Design and Planning For People in Place

3/28/2017 DesignandPlanningforPeopleinPlace:SirPatrickGeddes(18541932)andtheEmergenceof
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Daniel Christian Wahl Follow
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Glocal educator, activist and consultant, generalized in whole systems design and transformative innovation
Mar 8 28 min read
Design and Planning for People in Place:

Sir Patrick Geddes (18541932) and the
Emergence of Ecological Planning,
Ecological Design, and Bioregionalism
The central Geddesian lessons his emphasis of the fundamental unity
and interdependence of culture and nature, and his emphasis on
transdisciplinary education and locally adapted direct action as a
means of cultural transformation are of profound contemporary
signicance. For Geddes the role of the designer was two-fold: i) to
contribute to the material adaptation of people and their livelihood to
the specic opportunities and challenges of the places they inhabit, and
ii), to aect in the transformation of culture through education.
Source
Geddes aim was not only to contribute to the physical expression of

culture in the form of material designs, but also to engage in cultural
metadesign and aect the social and psychological expression of
culture through transdisciplinary education that engaged hands, heart,
and mind. Culturally transformative education has to make explicit and
challenge the basic assumptions that underlie the culturally dominant
worldview. Geddes advocated a design approach that encompassed
bioregional integration, changes in culture and worldview, as well as
transdisciplinary synthesis and holistic education. Almost a century
ago, he wrote:
https://medium.com/@designforsustainability/designandplanningforpeopleinplacesirpatrickgeddes18541932andtheemergenceof2efa4886317e 1/24
Our greatest need today is to see life as whole, to see its many sides in their
proper relations; but we must have a practical as well as a philosophical
interest in such an integrated view of life.1
At a time when the eects of humanitys exploitation of the Earths

natural resources, the decimation of cultural and biological diversity2,
and the anthropogenic alteration of the planets atmospheric
composition are beginning to produce alarming ecological, social and
economic eects, Patrick Geddes call for an integrated view of life
deserves even more attention, today, then it did a hundred years ago.
Geddes rmly believed that there is a larger view of Nature and Life, a
rebuilding of analyses into Synthesis.3
Such a synthesis of knowledge and action that embeds economical,

social and cultural considerations rmly into an understanding of the
ecological limits of the biosphere will necessarily go hand in hand with
a reintegration of the arts, humanities and sciences into a new
transdisciplinary perspective that will guide collaboration and
research. Design can play an important role as transdisciplinary
integrator and facilitator of cultural transformation towards a
sustainable human civilization during the 21st century.4
A Map of how to conceive of and relate to place (From Cities in Evolution by Patrick Geddes,Source)
Seeing life as whole, which is to understand life as a dynamic

ecological, social, and cognitive process in which humanity
participates, raises awareness of the fundamental interconnection of
nature and culture. Patrick Geddes understood that such a

participatory worldview informed by detailed knowledge about the
ecological, social, geological, cultural and hydrological conditions of
the local region would be instrumental in facilitating the emergence of
sustainable human societies uniquely adapted to their particular
region.
Inspired by the French sociologist Frederic Le Plays (18021886) triad

of Lieu, Travail, Famille which Geddes translated to Work, Place,
Folk Geddes developed a new approach to regional and town
planning based on the integration of people and their livelihood into
the environmental givens of the particular place and region they
inhabit. He emphasized that sound planning decisions have to be based
on a detailed regional survey, which established an inventory of a
regions hydrology, geology, ora, fauna, climate and natural
topography, as well as its social and economic opportunities and
challenges. As such the Geddesian methodology pioneered the
bioregional planning approach more than 70 years before the
emergence of bioregionalism.
Place Work Folk was Geddes version of Le Plays triad Lieu, Travail, Famille(Image)
Since the rst United Nations conference on the environment in Rio de

Janeiro in 1992, the Local Agenda 21 approach to citizen
participation in the creation of integrated responses to the challenges
of sustainability has spread internationally. It may come as a surprise to
many that the popular rallying call of sustainable development, Think
Global, Act Local, can be attributed to Geddes book, Cities in
Evolution, which was rst published in 1915.5 Patrick Geddes led by
example, through his theoretical and practical work as a planner and
educator both in his native Scotland and in India, Cyprus, France and
Palestine.
Anybody who has enjoyed a scenic stroll through the old town of
Edinburgh, up the Royal Mile or down to the Grass Market, owes part of
this experience to the spirited regeneration work of Patrick Geddes and
his wife Anna Geddes. Between 1887 and the early 20th century they
engaged the inhabitants of the dilapidated old town slums in a
collective clean-up of their own neighbourhood and established the
rst student-run halls of residence along the Royal Mile. During that
time, Geddes also created a sociological laboratory and centre for
popular regional education in a global context that he called the

