. Alternative schemes were considered to evolve the least-cost solution. Waste stabilisation ponds were found to be feasible for the largest works but impossible because of site limitations at another works. Both ventilated improved pit latrines and twin-pit pour-flush latrines are to be offered in unsewered areas. The choice is to be left to the householder and is expected to be largely determined by religious considerations. Conveniently (from the point of view of making Port City a good case for study) there are large numbers of Moslems, Hindus and Christians, each with their distinctive sanitation practices. An unusual feature of the sanitation aspects of the Project is the widespread adoption of small-bore sewerage. An Annex shows the cost effectiveness of this solution, although more attention should have been given to the institutional difficulties of desludging large numbers of interceptor tanks. This Handbook provides very useful general guidance and detailed information. No project planners in the water and sanitation sector of developing countries should go ahead with their projects without first studying its three volumes. John Pickford
Loughborough
WEDC Group Leuder University of Technology, UK
LLOYD RODWIN, Cifies and City Pfunning. Plenum Press, New York and London 1981, 309 pp., $29.50. This book is a collection of commissioned and independently written articles which deal with different ways planners, scholars, politicians and laymen have perceived cities. It is based on studies undertaken in the 1970s and focuses on recent changes in the understanding of the character and images of cities and of their problems and opportunities. The main concerns which link the 14 papers written by Lloyd Rodwin, five of them together with colleagues, is what planners need to know and do with regard to cities in the more developed and Third World countries. Part One deals with ‘Images of the City’. In this group of five papers ‘The Form of the City’ (with Kevin Lynch) stands out as a seminal work so characteristic of Kevin Lynch’s thinking. This paper is based on an article publised by Kevin Lynch 20 years earlier under the title ‘The Theory of Urban Form’ and develops his by now well-known analytical approach, his proposed analytical system, goal-form interaction and evaluation. By comparison, the subsequent paper ‘Images of the City in the Social Sciences’ (with Robert Hollister) broadens our perception of cities by analysing their sociopolitical aspects. Part Two addresses itself to the ‘Metropolis and New Communities in the United States’. The first paper ‘Problems of the Metropolis’ deals in some depth with changing perceptions of metropolitan problems between the 1950s and 1970s in the light of downward trends of population and economic activity. However, one misses here a clear recognition of the essentially limited role planners and public intervention can play in the political context of the USA compared with Europe or Third World countries. The subsequent article in which the failure of the New Communities Program is convincingly documented is proof of these limitations: the conclusion - “that building new towns is highly unlikely to be a viable proposition for the private sector” - should not have come as too much of a surprise. Part Three deals with ‘The Metropolis and City Planning in the Third World’. The then-emerging radical new thinking about Third World cities is well argued. This part makes interesting reading, last but not least because it illustrates how quickly new approaches such as rural development alternatives and a better understanding of the informal sector, can become conventional wisdom only a few years later.
