- Email: [email protected]
The English terraced house
Book reviews
Land and buildings LONDON: 2000 Years of a City and its People by Felix Barker and Peter Jackson Papermac, Macmillan, London, 379 pp, f9.95
ROBERT SMYTHSON AND THE ELIZABETHAN COUNTRY HOUSE by Mark Girouard Yale University Press, New Haven andLondon, 1983,328~~
SURVEY OF LONDON, VOL XLI, SOUTHERN KENSINGTON: Brompton General Editor, F.H.W. Sheppard The Afhlone Press, for the Greater London Council, London, 1983, 318 pp, 108 plates, f45.00
THE OUTER CITY by John ~erington Harper & Row Ltd, London, paperback, 205 pp
EUROPEAN URBANIZATION 15001800 by Jan de Vries Mefhuen & Co Ltd, London, f 984,398 pp, f22.50 LAND, KINSHIP AND LIFE-CYCLE edited by Richard M. Smith Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 7985, 547 pp, f40.00
1984,
URBANIZATION AND SETTLEMENT SYSTEMS: International Perspectives edited by L.S. Bourne, R. Sinclair and K. Dziewonski Oxford Universjty Press, for Infernational Geographical Union, Commission on National Settlement Systems, Oxford, UK, 1984, 475 pp, .!?25.00 THE ENGLISH TERRACED HOUSE by Stefan Muthesius Yale University Press, London, 198.2, 278 pp, f12.50
ADVERSARY POLITICS AND LAND: The Conflict over Land and Property Policy in Post-War Britain by Andrew Cox Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 1984, 242 pp, E25.00
HOW TO RESTORE AND IMPROVE YOUR VICTORIAN HOUSE by Alan Johnson David and Charles, London, 1984, 208 pp, ff2.50
In a sense. the land problem is the same worldwide. Land is the only stable, heritable resource, the only real property; but there are conflicting demands on its use which alter its quality and nullify some possible uses. Questions of quality and purpose are seldom raised. Historical context is needed before they can be discerned. London is a handy means to bring land use policy to view over a long history. For example, the Court of Wards and Liveries was created by Henry VIII to deal with the estates of the many children who by feudal law became royal wards; but those in the Court had to buy the child from the Crown, and thus the protracted grant of letters patent to a prospective guardian enriched him. This, like the Dissolution of the Monasteries, was another way to establish ‘the new men’ who became the powerful, moneyed classes of modern England.
By 1559, Moorfields was a suburb ‘without the walls’. Through the Great Fire (1666) the opportunity arose for comprehensive town planning. But just as Sir Thomas Bludder. Lord Mayor, found himself powerless to command citizens to pull down houses in the path of the fire - as Pepys recommended and as Charles II commanded - so powerful objections hindered the rebuilding during the next 30 years. The removal of London’s medieval quirks in plan was the outcome, with classically proportioned houses in wider, healthier streets. The coming of the Squares in the 1670s was one feature which has stood the test of time. The system was to grant initial leases for 42 years at peppercorn rents. When the leases fell in, the landowner became the property owner. Half of London was to be built like this, and at the end of the 18th century
254
the present Y&year term of lease was normal. Then several principal families as ground landlords established over residential London their estates of squares with streets in a grid pattern. The Prince Regent patronized the inspired planner John Nash. He was a man then 61 and well experienced in country-house architecture; but the Regent Street development was ridiculed and financed with difficulty. The progressive lack of State control from Henry VIII on had produced the makings of administrative chaos which post-war legislation has yet to make rational and equitable. Nash wanted architectural unity; the speculators did not. As for the Grand Junction Canal, it could be justified by the greater capacity for freight of canal boats (one to 4 large wagons) and was a self-evident advantage to speculators; so it was financially supported but opposed by landlords. The Victorian age to the present will be most easily assimilated; but the authors leave their discussion full of questions. Their conclusion remarks the need to abate traffic and to provide ‘free public transport on an increased scale’, while it is also noted that because there is so much ‘gentle procrastination’ it is possible ‘to visualize the historical past’ of London even if much is greatly changed ‘in detail’.
