patrick geddes sociologist environmentalist and town planner

Economic and Political Weekly February 5, 2000 485

Patrick Geddes: Sociologist,Environmentalist and Town Planner

Patrick Geddes pioneering work in applying sociological understanding of environmentalconcerns to town planning did not get due recognition during his own lifetime and also

subsequently. But, with the quest for seeking inter-linkages between various specialised streamsof knowledge gaining momentum of late, Geddes interdisciplinary inquiries into natural and

social sciences have gained significance within contemporary academia.

IIndroduction

atrick Geddes first contact withthe university of Bombay was in1914-15 when he was invited to

deliver a series of four public lectures onthe study of Bombay which are said to havebeen a great success. In the summer of1919 Sir Chimanlal Setalvad, the then vice-chancellor, offered Geddes the post ofprofessor of sociology in the University ofBombay. Geddes, then 65, acceptedthe offer, adding the title civics to thedesignation of his chair and set aboutorganising the department of civics andsociology in the university. Before this,Geddes had been lecturing at CanningCollege in Lucknow; at the University ofCalcutta; and had organised a summerschool at Darjeeling, dealing with a varietyof subjects like regional survey, townplanning, nature study, social evolutionand others.

When Geddes took charge, the depart-ment was temporarily housed in the RoyalInstitute of Science not far from the mainuniversity buildings. CharacteristicallyGeddes gave his daily lectures in the formof conversations and seminar (a style whichhis successors tried but with little success).A course on the Elements of Sociologywas also offered to the public on threeafternoons a week, the lectures beinginvariably followed by discussions. Fur-ther, since Geddes was no admirer of merebook learning, Saturdays were devoted toexcursions to various parts of Bombay andneighbouring villages, and whenever pos-sible, to more distant places [Ferreira andJha 1976: xi].

Between 13 and 18 students were en-rolled in 1919 for a three-year course in

sociology. The emphasis of the course wason practical work, for undertaking whichGeddes sent his students to his friends indifferent parts of India. But when Geddeswent to Palestine in 1920 and the studentswere left on their own, the Senate of theuniversity did not take a favourable viewof the situation. Exasperated, he wroteto the Senate that he was conducting notonly a new course in India but an experi-mental one which had to be allowed to runfor three years without interference. Be-sides, he argued, he was training hisstudents in pure sociology for whichfieldwork was absolutely essential [Meller1990: 225-26].

The initial recruitment figures dwindledslowly since the course did not run forlong periods during Geddes absence. By1924, the last year of the five-year con-tract with the university, Geddes healthsuffered greatly and so did his ability toenthuse his students with his unconven-tional courses. Geddes attempt to find anIndian collaborator did not meet withsuccess either. He sent his best students,G S Ghurye and N A Toothi among them,to England for further training. AlthoughGeddes wanted Ghurye to become hiscollaborator and assistant, as he laterwanted Lewis Mumford to do, it did notwork out that way. In fact it was Toothiwho found Geddes ideas stimulating andhe promoted his approach after his returnto India. A more favourable response camefrom Radha Kamal Mukherjee fromCalcutta who found Geddes ideas in-spiring as is evident from his own studies.There is otherwise little evidence of theimpact of Geddes approach on socio-logists. One of his biographers, HelenMeller, writes that Geddes warmest sup-port in India came not from sociologists

but from one of Indias most outstandingnatural scientist, Sir Jagdish Chandra Bose[Meller 1990:226-27].

After more than half a century, Geddesinfluence on sociologists in India remainsnegligible although geographers and townplanners show a greater appreciation andengagement with his ideas and approach.However in the context of increasingenvironmental concerns, especially thecrisis of urbanisation in India, Geddesidea do acquire contemporary relevance.A man, whom no less a scholar than LewisMumford describes as one whose lifeshows a constant interpenetration of thegeneral and the particular, the philosophi-cal outlook and the scientific outlook, theuniversal and the regional: this world enveloping mind was also deeply con-cerned with the improvement of life at hisown doorstep [Boardman 1944: XI],certainly deserves greater appreciation. Thisarticle is an attempt to remind sociologistsin India of our legacy and given that thedepartment of sociology in BombayUniversity has recently completed its sev-enty-fifth year, it is probably a good timeto do so.

IIEarly Influences

Patrick Geddes was born in October1854 at Ballater in West Aberdeen, Scot-land, and brought up and educated in Perth.Growing up in the Scottish countryside,renowned for its beauty, in close commu-nication with the hills, woods, fields andgardens, was an experience which greatelyinfluenced Geddes personality and ca-reer. He was often to claim that his fatherwas his first and best teacher. He had givenhim the finest education for life by encour-

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Economic and Political Weekly February 5, 2000486

aging his love of nature and especially byteaching him how to care a garden [Meller1990:6]. Significantly, gardens figuredprominently in his subsequent work as atown-planner.

