Polskie Towarzystwo Socjologiczne (Polish Sociological Association)

The Human Values of Town Planning

Author(s): BOHDAN JAŁOWIECKI
Source: The Polish Sociological Bulletin, No. 73/74 (1986), pp. 89-100
Published by: Polskie Towarzystwo Socjologiczne (Polish Sociological Association)
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 THE POLISH
SOCIOLOGICAL BULLETIN
No. 1-2, 1986
PL ISSN 0032-2997

BOHDAN JAŁOWIECKI

University of Warsaw

The Human Values of Town Planning

The problems of values are very strongly em-
phasized by so-called "modern town planning,''
where social matters acquire autonomous im-
portance. Humanistic values of social urbanism
should be considered on three separate planes,
functioning to a great measure independently
from one another. These planes, or levels, are :
ideology, urban planning (programming and de-
sign), and realization.

At the beginning we are faced with the question to which of these

planes our reflections, analyses and evaluations should refer. As most of
modern town planning works have not been realized, and those which
have bear only a remote resemblance to original projects, it will be fairer
to refer this sociological commentary only to the levels of ideology and
town planning. Modern town planning contributions to 20th century so-
ciety can therefore not be judged by the condition of contemporary towns,
for their actual shape is determined, regardless of the socio-economic
system, by great industrial organizations, beaurocratic authority and build-
ing contractors, and only to a small extent by town planners and ar-
chitects.
So social urbanism found its expression mainly in ideological dis-
course, and subsequently attempts were made to translate these theses
into the language of shapes and spatial forms. But that could not be done
adequately, for neither language qualified for translation into the other
one.

The fundamental value expressed on the ideological level was the

accessibility of decent housing to the under privileged working classes.
Access was hampered by private land speculation and high costs of con-
struction, calculated to bring profit to investors. Modern town planners
were highly sensitive to poverty and to catastrophic housing conditions
in towns, which after the World War I were not far removed from those
described by Frederick Engels in his famous diagnosis of big cities. There
were of course differences in this respect between the European cities.
Though the conditions were everywhere bad, they were better in West-
ern and worse in Eastern Europe, and particularly in Poland, much
destroyed by the war. So it was only natural that the idea of "social
priority housing" was taken up and developed by the circles of Polish
architects and town planners connected with CIAM ( Congrès Interna-
tional d'Architecture Moderne).
The perusal of the history of that group, and especially of Helena
Syrkus' book (Syrkus, 1976) which - though written from the perspective
of Poland - shows in a measure the general achievement of social ur-
banism, leaves in impression that it was under many respects an excep-
tional phenomenon.

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90 BOHDAN JAŁOWIECKI

Firstly, CIAM is universalist in ch

single out the contributions of separate national groups, their mutual
influence, inspirations and frequent contacts resulted in the fact that we
have to deal with a certain common achievement on a European scale.
Precisely European, for although non-European architects and town plan-
ners also participated in the works of CIAM, their contribution hardly
left a mark, owing to their small number and the dissimilarity of prob-
lems.
Secondly, CIAM formed a very close circle and its ideas took shape
in discussions, frequently violent, during successive congresses and other
occasions. That was possible owing to a relatively small number of par-
ticipants at those meetings. For instance, the 4th CIAM Congress in
1933 where, after 15 days of discussions the "Athens Charter'' was re-
solved, gathered only about 60 members.
Another factor was a wide consensus on political, ideological and
aesthetic opinions. The resolutions were binding for all national groups.
Common rules have been accepted in the preparation of inventory docu-
ments, including the use of common symbols. At the 4th Congress, uni-
form and comparable analytical studies of 33 cities were presented from
Paris through Warsaw and Bandung to Detroit, which was an imposing
work and would be regarded as such not only in those days. Even if one
is concentrating on the achievements of the Polish CIAM group, one finds
it difficult not to refer to common documents or to statements originating
from other countries.
The ideology of modern town planning assumes that a town has the
aim of meeting four primary universal needs : housing, work, recreation
and transport. So the four basic functions of the town are to provide
dwellings, work, recreation and transport facilities. This opinion, though
at the time it could seem a revelation, is obviously both a truism and
a simplification. After a lapse of years the French sociologist Raymond
Ledrut wrote :
"We reject in full the idea that the functions of the town or its part are to be
defined in an absolute and, in a sense, metaphysical way. We must not make
a priori an inventory of functions, especially of those connected with urban life,
as Le Corbusier used to do ... To say that among the basic anthropological func-
tions there is the function of providing shelter, as does Malinowski, or to say that
man has the need of shelter and of moving from place to place (as does Le Cor-
busier and the representatives of social urbanism - B.J.) - actually means to tell
nothing of the city, man and space and of the functions as well. It is thoughtlessnes
assuming a semblance of science." (Ledrut, 1976, p. 156).