Broad database For detailed knowledge of London, the Greater London Council’s Survey of London in its many volumes is indispensable. Like the Victorian County History of England it remains incomplete. There is an excellent case for establishing some institution where these efforts and, say. that of the Second Land Use Survey of Britain could go forward securely with benefit to all concerned - which really means the general public! This volume. like all the others, is excellent, It combines plans, photographs, biodata and other archival
LAN5 USE POLICY July 1985
Book reviews material with a detachment that ventures occasionally the wry observation on the forces which shape land use. For example, the discussion of John Goddard’s estate (p 16) notes that when a descendant sold the bulk of it to Capital and Counties Property Company in 1956, a chairman thereof was himself descended from the Marler who had owned much of the adjacent land to the south - as Belgravia Estates Limited - since 1894. This perspective for investment and development is often ignored by those seeking change; but if there is no real equivalent to the Survey of London it is easy to ignore the fact. There is, therefore, a need to secure details of ownership by unrestricted access to the Land Registry; and the Survey should be paralleled by studies for other cities and towns in Britain, where mercenary demolition and rebuilding in the post-war era has obliterated things which have not even been identified - all over the country. The Survey is well nigh perfect. We may not know where or why the stained glass of the Brompton Hospital Chapel’s east window went (p 139); but the price for the land in its estate (about &4000 per acre) in 18.53 is set in its context. Between pp 219 and 224, there are details of house plans and types and rents and prices - and much else - for The Boltons and Redcliffe Square area. This is the characteristic quality: exact detail. Jan de Vries, an agrarian historian, was initially struck by the lack of facts about the role of cities in the preindustrial economy. He then accumulated a vast database, of which his book is a product. He intends it to be ‘a framework for urban history’. The first chapter attempts to define the city as feudal or not, subordinate, parasitic and so on. Not one city is mentioned by name; so one infers that the real purpose - to make a new method - is going to prove more important than historical insight. The last three pages of the text are all too speculative. The big-scale attempt is alluring because it seeks to make social science more like the natural sciences. But, as de Vries admits (p 102), ‘Twentieth-century urban systems are enormously difficult to com-
LAND
USE
POLICY
July
1985
pare to those of earlier times’, and his remarks on Germany’s modern ranksize distribution (p 116) prove also that an alluring method need not result in anything markedly superior. Is it indeed useful to be told that ‘the industrial heart of Europe (the Ruhrgebier) has ‘of all things, an immature, pre-modern urban system’? On the other hand, the night-time satellite photograph of Europe (p 170) and the facing figure seem to say it all. In contrast with de Vries, the essays in Smith rely on identities. They use the magnificent sources of English historiography to full effect. There are case studies from individual rural communities from 1250 to 1850. These carefully oppose the view that family forms have been shaped by the transmission of property within and between families, to that which finds the kinship system largely unaffected by such influences. Close-grained study establishes that in families between 1380 and 1520 which combined industrial activity with agriculture, aggressive wealth-maximizing was normal, but they were ‘in a symbiotic relawith the agriculturalists tionship’ whose defensive mechanisms led to the temporary alienation of land: market forces indeed. Again, in 13th century Norfolk, it is clear that regulations on common land were minimal, because the rights of the individual tended to supersede those of the group; while in Melbourn, Cambridgeshire, the peasantry survived to 1839 because ,the manorial lords and the main institutional owners do not appear to have entered the land market in a big way to enlarge their estates. Such studies suggest that contemporary land: population ratios can be adjusted if the policy begins with the consideration of identities, not merely numbers!
Managing
change
The Survey of London seems to be a model for Stefan Muthesius, whose study of The English Terraced House is supplemented by his great ancestor Hermann’s knowledge at the time these buildings were being erected. German observers noted in those days the low cost of English building land :
about 10 to 20% of the cost of the dwelling, against a land price for big Berlin blocks of flats of up to onethird to two-thirds. This matter is regrettably not pursued. Stefan Muthesius believes that the low English price reflected the comparative lack of contrast between town and country in England. It could, however, be objected that few British capitalists provided colonies for their workers according to the idea which Muthesius suggests; whereas the Ruhr, for instance, was provided with housing estates where a village style was deliberately achieved, to make those of rural origin content as industrial workers.
Class differences Muthesius analyses the role of class in the development of Victorian housing. He notes that ‘The English increasingly disliked the close proximity of different classes . .’ (p 26); but he concludes that ‘in contrast with the high level of class separation in recent housing’, Victorian houses now seem less distinct among themselves, specially with larger terraces now in multi occupation. ‘Could perhaps the preservation and adaptation of nineteenth-century terraces help us to overcome some of the extremes of class difference today?’ (p 256) The transition to respectability of former days (p 138) is not, however, followed by a trend to conservation, with an openness to the implications of property ownership and the need for ‘community politics’. Party dissent remains a reason for the lack of any real national policy in Britian - on every subject. Yet the persistence of the row house (p 145) and the wide adoption of the regular plan (p 196) in the second half of the 19th century should result in common opinions to conserve and adapt today. This, at least, is the purpose of the Victorian Society, one of whose committee has now produced a book which, like that of Muthesius, should be reflected in the agendas of local and national government alike. There is no evidence that the Civic Trust and similar bodies actually promote the kind of view offered by Muthesius and
Book reviews Johnson. Yet who will speak for the people who inhabit those dwellings built before 1919? They number at least a third of the housing stock in Britain. Surely they demand conservation, even if legislation has to be introduced to secure it! Meantime. those who are able will be greatly helped in this endeavour by Johnson’s book. The growth of self-help organizations suggests that there is wide scope for its application.
