NMML

OCCASIONAL PAPER
HISTORY AND SOCIETY
New Series
5

Patrick Geddes and the Metropolis

Partho Datta

Nehru Memorial Museum and Library

2012

NMML Occasional Paper

© Partho Datta, 2012
All rights reserved. No portion of the contents may
be reproduced in any form without the written
permission of the publisher. The views expressed in
the article are of the author and not of the institution.

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NMML Occasional Paper

Patrick Geddes and the Metropolis*

Introduction: The beginnings of modern planning and Patrick

Geddes

W
ith the decision to shift the capital of colonial India from
Calcutta to Delhi in 1911, urban planning became a
prominent area of debate and discussion in planning
societies and journals throughout the Western world. Because of this
project, other urban centres in colonial India willy nilly came under
the scanner of urban planners and the discourse of modern planning
expanded to accommodate many Indian towns and cities.

The colonies had always attracted and provided opportunities for

all kinds of technical experts from Britain. Consequently a whole
band of architects, engineers and town planners (their work usually
overlapped) were to make a name for themselves throughout the
British empire laying down a common thread of concerns and
attitudes towards urban problems in the colonies. In the words of
historian R.K. Home, town planning became part of the ‘currency
of progressive paternalistic ideas circulating in the British Empire
in the 20th century’.l Examples include E.P. Richards who worked
in Calcutta and Singapore, A.E. Mirams in Bombay and Uganda,
Herbert Baker in Delhi and Johannesburg and Patrick Geddes all
over India and in Colombo and Palestine. Western planning models,

* I would like to thank all the participants in the 'The City in South Asia'
conference especially Yamada Kyota, Markus Daechsel, Benjamin Solomon,
Crispin Bates and Minoru Mio for their comments. This paper draws on
research done as Fellow, Nehru Memorial Museum Library and on my book
Planning the City: Urbanization and Reform in Calcutta, c.1800 to c.1940
(Delhi: Tulika Books, 2012).

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2 Partho Datta

indeed the western experience of urbanization was seen by some of

these planners as the only model available for modernization. It was
because of these itinerant individuals that western urbanism was
extended to the colonies and in some cases got a new lease of life.
The work of Geddes is particularly important because he represented
a considered and very articulate dissent to this conventional planning
wisdom.

Colonial metropolises by the early twentieth century presented

a picture of great urban squalor, which needed urgent attention. The
rapid growth of factory based industry (particularly in Bombay and
Calcutta) had given a fillip to migration into the cities and the
concomitant problems of overcrowding and insanitation became
particularly acute during epidemics like the plague (1896). The
colonial governments were particularly concerned with shielding
cantonments and towns with significant European populations from
disease and responded by intervening decisively in the built-up areas,
demolishing old buildings and slums, quarantining the sick, setting
up vigilance operations to discipline and regulate the population.
Thus modern planning in India had its roots in nineteenth century
pandemics.2 One outcome of this was that the relationship between
bodies and spaces came to be intensely investigated and the
management of spaces in the city became an important part of urban
policy.

In the first few decades of the twentieth century, the town

planning movement gathered momentum with the emergence of the
professional town planner, publication of journals, the proliferation
of professional associations, pressure groups and lobbyists for town
planning. In India extant urban policy married to town planning ideas
soon took a concrete shape with the setting up of Improvement Trusts
after the plague most prominently in Bombay (1898) and in Calcutta
(1911) and in numerous other cities in the later decades. The
importance of these Trusts lay in the normative standards for
‘improvement’ that they developed. Planning, as Christian Topalov
has pointed out perceptively had a larger reformist agenda: changing
cities meant changing people and this in turn meant changing society
itself.3

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Patrick Geddes and the Metropolis 3

In the hands of bureaucratic practitioners, 'improvement' was

procrustean in nature. One objective was sanitising public places in
the city. But with epidemics showing no signs of abatement, the
colonial state forcibly entered the Indian home making a bid to set
sanitary standards for private and domestic spaces as well. Not
surprisingly the sanitary reach and goals of the state often clashed
with communitarian norms: sanitation and hygiene refused to
dovetail easily with traditional Indian notions of purity and pollution.
Regulation of domestic practices thus remained a contentious issue
and the populace refused to follow modern sanitary standards in daily
life or practice it in public spaces. In colonial India the state's
initiatives in this sphere was complicated by its alien status, its
inherent racism and class inhibitions. Even Indian nationalists who
supported planning as a progressive move were quick to point out
that the colonial state openly favoured European neighbourhoods at
the cost of Indian localities.

