strengthened, perhaps, with some more tables indicating institutional and policy comparisons. One must agree with the authors, however, that much of the underlying problem in coping with the development of these huge cities is not urban management as such but difficulties in representa- tive government in general:

In the final analysis, the legitimacy of metropolitan management derives from the public's sanction, and its effectiveness is a function of management's response to the public's expressed needs and desires. Aside from Tokyo, however, no great city in South and East Asia can claim long and tried experience with these political princi- ples at the metropolitan level (p 86).

Overall, this volume is an important and welcome addition to the Asian

urban studies literature and the grow- ing list of titles originating in the various departments of the World Bank. 1

John Lea Department of Urban and

Regional Planning University of Sydney, Australia

1See for example B.M. Renaud, National Urbanization Policy in Developing Coun- tries, World Bank, New York, 1981; J.F. Linn, Cities in the Developing World: Pofi- cies for their Equitable and Efficient Growth, World Bank, New York, 1983; and J.P. Lea and J.M. Courtney, Cities in Conflict: Studies in the Planning and Man- agement of Asian Cities, World Bank, New York, 1985.

Appropriate housing design REHUMANISING HOUSING

by Necdet Teymur, Thomas Markus and Tom Woolley

Butterworths, Guildford, 1988, 196pp

This book consists of the papers of a 1987 conference that was described by one of its participants as 'an Alice Coleman hate session'. It claims to use my book on the ill-effects of miscon- ceived design, Utopia on Trial, as "a peg upon which to hang a wider debate'. In practice, however, it nar- rows the debate by excluding anyone who might commend my evidence or refute criticisms of it. Within this sheltered bias Thomas Markus feels he can safely assert that the criticisms are devastating and justified, but the reader should be warned of the book's left-wing prejudices.

To do him justice, Markus depre- cates the mindless use of terms such as 'positivist' and 'determinist' as substi- tutes for rational appraisal, but he has failed to edit them out of his contribu- tors' papers. Mike Jenks, for example, uses 'positivist' and 'scientific' as if they were dirty words, and also in- dulges in the dishonest trick of invent- ing a hypothesis, pretending it is mine, knocking it down and pretending this

is a valid criticism of my work. I have never claimed 'a simple causal link between crime and design' and have repeatedly exposed the fallacy in such a crude linkage, but Jenks continues to pursue the simplistic.

Some of the papers are mere exer- cises in verbiage without practical value for improving problem housing. Necdet Teymur argues that nothing useful can emerge until housing is studied from over one hundred view- points, none of which he advances beyond the status of topic headings. He presents unnecessary complica- tions as sophistication, and his conclu- sions are mere platitudes. His paper appears an apt example of its preten- tious title: 'The pathology of housing discourse'.

Markus's second paper, on prescrip- tion in housing design, is at two removes from reality. It studies, not housing itself but documents from Tudor Waiters to Parker Morris, and not the content of the documents but their form: how many paragraphs per section, how many pages with illustra- tions, etc.

Mike Jenks warns against the dan- gers of certainty by showing how the 70-foot rule and high-rise designs were unfounded recommendations that be- came entrenched. He then descends to

Book reviews

argument by analogy by claiming that two thoroughly researched concepts - Newman's defensible space and my design disadvantagement - are also becoming entrenched and supposedly equally dangerous. Jenks is not con- cerned with evidence but prefers to cite bogus criticism by Anson, who elsewhere champions terrorists and petrol bombers as 'free spirits' and Hillier, who is unfortunately prone to invent 'facts' as and when he pleases. Hillier has two unscientific speciali- ties. One is criticizing others for bla- tant reversals of what they have actually said. Here he alleges that Newman and I aim to decrease pedes- trian encounter rates whereas in fact we aim to increase them.

I would also question Hillier's data for unknown distributions which he claims overturn a body of known data that he dislikes. While he does not do so here, one of his earlier examples is quoted in all seriousness by Alison Ravetz. It makes the false assumption that one vandal target type is equiva- lent to one incident of vandalism, for example, that "broken glass' always means 'one pane per block'. I recently counted 30 smashed panes in one badly designed building, and there is no reason why Hillier and Ravetz could not have collected independent evidence instead of jumping to wrong conclusions about mine.

Flats of over five storeys cost at least 50% more per dwelling than two-storey buildings, and many times more to maintain. Yet, as Michael Jones usefully shows, satisfactory housing standards prove unsatisfac- t o ry in m u l t i s t o r e y f la ts and maisonettes, and so still higher ex- penditure is needed. Its absence leads to a deterioration in council services, and an attempt to redress the deficien- cy in Broadwater Farm now absorbs 25% of the borough cleansing services for what is only 4% of the housing stock. The fact that it is an appallingly badly designed estate is not even considered. Instead, Jones advocates breaking the cycle of deprivation by further expenditure in other spheres as well as housing.