The city is a product of history. Its space bears the mark of socio-
economic formations as well as of the culture of a given community.
Alongside utilitarian and existential values, it is permeated with histor-
ical and symbolic values, the collective memory of the inhabitants. In
no way can it be reduced to those four functions, regardless of their im-
portance. Also, these functions cannot be regarded as universal, for
a "dwelling" means something different for an Algerian of Kasba and
for a Pole of Warsaw.
Defining urban functions through needs at such a general level bro
nothing new to urban science, but weighed heavily on the ways of to
planning. Treating the performance of these functions as an obligatory
dogma in town planning brought schematic solutions used under geograph-

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 THE HUMAN VALUES OF TOWN PLANNING 91

ically and climatically different conditions (e.g. Le Co

Algier).
The concept of four needs and its universalistic treatment resulted
from a definite image of man and society. That image was flat and one-
sided, acultural and ahistoric. It was not merely phraseological, for this
image of the city dweller led to definite consequences. Man appeared as
a divided being : homo faber , homo Indens, homo habitans , and, as a con-
sequence, the city was respectively divided into zones of work, recreation
and habitation. The unity of the city as an organic product of culture
was thereby negated. The division of human existence into independent
sequences, separated from one another in time and space, flowed from
the logic of development of the capitalist formation, and particularly its
monopolistic stage, in which not only work was alienated, but also every-
day existence of the inhabitants, their habitations and recreation. Zoning
of city space strengthened and deepened the alienation (Lefebvre, 1976).
While the Athens Charter postulated the separation of industrial and
residential quarters, the Russian sociologist M. A. Ochitovitsh wrote :
"The dwelling is always linked with the place of work. Man always lives
where he works or, more precisely, man wants to live where he works. Work is
the only source of humanity or, in other words, the only source of social bonds.
A dwelling removed from the place of work is not a dwelling. Homelessness also
means the lack of a dwelling near the place of work." (Kopp, 1975, p. 442).

In turn, individualistic building of garden-cities was set against^ the

new concept.

"A garden-city satisfies individual egoism, but it destroys the benefits of collec-
tive organization. However, owing to the introduction of modern techniques to con-
struction, we can build concentrated cities, which provide individual freedom within
the dwelling, and organized collective life and recreation within the urban complex.
Hence the individual factor-dwelling, and the collective one - recreation - everyday
as well as seasonal . . ." (Syrkus, 1976, p. 137).

So work, especially work in industry, is thus put outside the urban

space.
A specific example of the concept of functional city was the work
Functional Warsaw by Jan Chmielewski and Szymon Syrkus, with the
collaboration of Tadeusz Tillinger. Its subtitle was A Contribution to the
Urbanization of the Warsaw Region. The work was written in 1934, one
year after the proclamation of the Athens Charter, and was soon approved
as a CIAM document - a model study for the national groups preparing
materials for the 5th Congress of the organization.
In accordance with the role of separating individual functions, the
Warsaw region, in the project, is formed of six belts equipped with road
and rail transport lines and underground infrastructure. Individual func-
tions were to be located on those belts. There is a capital-city urban belt ;
a commercial belt along the former cross-city railway line ; a residential
bank on the left side of the Vistula, of a mixed residential-industrial
character in the north, residential-health resort character in the south ;
a transit transport belt ; an industrial belt by-passing the centre from
the north-west and a summer-resort belt by-passing the centre from the
south.