After an early education which includedsubjects such as geology, chemistry andbotany, Geddes studied biology for manyyears under the greatest natural scientistsof the time. Huxleys influence uponGeddes is said to have been profound andenduring. The splendid range of Huxleysmind that went beyond his specialisationsinspired many. But as Philip Mairet writes,it was in disagreement with Huxley thatGeddes developed many of his own ideas.For example, Geddes found Huxleyscontemptuous treatment of Comtes posi-tivist philosophy totally unjustified.Geddes, like many of his time, was im-pressed by Comte with whose work he issaid to have formed an enduring attach-ment [Mairet 1957: 18-20]. He was alsoattracted to Spencers idea of applying theconcept of evolution to society. He ac-cepted Spencers view of society as anorganism of functionally interdependentparts and appreciated his attempt to tracethe evolutionary forces working towardschanging society. But it was Fredric LePlay whose method most influencedGeddes own approach to sociology. For,it was in Le Plays work that he found apoint of contact between the naturalisticand social studies which had been pullinghim in different directions [Mairet1957:28].

Le Plays method of survey was govern-ed by his postulate that the three key unitsfor the study of society were lieu, tra-vail, famille (place, work and family).The first, or geographical locality, pre-sents the environmental pressures (needs)and the possibilities (resourecs) whichdetermine the nature of the work. Work,in turn, determines the organisation of thefamily, the biological unit of humansociety. Conversely, the needs and poten-tialities of the family shape the characterof the work, which in turn progressivelymodifies the environment [Mariet1957:28].1

Armed with the approach of Le Play andComte, Geddes felt confident to develophis own evolutionary approach to the socialsciences. Taking his cue from Comteansociology, which sought to encompass allknowledge, Geddes developed his posi-tion as a generalist and synthesiser ofknowledge. He felt confident that he hadinvented a new and potentially powerful

methodology with which the connectionsbetween all disciplines could be studied[Meller 1990: 45]. Place, work and people(Geddes replaced family with people orfolk) have, in his scheme not to beseparately analysed as into geomorphol-ogy, the market economics and the cranialanthropology which still go on, in neces-sary detachment from each other...Withinthe single chord of social life all threecombine [Geddes 1968: 267]. He arguedthat geography, economics and anthropol-ogy were so closely related that their unionwithin sociology was sure to yield richresults.

In academic sociology, Geddes, alongwith others like Victor Branford and J AThomson, belonged to a school of civicssociologists which attempted to reassertthe importance of environmental factorsin human evolution. It refuted any attemptto set heredity and environment in oppo-sition. It sought to popularise the socio-logical method of Le Play and to establishthe city as a natural phenomenon. It trans-cended the nature, nurture categoris-ation since the city expressed the evolu-tionary process in geographical space andhistorical time [Halliday 1968: 380].Hence it is remarked that for this school,sociology was the science of mans inter-action with a natural environment; the basictechnique was the regional survey, and theimprovement of town planning the chiefpractical application of sociology [Halliday1968: 380].

In general, for Geddes (the founder-member of the British Sociological Soci-ety in 1903) sociology as a subject wasto have a definite practical purpose. So-ciologists were to be people of action whotook part in the evolutionary strugglebetween society and environment so thatthe positive tendencies were identifiedand encouraged and the negative/destruc-tive ones repressed. The idea was to planby application of laws of nature or socialevolution, so that better ways of lifemight be devised. These were not merefanciful Utopias, but rooted in evolution-ary tendencies and therefore may berealised if one planned for them withforesight. In contrast to Utopian proposalswhich are essentially without definiteplace and therefore futile, Utopia are ofplace (i e, are regional) and realisable[Branford and Geddes 1917: 250). ToGeddes Utopia really meant making thebest of each place in actual and possiblefitness and beauty [Brandford andGeddes 1919: 87].

IIIGeddes and the City

Geddes objective in establishing civicsas applied sociology, it is observed, wasto dispel the fear of cities and massurbanisation, and to release the creativeresponses of individuals towards solvingmodern urban problems. He pioneered asociological approach to the study ofurbanisation, discovered that the city couldbe studied in the context of region, thatthe process of urbanisation could beanalysed and that the application of suchknowledge could enhance life in the future[Meller 1990:1]. He believed that the bestmethod for studying the city was to begin,on the one hand, with its geographicallocation, and on the other, with the evo-lution of its historical and cultural tradi-tions [Meller 1990: 144]. In his own words,to decipher the origins of cities in the past,and to unravel their life processes in thepresent... are indispensable...for everystudent of civics [Geddes 1915:4].

