Bookworming: Raymond Unwin, Town planning in practice

Raymond Unwin was a noted architect and one of the first English town planners who took most of his inspiration from Germany. He was born in Yorkshire but grew up and studied in Oxford. After his studies he returned to the North of England (first Chesterfield, then Manchester and later Sheffield). He worked as an engineer in iron manufacture and was inspired by John Ruskin and William Morris and in fact a member of the Sheffield Socialist Society. At the age of 30 he married Ethel, Barry Parker's sister. He formed a partnership with Parker in 1896 (three years later). Their architecture firm preferred the simple vernacular style of the Arts and Crafts Style and aims at improving housing standards for the working classes. They both wrote books and published articles and pamphlets on the subject of planned housing.

Parker and Unwin were asked to design the model village of New Earswick near York in 1902 and were invited to submit a plan for Letchwort Garden Citty in 1903. That same year they were involved in the Cottages near a Town Exhibit held in Manchester. In 1905 Parker and Unwin were asked to draw the plans for Hampstead Harden Suburb. Raymond Unwin became president of the Royal Institute of British Architects in 1931. He died in 1940 aged 76.

In 1909 Raymond Unwin published his most famous book: Town planning in Practice, an introduction to the Art of Designing Cities and Suburbs. This book boasts 300 illustrations and was published in London and Leipsic (Leipzig). A German edition was published in 1922 in Berlin. The book is an effort to combine previously (un)published writings with pictures, plans and impressions by the author. In several chapters Unwin discusses Civic Art, the individuality of towns, formal and informal beauty, the city survey, boundaries and approaches, enclosed spaces, arrangement of roads, site planning, spacing and placement of buildings, variety of buildings, cooperation in site-planning and building bye-laws. There is a ten page index of plans and illustrations plus a bibliography with 17 English, 23 German and 27 French authors.

Unwin states that the rapid growth of towns and cities has lead to the disorderly and perfectly haphazard manner of streets being laid out with the aim of crowding as many buildings on the land as it would hold. Only in the first chapter does Unwin mention To-morrow by Ebenezer Howard. His references to Camillo Sitte are multiple and occur throughout the book. He has his eyes fixed on continental practices, especially in Germany where planning and designing town development had become routine for municipal authorities by 1900. Unwin laments that America France and England lack such planning and controlling regimes and still rely on local regulations (bye-laws). Cities, he argues, need art as an expression of civic life [and by extension an urban environment designed on artistic principles]. As such the conscious art of town building is new to England.

Unwin addresses the individuality of towns with a sketch of the ancient art of town building. For this he compares the differences in layout based on the history of the place showing examples like Chester (Roman town), Edinburgh (medieval old town and formal new town), Winchelsea (planned rebuilt town), Hereford (ancient road junction) and a long list of foreign examples -Moscow, Nuremburg, Mannheim, Rothenburg, Nancy, Monpazier, Paris, Bruges, Turin, Rome, Washington and Karlsruhe to name a few. Plans and reconstructions of recently excavated ancient cities are included. [Incidentally the plans of these ancient cities more often than not show a haphazard layout of streets indicative of ad-hoc planning.] In discussing medieval (German) cities and their particular layouts, Camillo Sitte is mentioned for the first time. He reiterates Sitte when he states that cities with development on irregular lines have so much system and artistic quality that they aren't merely incidental but instead must be the result of conscious planning and design.

Unwin doesn't limit himself to examples of irregular street plans, but also show regular and formal examples that are brought under the term "renaissance planning" [notwithstanding that most examples shown date from the 1600s, 1700s and 1800s]. The reconstruction of Paris under Eugène Haussmann and the monotonous grid iron American cities are also included in this section. Unwin feels it is possible to work along the lines of Sittes artistic principles in a design based on regular lines. He concludes that towns fall into two distinct classes: formal and informal. To elaborate on this he compares Oxford and Rothenburg (informal) with Paris, Nancy and Copenhagen-Amalienborg (formal). The differences in layout choices he -rightly- compares to styles of garden design. Successful town planning, Unwin states,  is akin to well designed gardens and characterised by the successful implementation of purposeful interventions. There is both merit in careful study of the site and its possibilities [the informal approach] and in a simple and orderly plan framing spaces and views [the formal approach]. He makes a plea for incorporating features of the site and where possible mature trees, woodland and other plantings. Unwin considers it wise not to dogmatise on theory!