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92 BOHDAN JAŁOWIECKI

The project foresees the constructio

be organized aggregations of places of work, residence and recreation,
located on the lines of infrastructure and separated by green isolation
belts. The centre is to be like Le Corbusier's Ville radieuse , and the in-
dustrial belt like Milutin's Socgorod .
Functional Warsaw was a methodologically innovative project, for it
dealt with the city in close relation to the region and considered the region
as a part of a wider system of international links.
N. Kelen, a Swiss consultant to the plan for Moscow, wrote an in-
troduction entitled The Future Tasks of Town Planning to a pamphlet
where the project of Functional Warsaw was described, and he stated
therein that

". . . Planning is a question of existence. Nowadays the universal anarchy of

social life makes impossible the planned activity of big organizations. Planning
plays the same part in the building of contemporary towns as in economic life. The
construction of residential houses, as well as any investments meant to serve for
a long time, require the preparation of a long-term plan . . . The time of planned
economy has arrived ... a plan should foresee development for hundreds of years
ahead, as well as deep changes of social structure. Short-term planning does not
lead to the right conclusions, for during short time periods the role of chance is
enormous . . . The town planner must include ever wider domains in his work, he
must acquire ever wider technical, historical, economic, sociological knowledge, so
he can use scientific methods in all these fields. The town planner must change his
outlook by breaking with his former constraints and former ideology bordering
on mysticism." (Minorski, 1965, pp. 10 - 18).

The author, who worked at the time in the Soviet Union, obviously
caught the revolutionary enthusiasm and the belief in unlimited effective
power of the plan which can transform at will the economy, space, human
beings and the society. Today such belief is considered naive.
A consequence of the functional city was a functional housing estate.
Its most complete and ideologically best supported version was created
by the members of the semi-clandestine Workshop of Architecture and
Town Planning, who worked in Warsaw under German occupation for
a legally acting Co-operative Building Contractors Company. Their project
was synthetically presented in the form of diagrams with notes. Here is
its quintessence :
- The housing estate is situated between urban traffic arteries and is
closed to through traffic, which ensures pedestrian safety.
- The organizing force of the estate and of the residential areas is
the social bond among the inhabitants. The heart of the residential quarter
and of the housing estate is to be a green belt sized 750X80 meters running
through the middle a park-like spare land where, as need arises, cultural
and educational buildings, meeting places, local government quarters, etc.
will be erected.
- Housing estates should be built along that "social" belt. Every
estate should consist of 4 to 5 smaller units, each housing 2000 - 2500 in-
habitants.
- Primary schools, playgrounds, community houses with common
rooms for the youth should be situated inside each estate or between
two neighbouring estates. Children should have no roads to cross on their
way to school.

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 THE HUMAN VALUES OF TOWN PLANNING 93

- Sporting grounds and playgrounds should be situated inside the

housing estate and linked with schools.
- Shops which serve everyday needs of the inhabitants, workshops,
parking grounds and other services should be placed at the peripheries
of the housing estate, in the green belts separating housing areas from
through traffic roads. Shops and workshops should be situated near trans-
port roads and near bus or tram stops for the convenience of those who
do their shopping on their way to or from work.
- Housing estates can be combined into greater units - functional
districts. An average population density in the estate is 250 inhabitants
per hectare. It is built-up with houses up to four storeys high in a parallel
arrangement (Syrkus, 1976, pp. 145 - 251).
These planning rules are provided with an aboundant ideological justi-
fication :

"Open spaces, sucked out of the town in the capitalist era, become again the
natural environment from which the houses grow ; from every window one can see
the sky, grass, flower-beds and trees ; not only does the housing estate meet all
demands of a neighbourhood unit, but also its activity based on the framework
of social infrastructure (our specific field of research). Its elements, permeating
the houses, have for an object to promote the formation, growth and consolidation
of multilevel human inter-relationships. The town planner's democracy coefficient
(by this term the A.T.P. Workshop denoted the proportion of areas with social
facilities to areas with dwelling house only) is equal here to an analogical coeffi-
cient in Priene - a typical Hellenic town - of the peak period of Hellenic urban
development. In the Rakowiec housing estate in Warsaw, owing to the fact that
it belongs to such higher-level urban systems as district, city and region this coeffi-
cient is even higher, corresponding to a wider extent of democracy in the structure
for which we prepared our plans under the occupation." (Syrkus, 1976, p. 255).