Discreetly imitative Girouard points out that after the Reformation, English architecture was discreetly imitative, but also distorted. Private houses were blatant status symbols under Elizabeth and James I, to outface potential rivals at a time of great insecurity. Girouard studies houses certainly and probably associated with Robert Smythson, whose genius he finds displayed in Longleat, Wollaton, Hardwick, Burton Agnes and elsewhere. Oddly. he does not include landscape in his discussion of the context to any marked degree. What is striking is that some of these properties have been demolished because of fiscal policies and a failure to take the conservationist approach. These are places which RIBA and RICS should consider adopting as the subject for campaigns. How better to honour the professions of architecture and surveying than by conserving work done by inspired ancestors? Surely some policy on conservation and tourism can emerge from such interest? Herington wishes to arouse interest in the pressures on the areas near existing cities and towns. He examines the challenge of development to green belts in thi UK. He ‘finds that the policies of 40 years ago are being reinterpreted in a national recession with no special success or coherence. He notes that the division of planning functions between shire counties and local districts ‘has been the source of much political conflict’ and that central government has tended to relinquish national control over official dispersal policy in Britain. Present policies are not preventing the physical urbanization of the countryside, and
256
some now hold that ‘the main aim of planning should be to facilitate economic growth rather than protect the environment’ (p 41). Governments have not asked whether dispersal is indispensable to future economic growth. It is odd that Herington does not comment more shrewdly on the highly speculative character of the national economic notions which underlie these problems, and of which the vague form of the structure plan is but a reflexion. It is tantalizing that he leaves unremarked a fatuous distinction (p 117) between ‘strategic’ and ‘local’. His chapter on ‘The AntiGrowth Lobby’ would be improved by discussion in more detail. As it stands, it leaves the unfair impression that narrow interests motivate objectors. But Herington offers many good things, principally an uncomplicated account, and he tends to the conclusion that reform of the policy process is needed. There are several well-known difficulties with books edited by several hands. Bourne et al offer 22 studies of which eight are by more than one author. The reader is therefore at a loss to find much definition and will be puzzled to know how ‘international perspectives’ can result in a clear picture, especially when the categories for the analysis are themselves dubious. Thus, 15 studies are grouped, under the head ‘Settlement systems in industrial market economies’. These are further classified as ‘New lands and low-density regions’, ‘old lands and higher-density regions’ and ‘the Mediterranean world’; while this is acceptable, the facts of the industrial market economy are somewhat different as between Finland and Japan, let alone the differences between Italy, Spain and Portugal! ‘Settlement systems in centrally planned economies’ has one study being one section - on the USSR; and three - in another section - on Poland, the German Democratic Republic, and Yugoslavia. Again, it must be objected that the central planning of these economies is divergent; the German Democratic Republic benefits from incorporation in the EEC, in a mysterious way, and its massive exac-
tions, credits or whatever from FR Germany. The Poles have remarkable dollar shops. The Yugoslavs are anomalous to a degree. ‘Settlement systems in the developing world’ lumps together Brazil and Venezuela (‘new lands and lowdensity regions’) in one section; and as an example of ‘settlement on old lands in higher density regions’ we have another section on India. This last chapter is actually concerned mainly with Hyberabad; but even in this the focus is misty. The besetting problems of communal politics, corruption and poverty in Hyderabad are glossed over. This is perhaps accounted for by the fact that the author is a Muslim living in a deliberately contrived Hindu framework, and that the Muslim predominance in the Old City of Hyderabad is so touchy a matter that he must say nothing. If so, he should not have been asked to contribute. The time has come for some frank, challenging discussion of the problems of land use. As the author of the study on England and Wales remarks at the end, ‘The settlement system is still in transition between its industrial past and its post-industrial future’ (p 155). True enough. But it is unhelpful to be told that ‘Economic recession is likely to have its primary impact upon the metropolitan counties furthest removed from the South East’ (p 151). Indeed, this is so banal an utterance that its author should have been required to think of something else. Possible subjects? Black vs white, West Indian V.FAsian, Vietnamese vs all others. Ways of encouraging enterprise. Options for transport policy, including the revival of waterways. None appears in this study. Cui bono?