The author stresses the importance of the city survey as the basis for any new town design. The practical and artistic are interdependent and must be worked out together. The main difference between the two is that practical considerations are often fixed while the artistic expression may take varying form. A proper city survey should include social aspects, population densities, distribution of functions and public spaces, historical development, places of special interest and the relevant context (geology, soil, water, climate, etcetera).  Unwin sums up the maps that need to be drawn and the diagrams that need to be prepared. He also includes examples. He states: without the right information no design can be executed well.

To combat the persistently expanding fringes of half-developed suburbs and half-spoiled countryside around the metropolis more attention must be paid to boundaries and approaches. Though historic cities often had strict boundaries they should not be copied but serve as inspiration. The design of "the wall" in Hampstead Garden Suburb is included as a good example of an attractive boundary. Unwin mentions allotments and parks as a way of creating internal and external boundaries in a suburban context. Other devices useful in creating an interesting approach mentioned in the book are avenues, boulevards, bridges gateways and higher buildings at entrances.

Unwin also elaborate son the importance of a central point or central focus. Centres and enclosed spaces have been the focus of cities and human social life since ancient times, although no recreation of known examples should be attempted. Often there is a clear functional centre with public building(s) in any new town, but the focus shouldn't merely lie there as some degree of central focal point in districts and neigbourhoods is advised by Unwin. He advocates seeing these central focus points not as a functional exercise but as a place [again referencing Sitte]. The effect of enclosure is the most important quality and single characteristic of a good place. Glimpses of buildings on long and short vistas from the place create interest. In contrast to Sitte, Unwin devotes several pages to planted roads [with sketches from the German magazine Städtebau]. Where Sitte treats roads mainly as devices for transport, Unwin also treats them as an integral part of a spatial composition (with greenery) and as a device for affording sites for buildings and other functions. Roads and streets can be arranged on the basis of function, width or use. Unwin shows several diagrams for different types of streets but also focuses heavily on junctions (like Sitte). The strong emphasis on curved streets -as advocated by German planners- isn't shared by Unwin who also sees beauty in straight streets and the formal alignment of spaces. He instead points to variation in the building line as a spatial device for creating interest along long vistas or straight streets. English designers should take inspiration from abroad for the use of greenery in the beautification of places. Therefore Unwin discusses the treatment and arrangement of grass trees and plants to improve the situation.

The chapter on site planning and residential streets deals with practical issues and shows, in contrast to the rest of the book, mostly pictures of British examples, often designed by the author [he is after all an architect]. The lengthy chapter on plots and placing buildings, together with the chapter on buildings explains the basis of so-called Unwinesque design. It elaborates on the number of dwellings per acre [12 is deemed perfectly suitable] and the most economical way of providing access to dwelling by streets and paths. Unwin also recommends the use of greens and closes to cluster houses around. He consciously speaks of cottages instead of houses or dwellings. The plans in the book also mainly show detached and semidetached houses with gardens back and front. Close groupings of buildings to give some sense of enclosure which in turn creates a sense of space are strongly recommended.

On the realisation of his ideas he references the German Societies of Public Interest (Öffentliches Versorgungsunternehmen) as the preferred model. As a practical person Unwin also makes note of the possibilities of Tennant Cooperatives [Brentham Garden Suburb], enlightened paternalism [Bourneville, New Earswick and Port Sunlight], Council Housing [Boundary Estate and Pimlico] and Tennant Societies [Letchworth and Hampstead Garden Suburb]. The modern school of German town planners is looked upon with envy by Unwin. The whole book is a pamphlet for municipal town planning powers. Building bye-laws are identified as stifling good development and encouraging overdevelopment and wasteful parcelling on samely narrow streets.