The authors of the "social housing estate" concept are convinced that
a proper arrangement of buildings, a predetermined proportion of open
spaces and communal facilities are bound to evoke the desired social
behaviour and to create social bonds, which will be an expression of de-
mocracy. There was a strongly rooted conviction that town-planning
measures can affect the attitudes and behaviour of individuals and bring
about social integration. Such convictions and opinions of ideological na-
ture were very common not only in the CIAM circles, but generally among
architects. As Liliane Voyé very correctly wrote,
"the world is wrong, so it should be changed, and those called upon to perform
the change are architects and town planners who, through form, bring a message
opposing human whims and moods." She concludes : "On the one hand, architects
or town planners often feel authorized to an educational mission towards the so-
ciety and they tend to believe in the automatic and uniform effect of spatial
forms ... At the same time, the architect or town planner often does not understand
the rules of social dynamics, with which the practices of the inhabitants and users
of a given space are consistent." (Voyé, 1976, pp. 378, 382).

As follows from that was said before, the architects and town planners
who represented Polish social urbanism had a definite image of a city
dweller. Here, in brief, are his main features :
- It was an image of a "divided man" whose various activities were
to be performed in separate zones.

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94 BOHDAN JAŁOWIECKI

"Housing will be concentrated jn special

be excluded with the one exception of services. In the plan of the quarter the
recreational functions penetrate the residential ones as well as youth education and
child care, so that every quarter of Functional Warsaw will form a biological unit
with definite functions, being at the same time an inseparable part of the city-
region organism'' (Syrkus, 1976, p. 290).

- It was an image of a collective man whose many needs, formerly

satisfied individually in his own dwelling, would now be realized in
communal facilities, owing to a necessarily limited living space and a de-
sirability of forming social bonds. "A co-operative restaurant will provide
meals for the families, children will be cared for in day nurseries, nur-
sery schools, schools, common rooms. Social services at this level can only
be supplied by non-ownership housing" (Syrkus, 1976, p. 295).
- Finally, it was an image of man who became socialized by a group
of co-habitants on the base of collective facilities. These facilities, along
with the whole residential environment, were to be the main basis of
integration of the inhabitants.
The concept of a "social housing estate" was therefore very similar to
Clarence Perry's "neighbourhood unit," while the organization of collec-
tive life was based on collectivistic concepts of Le Corbusier's unité
d'habitation.
A more or less explicit idea of a neighbourhood unit appears in various
statements of the Polish architects and town planners. Barbara Brukal-
ska, who also participated in CIAM, wrote in her work published in
1948, where her previous experiences in designing a completed housing
estate, WSM-Żoliborz, were generalized :
"There is no doubt that each house or a complex of houses imposes certain
forms of living and coexistence upon the inhabitants. While in housing estates
designed mechanically, with regard only for geometric configurations, communal
life developed in an accidental manner, today we strive to create a housing estate
which would, by its form, correspond with the social content that we consciously
invest it with . . .A housing estate of a size suited to promote neighbourliness . . . con-
sists of a few thousand inhabitants . . . Social bond is a relationship founded on an
unwritten contract . . . which regulates mutual interdependence in such a way that
each contracting party knows where its contributions and constraints for common
benefit end, and where its individual benefits and independence begin," (Brukalska,
1948).

A particularly acute "housing problem" in Poland between the wars

was probably one of the reasons why the attention of architects and town
planners focused on housing estate problems and why they perceived the
city dweller as, above all, homo habitans.
Stanisław Cssowski, a sociologist who was also a member of the A.T.P.
Workshop team under German occupation, had a more universal approach
to urban problems.
"In planning city quarters - he wrote - we must consider three categories of
communities : neighbourhood groups based on the family cell, professional and
class groups, collectives of employees of particular work places." (Ossowski, 1967,
pp. 382-383).