Bulos and Walker carelessly misuse my spatial-organization terms. They assume that the line between public

CITIES May 1989 159

Book reviews

and private space lies along the house facade instead of the garden frontage, and that the grounds of flats are all semi-puNic instead of wlriously semi- private, semi-public and confused space. Their description of improve- ments wrought by concierge schemes in two blocks needs to be supported by the costs inw)lved. A concierge pro- posal in Greenwich estimates an ongo ing a n n u a l expend i t u r e of £134 000 m excess of savings on up- keep, and by the manning standards of a scheme | saw in Leicester, it will protect only two of the estates' 56 blocks. Claims of success are also premature before an investigation is made of how far a concierge presence in one block merely displaces crimes and wmdalism elsewhere.

Marion Roberts claims that a key assumption running through Utopia on Trial is that an absence of caretak- ing means a breakdown in social order

- exactly the reverse of my actual exphmation that a decline in social order occurs first and makes it difficult to retain or recruit caretakers. Francis Jones thinks that universal anti-social impulses are kept in check only if people can afford leisure and cultural activities, lie fails to explain why blocks with play areas are more crime and vandal prone than those without, or why affluence has not prevented lager-loutism and 'rural" mob be- haviour in settlements expanded by new and defectively designed houses.

Taken as a whole, this book is a grouping of interests determined to close their minds to the role of design in creating problem estates and its potential role in improving them.

Alice Coleman Department of Geography

Kings College London London, UK

Evaluating the GEAR project REGENERATING THE INNER CITY: GLASGOW'S EXPERIENCE

edited by David Donnison and Alan Middleton

Routledge and Kegan Paul London, 1987, 322 pp

Just as with its rent strike in 1915, the "turnaround' in Glasgow's fortunes in the last few years has been in danger of assuming mythic propor t ions amongst many researchers, pundits and politicians. How good it is to have this book to provide research details of what has and has not been achieved in the 'Miles Better' city and of what lessons can be learned from its experi- ences. It is deprived from work carried out by four teams from the universities of Glasgow and Strathclydc looking at the impacts and the workings of the Glasgow Eastern Area Renewal (GEAR) project in Glasgow's east end: an area whose historical depend- ence on heavy manufacturing firms such as Beardmore left it especially

vulnerable to the impacts of recession and restructuring and whose popula- tion fell between 1951 and 1981 from 145 000 to 41 000, leaving it as one of the largest concentrations of the de- prived, unemployed, elderly and un- wanted.

The substantive chapters in the book's evaluation of GEAR systema- tically cover the range of employment, housing, environment, health, leisure and transport issues. They are com- plemented by chapters on the historic- al background of the area and of urban policy and by concluding chap- ters drawing lessons from the studies. With a variety of authors, drawn from a range of disciplinary backgrounds, the tone inevitably varies from chapter to chapter, but .the book's general stance is one of guarded optimism. It may be that much distress still remains in Glasgow, but the successes of policy interventions and of the processcs whereby those interventions have been achieved cannot be gainsaid. Its message is both to local govern- ments but more especially to central

governments: if there is one thing that has slowly been learned from the experiences of the structural trans- formation of the economy it is that it is unrealistic to look to cities to solve their own problems; rather, liberally- funded and long-sustained commit- ment from government is required if the problems are to be seriously addressed. Equally, it is not true that nothing can be done to help deprived areas until a major improvement in the global economy has occurred.

Three major lessons emerge from the surveys and evaluations. First, much can be learned south of the border from the structure and role of GEAR. Unlike the later English Urban Development Corporations (UDCs), it operated in a complex triangle of power in association with the local authorities of Stathclyde and Glasgow and under thc guidance of the Scottish Development Authority (SDA). Not only did it have the legitimacy which derived from the need to establish its role from within a local context, but thc politics of its operations were hclpcd by thc unusual continuity of regional phmning in Scothmd thanks to the attention given to local affairs through the aegis of the Scottish Office. Were comparable En- glish regions to have roving develop- ment agencies equivalent to SDA much of thc suspicion and hostility experienced by the London and l,ivcr- pool UDCs might have been reduced.

Second, a strong argument is ex- pressed for the economic and com- munity developmental role that hous- ing investment can play in renewal. The direct job impacts of GEAR arc shown to be relatively limited. It is estimated that by 1982 some 450 jobs had been created of which less than 200 went to local people. Most of the firms moving to newly-provided pre- mises were local and were already m existence. By contrast, the large sums of resources spent on housing, which represented over half of GEAR's funds, can bc argued to have had vcry direct local impacts: increasing thc demand for construction work ; streng- thening the community by bringing in more employed and younger families: boosting the local economy through demands for goods and services: as

160 CITIES May 1989