Outside constraints Cox seeks to identify the major issues in British land and property development policy and then ‘to outline constraints outside the political decisonmaking structure which limit the scope for successful policy implementation’. He further seeks ‘to illuminate the power of initiation and the power of in these respects. He constraint’ argues that ‘governments fail to understand the power of constraint
LAND USE POLICY July 1985
Book reviews
and that they generally legislate in ignorance of it’. Cox suggests that the power of constraint in ‘advanced capitalist societies’ can be effective only if ‘middle-way’ approach is a more taken, which would recognize the ‘relatively autonomous centres of social and economic power outside the purely political decision-making process.’ Cox gives thorough accounts of the history of land and property policy (184%1945), the land and property market, and the post-war policies of Labour and the Conservatives. There is a teasing chapter on ‘the enigma of the Thatcher government’. It is odd to see the Civic Trust and the National Trust described as
‘socialist/social democratic’, though one may well agree with these terms for the Town and Country Planning Association and the Council for the Protection of Rural England (p 53). The great weakness of the book is that it lacks case studies and international comparisons. That the adversarial procedure is common in the western world would seem to be clear. But the rigidities and ineptitudes of the British system may not be exactly the same elsewhere. That is, at least, a pious hope. A radical proposal would be to require conservationist or Georgist views to be normative in these matters. M. 17. Brett-Crowther
A spare, clear and direct message RURAL DEVELOPMENT THE LAST FIRST by Robert
Chambers
Longman, f2.00
London,
: PUTTING
1983,
246
pp,
Here is one book that will surely be spared when most of ‘development literature’ sinks into deserved oblivion, for Robert Chambers has written a masterpiece of impassioned analysis, worthy of the gravity of its subject - and in spite of the title, he addresses the true problem, that of poverty, not the false problem of ‘development’, whatever is meant by that confusing word. Chambers is a fellow of the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex, but this is not an academic book, though it is written with admirable clarity and respect for evidence. In accordance with the practice of his Institute, he has spent much of his career in poorer countries, but this is not a collection of anecdotes from the field, though it abounds with concrete examples. Instead, spanning the two cultures - that of the academics and that of the practitioners - he is able to rise above them to a viewpoint that he has made all his own. His book falls into two parts. The
LAND USE POLICY July 1985
first five chapters describe and anaiyse the problem; the last three offer positive ideas about solving it. He starts by accounting for the fact that rural poverty is largely unperceived by outsiders, except when it erupts into famine or strife. Academics, bureaucrats, foreigners and journalists tend to glimpse the problem in the course of brief episodes of ‘rural development tourism’. This usually takes the form of a visit to a project, conveniently close to a road and probably in the least difficult season of the year. The visitors are mostly urban, and their hosts are local notables, but in any case contact is likely to be limited by politeness and reticence as well as by the many problems of language and culture. Even those ‘experts’ who manage to get beyond tourism are mostly the prisoners of their academic or administrative status. Academics, accustomed to the silence of the library and the critical spirit of the seminar, tend to produce negative and narrowly focused studies. Administrators, in a hurry to get results and to impress superiors, are too often satisfied with hasty and superficial accounts. Both rely too much on questionnaires, which are often ill conceived, badly administered and poorly analysed. Only the social anthropologist routinely plunges deeply into the cul-
ture of the rural poor. Techniques for rapid assessment do exist, but they may need the gifts of a Ladejinsky to be fully effective.
Mental framework Whoever the outsiders, there is a systematic tendency for them to seek the kind of knowledge that fits their own mental framework, instead of listening humbly to what the rural poor have to say. The urban observer is interested in what is modern, commechanical and marketable plex, rather than in what is traditional, simple, biological and unmarketed. Cows are the subject of enquiry rather than goats, fertilizer rather than dung, fossil fuels rather than firewood, and men’s jobs rather than the life of women and children, the old and the sick. The first part of the book culminates in a powerful description of ‘integrated rural poverty’. Chambers traces the web of links that make rural poverty into an all-too-stable phenomenon. Deprivation, physical weakness, isolation, vulnerability to disaster and lack of political power reinforce each other in a ghastly cycle. Only with help from outside will people be able to break out of the vicious circle. But ‘help’ of the