Captured by: John Young

Financial Times, August 26, 1996, p. 10. 


Colin Amery / Architecture

It is not too late for visions


News last week that you can now visit your doctor (private) at your 
local UK railway station is the first clue to the thinking of Railtrack 
about the way its sees its stations. Rail stations are large and under-
used and thus well placed to help the revitalisation of city and town 
centres. The secretary of state for the environment, John Gummer, 
has belatedly realised he has to do something about these places, 
having let market forces remove so much urban vitality to the edge of 
towns.

His department's most recent planning policy notes are zealous in 
their hope of encouraging the rejuvenation of town centres.

They also take an avuncular view of new architecture in towns, 
urging sympathy for local vernacular styles and caution concerning 
radical new designs.

The dog days of August, when many of us find ourselves on a rare 
visit to a country town or with a little more time on our hands to look 
about us, are a good time to consider how the built environment 
comes to look the way it does. The tentacles of the planning 
bureaucracy reach long and far. but their effectiveness depends on the 
interpretation of the rules by small committees of local politicians. 

Local considerations and attitudes matter, but it is hard to detect 
consistency about quality of environmental standards. Indeed. it is the 
lack of informed government leadership and the poverty of direct 
government patronage in architecture and town planning that prevent 
a raising of standards. As part of my August reading I have been 
enjoying a new book, *Gordon Cullen*, by David Gosling (Academy 
Editions, L45).

Cullen's name probably means little to anyone today. He was an artist 
and architectural draughtsman who died in 1994 -- the inventor of 
something called "townscape". 

He was an architect. but he had the rare gift of being able to look at 
towns and cities as a whole and make it clear that everything we see 
is designed, and therefore everything we see can be improved.

This new book is not just a tribute to his unsung genius but also a 
biography of a man who took on the planning bureaucracy and made 
it clear that nothing in the built world happens of its own accord. His 
visionary drawings showed how the planning process can be used to 
create a beautiful world. They had some effect. but it would take 
1,000 Gordon Cullens to end the process of compromise that so often 
results in mediocrity.

In the book Cullen tackles many of the places that are currently the 
subject of development: Manchester, Greenwich, St Paul's cathedral 
precinct, Westminster, the centres of Edinburgh and Glasgow, and 
London's Docklands. He also analyses several smaller towns and 
proposes idealistic solutions for imaginary new cities. 

His visual intelligence is exactly what is needed in the new climate of 
concern for cities. His invention of the discipline of "townscaping" 
brought the visual ideas that great landscape designers used in the 
18th century to the city.

Perhaps Cullen was too visionary. His world looks like a world of 
missed opportunities. But it need not be. In fact, Cullen's time has 
come, and this book makes his visual thinking available in a way 
that, makes everything seem new and possible.

[End]

About Cullen I agree with Amery. Cullen was a genius at 
understanding and sketching the constituent elements of townscapes 
and demonstrating how to see what is often overlooked. For genuine 
insight, instruction and inspiration into town shaping, get Cullen's 
own publications, along with the two trenchant volumes on Camillo 
Sitte's city planning by Christiane Collins and George Collins:

City Planning According to Artistic Principles, by Camillo Sitte, 
translated by Collins and Collins. 

Camillo Sitte and the Birth of Modern city Planning, by Collins and 
Collins.

Then, add:

Cities in Evolution: An Introduction to the Town Planning 
Movement and to the Study of Civics, by Patrick Geddes.

The Origins of Modern Town Planning, by Leonardo Benevolo.

For comprehensive wisdom and guidance, observe the grim present 
depredations and envision future urbanscapes via Christine Boyer's 
exemplary corpus of urban planning analyses, strategies and 
prognostications.