With reluctant assent from the people, spatial planning and

restructuring in the city took on the character of violent coercion.
Commercial and business imperatives often justified these measures
as inevitable which in effect meant unleashing class violence on the
poor living in slums. The slum populace were easy to attack since
they were squatters with no legal title to land and at the mercy of
unscrupulous landlords. Colonial town planners irrespective of needs,
implemented mechanically the Haussmannian model of restructuring,
which meant cutting broad swathes of roads, usually rectilinears and
diagonals on the face of the city for efficient traffic circulation. The
influence of nineteenth century English sanitary and bye-law
regulations also played a decisive part.

However not all practitioners of town planning were mechanical

and unthinking in their approach. Haussmann's model of city
improvement had provoked contrary views. His work was criticised
by contemporaries like Camillo Sitte (1889) whose championing of
non-geometric forms, challenged mechanical conceptions of design
and the tyranny of the straight line, and by Ebenezer Howard (1898)
whose Garden Cities brought into question the very usefulness of
sustaining expanding conglomerations with improved utilities.4

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4 Partho Datta

Similarly the influential architect Raymond Unwin (early 1900s —

he had designed Hampstead Garden suburb in London) campaigned
against mechanical implementation of bye-law streets. 5 These
thinkers were responsible for pointing out the perils of unabashed
industrialism. In India too, there were rumblings of discontent with
official policy. J.M. Linton Bogle who wrote a pioneering book on
town planning was making an implicit criticism of colonialism and
how political power determined space when he wrote (about
Allahabad):6

'is there any good reason why the occupants of Civil Lines should
have enormous compounds of six to eight bighas - far more than
they want - while the houses in the city are packed together like
sheep in a pen?'.

Similarly another contemporary planner, H.V. Lanchester wrote

retrospectively on the problems of ‘cutting straight roads through
the more congested areas, regardless of the groupings of those
displaced’.7

Geddes' Method: Some details

Patrick Geddes' work threw into sharp relief some of these

dilemmas of modern planning in a more sustained manner. Invited
to work first in India by the Governor of Madras, Lord Pentland,
Geddes stayed on as a free-lance advisor and planner for princely
states and other municipal authorities. His work was backed by
numerous town planning reports, by one estimate almost forty in
number, which he wrote and published between 1918-24.8 Geddes
was appalled at the indifference and unthinking drives to demolish
large parts of the historic core of Indian cities and was quick to
appreciate the varied urban and civic traditions of pre-modern India.
He had long been convinced that capitalist modernization had
brought sea-changes, but had been unable to efface vital cultural
symbols.9 Geddes’ only major book Cities in Evolution (1915), a
theoretical statement on cities, published before he came to India
argued that the post railway age had obscured and hidden the ‘grand
design’ of cities in the past.10

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Patrick Geddes and the Metropolis 5

Geddes' approach is generally seen as 'culturally informed'.11 This

meant that he was sensitive and empathetic to extant civic culture.
He was impressed with the functional character of Indian building
traditions, the adaptation to weather, the use of local material, the
multiple use of public spaces, the small grain character of street life.
He argued that these practices were sensitive to the ecology of the
regions and therefore needed to be recovered and reinstated.l2
However unlike the West none of these practices had been theorized
in the academy nor were they sanctified by modern movements for
conservation. Geddes was sympathetic to Indian nationalism and
hoped that Indian leaders and thinkers with their rejection of
mechanical western ideas would play a vital role in encouraging his
efforts. In an early celebrated essay which he published in The
Modern Review hoping to catch the attention of Indian nationalists,
he advised13:

'For present purposes, our problem, as students of cities and their

planning, is to get beyond architectural studies, as commonly
understood. What we need are interpretations, sociological and
civic, i.e. on the one hand in terms of the social life and psychology
from which buildings of each type arise, and of the movements
these express; and on the other of the main types of City
Development which are their fullest concrete expression, and which
react in their turn, on the mental world of their inhabitants.'