Theoretically, Geddes proposed that justas the stone age is now distinguished intotwo periods Paleolithic and Neolithic,so also the industrial age requires distinc-tion into two phases, an earlier one asPaleotechnic and the nascent as neotechnic.The former was characterised by dissipationof stupendous resources of energy andmaterials, of great wealth and poverty, andcrowded, dreary industrial towns. The latterwith its better use of resources and popu-lation towards improving humans and theirenvironment together, seeks the creationof city by city, region by region, of itsUtopia, each a place of effective health andwell-being, even of glorious and... unprec-edented beauty [Geddes 1915: 73].

When Geddes began his work in mid-1880s, industrialisation and urbanisationhad profoundly altered the relation be-tween human beings and their environ-ment. He belonged to a generation of writersand thinkers who had developed a critiqueof the industrial revolution and its socialconsequences [Meller 1990: 3-4]. Geddessensed the unrest especially among theyouth of his times disturbed by the con-sequenecs of industrialisation and urban-isation. It manifested itself in unemploy-ment and mis-employment, in diseaseand folly, in vice and apathy, in indolenceand crime [Geddes 1915: 86].

His critique was, however, not that ofa romantic, but of a scientist who wantedto analyse and understand the process ofurbanisation. The purpose of acquiring


such knowledge was to direct change awayfrom what was destructive towards thebetterment of life of individual and com-munity, towards city development. In hisown words, to criticise the city of thepresent, and to make provision for itsbetterment. His Cities in Evolution, pub-lished in 1915, is regarded as an outstand-ing introduction to the study of city as anorganism. He was the first writer to seeslums not simply as something ugly andunhealthy, and therefore to be wiped out,but as a living part of the city with a pastand a future which makes sense in relationto the whole [Summerson 1963:167].

Town plans were to aid the improvementof the present cities towards cleanliness,good order, good looks; conservation ofnature not only for recreation and reposebut for its hills, rivers and forests whichare essential for maintenance and devel-opment of life, of the life of youth and ofthe health of all; and towards a greaterinteraction between town and countryside[Summerson 1963:94]. He believed thatin the new period of social and politicalevolution in which reconstruction of thecity was taking place, new ideals of citi-zenship and a sense of human fellowshipand helpfulness would also emerge. Thiswould express itself in greater participa-tion in the improvement of the city in thelong-term interest of enhancement of lifeof all citizens. In a sense, Geddes goal,which transcended the boundaries of con-servation, planning or even geography,was geotechnic, i e, as applied science ofmaking the earth more habitable. ForGeddes, to achieve a new equilibriumbetween a natural and manmade world,which went beyond physical environmen-tal planning to cultural evolution, wasprecisely the challenge of moderncivilisation [Meller 1990: 13].

IVThe Outlook Tower and other

ExperimentsAn early experiment carried out in pursuit

of his civic crusade was to move into arundown workers tenement in Edinburghwith his newly married wife, and improv-ing and beautifying it. At the same timethey also founded the first student halls ofresidence in Scotland.

A more fantastic experiment, however,was given expression in the Outlook Tower,the worlds first sociological laboratoryfounded in 1892. It was conceived byGeddes as a civic and regional museum,

the idea being to educate people to under-stand their region and the larger environ-ment in all its complexity and from allpossible viewpoints. As Philip Abramsputs it, the Outlook Tower with its col-lection of maps, photographs, projections,demonstrations by means of cameraobscura and ad hoc lectures, was themost brilliant of Geddes many attemptsat an action sociology a presentation ofthe sociological dimension of cities, urbanproblems and town planning [Abrams1968:66].

The tours conducted by Geddes throughthe Tower, began with the Camera Obscuraon top of the dome, which reflected thepanoramic outside view in a series of imageslike moving pictures, the way an artistwould see it. Then from the observationbalcony outside, Geddes would show howmeteorologist, geologist, geographer, zo-ologist, botanist would look at the region.To illustrate each of the outlooks, he hadset up typical instruments, or specimen asthe case may be. What existed, therefore,was a kind of index museum representingeverything that the natural sciences knewabout this region which extended from theHighlands and Pentland Hills down to theFirth of Forth and the North Sea. Next camethe outlook of the historians, literary scholar,and of men of action like engineers andplanners who are engaged in reshaping theenvironment. Their methods of observa-tion and samples of their studies were alsodisplayed [Boardman 1976:4-5].

The storey under the Camera Obscurawas devoted to Edinburgh and the sur-rounding region. Prints, maps, sketchesand photographs were displayed hereshowing the citys chronological historyfrom pre-Roman times to the 19th century.There were also constructive plans for howits defects could be remedied and how itsheritage of culture and art could be pre-served. For, as Geddes put it, after re-gional survey should come regional ser-vice. The floors below were devoted toScotland, the British empire, Europe andthe world in general.