122
Book hVVi0VJ
Part Four is concerned with ‘Educational Dilemmas in City Planning’. Four basic approaches are discussed: City Planning, Regional Science, Area Policy Analysis, and Urban and Regional Studies, together with the experience of the MIT Urban Studies Programme. The subsequent chapter ‘Training Planners in Third World Countries’ would merit development in greater depth in view of its great importance. Perhaps the most hard-hitting and revealing chapter is to be found in Part Five on the ‘Illusions of City Planners’. Here the discrepancies between the formal notions of city planning and the actual practice of city planning is reviewed together with the presumed and actual knowledge and powers of city planners. This chapter concludes: “This evaluation of the limitations in what planners know and do and the problems associated with the groups they serve is anything but encouraging.” Yet, after a final chapter about ‘The Profession of City Planning’, the author concludes his book: “The views expressed here exude restrained optimism on the grounds that a profession, like an individual, is in an essentially healthy condition when it increases its ability to deal with felt needs; when it achieves more realistic integration of its aims, subject matter, and tools; and when it perceives itself and the world more accurately. If the evidence and the interpretations developed here are correct, this is what is happening in city planning.” Walter Bor Architect and Town Planner London, UK
LAU SIU-KAI, Society and Politics in Hong Kong. The Chinese University Press, Hong Kong, 1982, 205 pp. With interest in the negotiations and agreement between The Peoples’ Republic of China (PRC) and the United Kingdom over the future of Hong Kong continuing, this seems a fortuitous time to review this excellent and diligently researched book. It deals with the obvious paradox of Hong Kong that it obeys none of the prescriptive economic or social theories as to how a society should conduct itself through the apparently unstoppable historical progression from colonialism and yet has produced a rich, flexible, mobile, and reasonably cheery society. It has done this by a process of using the ambiguities and paradoxes in the political system to synergise, rather than homogenise, the different energy and power sources in its society. Dr Lau poses us with this problem: “given the limited economic and political capacity and adaptability characteristics of a colonial regime, how can it maintain political stability (and also its own political survival) in the face of all these potentially disintegrative factors which can rapidly politicise society and mobilise people into political action? While many other countries display higher levels of ‘state activism’ they are not able to guarantee political stability; why is the colonial government of Hong Kong capable of doing so?” And, on reflection. he points out that “it is futile to try and find analagous cases and draw explanations through comparisons”. Amongst the reasons Dr Lau sees as crucial to the mutual usage and retention of the central paradox is that Hong Kong, the ‘Barren Rock’, was obtained to enhance free trade in the Far East rather than as pure territorial gain; that the pattern of alien rule in Hong Kong is reversed the colonised people of Hong Kong came to subject themselves voluntarily to alien rule. From the start a partnership between Britain and the Chinese was set up with a common goal of economic gain. Though an unequal partnership, coercion has never been the sole means of consolidating it. The lack of natural resources means that Hong Kong has always had to develop human talent particularly entrepreneurial initiative and labour productivity; and while division of
121
Reviews
The Project provides a range of sanitation improvements. The sewerage, sewage treatment and effluent disposal works are to be extended. Alternative schemes were considered to evolve the least-cost solution. Waste stabilisation ponds were found to be feasible for the largest works but impossible because of site limitations at another works. Both ventilated improved pit latrines and twin-pit pour-flush latrines are to be offered in unsewered areas. The choice is to be left to the householder and is expected to be largely determined by religious considerations. Conveniently (from the point of view of making Port City a good case for study) there are large numbers of Moslems, Hindus and Christians, each with their distinctive sanitation practices. An unusual feature of the sanitation aspects of the Project is the widespread adoption of small-bore sewerage. An Annex shows the cost effectiveness of this solution, although more attention should have been given to the institutional difficulties of desludging large numbers of interceptor tanks. This Handbook provides very useful general guidance and detailed information. No project planners in the water and sanitation sector of developing countries should go ahead with their projects without first studying its three volumes. John Pickford
Loughborough
WEDC Group Leuder University of Technology, UK
LLOYD RODWIN, Cifies and City Pfunning. Plenum Press, New York and London 1981, 309 pp., $29.50. This book is a collection of commissioned and independently written articles which deal with different ways planners, scholars, politicians and laymen have perceived cities. It is based on studies undertaken in the 1970s and focuses on recent changes in the understanding of the character and images of cities and of their problems and opportunities. The main concerns which link the 14 papers written by Lloyd Rodwin, five of them together with colleagues, is what planners need to know and do with regard to cities in the more developed and Third World countries. Part One deals with ‘Images of the City’. In this group of five papers ‘The Form of the City’ (with Kevin Lynch) stands out as a seminal work so characteristic of Kevin Lynch’s thinking. This paper is based on an article publised by Kevin Lynch 20 years earlier under the title ‘The Theory of Urban Form’ and develops his by now well-known analytical approach, his proposed analytical system, goal-form interaction and evaluation. By comparison, the subsequent paper ‘Images of the City in the Social Sciences’ (with Robert Hollister) broadens our perception of cities by analysing their sociopolitical aspects. Part Two addresses itself to the ‘Metropolis and New Communities in the United States’. The first paper ‘Problems of the Metropolis’ deals in some depth with changing perceptions of metropolitan problems between the 1950s and 1970s in the light of downward trends of population and economic activity. However, one misses here a clear recognition of the essentially limited role planners and public intervention can play in the political context of the USA compared with Europe or Third World countries. The subsequent article in which the failure of the New Communities Program is convincingly documented is proof of these limitations: the conclusion - “that building new towns is highly unlikely to be a viable proposition for the private sector” - should not have come as too much of a surprise. Part Three deals with ‘The Metropolis and City Planning in the Third World’. The then-emerging radical new thinking about Third World cities is well argued. This part makes interesting reading, last but not least because it illustrates how quickly new approaches such as rural development alternatives and a better understanding of the informal sector, can become conventional wisdom only a few years later.