Outlook Tower, he built Ramsay Gardens on the castle esplanade,
took up the chair of Botany at University College, Dundee, and
pioneered the rst international academic summer school in Europe.
Geddes was an academic who could not be conned to a single

discipline and neither a purely practical nor a purely theoretical focus
for his endeavours. To him theory and practice formed a necessary
continuum expressed in peoples lifestyles and ideally informed by
insights from diverse disciplinary perspectives. He was a generalist who
moved freely between the roles of biologist, sociologist, town and
regional planner, exhibition designer, public and academic educator, as
well as patron of the arts and natural philosopher.
Geddes participatory approach to civic action, that emphasized the

need for humanitys integration into the specic environmental
conditions of the region, and his recognition of education as the
facilitator of societal change, along with, his transdisciplinary design
methodology, oers an integrated pathway to sustainability. The
bioregional approach is increasingly being recognized as a central
strategy in planning for sustainability.6
Geddes was keenly aware that fundamental change in the material

domain requires fundamental immaterial changes in the underlying
attitudes and consciousness, and identied transdisciplinary education
as the facilitator of such social change. He believed in the possibility
and necessity of societys evolution towards higher levels of
consciousness and co-operation. The author will discuss this aspect of
Geddes work in another publication.
Without specically using the word design, Geddes provided an early

example of a drastically expanded conception of design. As a promoter
of the transdisciplinary exchange of knowledge, public education, and
engaged citizen responsibility through direct participatory action,
Geddes lived out the role of the designer as integrator of, and facilitator
between, diverse knowledge domains, as well as theory and practice.
The practical and theoretical work of Patrick Geddes expressed a
thoroughly modern understanding of the role that design can play in
the education and creation of a sustainable human civilization.
Regionalism, Ecology, Cooperation and the Eutechnic Age
The intellectual roots of regionalism can be traced back to the French

sociologist, Le Play, who emphasized the importance of integrating
people through right livelihood into the particular place they inhabited,
and the Russian anarchist Peter Kropotkin (18421921), who proposed
a greater regional independence and self-governance based on
decentralized and self-determined modes of production. Kropotkin
argued that at a local scale of production human society naturally tends
towards cooperative arrangements.
The work of Kropotkin and Le Play, as well as contributions by Le Plays

student Edmond Demolins (18521907), and the geographer Elise
Reclus (18301905) formed the basis of Geddes regional planning
approach. Patrick Geddes united dierent aspects of their work with his
own evolutionary understanding as a biologist and created a planning
strategy based on a regional survey of the geological, ecological,
hydrological, and climatological as well as social and economical
conditions of a particular place. He recognized the important role of
cities in the evolution of culture and maintained that a city has to be
understood and integrated in the context of its biological and
geographical region.
Geddes developed Le Plays notion of the valley section, into a

schematic representation of a regional watershed that suggested a
hierarchy of forms of human settlements from croft, to village, to
market town to city adapted to particular environmental conditions and
associated with dierent livelihoods and occupations. This integration
of settlements and modes of production and consumption into the
context and conditions of their natural region, roughly delineated by
the local watershed later formed the conceptual basis of
bioregionalism.7
The Geddesian Valley Section(Image)
Widely regarded as a cofounder of the town and regional planning

movement, Geddes famously pronounced that It takes a whole region
to make a city.8 Geddes training as an evolutionary biologist under
T.H. Huxley (18251895), as well as his collaboration and friendship
with the German biologist, philosopher, and founder of ecology Ernst
Haeckel (18341919), added an important ecological dimension to the
Geddesian planning approach. Geddes integrated ecological, social and
economic considerations, based on his biological understanding of how
organisms both adapt to, and adapt, their natural environment. Volker
M. Welter suggests that Geddes identied misadaptation to the natural
environment as the underlying cause of urban problems. Welter
explains:
For Geddes, conicts arise not between classes but between occupational
groups and the environment. As the aim is to adjust the whole city to the
environment, cooperation among citizens becomes not only a viable option
but a necessity.9
According to Geddes, it was through the notion of right livelihood that

humanity could begin to integrate into natural process rather than
continue to dominate and exploit nature through ever more destructive
technologies. He believed that eventually the destructive technologies
that emerged from the Industrial Revolution and led to a progressive
subjugation of human beings and the environment to the machine
would give way to a new geotechnology that was to meet human
needs within the limits of the planetary biosphere. Geddes talked about
a shift from the paleotechnic age where life as a whole was
threatened to the neotechnic age also referred to by him as the
eutechnic age when life would resurge (eu- is a Greek prex
indicating positive, healthy, or good).
In Geddes eyes, life itself is the underlying process that connects

nature and culture. During the paleotechnic age technological progress
involves the renunciation of the organic and its substitution by the
mechanical; wealth is measured in purely monetary terms rather than
in terms of quality of life and environmental health. In contrast, during
the emergence of the eutechnic age the goal of technology is to meet
human needs and to integrate into ecological and social process thus
creating a healthy environment.
Geddes believed that in this eutechnic age nature conservation and

restoration would be a priority. It would lead to a greening of the cities
and the development of a new technology based on new sources of
energy, clean, unpolluting, and ecient.10 Was he foreseeing the
emergence of new regional economies based on renewable energy?
Geddes suggested that eventually a shift away from the predominantly
competitive outlook that characterized the paleotechnic age would lead
to a focus on greater cooperation at the regional, international and
global scale during the eutechnic age.
One of Geddes complex maps of a participatory holistic view of life(Image)
In a recently published book The Chaos Point The World at the