A diagram showing a landscape frommountain peaks to the sea with a textbeneath naming the occupation whichcorresponded to the particular part of thevalley section was displayed. In this simplediagram Geddes saw the basic elements ofsociology place, work and folk illus-trated. In it he also saw the only validmethod by which to study nature and manin order to improve them both [Boardman1976: 186-87; Fleure 1953:10].

The Outlook Tower synthesised thespecialised and even conflicting view-points. It also served to highlight all as-pects of a place, its ugliness, poverty andcrime against its heritage of scenic beauty,natural resources and human culture.Geddes Outlook Tower, it is observed,was far more than a passive repository ofknowledge; it was the outpost from whichGeddes launched many projects for civicbetterment and sent out many exhortationsin print and in speech to arouse people toboth understanding and action [Ferreiraand Jha 1976:5-6].

The Tower was also his alternative tothe dull, tedious examination-orientededucation system which destroyed thecreativity of the young minds. Inspired byLe Play who urged social scientists to liverather than write, he proposed to educatethe young through practical activities,laboratory work and field-studies. Obser-vation, as opposed to book learning, wasfor him the key method of education. Onlyin this way could the youth be involvedin the practical problems around them, andenthused to work towards solving them.

VGeddes as Town Planner

To Geddes, it must be pointed out at theoutset, town planning which he called CityDesign, was not a new and special branchof engineering, or of sanitation, building,architecture, gardening or any other finearts, as most people mistakenly believe. Itwas not a new specialism added to theexisting ones, but a combination of all ofthem towards civic well being [Geddes1918, I: 15-16]. In this section we willexamine some of Geddes ideas of townplanning which became influential amongplanners. As Geddes most distinguisheddisciple and follower, Lewis Mumfordpoints out, ...I believe that a sober historicjudgment will show that no other mind hada greater influence upon both movements(cities and regionalist) during the last 50years. There are many active participatorsin housing, regional planning, and citydevelopment who do not know what theyowe to him or how many ideas they foundin the air were originally conceived byGeddes... [Boardman 1976:xi].2

Recognising the significance of theregion, Geddes advocated regional sur-vey to bring about the reunion of townand country. The two could then be con-sidered as city regions, each occupyinga definite geographical area. The big


metropolis, he observed, often grew inwealth and power by exploiting and evenexhausting vast areas with their smalltowns. The latter became increasinglyimpoverished, and that was why a world-wide movement for decentralisation wasgrowing [Tyrwhitt 1947: 29]. His notionof regional planning, it is observed, me-diated between the abstractions of uni-versalist planning and the parochialism ofthe locally concrete, and also between townand country [Visvanathan 1987:21]. Yet,region was far more central to Geddesconception is evident from his plea for aregional outlook and regional culture,whereby a new vision must arise wherepeople see their life in all its everwideningrelations, its expanding possibilities wherethe personal and the regional, the nationaland the human are reconciled in a commonpurpose for a better life. The regionaloutlook, the rustic, the vital and the ethi-cal must increasingly supplement thepresent too purely urban outlook with itsmechanical, venal and legalistic point ofview which has so far dominated thepolitics, education and even science[Boardman and Geddes 1917: 243, 249].

To town planning Geddes brought themethods of diagnostic survey and con-servative surgery. The former implied anextensive, preferably walking, tour of city,meeting and talking to the people in orderto acquaint oneself with how the city hadgrown and what problems it faced atpresent. Geddes diagnosis before treat-ment may seem obvious today, but theidea was new in town planning at that time.

Addressing a gathering in 1910, he arguedIf you...wish to shape effectively thegrowth of your town, you must first studyit, and from every conceivable point ofview. Study its location and means ofcommunication, its history and cultureresources, its industries, commerce andpopulation, and a hundred other factors;in short, make first a balanced Civic Survey,and then set about drawing plans andpassing ordinances [Boardman 1944:248]. By his insistence on a survey toexamine the citys past and present beforetrying to shape its future growth, Geddesupset the town councillors who wantedquick results. But through his own workGeddes demonstrated that detailed andthorough surveys could be done withoutspending too much time or money.

Conservative surgery, another phrasetaken from the medical science, meantimprovement of the city with the minimumof human and financial cost. He believed

that every city had its rundown areas, uglyand unhealthy quarters, congested andnarrow lanes which could be upgraded andrenewed without adopting drastic andexpensive measures. These ideas are wellillustrated in Geddes Indian reports. Heviewed the city as an organism not asa machine, parts of which could be easilythrown away. It was this belief whichunderlays his argument that it was im-portant to first understand the inner, theolder part of the city which might appearchaotic at first, but in it gradually a higherform of order can be discerned the orderof life in development.