Ossowski takes under consideration three tendencies in the formation

of cities which are conditioned by a definite system of values. One of

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 THE HUMAN VALUES OF TOWN PLANNING 95

them consists in a complete separation of the working and residential

environments, with the development of institutions of communal life
localized in the place of residence. The other upholds the separation, but
locates the communal institutions in the working quarters. The third
tendency aims at bringing work and residence nearer to each other.
"Bringing nearer the housing estate and the places of work - writes Ossow-
ski - can be understood in the spatial sense. The spatial penetration between residen-
tial and work districts is, in a great measure, possible owing to modern industrial
techniques, which make the vicinity of industrial plants less annoying, or in any
case less detrimental to the health of the population than it was some decades ago.
But this process of bringing the place of work nearer to the housing estate can
be effected not only in space. The rapproachment takes place if, for instance, the
workers of one industrial plant live in one housing estate, as is the case in Bata
factories or in some factory housing estates in USSR" (Ossowski, 1967, p. 386).

During his work with the A.T.P. Workshop team, S. Ossowski pre-
pared a socio-economic study for the western industrial district of War-
saw, treated as a district which united the places of work and residence
in one spatial entity.
One of the ideas of the A.T.P. Workshop architects and town planners,
and also of those connected with the Warsaw Housing Co-operative, was
a close collaboration with workers employed by Co-operative Building
Contractors. Training courses, meetings and discussions were organized
for them in order to form a united collective body of designers and ex-
ecutors. In this way was realized the principal idea of the Bauhaus , ex-
pressed by Gropius in the following words :
"We wish to form a new association of craftsmen, for the class pride that
raises a high wall between craftsmen and artists is no more to be found. We wish
to raise in common the edifice of the future, where architecture, sculpture and
painting will be harmoniously united. That edifice, erected thanks to millions of
workers under the sky of the future, will be a symbol of our confidence in the
future." (Wisłocka, 1968).

The Architecture and Town Planning Workshop also put into practice
the principle of interdisciplinary work, expressed by Ernst May, the
Chief Architect of Frankfurt am Main in the 1920s :
"Building art and hygiene must combine with psychology and sociology in
order to create houses technically perfect and humanly laid out. Those responsible
for housing policy must watch attentively the barometer of national health and
draw proper conclusions from the symptoms registered." (Syrkus, 1976, p. 89).

The A.T.P. Workshop, besides architects, town planners and engineers,

included economists, sociologists, natural scientists, statisticians, demo-
graphers, pedagogues, hygiene specialists, historians, co-operative activists.
The manager of the fundamental section of general studies was socio-
logist S. Ossowski. That was interdisciplinary planning and design work in
the full meaning of the term ; it was not practiced in Poland either before
nor after.
The 1950s closed in Poland period in physical planning known as
"social urbanism." From the perspective of the present day this trend
appears ambiguous. On the one hand, the professional circles of architects
and town planners were characterized by sensitivity to living conditions
of the poorer classes of urban population ; their projects were charged

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*96 BOHDAN JAŁOWIECKI

with social meaning and their profes

emphasized axiology. On the other ha
dweller for whom they created the frames of everyday existence was
simplified and uniformized. A town planning approach to social life was
prevalent and it took no account of differentiated human needs. Social
and cultural dynamics determining the organic growth of cities were
neither appreciated nor understood. The ideology of "social urbanism"
had a strong influence on contemporary and future images of the city
but, all things considered, it was a negative influence.
In the early 1950s, during the so-called socrealism period, the role of
architecture as an instrument of social and political transformations was
stressed by the specific phraseology of the time. In an official document
issued by architectural circles we read :
"Our architecture must become the Party's ideological weapon, the factor of
socialist education of the masses. Polish architecture shall be reborn as a great so-
cial art. Reflecting the ideological wealth of socialism-building era, it shall take
national forms, close and understandable to the people . . . Formalism, nihilism and
constructivism, as symptoms of bourgeois cosmopolitism, narrow traditionalism
reflecting nationalistic tendencies, economism too narrowly understood - these are
the factors inhibiting the development of architecture." ( Polish Socialist . . . 1950,
pp. 213-214).