Crossroads, Ervin Laszlo, founder of the Club of Budapest, has argued
that human civilization is currently at a bifurcation point where the
collective design decision we take over the course of the next decade
will either steer us towards eco-social breakdown or a breakthrough
towards fundamental social, cultural and psychological changes and
sustainability.11 The work of Sir Patrick Geddes comes alive and gains
contemporary signicance within the context of this unprecedented
transformation of the human presence on earth.
The frequent calls for the consideration of ethical, social and

environmental responsibility in business, government and civil society,
along with the progress made in elds like green product design,
renewable energy technologies, and in integrated planning
approaches, could be regarded as an indication that we are nally a
hundred years after Geddes proclaimed his vision of the eutechnic age
reaching the critical mass for such a shift to actually occur. The
systems theorist, Buddhist scholar and deep ecologist Joanna Macy
describes this shift from the currently still dominant industrial growth
society to a life sustaining society as the time of the great
turning.12
Like Geddes, Macy clearly recognizes that such a profound shift in

societys guiding paradigm needs to express itself not simply in the
physical dimension in terms of new technologies, products, buildings
and planning approaches, but needs to go hand in hand with a change
in human consciousness. Sustainability requires a fundamental change
in worldview resulting in a change in self-perception that reintegrates
humanity into natural process as a conscious participant and integral
part of nature. Such changes can be facilitated by transdisciplinary
education of the whole person. Profound societal change emerges from
the bottom up through direct participation of citizens in their local
communities and the ecological context of their regions.
Global solutions to humanitys current environmental problems are

only to be found and brought about through local actions at the scale of
communities and their bioregion. Such actions require a socially and
ecologically literate citizenry. Geddes understood the importance of
thinking global and acting local. He was at once a strong supporter of
the preservation of Scottish regional and national identity, as well as
international cooperation within and beyond Europe.
Geddes knew that the creative integration of nature and culture would
ultimately require humanitys collaboration at a global scale.
Regionally adapted work, i.e. local production for local consumption, is
the most parsimonious way to achieve the ecological integration of
culture and nature. Regionally appropriate livelihoods connect people
to the place they inhabit. The emergence of a globally sustainable
civilization requires participation of locally adapted sustainable
communities in regional, national, and international networks of
cooperation and knowledge exchange.
Transdisciplinary and Integrated Solutions for Sustainability
Practical ways to achieve the integration of ecological, social, cultural,

economic and psychological concerns within the context of the
globalised world of the 21st century are currently being researched and
developed through disciplines such as ecological economics, industrial
ecology, bioregional planning, urban ecology, integral ecology,
ecological engineering and the various design approaches that aim to
meet human needs while integrating human activity into the limits
posed by the biosphere. Among them are: design for sustainability,
deep design, green design, eco-design, cradle-to-cradle design, and
ecological design.13
At the University of Dundee, where Geddes taught for more than 30

years, researchers at the Centre for the Study of Natural Design are
investigating the emerging transdisciplinary synthesis and integration
that is beginning to unite all these diverse disciplines into a movement
aiming to provide pathways towards humanitys appropriate
participation in the complex dynamics of social and ecological process
and therefore true sustainability. This movement is tentatively referred
to as the natural design movement.
Without specically using the word design, Patrick Geddes pioneered

such a transdisciplinary or holistic approach to design, planning and
education over a century ago. Geddes has sometimes been dismissed as
an idiosyncratic generalist a jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none but
could it be that this was the judgement of focussed specialists from
within the connes of their disciplinary boundaries? Within the context
of the complex and interconnected problems that are facing modern
society, which all seem to require profoundly transdisciplinary
approaches to develop viable and sustainable solutions, it may be time
to reconsider the inuence of Patrick Geddes and some of his insights
in a totally new light.
Geddes was a generalist by conviction and not by circumstance. He

understood that we needed both specialized knowledge and an
understanding of how the various disciplines relate. Geddes spent a
large part of his life developing a methodology for transdisciplinary
collaboration and a synthesis of the diverse aspects of human
knowledge about the world. To him seeing life as whole was the
solution. He understood that life was a process fundamental to the
emergence of both nature and culture. The unity of nature and culture
and his ecological understanding served as the basis for his

transdisciplinary synthesis of knowledge.
Geddes understood that a successful shift towards a sustainable human

civilization at a local, regional, and global scale ultimately depends
on profound metadesign changes in peoples attitudes, values,
worldviews, and perceived needs. Only such immaterial changes in
awareness and consciousness informed by transdisciplinary
integration and synthesis have the transformative power to aect all
material design and planning decisions downstream.
Geddes on Ecological Economics
With regard to the eld of economics, Geddes took his initial

inspirations from John Ruskin (1819- 1900). In an early paper, entitled
John Ruskin: Economist, rst published in 1885, Geddes agrees with
Ruskins assessment that market forces should not control economics,
but what was needed was a new approach to economics that focussed
on true quality of life by answering to the biological and aesthetic needs
of humanity.14
Based on his biological understanding of the dynamics of ecosystems,

Geddes suggested that a high degree of specialization in the function of
an organism within a highly complex society would lead to a decrease
of individual competition. At the same time he was aware of the
inherent dangers of such specialisation and the fragmentation of
knowledge into disconnected disciplines. Geddes emphasized the need
for a holistic perspective that contextualises specialist knowledge.
In An Analysis of the Principles of Economics, a paper that Geddes

presented at the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1883, he compared the
physical principles of economics based on mechanical metaphors of
industrial production and the absorption and dissipation of energy,
with the biological principles of economics that took an evolutionary
perspective of life as the process that connects culture and nature.
Geddes warned that the specialization of labour if not balanced by a

profoundly transdisciplinary education could have a detrimental
eect on individual, cultural and eventually environmental health. He
was convinced that a clear focus on education was needed to support
the continued evolution of culture and society.
Rooted in his biological conviction of the fundamental unity of nature