In town planning, Geddes saw co-opera-tion as the most important method to solveproblems. He believed that while compe-tition was an essential part of the animaland plant life, co-operation was even moreimportant in the evolutionary scheme. Hewrote, it is possible to interpret the idealsof ethical progress through love and so-ciality, co-operation and sacrifice, not asmere utopias contradicted by experience,but as the highest expression of the centralevolutionary process of the natural world[quoted from Roe 1995:77]. The idea wasto involve people in improving their sur-roundings. That he succeeded in doing sois amply demonstrated by his early experi-ments in the Edinburgh slum referred toearlier and by his Indian experiments towhich we will now turn. It is importantto remember that underlying his townplanning exercise was his notion of col-laboration between physical planning andsocial planning. Therefore it was abso-lutely necessary for a planner, accordingto Geddes, to have a training in sociology.

VIThe Indian Experience

Geddes earlier engagement and ex-periments with urban renewal promptedLord Pentland, the then governor of Madras,to invite him to bring his Cities and TownPlanning exhibition and to continue hiseducational work in India. Pentland alsosucceeded in convincing his friends, LordsWillingdon and Carmichael, governors ofBombay and Bengal respectively, of thevalue of Geddes work. Geddes was there-fore able to show his exhibition in theimportant towns. Interestingly, the origi-nal exhibition was lost on its way to India,but his friends and supporters in Britainand Europe sent him fresh material foranother, which he took around in India.

Geddes came to India in 1915. During

his 10-years stay in India, he toured throughthe length and breadth of the subcontinentand prepared several reports describing ingreat details the nature of urban problemsand the possible ways to overcome them.For the first time in his life, he had anopportunity in India to supplement hiseducational and propaganda work withwell paid commissioned town planningreports. These reports, nearly 40, are saidto represent the first major contribution tothe development of modern town planningin India on a fairly large scale. He is believedto have done more than any other indi-vidual to promote town planning in India[Meller 1979:343].

Although Geddes noticed the collapseof the old tradition of town plans in India,neglect of sanitary regulations, encroach-ments and congestion everywhere, he paidrich tributes to the Indian civilisation. Forexample, he was impressed by traditionalarchitecture and planning in the templetown of the south. He saw a great deal ofcivic beauty in simple homes and shrinesas well as in the magnificent places andtemples. He was appreciative of some ofthe features of Indian homes and towns,such as the proud place given to the ven-erated tulsi plant (symbol of the well-keptHindu home); the shrine in the courtyard,even the narrow lanes in housing areaswhich opened into squares with shadebearing trees. The narrowness of the lanes,he found, made for shade and quietnessand left the building sites large enough toenclose courtyards and gardens [Tyrwhitt1947: plate 7].

Geddes was often critical of the civicofficials and engineers whose interven-tions for improvement such as wide, openthoroughfares, destruction of slum areas,flushed sewers, etc, often resulted not onlyin high expenditure but also in great humansuffering. Much of the work was in thehands of officers who were not trained forit, who were unaware of the sociologicalaspects of the problems and whose viewson hygiene and sanitation were largelybased on European traditions.3 Their at-tempts to clean up the city or to broadenthe roads often caused eviction and dis-placement of people, and were, therefore,extremely unpopular [Tyrwhitt 1947:18-19]. This kind of planning went againstGeddes principle that town planning isnot mere place-planning, nor even work-planning. If it is to be successful, it mustbe folk-planning. This means that its taskis not to coerce people into new placesagainst their associations, wishes and


interest as we find bad schemes tryingto do. Instead its task is to find the rightplaces for each sort of people; placeswhere they will really flourish [Geddes1915:91].

He condemned a scheme proposed forimprovements in Lahore, which would havedemolished temples, mosques,dharmashalas, tombs, shops and houses,as indiscriminate destruction of labour aswell as of the cultural values of people[Guha 1992:59]. He believed that animportant function of the town plannerwas not to be a mere improver of certainstreets, however important at the cost ofthe city as a whole. The old buildings andstreets ought not be destroyed in the pro-cess [Geddes 1965:3].

His respect for tradition also led him toargue for better maintenance of resourcessuch as tanks and wells. Rather than seethem as malarial hazard as the sanitaryofficers were inclined to do, which Geddesvalued them not only for being an assuredsource of water but also for having a positiveeffect on the atmosphere. Too often theauthorities, impatient at the polluted stateof the tanks, had filled them rather thantaking necessary steps to keep them clean.In Lucknow, for instance, the engineershad filled in many tanks and water con-duits as part of the campaign to eliminatemalaria. In the same year, 1915, heavymonsoons which brought torrential rainscaused extensive flooding to occur, bring-ing disaster to the city. An easier solutionwas to stock the tanks with sufficient fishand duck to keep down the Anopheles[Tyrwhitt 1947: plate 25].