Like many people of his generation, Geddes was a practicing

evolutionist. He was appalled that the Industrial Revolution had
unleashed economic forces without taking cognizance of the
biological circumstances of human beings and in this he was truly
prophetic anticipating modern environmentalism by many decades.
He wanted to apply evolutionary theory to society but realized that
the vast potential created by the evolutionary pattern had to be
consciously seized, since evolution was not always progressive.l4
Modern town planning with its grand schemes and industrial
technology exuded an utopian flavour and was unusually dismissive
of the past. Only on painstaking unravelling of the social pattern of
the community, Geddes argued, could the plans for a future be drawn.
He was willing to be an utopian if the future was also premised on

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an understanding of the past. Geddes wrote that the quest for utopian
endeavours should begin right in the city itself and the way to connect
the past and the present was through the observation and recording
of local heritage which had persisted with local advantages through
generations. Only then would 'historic appreciation and utopian
anticipation ... be increasingly united to bring forth fruit in civic
aspiration and endeavour'.15 This approach was markedly different
from his contemporary Ebenezer Howard, who envisaged ‘Garden
Cities’ on an empty plain where no contingencies existed.16 In
contrast Geddes' utopia was no escape from the harsh realities of
urban squalor.

Geddes had invented what he called the 'the diagnostic or civic

survey' to aid the process of recovery. This survey method that
Geddes patented gave him an enviable 'feel' for the organic form of
the city. However this was not an intuitive response but based on an
idiosyncratic reading of history, morphology, economy and cultural
traditions of the city - which he put forward in his book, in his town
planning reports and in his famous travelling exhibitions which
showcased this approach graphically. In one of his Indian reports,
Geddes warned that the enthusiastic planner who put pen on paper
without survey:

' ... exceeds too readily the scale of his surroundings and over-
reaches also the requirements of the town. The result has been that,
in too many cities, imposing new streets have been laid out without
survey of their surrounding quarter and constructed without
reference to local needs or potentialities'.17

To tackle the dross and decay of urban settlements Geddes had

invented the complimentary 'conservative surgery' to his civic survey.
This was a way in which maximum improvement could be achieved
by minimum demolition and disruption. He explained18:

'…the method of Conservative Surgery .. , first it shows that the

new streets prove not to be really required since, by simply
enlarging the existing lanes, ample communications already exist;
secondly that, with the addition of some vacant lots and the removal

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Patrick Geddes and the Metropolis 7

of a few of the most dilapidated and insanitary houses, these lanes

can be greatly improved and every house brought within reach of
fresh air as well as of material sanitation - a point on which the
more pretentious method constantly fails, as is evident on every
plan'.

Geddes was partial to intimate spaces: the community, the

neighbourhood, the family. If custom segregated women, then he
wanted exclusive 'purdah gardens',19 if the 'chabutra' (platforms
outside houses) was the focus of neighbourhood sociability then it
had to be saved, if the tulsi plant symbolised the nurturing power of
women then it had to become the symbol of the thriving Hindu home.
For ideas such as these Geddes was dismissed as a conservative and
he in his turn was contemptuous of radicals who wanted to have no
truck with tradition. Geddes in fact was far from being a traditionalist
as his championing of working class housing and of lower caste
issues in his many reports demonstrate. 20 Geddes' belief in
communitarian civic norms were firmly rooted in modernist ideas
of health, beauty and sanitation.21