E. Goldzamt, one of the theoreticians of that period, in a review of

a deluxe edition of B. Bieruťs article on architecture, wrote that Warsaw
architects were looking for such an
"illustration of the new idea of a social city centre. Instead of a multitude of
advertising signs and of central bustle and traffic, we have a picture of monumental
squares of the capital, overflowing with manifesting crowds. Instead of motor-car
dealers and technical development dehumanized in its impetus, there is a concept
of a great socio-cultural centre with a central square dominated by a complex of
buildings of the central community house." (Goldzamt, 1956, p. 457).

This concept, despite its grotesque exaggeration, has a certain alter-

native social substance of humanistic significance.
The last thirty years in Poland witnessed a mostly anonymous produc-
tion of houses where the image of the user was supplanted by an arith-
metical index of meeting primitive needs calculated per statistical unit
(Herbst, 1983). The axiology of the architect and town planner was re-
placed by a beaurocratic standard. The pronouncements by architects ex-
pressing their ideology are rare. A deeper social reflection preceding the
preparation of designs becomes an exception. Among the exceptions
should be mentioned projects where the intention of affecting human
behaviour and meeting human needs is carefully thought-out and explic-
itly expressed - the housing estates Sady Zoliborskie by Halina Skibniew-
ska and Zatrasie by Jacek Nowicki. The latter gives thought to such a lo-
cation of entrances to the buildings as would facilitate contacts between
the people (Siemiński, 1983).
Some diploma projects of students at departments of architecture also
show visible attempts to break with the common practice of "bureaucratic
urbanism." I shall quote two of them revealing a deeper thought.
J. Łukasiewicz, the author of the diploma design for the housing es-
tate Ursynów-Natolin , writes :

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 THE HUMAN VALUES OF TOWN PLANNING 97

"In designing houses I paid special attention to the maintenance of human

proportions which, in my opinion, are often absent in contemporary housing. Let
us compare a single-family house where the human scale is obvious with one of
the human containers in the housing estate Za Żelazną Bramą , so typical for th
last decade" (Syrkus, 1976, p. 407).

Other graduates, M. Przetacznik and P. Schneider, wrote in the notes

to the project of Dolinka Służewiecka :
"The axis of our interest is man, his personal values, needs and predilec-
tions ... In our design human proportions dictated the size of dwellings . . . We were
conscious that in designing a housing estate, we create spatial frames for the life
and relationships of individuals, families, smaller and greater social groups. Foresee-
ing the possibility of change in the frames of living, we tred to design flexile
frames" (Syrkus, 1976, p. 417).

From a sociological viewpoint, these ideas are not new and the authors'
aims are modest. They do not show ambition to transform the world
through town-planning projects, but at least they are aware that it is
necessary to preserve a minimum of humanistic values.
This attitude is something new among town planners and architects,
whose conviction that they can shape man and society by organizing
space was hitherto quite firm. Possibly, it originated in the eternal hu-
man longing for utopia, and it seemed easier to realize that utopia through
constructing a new spatial skeleton than to change man, to transform so-
cial conditions. Architects and town planners had possibilities to inter-
vene in the actual world ; maybe this possibility created the sense of
strength, the belief in the effective power of proposed solutions. Most of
their visions have never been realized, and those which have brought
disillusionment to their designers, as for instance Brasilia, which was to
be a superb manifestation of twentieth century town planning and ar-
chitecture, and instead became a ghost city where thousands of people
live in makeshift constructions, in bidonvilles which are, in their turn,
a manifestation of "popular town planning" in third world countries.
L'unité d'habitation in Marseilles, which was to be a materialization of
Le Corbusier's idea of a new way to live in a new magnificent city, is
slowly degenerating into a slum where only those remain who must. More
examples could be found, but these two are particularly telling as realiza-
tions of "pure ideas."
Like every such vision of the world, total town planning and archi-
tecture, though using humanistic phraseology, is in fact directed against
man. The French architect Claude Parent does not hesitate to say :
"I want the architect to oppose man's mental illness instead of being his com-
panion in disease. I want to act so as to make him sane ... by opposing man such
as be seems to be, I want to serve better man as he really is, such as he will
become. I must serve the future of the species and not the momentarily degraded
form of life. I create architecture initially against man, lest it should aid any of
his weaknesses, any form of subjugation." (Voyé, 1976, p. 381).

Another architect, Emile Aillaud, proclaims a similar credo.