wrong kind can actually make things worse. How to give the right help is the subject of the last three chapters. Most of the development literature is depressingly negative. As Chambers says ‘if economics is dismal, development studies are morbid’. One of his strengths is that, after an outstandingly clear-sighted presentation, he is invigoratingly positive in his search for solutions. These should respond to the needs and priorities of the poor. To discover them, outsiders need to effect reversals in their own ways of perceiving and thinking. Already there is a body of ‘new professionals’ who have effected such reversals, who have changed their way of life and who are dedicated to putting the last first. Even for those who do not become professionals, there are a great many opportunities for practical action, if only perceptions can be changed. This then is Robert Chambers’ mes-
257
Land and buildings LONDON: 2000 Years of a City and its People by Felix Barker and Peter Jackson Papermac, Macmillan, London, 379 pp, f9.95
ROBERT SMYTHSON AND THE ELIZABETHAN COUNTRY HOUSE by Mark Girouard Yale University Press, New Haven andLondon, 1983,328~~
SURVEY OF LONDON, VOL XLI, SOUTHERN KENSINGTON: Brompton General Editor, F.H.W. Sheppard The Afhlone Press, for the Greater London Council, London, 1983, 318 pp, 108 plates, f45.00
THE OUTER CITY by John ~erington Harper & Row Ltd, London, paperback, 205 pp
EUROPEAN URBANIZATION 15001800 by Jan de Vries Mefhuen & Co Ltd, London, f 984,398 pp, f22.50 LAND, KINSHIP AND LIFE-CYCLE edited by Richard M. Smith Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 7985, 547 pp, f40.00
1984,
URBANIZATION AND SETTLEMENT SYSTEMS: International Perspectives edited by L.S. Bourne, R. Sinclair and K. Dziewonski Oxford Universjty Press, for Infernational Geographical Union, Commission on National Settlement Systems, Oxford, UK, 1984, 475 pp, .!?25.00 THE ENGLISH TERRACED HOUSE by Stefan Muthesius Yale University Press, London, 198.2, 278 pp, f12.50
ADVERSARY POLITICS AND LAND: The Conflict over Land and Property Policy in Post-War Britain by Andrew Cox Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 1984, 242 pp, E25.00
HOW TO RESTORE AND IMPROVE YOUR VICTORIAN HOUSE by Alan Johnson David and Charles, London, 1984, 208 pp, ff2.50
In a sense. the land problem is the same worldwide. Land is the only stable, heritable resource, the only real property; but there are conflicting demands on its use which alter its quality and nullify some possible uses. Questions of quality and purpose are seldom raised. Historical context is needed before they can be discerned. London is a handy means to bring land use policy to view over a long history. For example, the Court of Wards and Liveries was created by Henry VIII to deal with the estates of the many children who by feudal law became royal wards; but those in the Court had to buy the child from the Crown, and thus the protracted grant of letters patent to a prospective guardian enriched him. This, like the Dissolution of the Monasteries, was another way to establish ‘the new men’ who became the powerful, moneyed classes of modern England.
By 1559, Moorfields was a suburb ‘without the walls’. Through the Great Fire (1666) the opportunity arose for comprehensive town planning. But just as Sir Thomas Bludder. Lord Mayor, found himself powerless to command citizens to pull down houses in the path of the fire - as Pepys recommended and as Charles II commanded - so powerful objections hindered the rebuilding during the next 30 years. The removal of London’s medieval quirks in plan was the outcome, with classically proportioned houses in wider, healthier streets. The coming of the Squares in the 1670s was one feature which has stood the test of time. The system was to grant initial leases for 42 years at peppercorn rents. When the leases fell in, the landowner became the property owner. Half of London was to be built like this, and at the end of the 18th century
254
the present Y&year term of lease was normal. Then several principal families as ground landlords established over residential London their estates of squares with streets in a grid pattern. The Prince Regent patronized the inspired planner John Nash. He was a man then 61 and well experienced in country-house architecture; but the Regent Street development was ridiculed and financed with difficulty. The progressive lack of State control from Henry VIII on had produced the makings of administrative chaos which post-war legislation has yet to make rational and equitable. Nash wanted architectural unity; the speculators did not. As for the Grand Junction Canal, it could be justified by the greater capacity for freight of canal boats (one to 4 large wagons) and was a self-evident advantage to speculators; so it was financially supported but opposed by landlords. The Victorian age to the present will be most easily assimilated; but the authors leave their discussion full of questions. Their conclusion remarks the need to abate traffic and to provide ‘free public transport on an increased scale’, while it is also noted that because there is so much ‘gentle procrastination’ it is possible ‘to visualize the historical past’ of London even if much is greatly changed ‘in detail’.