For planning historians of colonial India, Geddes is important

because his work throws up larger questions. Douglas Goodfriend
in his re-evaluation has written that Geddes critiqued the
'unconsidered importation of any Western planning practices into
(the) different cultural milieu'22 of India. On this theme the planning
historian Anthony King has written a perceptive and pioneering
essay.23 For one, importing planning models (from the West) meant
measuring indigenous society by standards set elsewhere (e.g.
overcrowding, sanitation etc.) Such plans also ran the risk of being
imposed on a people with totally different needs. Looming large too
was the question of social and financial costs, since large planning
projects called for huge investments and displacement hit citizens
very hard. Even more telling — these imposed plans never
questioned power relations in the colonial city. Racist distinctions
like black/white were taken for granted and maintained.24

Geddes' critique of colonial planning anticipated many of these

concerns. His work also demonstrated that the norms of Euclidean

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8 Partho Datta

geometry (the rectilinears, the diagonals, etc.) used in the plans were
dubious since it represented all space uniformly. The biggest casualty
in this method were the labouring poor. Being low down in the social
hierarchy meant that they were unlikely to find representation in the
plans and would therefore become victims of cartographic silence.

Barrabazar: Fantasies of Demolition

Barrabazar (literally "Big Bazaar") was central Calcutta's most

congested and most important business district. It had developed into
Eastern India's centre for wholesale and retail trade in the hands of
Marwaris who had settled in this area in significant numbers by end
of the nineteenth century. Barrabazar was an important indication
that Calcutta's economy despite appearances was one that was
dependent on trade not manufacturing.25 One early account from the
1840s put an orientalist hue to this bustling mart.

'Few Europeans, I believe, have ever taken the trouble of exploring

the inmost recesses of the Babel-like regions of the Burra Bazar....
Here above and below, may be seen the jewels of Golconda and
Bundelkhand, the shawls of Cashmere, the broad cloths of England,
silks of Moorshedabad and Benares, muslins of Dacca, calicoes,
ginghams, chintzes, brocade of Persia, spicery and myrrh and
frankincense from Ceylon, the Spice Islands and Arabia, shells
from the eastern coast and straits, iron ware and cutlery in
abundance, as well from Europe as Monghyr, coffee, drugs, dried
fruits, and sweetmeats from Arabia and Turkey, cows’ tails from
Thibet, and ivory from Ceylon. A great portion of these and other
such articles, are either sold or brought by natives of the countries
from whence they are obtained, who together with visitors,
travellers and beggars, form a diversified group of Persians, Arabs,
Jews, Marwarrees, Armenians, Cashmeerees, Malabars, Goorkhas,
Afghans, Seiks, Turks, Parsees, Chinese, Burmese and Bengalis.'26

Another European account from 1900 declared that

'one of the most wonderful sights in Calcutta is the Burra Bazar,

yet how few Europeans ... ever visit it! …The houses are all very
high, many rising to more than four storeys. They are built of stone

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Patrick Geddes and the Metropolis 9

or brick and, as a rule, are ornamented within and without, with

rough but not unpleasing coloured frescoes. Some have balconies
of wonderfully carved wood.'27