122
Book hVVi0VJ
Part Four is concerned with ‘Educational Dilemmas in City Planning’. Four basic approaches are discussed: City Planning, Regional Science, Area Policy Analysis, and Urban and Regional Studies, together with the experience of the MIT Urban Studies Programme. The subsequent chapter ‘Training Planners in Third World Countries’ would merit development in greater depth in view of its great importance. Perhaps the most hard-hitting and revealing chapter is to be found in Part Five on the ‘Illusions of City Planners’. Here the discrepancies between the formal notions of city planning and the actual practice of city planning is reviewed together with the presumed and actual knowledge and powers of city planners. This chapter concludes: “This evaluation of the limitations in what planners know and do and the problems associated with the groups they serve is anything but encouraging.” Yet, after a final chapter about ‘The Profession of City Planning’, the author concludes his book: “The views expressed here exude restrained optimism on the grounds that a profession, like an individual, is in an essentially healthy condition when it increases its ability to deal with felt needs; when it achieves more realistic integration of its aims, subject matter, and tools; and when it perceives itself and the world more accurately. If the evidence and the interpretations developed here are correct, this is what is happening in city planning.” Walter Bor Architect and Town Planner London, UK
LAU SIU-KAI, Society and Politics in Hong Kong. The Chinese University Press, Hong Kong, 1982, 205 pp. With interest in the negotiations and agreement between The Peoples’ Republic of China (PRC) and the United Kingdom over the future of Hong Kong continuing, this seems a fortuitous time to review this excellent and diligently researched book. It deals with the obvious paradox of Hong Kong that it obeys none of the prescriptive economic or social theories as to how a society should conduct itself through the apparently unstoppable historical progression from colonialism and yet has produced a rich, flexible, mobile, and reasonably cheery society. It has done this by a process of using the ambiguities and paradoxes in the political system to synergise, rather than homogenise, the different energy and power sources in its society. Dr Lau poses us with this problem: “given the limited economic and political capacity and adaptability characteristics of a colonial regime, how can it maintain political stability (and also its own political survival) in the face of all these potentially disintegrative factors which can rapidly politicise society and mobilise people into political action? While many other countries display higher levels of ‘state activism’ they are not able to guarantee political stability; why is the colonial government of Hong Kong capable of doing so?” And, on reflection. he points out that “it is futile to try and find analagous cases and draw explanations through comparisons”. Amongst the reasons Dr Lau sees as crucial to the mutual usage and retention of the central paradox is that Hong Kong, the ‘Barren Rock’, was obtained to enhance free trade in the Far East rather than as pure territorial gain; that the pattern of alien rule in Hong Kong is reversed the colonised people of Hong Kong came to subject themselves voluntarily to alien rule. From the start a partnership between Britain and the Chinese was set up with a common goal of economic gain. Though an unequal partnership, coercion has never been the sole means of consolidating it. The lack of natural resources means that Hong Kong has always had to develop human talent particularly entrepreneurial initiative and labour productivity; and while division of