and culture, Geddes argued that the key objective of the biological
principles of economics was not food and shelter but culture and
education. For Geddes, the creation of an educated, and regionally
adapted culture was the prerequisite for the long-term assurance of the
provision of food and shelter for all its citizens.
Geddes believed that a society was able to evolve healthily if its people
and their livelihoods were adapted to the specic conditions of their
local region. Such adaptations required a form of transdisciplinary
education that made people aware of how their livelihood tted into
the overall adaptive and integrative process that joined local culture to
local nature.
In Geddes opinion, art and architecture had the dual function of

expressing, and educating, about this symbiotic relationship between
nature and culture. To him, an ecological economics that followed
biological design principles would meet human needs through creative
and exible adaptation to local and regional limits. The focus of such
an economic system was not economic growth but biological,
ecological, and social health.
The eld of ecological economics has developed signicantly over the

last three decades. A diverse range of researchers, entrepreneurs, and
activists has contributed to the maturation of ecological economics.15
Geddes set one of the earliest impulses for the emergence of ecological
economics and the wider movement aiming towards a reintegration of
humanities economic activities within the limits to allow for the long-
term sustainment of healthy ecological and social processes.
Geddes Inuence on Regional and Urban Planning
Various authors have discussed the Geddesian inuence on regional

and urban planning over the last decade and they have come to varying
conclusions ranging from regarding it as marginal to crucial.16 In a
recent article, Kenneth Maclean reviewed some of Geddes legacy. He
suggested, Cities in Evolution, Geddes most widely read book,
eectively spread his innovatory message that the key to dynamic
social and urban improvement lay with an educated citizenry and
emphasized that awareness and participation were essential to
Geddess ideas of citizenship17.
Maclean lists a number of people whose work was particularly

inuenced by Patrick Geddes, among them: the geographer and
anthropologist Herbert John Fleure (18761969) who set up the rst
BSc./Ba. Programme in geography at the University of Aberystwyth;
the geologist and geographer L. Dudley Stamp (18981966), who
chaired the Regional Survey Committee of the Geographical
Association and oversaw the Land Utilization Survey of Britain while
lecturing on Economic Geography at the London School of Economics;
and the geographer and environmental educator Tom H. Masterton, a
student of Geddes son Arthur Geddes at the University of Edinburgh
and later lecturer in geography at Moray House College of Education.
In his inuential textbook Environmental Studies: A Concentric Approach
which had a signicant eect on primary school education in Scotland,
Masteron advocates that teachers should centre education around the
local region.18
Helen Meller mentions Geddes direct inspirational inuence on the

Clyde Valley Plan that was developed for Strathclyde Regional Council.
Meller also points out that when the Architectural Association assisted
in the development of correspondence courses for ex-service men after
the Second World War these were supervised by Jacqueline Tyrwhitt
(19051983) a strong supporter of the Geddesian approach to
planning.
These courses at the School of Planning, for which over 1600 students
enrolled focussed on four essential aspects of planning: the need for
the activity to be multidisciplinary, the use of the region as a planning
unit, the necessity of a holistic approach, and the importance of
economic and social factors. Meller concludes that all four were
derived from her [Tyrwhitts] Geddesian perspective.19
A curious phenomenon about the academic inuence of Geddes is that

even today his work seems to be better known and more respected
outside Britain. His planning work in India, Palestine and Cyprus has
left relatively little remaining physical testimony in the form of existing
buildings or towns, but his planning approach remains inuential in
Indian and South American planning departments.
Meller mentions that Geddes encouraged Howard Odum (18851954)

to establish the Institute for Research in Social Science at the University
of North Carolina. She argues that through this, and his impact on the
work of Lewis Mumford (18951988) and Benton Mackaye (1879

1975), Geddes had an indirect but signicant inuence on the often
cited Tennessee Valley Authority regional planning and economic
regeneration project.20 Through his eect on Mumford and Mackaye,
Geddes ideas spread to the Regional Planning Association of America
and to university planning departments internationally.
Ecological Planning and Design
Another crucially important person in the propagation and further

development of the interdisciplinary regional planning approach
pioneered by Geddes was the Scottish planner and landscape architect
Ian L. McHarg (19202001). McHarg was one of the ex-servicemen
who enrolled in the post-war correspondence course in planning
mentioned above, before studying city planning and landscape
architecture at Harvard. He went on to set up the department for
regional planning and landscape architecture at the University of
Pennsylvania and is today widely recognized as the founder of
ecological planning.
McHargs systematic development of Geddes regional survey into a

planning methodology ultimately led to the development of the
Geographic Information System software that has become an
important tool in most planning departments. G.I.S. represents a
modern day, concretised version of the Geddesian valley section. The
programme allows for the inclusion of diverse regional survey results in
a series of overlaid maps to enable planners to site new developments
in their most environmentally opportune location. McHarg adopted
and developed Geddes transdisciplinary approach, and his emphasis
on the importance of education and citizen participation, into an
ecological planning methodology.
Like Geddes, McHarg understood that a reassessment of societys

guiding value system with regard to the relationship between culture
and nature was crucial for the reintegration of humanity into natural
process. In 1969, McHarg published Design With Nature. The book
marked the re-emergence of ecological planning in the modern world
(most vernacular or traditional land- use patterns are predominantly
based on natural limits and opportunities), and can be regarded as the
foundation of ecological design.21 In a more recent article McHarg
dened the terms ecological planning and ecological design as follows:
Ecological Planning is that approach whereby a region is understood as a