Broad database For detailed knowledge of London, the Greater London Council’s Survey of London in its many volumes is indispensable. Like the Victorian County History of England it remains incomplete. There is an excellent case for establishing some institution where these efforts and, say. that of the Second Land Use Survey of Britain could go forward securely with benefit to all concerned - which really means the general public! This volume. like all the others, is excellent, It combines plans, photographs, biodata and other archival
LAN5 USE POLICY July 1985
Book reviews material with a detachment that ventures occasionally the wry observation on the forces which shape land use. For example, the discussion of John Goddard’s estate (p 16) notes that when a descendant sold the bulk of it to Capital and Counties Property Company in 1956, a chairman thereof was himself descended from the Marler who had owned much of the adjacent land to the south - as Belgravia Estates Limited - since 1894. This perspective for investment and development is often ignored by those seeking change; but if there is no real equivalent to the Survey of London it is easy to ignore the fact. There is, therefore, a need to secure details of ownership by unrestricted access to the Land Registry; and the Survey should be paralleled by studies for other cities and towns in Britain, where mercenary demolition and rebuilding in the post-war era has obliterated things which have not even been identified - all over the country. The Survey is well nigh perfect. We may not know where or why the stained glass of the Brompton Hospital Chapel’s east window went (p 139); but the price for the land in its estate (about &4000 per acre) in 18.53 is set in its context. Between pp 219 and 224, there are details of house plans and types and rents and prices - and much else - for The Boltons and Redcliffe Square area. This is the characteristic quality: exact detail. Jan de Vries, an agrarian historian, was initially struck by the lack of facts about the role of cities in the preindustrial economy. He then accumulated a vast database, of which his book is a product. He intends it to be ‘a framework for urban history’. The first chapter attempts to define the city as feudal or not, subordinate, parasitic and so on. Not one city is mentioned by name; so one infers that the real purpose - to make a new method - is going to prove more important than historical insight. The last three pages of the text are all too speculative. The big-scale attempt is alluring because it seeks to make social science more like the natural sciences. But, as de Vries admits (p 102), ‘Twentieth-century urban systems are enormously difficult to com-
LAND
USE
POLICY
July
1985
pare to those of earlier times’, and his remarks on Germany’s modern ranksize distribution (p 116) prove also that an alluring method need not result in anything markedly superior. Is it indeed useful to be told that ‘the industrial heart of Europe (the Ruhrgebier) has ‘of all things, an immature, pre-modern urban system’? On the other hand, the night-time satellite photograph of Europe (p 170) and the facing figure seem to say it all. In contrast with de Vries, the essays in Smith rely on identities. They use the magnificent sources of English historiography to full effect. There are case studies from individual rural communities from 1250 to 1850. These carefully oppose the view that family forms have been shaped by the transmission of property within and between families, to that which finds the kinship system largely unaffected by such influences. Close-grained study establishes that in families between 1380 and 1520 which combined industrial activity with agriculture, aggressive wealth-maximizing was normal, but they were ‘in a symbiotic relawith the agriculturalists tionship’ whose defensive mechanisms led to the temporary alienation of land: market forces indeed. Again, in 13th century Norfolk, it is clear that regulations on common land were minimal, because the rights of the individual tended to supersede those of the group; while in Melbourn, Cambridgeshire, the peasantry survived to 1839 because ,the manorial lords and the main institutional owners do not appear to have entered the land market in a big way to enlarge their estates. Such studies suggest that contemporary land: population ratios can be adjusted if the policy begins with the consideration of identities, not merely numbers!
Managing
change
The Survey of London seems to be a model for Stefan Muthesius, whose study of The English Terraced House is supplemented by his great ancestor Hermann’s knowledge at the time these buildings were being erected. German observers noted in those days the low cost of English building land :
about 10 to 20% of the cost of the dwelling, against a land price for big Berlin blocks of flats of up to onethird to two-thirds. This matter is regrettably not pursued. Stefan Muthesius believes that the low English price reflected the comparative lack of contrast between town and country in England. It could, however, be objected that few British capitalists provided colonies for their workers according to the idea which Muthesius suggests; whereas the Ruhr, for instance, was provided with housing estates where a village style was deliberately achieved, to make those of rural origin content as industrial workers.
Class differences Muthesius analyses the role of class in the development of Victorian housing. He notes that ‘The English increasingly disliked the close proximity of different classes . .’ (p 26); but he concludes that ‘in contrast with the high level of class separation in recent housing’, Victorian houses now seem less distinct among themselves, specially with larger terraces now in multi occupation. ‘Could perhaps the preservation and adaptation of nineteenth-century terraces help us to overcome some of the extremes of class difference today?’ (p 256) The transition to respectability of former days (p 138) is not, however, followed by a trend to conservation, with an openness to the implications of property ownership and the need for ‘community politics’. Party dissent remains a reason for the lack of any real national policy in Britian - on every subject. Yet the persistence of the row house (p 145) and the wide adoption of the regular plan (p 196) in the second half of the 19th century should result in common opinions to conserve and adapt today. This, at least, is the purpose of the Victorian Society, one of whose committee has now produced a book which, like that of Muthesius, should be reflected in the agendas of local and national government alike. There is no evidence that the Civic Trust and similar bodies actually promote the kind of view offered by Muthesius and
Book reviews Johnson. Yet who will speak for the people who inhabit those dwellings built before 1919? They number at least a third of the housing stock in Britain. Surely they demand conservation, even if legislation has to be introduced to secure it! Meantime. those who are able will be greatly helped in this endeavour by Johnson’s book. The growth of self-help organizations suggests that there is wide scope for its application.