Speaking of the great Masunda tank ofThane, Geddes strongly recommended itsimprovement not only as a source of waterbut as a water park, a beautiful eveningresort for the public. He argued that anyand every water system occasionally goesout of order and is open to accident andinjuries of very many kinds, and in theseold wells we inherit and ancient policy oflife insurance, of a very real kind and onefar too valuable to be abandoned [Geddes1965:3]. For Surat he proposed that byjust planting more trees, cutting a fewpaths, filling up some unsightly holes,making a few bridges from bamboos andbranches, a public park could be devel-oped from the existing Nullas. Youngboys and girls could be mobilised ascivic volunteers in the development ofthe same. No city, he believed, was toopoor to undertake such modest improve-ments, or to achieve substantial success

within half a generation, even without thegovernment help.

Elsewhere he noted with approval theexistence of the tradition of floating caraccompanied by a water festival withilluminated lanterns in some cities. Insteadof filling up tanks at the outbreak of malaria,he advocated the revival of water festivalnot only because it was the most joyousform of festival but also the best way tokeep the tanks clean. When properlymaintained, he found the temple tanks andcity tanks the very finest and most beau-tiful of public places and public gardensin the world [Geddes 1919:469].

He also defended the ceremonial pro-cession of Lord Jaggernaths car whichhad obviously come in for a lot of criti-cism from the authorities. In it he saw acivic institution and a festival essentiallybeneficient. It encouraged the main-tenance of good roads, discouragedperpetual encroachment upon streets,and in the collective pull, an admirableform of civic education took place[Geddes 1919: 468].

Geddes had come to India with the hopeof introducing his doctrine of civic re-construction since modern industrialis-ation and urbanisation had just begun inIndia. To many British administrators how-ever, his reconstruction message appearedto be superfluous and even dangerous. TheIndian Civil Service which provided ad-ministrators for the municipalities, ignoredhim. After his initial popularity withliberal governors like Pentland, Wil-loughby and Carmichael, he did not getmuch support from the British ad-ministrators who were generally hostile.Meller writes that he remained all his timein India as an outsider, tolerated by theBritish but not encouraged [Meller 1979:204]. But Geddes turned increasingly tothe princely rulers of the native statesand came to be regarded as a prophet ofcivic reconstruction.

Geddes believed that local knowledgeand understanding, along with con-sideration and tact, were necessary whendealing with the requirements of the citi-zens. With power of social appeal andcivic enthusiasm, the town planner canarouse people to participate in the schemesof improvement. For plans to succeed,more than technical expertness and activ-ity, municipal powers and business meth-ods were required. The town planner failsunless he can become something of amiracle worker to the people. He must beable to know them signs and wonders, to

abate malaria, plague, enteric, child mor-tality and to create wonders of beauty andveritable transformation scenes [Tyrwhitt1947:37].

This is exactly what Geddes did for thepeople of Indore as we shall see in thefollowing section.

VIIThe Indore Experiment

Geddes was invited to Indore in 1918in order to find means to improve malariaand plague infested conditions of the city.

The maharaja of Indore had spent largeamounts of money on an alternative sys-tem of water supply for Indore which wasdesigned to flush water through the sewersand thereby remove the cause of plague.In spite of the effort and expenditure, thescheme had not succeeded. Geddes wasconsulted, and after 10 months of thor-ough investigation, he prepared a twovolume report discussing the issues of watersupply and drainage, health and disease,gardens and parks in Indore in great de-tails. More importantly, he proposed theestablishment of a new university whichwould train students for civic reconstruc-tion in Indore and elsewhere. But leavingaside the serious issues discussed in thetwo volume, we narrate below a delightfulexperiment Geddes carried out to get ridof the dreadful plague.

As he went around the dusty lanes tryingto identify the problem areas, the localpeople are said to have shown signs ofopen hostility. For them the sight of a whitesahib going around with a map forbodetrouble in the form of demolition, evictionand so on. The hostility was so great thatGeddes saw people point at him and say,Thats the old Sahib that brings theplague.

Taking it as a challenge, Geddes wentto the ruling prince of Indore and askedto be made maharaja for a day. Having gotcomplete authority to pursue his plans,Geddes set about his campaign for re-construction in a novel and efficientmanner. He spread the news all over thecity that a new kind of pageant and festivalwould take place on the Diwali day. Diwalibeing an important religious festival, butabove all it being that annual insurrectionof the women from which all men can butflee, known all over the world as springcleaning. The new festive procession, itwas announced, would not follow eitherthe traditional Hindu or Muslim routethrough the city, but the one along which


most houses had been repaired and cleaned.Priests were involved in having the roadsoutside the temples cleaned, repaired andplanted with trees. Free collection andremoval of rubbish was organised and oversix thousand loads were carted away fromhomes and courtyards. Rats were trappedby the thousands in the city. At the sametime, much house-repairing, cleaning andpainting was carried out all over Indoresince everyone wanted the procession topass along their street.