biophysical and social process comprehensible through the operation of
laws and time. This can be reinterpreted as having explicit opportunities
and constraints for any particular human use. A survey will reveal the
most t locations and processes. Ecological design follows planning and
introduces the subject of form. There should be an intrinsically suitable
location, processes with appropriate materials, and forms. Design requires
an informed designer with a visual imagination, as well as graphic and
creative skills. It selects for creative tting revealed in intrinsic and
expressive form.22
The Geddesian inuence is undeniable. The understanding that all

design from the scale of the individual product, architecture,
settlements, and on to an entire region and its economic system needs
to be integrated into ecological and social processes constitutes an
important link between design and planning in theory and practice.
Unfortunately academic compartmentalization has separated the
disciplines of planning and design that should really be understood and
practiced as one. Ecological design is clearly aiming to re-establish the
fundamental unity of these disciplines.
Victor Papanek (19271999) was among the rst industrial product

designers to stress that there is an important ethical dimension to all
design and explored its ecological and social signicance. Papanek
emphasized that the designer-planner shares responsibility for nearly
all of our products and tools and hence all our environmental
mistakes.23 Papanek also advocated the Geddesian lesson of the
appropriate local scale for design intervention. He wrote: The
problems may be world-wide, yet they will yield only to decentralized,
human scale and local intervention. Like Geddes, Papanek was
convinced that design must be the bridge between human needs,
culture and ecology.24
There is a steadily growing movement of ecologically and socially

responsible design practitioners. The work of the economist E.F.
Schumacher (19111977), author of Small is Beautiful, supported a
redesign of production, consumption and governance at a local and
human scale. Since the late 1960s, John and Nancy Todd have
continued to develop and test many ecological design solutions suited
for a local and bioregional scale.
Amory Lovins and his wife Hunter Lovins, through their work at the
Rocky Mountain Institute, have provided detailed strategies for a shift
towards decentralized energy production and cleaner transport
solutions. The design philosophy and practice of permaculture, rst
developed by Bill Mollison, has since expanded into a global, grass-
roots movement, that operates along bioregional design principles.25
In their book Ecological Design, Sim van der Ryn and Stuart Cowan pay
tribute to Geddes as one of the pioneers of the ecological design
movement. They emphasize that ecological design works with the
inherent integrities of a given place, recognizing that the extent to
which we rely on far-ung resources is the extent to which we are no
longer accountable to our own place. Furthermore, they suggest that
design transforms awareness. Designs that grow out of and celebrate
place, will ground us in place. Designs that work in partnership with
nature articulate an implicit hope that we might do the same.26 All
this clearly expresses an understanding of design that was already
present in the work of Patrick Geddes and his emphasis on the
fundamental unity of nature and culture and the importance of seeing
life as whole. Van der Ryn and Cowan reiterate Geddes when they
lament that:
We have individually and collectively denied the interdependence of nature

and culture. The tragedy is that dumb design has provided so little of
enduring value at such a great environmental and social cost. The
industrial world, with its science, technology, and borrowed auence, has
developed by denying wholeness within the art of living.27
Bioregional Solutions
Geddes and McHarg pioneered a planning approach based on social

and ecological responsibility and literacy. Together with Kropotkin and
Le Play, Geddes was one of the rst advocates of a regional focus for
planning and design. He rst emphasized the need for more
transdisciplinary integration, holistic education, and citizen
participation. Geddes was also the rst to suggest that local watersheds
indicated the appropriate regional planning scale.
The movement of bioregionalism emerged in the 1970s, promoted

through the work of Kirkpatrick Sale, Raymond Dasman and Peter
Berg.28 But it is only in recent years that the ecological design
approach integrated into a bioregional planning strategy is increasingly

being recognized as the most comprehensive strategy to bring about
the crucially important shift from a thoroughly unsustainable industrial
growth society to a new integration of nature and culture through
sustainable practices at all scales. Such a shift will require full
participation of civil society, industry and governments alike. In recent
years a number of excellent books about the bioregional planning
approach have been published.29
The sustainability consultants Pooran Desai and Sue Riddlestone of the

London based consultancy BioRegional suggest that we need to
reconsider the scale of our production systems and create more locally
self-sustaining communities in compact cities. They argue that
regional scale development encourages people to become engaged,
creating an environment in which the political ideal of subsidiarity can
be expressed and suggest that creating stable regional economies can
help to create a sense of community and security that can alleviate the
stresses inherent in a globally competitive world. Just like Geddes
suggested over a hundred years earlier, Desai and Riddlestone propose
that a sense of community can be supported by fostering a sense of
place, through locally distinct neighbourhoods and industries linked to
the ecology and heritage of the area.30
Bioregionalism is land-use planning that integrates industry, agriculture,

economics and governance together with the ecology of the region. It begins
from the premise that humans evolved in response to their environments,
and are subject to natural laws and limits; therefore, communities should
be designed to t their bioregion. However, bioregional planning could also
be designed to assist in the transition to a bio-based economy.31
In a recently published compendium of ecological design solutions,