Discreetly imitative Girouard points out that after the Reformation, English architecture was discreetly imitative, but also distorted. Private houses were blatant status symbols under Elizabeth and James I, to outface potential rivals at a time of great insecurity. Girouard studies houses certainly and probably associated with Robert Smythson, whose genius he finds displayed in Longleat, Wollaton, Hardwick, Burton Agnes and elsewhere. Oddly. he does not include landscape in his discussion of the context to any marked degree. What is striking is that some of these properties have been demolished because of fiscal policies and a failure to take the conservationist approach. These are places which RIBA and RICS should consider adopting as the subject for campaigns. How better to honour the professions of architecture and surveying than by conserving work done by inspired ancestors? Surely some policy on conservation and tourism can emerge from such interest? Herington wishes to arouse interest in the pressures on the areas near existing cities and towns. He examines the challenge of development to green belts in thi UK. He ‘finds that the policies of 40 years ago are being reinterpreted in a national recession with no special success or coherence. He notes that the division of planning functions between shire counties and local districts ‘has been the source of much political conflict’ and that central government has tended to relinquish national control over official dispersal policy in Britain. Present policies are not preventing the physical urbanization of the countryside, and
256
some now hold that ‘the main aim of planning should be to facilitate economic growth rather than protect the environment’ (p 41). Governments have not asked whether dispersal is indispensable to future economic growth. It is odd that Herington does not comment more shrewdly on the highly speculative character of the national economic notions which underlie these problems, and of which the vague form of the structure plan is but a reflexion. It is tantalizing that he leaves unremarked a fatuous distinction (p 117) between ‘strategic’ and ‘local’. His chapter on ‘The AntiGrowth Lobby’ would be improved by discussion in more detail. As it stands, it leaves the unfair impression that narrow interests motivate objectors. But Herington offers many good things, principally an uncomplicated account, and he tends to the conclusion that reform of the policy process is needed. There are several well-known difficulties with books edited by several hands. Bourne et al offer 22 studies of which eight are by more than one author. The reader is therefore at a loss to find much definition and will be puzzled to know how ‘international perspectives’ can result in a clear picture, especially when the categories for the analysis are themselves dubious. Thus, 15 studies are grouped, under the head ‘Settlement systems in industrial market economies’. These are further classified as ‘New lands and low-density regions’, ‘old lands and higher-density regions’ and ‘the Mediterranean world’; while this is acceptable, the facts of the industrial market economy are somewhat different as between Finland and Japan, let alone the differences between Italy, Spain and Portugal! ‘Settlement systems in centrally planned economies’ has one study being one section - on the USSR; and three - in another section - on Poland, the German Democratic Republic, and Yugoslavia. Again, it must be objected that the central planning of these economies is divergent; the German Democratic Republic benefits from incorporation in the EEC, in a mysterious way, and its massive exac-
tions, credits or whatever from FR Germany. The Poles have remarkable dollar shops. The Yugoslavs are anomalous to a degree. ‘Settlement systems in the developing world’ lumps together Brazil and Venezuela (‘new lands and lowdensity regions’) in one section; and as an example of ‘settlement on old lands in higher density regions’ we have another section on India. This last chapter is actually concerned mainly with Hyberabad; but even in this the focus is misty. The besetting problems of communal politics, corruption and poverty in Hyderabad are glossed over. This is perhaps accounted for by the fact that the author is a Muslim living in a deliberately contrived Hindu framework, and that the Muslim predominance in the Old City of Hyderabad is so touchy a matter that he must say nothing. If so, he should not have been asked to contribute. The time has come for some frank, challenging discussion of the problems of land use. As the author of the study on England and Wales remarks at the end, ‘The settlement system is still in transition between its industrial past and its post-industrial future’ (p 155). True enough. But it is unhelpful to be told that ‘Economic recession is likely to have its primary impact upon the metropolitan counties furthest removed from the South East’ (p 151). Indeed, this is so banal an utterance that its author should have been required to think of something else. Possible subjects? Black vs white, West Indian V.FAsian, Vietnamese vs all others. Ways of encouraging enterprise. Options for transport policy, including the revival of waterways. None appears in this study. Cui bono?