On the Diwali day a grand processiontook place. First came the stirring spec-tacle of the cavalry, the infantry and ar-tillery of the state. Then came elephantscarrying cotton and other important crops,rich merchants and the goddess Lakshmisymbolising prosperity and wealth. Soonfollowed a dismal scene of poverty, crum-bling houses, demons of dirt, giant-sizedmodels of rats and mosquitoes accompa-nied by dreadful wailing and melancholy.After a brief break came cheerful musicheading the long line of sweepers in spot-less white, with new brooms and freshlypainted carts. Behind the sweepers marcheda civic procession of labourers, firemenand police, officials, mayor and MaharajaGeddes himself, and after them, enthronedon a stately car, a new goddess evoked forthe occasion, the Indore city. Her bannerbore the name of the city on the one side,and on the other, the city plan showingproposed changes to be made. Next camecarts representing all the crafts on whichthe craftsmen acted out their parts. Cartsloaded with fruits and flowers, which weredistributed among the children followed.The last of them contained thousands ofpots with seedlings of the Tulsi plant tobe distributed among the households ofIndore. This novel procession passedthrough almost every part of the city, finallyending at midnight in a public park wherethe giant of dirt and rats of plague wereburned in a great bonfire. After the sym-bolic destruction of the enemies, the fes-tival was brought to a close with a granddisplay of fireworks.

The effect of the exercise was im-mediately apparent. A new enthusiasm andconfidence spread among the people to beclean and beautify their homes and thesurroundings. Above all, the plague cameto an end partly because the city had beencleaned up and partly because the seasonwas over. Geddes became a leading figurein Indore. Whenever people saw him, theypointed at him and spoke excitingly, say-ing this time, Theres the old Sahib thats

charmed away the plague [Boardman1944:386-90].

Geddes demonstrated unquestioningfaith in peoples support and participationin any real improvement of their sur-roundings. To the allegation probably oftenmade by the administrators that people didnot care for improvements, Geddes re-plied, Everywhere in the slums we seewomen toilling and sweeping, each strug-gling to maintain her poor little home abovethe distressingly low level of municipalpaving and draining in the quarter. Thefault does not lie with the people and I haveno fear that people of the cities would notrespond to improvements. The immediateproblem is for municipal and centralgovernment to understand what improve-ments really are needed and desired[Geddes 1915:82].

VIIIConcluding Remarks

Geddes combined several disciplines biology, sociology, geography, town plan-ning to develop his approach to studythe interaction between human beings andtheir natural environment. He also com-bined several activities lectures, exhibi-tions, demonstrations, writings and pag-eants to propagate his ideas of civicreconstruction, with total devotion andindefatigable energy. Interestingly, hisbiographer writes, his fierce energy andwild enthusiasm was balanced by hiswifes calm level-headedness and a strongcommon sense. While he indulged ingrandiose and expensive schemes, shetook the responsibility of working out thepractical details on which their successdepended [Meller 1990:7].4

In this context, it may be of interest tonote Geddes ideas on women which hedeveloped in his monograph titled, TheEvolution of Sex, with J A Thomson.According to him, women played a vitalrole in social evolution as wives andmothers. Their nurturing tendenciesshaped the economic and social environ-ment, creating ever higher levels of civilis-ation [Meller 1990:83]. A view whichwill not find much support today.

Geddes was essentially a crusader,acutely aware of the need for transfor-mation from the machine and the moneyeconomy of the industrial age to one oflife and civilisation. He asks the rhetoricalquestion, May not the pursuit of personalwealth grow less exigent as we gain asocial well-being expressed in betterment

of environment and enrichment of life[Geddes and Slater 1917:VII]. He believedthat in the coming age of life economypeople will be creative in proportion astwo conditions are satisfied. The inner lifeof people must be enriched and oppor-tunities must be provided to all, irrespec-tive of class, rank or sex, for the devel-opment of personality through citizenship.The university is called upon to play a vitalrole in the moral and intellectual transfor-mation of the people, of the city and theregion. It must not only give rise to thenew doctrine but plan and aid its practicalapplication, so that unity of thought andpurpose may develop together in a com-mon citizenship [Geddes and Slater1917:XII]. Geddes and his collaboratorsdared to hope that the university may hastenthe coming of the dawn by preparing thetranslation of dream into deed the dreamof creating Utopia, fulfilling the highideals of the past, emancipation and re-newal of lands, cities and people [Branfordand Geddes 1919:377]. Ironically, this wasjust what the English universities didnot do. He believed that with their narrow-minded specialism and academism, socio-logy was not the sort of thing theywould promote.