Janis Birkeland suggested seven basic scales of ecological design. These
are eco-design at the product scale, eco- architecture, construction
ecology, community design, industrial design, urban design, and all of
them integrate at the scale of bioregional design. In the same
compendium Birkeland and Walker explain that bioregional planning
starts from the recognition that humans are biological entities and
therefore need systems for living that are designed to meet their
cultural, economic, and physical needs, but in ways that foster
symbiotic relationships with the complex ecological systems of the
bioregion.32 They suggest that in contrast to conventional planning
approaches that still transform nature, bioregional planning

integrates nature and culture through transforming society.
To Geddes conurbation was a symbiosis between nature and the built

environment. Volker Welter argued that for Geddes a conurbation was
the potential pinnacle of [hu]mankinds tendency to urbanize large
stretches of land; today the term has become a synonym for
[hu]mankinds allegedly self-destructive tendency to create
unsustainable articial environments.33 While Geddes was in favour
of conurbation, he emphasised that this process had to be controlled to
occur within the natural limits of the region.
A contemporary bioregional vision includes cities of high densities with

integrated urban agricultural systems and generous greenbelts and
wildlife corridors in and around the cities. The Geddesian vision of an
ecologically and socially sustainable culture may need some
adjustments to the conditions of the 21st century, but the underlying
call for an ecological worldview that informs our approach to planning
and design and recognises the fundamental unity of nature and culture
has not lost, but gained importance. Geddes can clearly be regarded as
an early advocate of design and planning for people in place. Today,
such a health generating and contextualising design strategy can still
help to provide more sustainable solutions to our most pressing social,
ecological and economic problems.
The vision of a sustainable human civilization composed of

internationally collaborative, bioregional economies was born a
century ago. Bioregionalism, bioregional planning, and ecological
design will carry the modern expression of this Geddesian vision into
its practical implementation during the 21st century.
Conclusion
Sir Patrick Geddes emphasized the need for transdisciplinary education

as a facilitator of cultural change. He advocated ecologically and
socially appropriate practices, and stressed the need for an integration
of human settlements and livelihoods into the natural conditions of
their particular region. According to Geddes, appropriate local action
requires global awareness and international cooperation. Globalisation,
climate change, resource depletion, and national and international
inequality are complex and interconnected challenges requiring such
holistic design solutions. As the author has previously emphasized, the

creation of a sustainable human civilization is the central challenge for
design in the 21st century.34
Geddes saw adaptation as a two way process. On the one hand,

regional cultures are adapting their regional environment to suit
human needs, but on the other hand the limits of such adaptations are
set by the social and ecological conditions of their particular
environment. An adaptation of local cultures to specic ecosystem
conditions is therefore the equally important complementary process to
the adaptation of ecosystems by their inhabitants. In a healthy system
nature and culture are indistinguishable and mutually supportive. This
is the crucial lesson humanity has to re-learn at the global and local
scale, if the 21st Century is to mark the end of ecological overshoot and
a re-integration of humanity into natural processes and limits.
Without such integration, sustainability will remain an empty promise,

abused for political spin. When we see life as whole culture is
recognized as either a sustainable or unsustainable expression of
nature. As such, culture either faces continued evolution and change,
or extinction. Without the services provided by natures life-support
systems, no culture can sustain its existence. Human, ecosystems and
planetary health are fundamentally interdependent.35 Geddes
believed that our greatest need today is to see life as whole because he
understood that healthy communities depend on healthy ecosystems
and a healthy biosphere, and because how we design depends on how
we see the world and ourselves.
The work of Patrick Geddes can be regarded as an early impulse in the

emergence of ecological planning and design, as well as, ecological
economics and bioregionalism. Many of Geddes ideas are still
inuential today, although not always recognized as originating from
his work. His theories have naturally been adapted in language and
context to the contemporary discourse. Nevertheless, there are
fundamental lessons about sustainable development to be deduced
from Geddes work.
In summary, the key Geddesian impulses that still deserve further

attention in the contemporary context of sustainable development are:
the bioregional planning approach that integrates ecological, socio-
cultural and economical considerations at a regional scale; the
emphasis on transdisciplinary education as a prerequisite for informed

civic participation and cultural change; and a holistic methodology for
decision making and design that considers the contributions of diverse
elds of human knowledge.
[This paper was written in 2005 and I have published it here without
further editing. I just added a few images. For a more recent example of
my work, see the reviews of Designing Regenerative Cultures and many
excerpts from the book and articles on my Medium page.]
Notes:
1 This quotation of Patrick Geddes is from Sir William Holfords

introduction to P. Mairet, Pioneer of Sociology The Life and Letters of
Patrick Geddes, 1957.
2 In January 2005 an International Conference on Biodiversity
highlighted the fact that we are currently living through a global mass
extinction of species at a rate comparable to the disappearance of the
dinosaurs 65 million years ago. 15,589 animal and more than 60,000
plant species have now been listed as endangered, while only 1.8
million of an estimated 30 million species have even been named and
identied. Over the last millennium the earth has lost 45% of its forest
cover. The conference highlighted that human intervention in natural
systems has to be considered the main cause of this increase in
extinctions. (Source: El Pais, January, 25th, 2005, p. 28.
3.P. Geddes, The Sociology of Autumn, in M. McDonald ed.,

