Diopolis: Patrick Geddes and the City of Life. (Urban Polymath).DIOPOLIS: PATRICK GEDDES Sir Patrick Geddes (1854 - 1932) was a Scottish biologist and botanist, known also as an innovative thinker in the fields of urban planning and education. He was responsible for introducing the concept of "region" to architecture and planning and is also known to have coined the AND THE CITY OF LIFE By Volker M. Welter, London: MIT MIT - Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 2002. [pounds sterling]27.50 Geddes, his surviving contemporaries used to tell me, was the kind of person who would grab you by the elbow and talk non-stop, hoping to have found the right person to interpret to an indifferent INDIFFERENT. To have no bias nor partiality. 7 Conn. 229. A juror, an arbitrator, and a witness, ought to be indifferent, and when they are not so, they may be challenged. See 9 Conn. 42. world his synoptic syn·op·tic also syn·op·ti·cal adj. 1. Of or constituting a synopsis; presenting a summary of the principal parts or a general view of the whole. 2. a. Taking the same point of view. b. overview of urban civilization. He was closest to success with his son-in-law Frank Mears and with Lewis Mumford Lewis Mumford (October 19, 1895 – January 26, 1990) was an American historian of technology and science. Particularly noted for his study of cities and urban architecture, he had a tremendously broad career as a writer that also included a period as an influential literary , who had to break away in order to make his own contribution. It is 70 years since Geddes died, but interpretations of his life and ideas continue to appear. To my mind the best biography is that by Helen Meller (1990) and the best little book to show why he is important for modern planners is the long out-of-print compilation by Jaqueline Tyrwhitt, Patrick Geddes in India (1947). Tyrwhitt accompanied her extracts from his planning reports with some marvellous photographs. Volker Welter has been equally well-served by his publisher with the inclusion of a mass of illustrations from the work of Geddes and from architects of his day, as well as from their continental contemporaries Many of these European links will be new to Geddesian explorers. The book also provides a very useful examination of the differences, as well as the similarities, between the approaches of Elisee Reclus, Kropotkin, Howard and Geddes to the future of the city. |
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