Rehumanising housing

Book reviews

argument by analogy by claiming that two thoroughly researched concepts Newman's defensible space and my design disadvantagement - are also becoming entrenched and supposedly John Lea equally dangerous. Jenks is not conDepartment of Urban and cerned with evidence but prefers to Regional Planning cite bogus criticism by Anson, who University of Sydney, Australia elsewhere champions terrorists and petrol bombers as 'free spirits' and In the final analysis, the legitimacy of Hillier, who is unfortunately prone to metropolitan management derives from the public's sanction, and its effectiveness 1See for example B.M. Renaud, National invent 'facts' as and when he pleases. is a function of management's response to Urbanization Policy in Developing Coun- Hillier has two unscientific specialithe public's expressed needs and desires. tries, World Bank, New York, 1981; J.F. ties. One is criticizing others for blaAside from Tokyo, however, no great city Linn, Cities in the Developing World: Pofi- tant reversals of what they have in South and East Asia can claim long and cies for their Equitable and Efficient tried experience with these political princi- Growth, World Bank, New York, 1983; and actually said. Here he alleges that J.P. Lea and J.M. Courtney, Cities in Newman and I aim to decrease pedesples at the metropolitan level (p 86). Conflict: Studies in the Planning and Man- trian encounter rates whereas in fact Overall, this volume is an important agement of Asian Cities, World Bank, New we aim to increase them. and welcome addition to the Asian York, 1985. I would also question Hillier's data for unknown distributions which he claims overturn a body of known data that he dislikes. While he does not do so here, one of his earlier examples is quoted in all seriousness by Alison is a valid criticism of my work. I have Ravetz. It makes the false assumption REHUMANISING HOUSING never claimed 'a simple causal link that one vandal target type is equivaby Necdet Teymur, Thomas Markus between crime and design' and have lent to one incident of vandalism, for repeatedly exposed the fallacy in such example, that "broken glass' always and Tom Woolley a crude linkage, but Jenks continues means 'one pane per block'. I recently counted 30 smashed panes in one Butterworths, Guildford, 1988, 196pp to pursue the simplistic. Some of the papers are mere exer- badly designed building, and there is This book consists of the papers of a cises in verbiage without practical no reason why Hillier and Ravetz 1987 conference that was described by value for improving problem housing. could not have collected independent one of its participants as 'an Alice Necdet Teymur argues that nothing evidence instead of jumping to wrong Coleman hate session'. It claims to use useful can emerge until housing is conclusions about mine. Flats of over five storeys cost at my book on the ill-effects of miscon- studied from over one hundred viewceived design, Utopia on Trial, as "a points, none of which he advances least 50% more per dwelling than peg upon which to hang a wider beyond the status of topic headings. two-storey buildings, and many times debate'. In practice, however, it nar- He presents unnecessary complica- more to maintain. Yet, as Michael rows the debate by excluding anyone tions as sophistication, and his conclu- Jones usefully shows, satisfactory who might commend my evidence or sions are mere platitudes. His paper housing standards prove unsatisfacrefute criticisms of it. Within this appears an apt example of its preten- t o r y in m u l t i s t o r e y f l a t s a n d sheltered bias Thomas Markus feels tious title: 'The pathology of housing maisonettes, and so still higher expenditure is needed. Its absence leads he can safely assert that the criticisms discourse'. are devastating and justified, but the Markus's second paper, on prescrip- to a deterioration in council services, reader should be warned of the book's tion in housing design, is at two and an attempt to redress the deficienleft-wing prejudices. removes from reality. It studies, not cy in Broadwater Farm now absorbs To do him justice, Markus depre- housing itself but documents from 25% of the borough cleansing services cates the mindless use of terms such as Tudor Waiters to Parker Morris, and for what is only 4% of the housing 'positivist' and 'determinist' as substi- not the content of the documents but stock. The fact that it is an appallingly tutes for rational appraisal, but he has their form: how many paragraphs per badly designed estate is not even failed to edit them out of his contribu- section, how many pages with illustra- considered. Instead, Jones advocates tors' papers. Mike Jenks, for example, tions, etc. breaking the cycle of deprivation by uses 'positivist' and 'scientific' as if Mike Jenks warns against the dan- further expenditure in other spheres they were dirty words, and also in- gers of certainty by showing how the as well as housing. dulges in the dishonest trick of invent- 70-foot rule and high-rise designs were Bulos and Walker carelessly misuse ing a hypothesis, pretending it is mine, unfounded recommendations that be- my spatial-organization terms. They knocking it down and pretending this came entrenched. He then descends to assume that the line between public strengthened, perhaps, with some more tables indicating institutional and policy comparisons. One must agree with the authors, however, that much of the underlying problem in coping with the development of these huge cities is not urban management as such but difficulties in representative government in general:

urban studies literature and the growing list of titles originating in the various departments of the World Bank. 1