"I do not want to create artistically beautiful things, I want to create a state
of mind. It is not a question of architectural, and still less technical, research, it is
a question of research aimed towards the psychical world of man. I am not con-
cerned with adults, they can be written off as a loss, for they are trained to be

7 The Polish Sociological Bulletin 1 - 2/86

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98 BOHDAN JAŁOWIECKI

underdeveloped. But children are different, they can still be saved and become
free individuals ... It is necessary, and it is the task of those who create towns, to
invent urban environments capable of replacing family environmen and of leading
the child who, as Freud says, is the father of man, towards emotional maturity, by
the paths of loneliness and surprises, through places of mysterious power" (Voyé,
1976, p. 382).

Town planning, so perceived, is an illusion. H. Lefebvre writes :

"Like classical philosophy, town planning appears as an all-embracing system,
a new entity. It wants to be a modern urban philosophy justified by humanism
(liberal) and justifying a utopia (technocratic). Neither goodwill nor pure ideological
intentions can be a justification ; on the contrary, good intentions and clean hands
make matters worse. How should one define the emptiness of such town plan-
ning . . . born in individual intellects or in office collectives ? Attempts are made to
replace and eliminate urban practices, which are being studied. They are like
a dark room to the town planner : the lives in it, exists in it, but sees and under-
stands nothing. In full consciousness he replaces praxis with his image of space,
social life, human groups and their relationships. He knows not where these images
come from, nor does he realize their implications, i.e. the strategies which they serve.
And if he does know, it is unforgivable - the ideological sheath disappears, leaving
a peculiar bareness" (Lefebvre, 1970, p. 203).

To "total" town planning regarded as a philosophical illusion, as an

ideology changing man and the world, can be opposed "sociological"
town planning which takes conditions existing here and now for a start-
ing point and, basing itself on actual needs and culturally conditioned
practices of people tries to help them in shaping the individual and social
space. The point is to use peoples' own creative potential, invention and
initiative in forming their own environment. The architect's and town
planner's aid is certainly needed but it should be no more than aid. There
are many instances of such perception of architecture and town planning.
They come from the third world as well from the Western industrialized
countries. In the former, the shelter for homeless millions who build gi-
gantic bidonvilles is at stake. The problem lies in supplying financial and
technical aid, simultaneously making use of their own resources. Inter-
esting descriptions of such planned self-constructed housing can be found
in La planète des bidonvilles by B. Granotier (1980) or in Housing by
People by J. F. C. Turner (1976).
In the second case the problem seems less acute, for basic needs appear
to be satisfied. Nevertheless, more and more people show discontent with
the existing frames of living imposed. In such situations architects and
town planners can meet peoples' needs by engaging them in the process
of planning. As an example of such participation may be cited the reno-
vation program of the Byker district in Newcastle. The district occupies
80 hectares and is inhabited by about 10,000 people. One of the main
postulates was to preserve the social composition of the population and
to move people within the district without impairing the existing social
bonds, the ways of living and the characteristic spatial features. It was
therefore decided that the essential architectural elements, such as chur-
ches, schools, pubs, should be preserved. To enter into a direct relation-
ship with the inhabitants, the architects established their offices in an
old warehouse in the centre of the district and made access free to all
who were interested. As new dwellings successively reached the finish

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 THE HUMAN VALUES OF TOWN PLANNING 99

stage, the users were individually invited by the authorities and were
given the choice of alternative solutions by the architect. Everyone could
chose a dwelling which suited him and a location he wished with regard
to families, friends and former neighbours. Both the architects and the
city authority were aware of the necessity to respect the identified wishes
and needs of the inhabitants, their traditions and habits (Bernfeld, 1978,
1979, 1980).
Another example shows an interesting method how to identify human
behaviours in space as a base for design. Two Swiss architects, Marie
J. Dozio and Pierre Feddersen, wanted
"to link human behaviour with the problem of architecture and town planning
in order to obtain, in result, operational solutions better adjusted to the require-
ments and needs of users" (Dozio, and Feddersen, 1976, pp. 392 - 399).