Edinburgh Review Issue 88, Patrick Geddes Educator, Ecologist, Visual
Thinker, Edinburgh University Press, 1992, p. 32.
4 D.C. Wahl, Bionics vs. Biomimicry: from control of nature to
sustainable participation in nature, Wessex Institute of Technology
Transactions on Ecology and the Environment, vol. 87, 2006, pp.289
298.
5 P. Geddes, Cities in Evolution: an introduction to the town planning

movement and the study of civics, Williams & Norgate.
6 See for example: D.J. Brunckhorst, Bioregional Planning: Resource
management beyond the new millennium, Routledge, 2002; and M.V.
McGinnis, Bioregionalism, Routledge, 1999.
7 For a more detailed discussion of the intellectual roots of the
Geddesian approach to regional planning see W. Stephen, Think Global,
Act Local The Life and Legacy of Patrick Geddes, Luath Press, 2004,
pp.41 & pp.85; as well as H. Meller, Patrick Geddes Social Evolutionist
and City Planner, Routledge, 1993, pp.34.
8 P. Geddes, Civics: As Concrete and Applied Sociology. Part I, in
Sociological Papers 1904, Macmillan, 1905, p. 106.
9 V. M. Welter, Biopolis Patrick Geddes and the City of Life, MIT Press,
2002, p. 66.
10 S. Leonard, The message of Patrick Geddes the Green Pioneer, in
M. Macdonald ed., Edinburgh Review 88: Patrick Geddes Ecologist,
Educator, Visual Thinker, Edinburgh University Press, 1992, p. 76.
11 E. Laszlo, The Chaos Point The World at the Crossroads, Piatkus
Press, 2006
12 J. Macy & M. Y. Brown, Coming Back to Life Practices to Reconnect
Our Lives, OurWorld, New Society Publishers, 1998, pp. 17- 18.
13 See for example: J. Birkeland ed., Design for Sustainability A
Sourcebook for Integrated Eco-logical Solutions, Earthscan, 2002; D.
Wann, Deep Design Pathways to a Livable Future, Island Press, 1996;
D. Makenzie, Green Design: Design for the Environment, Laurence King,
1997; W. McDonough & M. Braungart, Cradle to Cradle Remaking the
Way We Make Things, North Point Press, 2002; S. Van der Ryn & S.
Cowan, Ecological Design, Island Press, 1996; S. Esbjrn-Hargens
Integral Ecology: The What, Who, and How of environmental
phenomena, World Futures: Journal of General Evolution, Routeledge,
2005, Vol.61 Numbers 12, pp.549
14 P. Geddes, John Ruskin: Economist, Brown, 1885. Reprinted in
International Monthly 1, 1900, pp. 280308, under the title John
Ruskin, as Economist.
15 See for example: E.F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful Economics as
if People Mattered, Harper Collins, 1973; R. Costanza edit., Ecological
Economics: The Science and Management of Sustainability, Columbia
University Press, 1991; H. Daly, Steady-State Economics, Island Press,
1991; P. Hawken, The Ecology of Commerce, Harper Collins, 1993; T.
Trainer, Towards a Sustainable Economy, Envirobooks, 1996; H.
Henderson, Beyond Globalization: Shaping a Sustainable Global
Economy, Kumarian Press, 1999; B. Milani, Designing the Green
Economy, Rowman & Littleeld, 2000.
16 See for example: V. M. Welter (2002); H. Meller (1993), W.
Stephen et al. (2004).
17 K. Maclean, Patrick Geddes: Regional Survey and Education, in W.
Stephen et al., Think Global, Act Local The Life and Legacy of Patrick
Geddes, Luath Press, 2004, p.86.
18 ibid. p.109.
19 H. Meller, Patrick Geddes: Social Evolutionist and City Planner,
Routledge, 1993, pp. 323324.
20 ibid. p. 322.
21 I.L. McHarg, Design with Nature, Doubleday/Natural History Press,
1969
22 I.L. McHarg, Ecology and Design, 1997, in McHarg & Steiner, To
Heal the Earth Selected Writings of Ian L. McHarg, Island Press, 1998,
p.195
23 V. Papaneck, Design for the Real World Human Ecology and Social
Change, Thames and Hudson, 2nd revised edition, 1984, p.57
24 V. Papanek, The Green Imperative Ecology and Ethics in Design and
Architecture, Thames & Hudson, 1995, p.25 & p.29
25 See: E.F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful Economics as if People
Mattered, first published in 1973, new edition with commentaries by
Hartley & Marks, 1999. For the work of John and Nancy Todd, see for
example: N.J. Todd & J. Todd, From Eco-Cities to Living Machines
Principles of Ecological Design, North Atlantic Books, 1993. For the work
of Amory Lovins and the Rocky Mountain Institute see www.rmi.org
and for example: A.B. Lovins et al., Small is Protable The Hidden
Economic Benets of Making Electrical Resources the Right Size, Rocky
Mountain Institute, 2002. For the work of Bill Molison, see for example:
B. Mollison, Permaculture A Designers Manual, Tagari Publications,
1988.
26 S. Van der Ryn & S. Cowan, Ecological Design, Island Press, 1996,
p.72 & p.162
27 ibid. p.14
28 For the work of Kirkpatrick Sale see e.g. Dwellers in the Land The
Bioregional Vision, New Society Publishers, 1991. The writer Peter Berg
and the ecologist Raymond Dasman working through a organisation
called Planet Drum in California and a magazine called Raising the
Stakes collaborated during the early 1970s with the poet Garry Snyder
in promoting the grass-root based involvement of local communities in
the movement of bioregionalism.
29 Among the recent publications that document the growing
academic and practical interest in the bioregional planning approach
are: D.J. Burnckhorst, Bioregional Planning: Resource Management
Beyond the New Millenium, Harwood Academic, 2000; P. Calthorpe &
W. Fulton, The Regional City, Island Press, 2000; P. Desai & S.
Riddlestone, Bioregional Solutions For Living on One Planet,
Schumacher Brieng 8, Green Books, 2002; H. Girardet, Creating
Sustainable Cities, Schumacher Brieng 2, Green Books, 1999; K.N.