Appropriate housingdesign

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Book reviews

and private space lies along the house facade instead of the garden frontage, and that the grounds of flats are all semi-puNic instead of wlriously semiprivate, semi-public and confused space. Their description of improvements wrought by concierge schemes in two blocks needs to be supported by the costs inw)lved. A concierge proposal in Greenwich estimates an o n g o i n g a n n u a l e x p e n d i t u r e of £134 000 m excess of savings on upkeep, and by the manning standards of a scheme | saw in Leicester, it will protect only two of the estates' 56 blocks. Claims of success are also premature before an investigation is made of how far a concierge presence in one block merely displaces crimes and wmdalism elsewhere. Marion Roberts claims that a key assumption running through Utopia on Trial is that an absence of caretaking means a breakdown in social order

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exactly the reverse of my actual exphmation that a decline in social order occurs first and makes it difficult to retain or recruit caretakers. Francis Jones thinks that universal anti-social impulses are kept in check only if people can afford leisure and cultural activities, lie fails to explain why blocks with play areas are more crime and vandal prone than those without, or why affluence has not prevented lager-loutism and 'rural" mob behaviour in settlements expanded by new and defectively designed houses. Taken as a whole, this book is a grouping of interests determined to close their minds to the role of design in creating problem estates and its potential role in improving them.

Alice Coleman Department of Geography Kings College London London, UK

Evaluating the GEAR project REGENERATING THE INNER CITY: GLASGOW'S EXPERIENCE edited by David Donnison and Alan Middleton

Routledge and Kegan Paul London, 1987, 322 pp Just as with its rent strike in 1915, the "turnaround' in Glasgow's fortunes in the last few years has been in danger of a s s u m i n g mythic p r o p o r t i o n s amongst many researchers, pundits and politicians. How good it is to have this book to provide research details of what has and has not been achieved in the 'Miles Better' city and of what lessons can be learned from its experiences. It is deprived from work carried out by four teams from the universities of Glasgow and Strathclydc looking at the impacts and the workings of the Glasgow E a s t e r n Area Renewal ( G E A R ) project in Glasgow's east end: an area whose historical dependence on heavy manufacturing firms such as Beardmore left it especially

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vulnerable to the impacts of recession and restructuring and whose population fell between 1951 and 1981 from 145 000 to 41 000, leaving it as one of the largest concentrations of the deprived, unemployed, elderly and unwanted. The substantive chapters in the book's evaluation of G E A R systematically cover the range of employment, housing, environment, health, leisure and transport issues. They are complemented by chapters on the historical background of the area and of urban policy and by concluding chapters drawing lessons from the studies. With a variety of authors, drawn from a range of disciplinary backgrounds, the tone inevitably varies from chapter to chapter, but .the book's general stance is one of guarded optimism. It may be that much distress still remains in Glasgow, but the successes of policy interventions and of the processcs whereby those interventions have been achieved cannot be gainsaid. Its message is both to local governments but more especially to central

governments: if there is one thing that has slowly been learned from the experiences of the structural transformation of the economy it is that it is unrealistic to look to cities to solve their own problems; rather, liberallyfunded and long-sustained commitment from government is required if the problems are to be seriously addressed. Equally, it is not true that nothing can be done to help deprived areas until a major improvement in the global economy has occurred. Three major lessons emerge from the surveys and evaluations. First, much can be learned south of the border from the structure and role of G E A R . Unlike the later English Urban Development Corporations (UDCs), it operated in a complex triangle of power in association with the local authorities of Stathclyde and Glasgow and under thc guidance of the Scottish Development Authority (SDA). Not only did it have the legitimacy which derived from the need to establish its role from within a local context, but thc politics of its operations were hclpcd by thc unusual continuity of regional phmning in Scothmd thanks to the attention given to local affairs through the aegis of the Scottish Office. Were comparable English regions to have roving development agencies equivalent to SDA much of thc suspicion and hostility experienced by the London and l,ivcrpool UDCs might have been reduced. Second, a strong argument is expressed for the economic and community developmental role that housing investment can play in renewal. The direct job impacts of G E A R arc shown to be relatively limited. It is estimated that by 1982 some 450 jobs had been created of which less than 200 went to local people. Most of the firms moving to newly-provided premises were local and were already m existence. By contrast, the large sums of resources spent on housing, which represented over half of G E A R ' s funds, can bc argued to have had vcry direct local impacts: increasing thc demand for construction work ; strengthening the community by bringing in more employed and younger families: boosting the local economy through demands for goods and services: as

CITIES May 1989