They undertook studies of the fishing isle of Murano on the Venice

lagoon for their renovation project. The isle has 24 hectares and its po-
pulation numbers about 5,000. The architects' task was to describe the
spatial organization of Burano and to interpret the system of social rela-
tionships according to various orders of collective appropriation of public
space by the island community and tourists, common - by neighbourhood
units and a group of families and private appropriation of the dwelling
by the family.
By systematic observation they studied the behaviour of individual
population categories in various places, using 5 criteria : definition of
personal area or space ; social occasion ; properties of the users ; their
behaviour, factor of reference or the scene of events.
Concluding their studies, the authors write :
"We have defined two possible types of intervention in a neighbourhood unit.
The first we called Restructuration,' which does not affect the space that is not
built-up ; here it is a question of a physical, social and functional remodelling of
the interior of a house. The second type is called 'anchoring.' It means attaching
a new living space to an existing house. The new part can be erected only in
a 'free' zone, determined through the observation of spatial behaviour of the in-
habitants".

The examples quoted show two different ways of socializing the de-
signing process. In the first instance it was achieved through free access
of inhabitants to the architect's office ; in the second, through a detailed
and systematic observation of spatial behaviour and urban practices.
We can observe, therefore, the attempts to cease to regard town plan-
ning as an ideology and to break off with total solutions meant to trans-
form the individual and the society, and instead to focus interests on
human needs, desires, behaviours and practices. Thic approach, which
can be described as "participating town planning," is based on truly
humanistic values and gives some hope for the future.

References

Bernfeld, D. (ed.) 1978, 1979, 1980 : Fichier de la participation. Vol. 1 - 4.

Brukalska, B. 1948 : Zasady społeczne projektowania osiedli mieszkaniowych
[Social Principles in Design of Housing Estates]y Warszawa.

7*

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100 BOHDAN JAŁOWIECKI

D o z i o, M. U. and Feddersen, P. 1976 : "Quelle est utilité de la notion d'appro-

priation pour la conception architectural et urbanistique ?", in : Appropriation de
Vspace. Actes de la Conference de Strasbourg, 1976
Goldzamt, E. 1956 : Architektura zespołów śródmiejskich i problemy dziedzic-
twa [Architecture of City-centre Complexes and Problems of Heritage], War-
szawa.

Granotier, B. 1980: La planète des Bidonvilles, Paris.

Herbst, K. 1983: "Funkcjonowanie miasta - Problemy planowania" ["Functions
of a Town - Problems of Planning"], in : Teorie socjologii miasta a problemy
społeczne miast polskich [Theories in Town's Sociology and Social Problems of
Polish Cities], Wrocław, Warszawa.
Lefebvre, H. 1970 : La révolution urbaine, Gallimard, Paris.
Le d rut, R. 1976: L'espace en question, Paris.
Minorski, J. 1965 : Postulaty i koncepcje urbanistyczne i architektoniczne w
ostatnim pięcioleciu przed II wojną światową [Postulates and Concepts in Town-
planning and Architecture during Last Five Years before World War II], War-
szawa.

O Polską architekturę socjalistyczną [Polish Socialist Architecture], Warszawa 1950.

Ossowski, S. 1967 : "Ogólne zagadnienia dotyczące współżycia zbiorowego w
dzielnicy pracy" ["General Problems of Collective Life in Work Districts"], in :
Dzieła [Collective Works], vol. 3, Warszawa.
Siemiński, W. 1983 : "Treść życia społecznego osiedli mieszkaniowych w ujęciu
architektów" ["An Essence of Social Life in Housing Estates as it is Seen by
Architects"], in : Theories in Town's Sociology and Social Problems of Polish
Cities, Wrocław, Warszawa.
S y r k u s, H. 1976 : Ku idei osiedla społecznego [Towards an Idea of Social Housing
Estate ], Warszawa.
T u r ne r J. F. C., 1976 : Housing by People, London.
Voyé, L. 1976: "Production et appropriation de l'espace: régies et modalités
différentielles," in : Appropriation de l'espace, actes de la conference de Stras-
bourg.
Wisłocka, H. 1968: Awangardowa architektura polska 1918 - 1939 [Avant-garde
of Polish Architecture 1918 - 1939], Warszawa.

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