Geddes interdisciplinary approach, hiseclecticism, his attempt to unite in himselfthe scientist and the artist, the academicand the planner, the dreamer and the doermade him and his ideas too complex forlesser mortals to comprehend. The fact thatthese ideas were expressed through highlyunconventional modes did not make it anyeasier. He had his loyal friends and sup-porters, among them many women, whopromoted and propagated his work withmuch zeal. But by and large in his owntime as also subsequently, Geddes did notenjoy the recognition due to him. Probablybecause in the days of high specialisation,Geddes tried to be a synthesiser of knowl-edge for he believed that specialisedknowledge was inadequate to grasp theever increasing complexity of life. Hebelonged to many disciplines, and each ofthem could claim him. While this qualitysometimes left his contemporaries bewil-dered, upset, and even outraged, renderedhis ideas somewhat confusing, and wasprobably the reason why he did not fit intothe academia, it was undoubtedly hisgreatest strength. He traversed many are-nas of natural and social sciences, and wasequally comfortable in the lecture hall andwith people on the street, giving his messageof the possibility and desirability of im-


provement of cities, regions and life it-self.5

Lewis Mumford sees this as one reasonwhy Geddes failed to make an adequateimpression on his contemporaries, althoughhe was one of the seminal minds of thelast century. Geddes shunned publicity,but more important, Mumford emphasises,he practised synthesis in an age of spe-cialism and stood for the insurgence of lifein a world that submitted even more fullyto the gods of mechanised routine[Mumford 1944b: VIII]. His most impor-tant insights were never written down; hehad distrust for what he called the modernhabit of verbalistic empaperment. Andwhat was written was often in a styledifficult to take. But then, as Mumfordpoints out, that was not his main purpose.Geddes coupled thought to action, andaction to life, and life itself to all thehighest manifestations of sense, feeling,and experience...Mans existence did notstay at the biological level of organism,function and environment, nor even at thetribal or folk level of folk, work, and place:man perpetually renewed himself and tran-scended himself by means of that heritageof ideal values, of self surpassing pur-poses, which are covered by the termspolity, culture, and art...For Geddes lifehad more than its animal destiny of repro-duction and physical survival: it had a highdestiny, that of revamping out of naturesoriginal materials, with the help of naturesoriginal patterns a more perfectlyharmonised, a more finely tuned, a morecomplexly balanced expression of bothpersonality and community [Mumford1944a:384].

Mumford prophesises, if our generationmanages to live down its automatisms andmechanisms and sadisms, its debilitatingfinancial parasitism and its fatal moralcomplacency, if it actually escapes thenecropolis it has prepared for itself inshort, if the forces of life once more becomedominant, the figure of Geddes will standforth as perhaps the central prophet of thenew age. There could be no better symbolof Life Insurgent and Humanity Resurgentthan Patrick Geddes himself [Mumford1944b:XIV].

Notes1 Branford and Geddes call Le Play the father of

scientific regionalism. His line of reasoningbegan with the soil and its natural products;it continued with man the creature of work andplace; culminating in man the builder of citiesand creator of arts and sciences. It returned

through all the ups and downs to the renewalor the destruction of the soil as the case maybe by mans action. The tale of that cycle, theyobserve, is the history of civilisation [Branfordand Geddes 1917:92].

2 Sir Patrick Abercrombie, an architect plannerand a contemporary of Geddes, writes thatGeddes Edinburgh survey led the way in Britain.The survey appeared in public at the great TownPlanning Exhibition in 1910. And, it is safeto say that the modern practice of planning inthis country would have been a more elementarything had not been for the Edinburgh room andall that this implied... Within the den sat Geddes,a most unsettling person talking, talking,talking...about everything and anything. Thevisitors could criticise the show for being ahotch-potch of picture postcards, newspapercuttings, strange diagrams, crude old woodcuts,archaeological reconstructions. But if theylistened to Geddes talk they would no longerbe the same because There was somethingmore in town planning than met the eye[Abercrombie 1933:128].

3 It is observed that the sanitary and civil engineersseldom questioned their priorities. Theirpriorities suited the British; to cut mortalityfigures by clearing slums and driving largestraight roads through them like in Europeancities; fill up tanks to eliminate the mosquitoes;and ensure that the civil lines were suppliedwith running water, a sewage system and streetcleaner. All this largely benefited the Britishresidents, although it was paid for by a tax onthe entire municipality [Meller 1979:332].

4 Meller also tells us that Geddes tried to keepalive the romantic element in his marriage byoccasionally writing special love letters to hiswife. Although he started with professing hisundying affection, he always ended with ageneral discussion of environmental problems[Meller 1979:8].

5 Official honours were given to Geddes for hiscontributions. In 1911, a knighthood for townplanning was offered to Geddes, who turnedit down for democratic reasons. Again in1932, just before his death, he was offered aknighthood for his service to education, whichhe accepted.

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EPW

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