Outside constraints Cox seeks to identify the major issues in British land and property development policy and then ‘to outline constraints outside the political decisonmaking structure which limit the scope for successful policy implementation’. He further seeks ‘to illuminate the power of initiation and the power of in these respects. He constraint’ argues that ‘governments fail to understand the power of constraint
LAND USE POLICY July 1985
Book reviews
and that they generally legislate in ignorance of it’. Cox suggests that the power of constraint in ‘advanced capitalist societies’ can be effective only if ‘middle-way’ approach is a more taken, which would recognize the ‘relatively autonomous centres of social and economic power outside the purely political decision-making process.’ Cox gives thorough accounts of the history of land and property policy (184%1945), the land and property market, and the post-war policies of Labour and the Conservatives. There is a teasing chapter on ‘the enigma of the Thatcher government’. It is odd to see the Civic Trust and the National Trust described as
‘socialist/social democratic’, though one may well agree with these terms for the Town and Country Planning Association and the Council for the Protection of Rural England (p 53). The great weakness of the book is that it lacks case studies and international comparisons. That the adversarial procedure is common in the western world would seem to be clear. But the rigidities and ineptitudes of the British system may not be exactly the same elsewhere. That is, at least, a pious hope. A radical proposal would be to require conservationist or Georgist views to be normative in these matters. M. 17. Brett-Crowther
A spare, clear and direct message RURAL DEVELOPMENT THE LAST FIRST by Robert
Chambers
Longman, f2.00
London,
: PUTTING
1983,
246
pp,
Here is one book that will surely be spared when most of ‘development literature’ sinks into deserved oblivion, for Robert Chambers has written a masterpiece of impassioned analysis, worthy of the gravity of its subject - and in spite of the title, he addresses the true problem, that of poverty, not the false problem of ‘development’, whatever is meant by that confusing word. Chambers is a fellow of the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex, but this is not an academic book, though it is written with admirable clarity and respect for evidence. In accordance with the practice of his Institute, he has spent much of his career in poorer countries, but this is not a collection of anecdotes from the field, though it abounds with concrete examples. Instead, spanning the two cultures - that of the academics and that of the practitioners - he is able to rise above them to a viewpoint that he has made all his own. His book falls into two parts. The
LAND USE POLICY July 1985
first five chapters describe and anaiyse the problem; the last three offer positive ideas about solving it. He starts by accounting for the fact that rural poverty is largely unperceived by outsiders, except when it erupts into famine or strife. Academics, bureaucrats, foreigners and journalists tend to glimpse the problem in the course of brief episodes of ‘rural development tourism’. This usually takes the form of a visit to a project, conveniently close to a road and probably in the least difficult season of the year. The visitors are mostly urban, and their hosts are local notables, but in any case contact is likely to be limited by politeness and reticence as well as by the many problems of language and culture. Even those ‘experts’ who manage to get beyond tourism are mostly the prisoners of their academic or administrative status. Academics, accustomed to the silence of the library and the critical spirit of the seminar, tend to produce negative and narrowly focused studies. Administrators, in a hurry to get results and to impress superiors, are too often satisfied with hasty and superficial accounts. Both rely too much on questionnaires, which are often ill conceived, badly administered and poorly analysed. Only the social anthropologist routinely plunges deeply into the cul-
ture of the rural poor. Techniques for rapid assessment do exist, but they may need the gifts of a Ladejinsky to be fully effective.
Mental framework Whoever the outsiders, there is a systematic tendency for them to seek the kind of knowledge that fits their own mental framework, instead of listening humbly to what the rural poor have to say. The urban observer is interested in what is modern, commechanical and marketable plex, rather than in what is traditional, simple, biological and unmarketed. Cows are the subject of enquiry rather than goats, fertilizer rather than dung, fossil fuels rather than firewood, and men’s jobs rather than the life of women and children, the old and the sick. The first part of the book culminates in a powerful description of ‘integrated rural poverty’. Chambers traces the web of links that make rural poverty into an all-too-stable phenomenon. Deprivation, physical weakness, isolation, vulnerability to disaster and lack of political power reinforce each other in a ghastly cycle. Only with help from outside will people be able to break out of the vicious circle. But ‘help’ of the wrong kind can actually make things worse. How to give the right help is the subject of the last three chapters. Most of the development literature is depressingly negative. As Chambers says ‘if economics is dismal, development studies are morbid’. One of his strengths is that, after an outstandingly clear-sighted presentation, he is invigoratingly positive in his search for solutions. These should respond to the needs and priorities of the poor. To discover them, outsiders need to effect reversals in their own ways of perceiving and thinking. Already there is a body of ‘new professionals’ who have effected such reversals, who have changed their way of life and who are dedicated to putting the last first. Even for those who do not become professionals, there are a great many opportunities for practical action, if only perceptions can be changed. This then is Robert Chambers’ mes-
257