Johnson ed., Bioregional Assessments: Science at the Crossroads of
Management and Policy, Island Press, 2001; M.V. McGinnis,
Bioregionalism, Routledge, 1999.
30 P. Desai & S. Riddlestone, Bioregional Solutions for Living on One
Planet, Schumacher Brieng 8, Green Books, 2002, p.77 & p.75
31 J. Birkeland & C. Walker, Bioregional Planning, in J. Birkeland ed.,
Design for Sustainability A Sourcebook for Integrated Eco- logical
Solutions, Earthscan Publications, 2002, p. 236
32 ibid, p.236
33 V.M. Welter, Biopolis: Patrick Geddes and the city of life, MIT Press,
p.251
34 see also: D.W. Orr, The Nature of Design: Ecology, Culture, and
Human Intention, Oxford University Press, 2002, p.50; and D.C. Wahl,
Bionics vs. Biomimicry: from control of nature to sustainable
participation in nature, Design & Nature III: Comparing Design in Nature
with science and Engineering, Wessex Institute of Technology
Transactions on Ecology and the Environment, Vol.87, WIT Press,
2006, pp.289298
35 see also D.C. Wahl, Design for human and planetary health: a
transdisciplinary approach to sustainability, The Ravage of the Planet,
Wessex Institute of Technology Transactions on Ecology and the
Environment, WIT Press, 2006, forthcoming

Design and Planning For People in Place

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3/28/2017 DesignandPlanningforPeopleinPlace:SirPatrickGeddes(18541932)andtheEmergenceof

Design and Planning for People in Place:

Geddes aim was not only to contribute to the physical expression of

At a time when the eects of humanitys exploitation of the Earths

Such a synthesis of knowledge and action that embeds economical,

Seeing life as whole, which is to understand life as a dynamic

nature and culture. Patrick Geddes understood that such a

Inspired by the French sociologist Frederic Le Plays (18021886) triad

Since the rst United Nations conference on the environment in Rio de

popular regional education in a global context that he called the

Geddes was an academic who could not be conned to a single

Geddes participatory approach to civic action, that emphasized the

Geddes was keenly aware that fundamental change in the material

Without specically using the word design, Geddes provided an early

Regionalism, Ecology, Cooperation and the Eutechnic Age

The intellectual roots of regionalism can be traced back to the French

The work of Kropotkin and Le Play, as well as contributions by Le Plays

Geddes developed Le Plays notion of the valley section, into a

The Geddesian Valley Section(Image)

Widely regarded as a cofounder of the town and regional planning

According to Geddes, it was through the notion of right livelihood that

In Geddes eyes, life itself is the underlying process that connects

Geddes believed that in this eutechnic age nature conservation and

One of Geddes complex maps of a participatory holistic view of life(Image)

In a recently published book The Chaos Point The World at the

The frequent calls for the consideration of ethical, social and

Like Geddes, Macy clearly recognizes that such a profound shift in

Global solutions to humanitys current environmental problems are

Transdisciplinary and Integrated Solutions for Sustainability

Practical ways to achieve the integration of ecological, social, cultural,

At the University of Dundee, where Geddes taught for more than 30

Without specically using the word design, Patrick Geddes pioneered

Geddes was a generalist by conviction and not by circumstance. He

and his ecological understanding served as the basis for his

Geddes understood that a successful shift towards a sustainable human

Geddes on Ecological Economics

With regard to the eld of economics, Geddes took his initial

Based on his biological understanding of the dynamics of ecosystems,

In An Analysis of the Principles of Economics, a paper that Geddes

Geddes warned that the specialization of labour if not balanced by a

Rooted in his biological conviction of the fundamental unity of nature

In Geddes opinion, art and architecture had the dual function of

The eld of ecological economics has developed signicantly over the

Geddes Inuence on Regional and Urban Planning

Various authors have discussed the Geddesian inuence on regional

Maclean lists a number of people whose work was particularly

Helen Meller mentions Geddes direct inspirational inuence on the

A curious phenomenon about the academic inuence of Geddes is that

Meller mentions that Geddes encouraged Howard Odum (18851954)

work of Lewis Mumford (18951988) and Benton Mackaye (1879

Ecological Planning and Design

Another crucially important person in the propagation and further

McHargs systematic development of Geddes regional survey into a

Like Geddes, McHarg understood that a reassessment of societys

Ecological Planning is that approach whereby a region is understood as a

The Geddesian inuence is undeniable. The understanding that all

Victor Papanek (19271999) was among the rst industrial product

There is a steadily growing movement of ecologically and socially

We have individually and collectively denied the interdependence of nature

Geddes and McHarg pioneered a planning approach based on social

The movement of bioregionalism emerged in the 1970s, promoted

approach integrated into a bioregional planning strategy is increasingly

The sustainability consultants Pooran Desai and Sue Riddlestone of the