Barrabazar or Ward VII was the area behind Writers Buildings

(seat of government) and Lalbazar (Police Headquarters) up to Cotton
Street in the north. It was bounded by the river on the west and Lower
Chitpur Road on the east. This area was diverse and included shops,
godowns, residential buildings and bustis (slums) though
commercialization had lent the whole ward a distinctive character.
Overbuilt with narrow streets, which made it mysterious and
impenetrable to government agencies, its insanitation worried
administrators because of its close proximity to the centre of
government. Things were compounded by the steep value of land in
this area which rivalled those of commercial London. Throughout
the nineteenth century official views swung from the romantic (quote
above) to the denunciatory: the latter harboured fantasies of razing
this commercial hub to the ground removing what was seen as an
important locus of disease in the city. By restoring order in this ward
the government planners wanted to create a kind of buffer between
Indian neighbourhoods to the north and British ones in the south.
The dilemma and prevarication of sanitary policy in Barrabazar
seemed to have been resolved when search began for a suitable site
for the proposed Central Railway Station. European engineers,
doctors, bureaucrats in the city wanted the Central Station to replace
this historic core. In 1899 when doctors Clemow and Hossack were
asked to prepare a report on the area (following the plague scare),
they too recommended demolition.28 Throughout the nineteenth
century the railways were seen as purveyors of sanitation and it was
thought that its benefits far outweighed any disruption caused to
communities. 29 Perhaps the enormous cost of demolition and
rebuilding was a deterrence to the government and the railway station
was never built here (it was built across the river in Howrah in 1906)
and Barrabazar escaped its dreadful fate. However, concern with
Barrabazar in the official mind did not diminish.

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The Geddes Report on Barrabazar

Geddes was in India yet two of the plummest planning

commissions slipped through his hand. New Delhi had already been
given to Lutyens (and Baker). Geddes was no architect and had an
idiosyncratic reputation among planners. It did not help that Geddes
had criticised the New Delhi plan30 and perhaps for this reason he
was never accommodated even in an advisory role. Acolytes of
Geddes like the architect and planner, H.V. Lanchester too did not
get a share of the Delhi pie. The autonomous Calcutta Improvement
Trust was set up in 1911 - a major project to restructure the city and
even here Geddes failed to get in. His private papers reveal that he
tried to get a place as an advisor through his friend the scientist
Jagadis Bose who put in a word (unsuccessfully) to the Indian
minister in government Surendranath Bannerjee.31 Clearly Geddes
was keen to bag a big project and he had made the appropriate noises
before leaving England going to the extent of praising the published
plan of the Calcutta Improvement Trust (CIT) as a 'stately volume'
in his Cities in Evolution (1915).32 Eventually Geddes was asked to
submit his views on one ward in the city - Barrabazar - by the rival
Calcutta Municipality who were miffed that the Trust had encroached
on their territory. The Municipality had been deliberately kept at a
distance by the Trust because the latter saw popular representation
as a liability.

This was Geddes' first proper commission in a colonial

metropolis - his previous reports had been on smaller towns or
princely capitals none of which had the scale of problems of a
Bombay or Calcutta. Planning models too valourised the big city—
the restructuring of Paris (by Haussmann, c.1850-1870) and Chicago
(Plan by Burnham and Bennett, 1909). Clearly Geddes had to
reconcile his cautious and piecemeal approach to the large-scale.33
In Calcutta he had to confront two major strains in modern planning
at odds with each other. First the close association of business needs
to urban planning: the proliferation of capital had always meant the
restructuring of spaces. Secondly: the bane of modern planning —
how to rehouse the displaced working classes without provoking
class conflict.

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Patrick Geddes and the Metropolis 11

Haussmann's plan was the official inspiration for restructuring

Calcutta and E.P. Richards who put together the CIT's blueprint
acknowledged his debt to this planning model.34 Haussmann's
emphasis on imposing a new functional order on the city with an
eye to the efficient circulation of goods and services was achieved
through the connection of economic nodes like docks and railway
stations and creating voids for 'respiration' (boulevards, parks).35
Richards' plan for CIT (he offered several alternative proposals) show
a similar logic: a Calcutta crisscrossed with rectilinears and diagonals
which reduced the city into manageable blocks: manageable i.e. for
commerce and the trades. Commenting generally on the carving up
of space in the modern city, Lewis Mumford (Geddes' principal
disciple36) had written that such a move signified the rapid turnover
of real estate in capitalism, a 'convertability' and 'replaceability' of
space for 'possible traffic, possible commercial opportunity, possible
conversion from residence into more exclusive business use'37.
Schemes such as Richards thus implicitly acknowledged the
importance of private investors in the property market in Calcutta.

Geddes had to contend with Richards as well as several other

plans already in place. Clemow and Hossack's report (1899) has been
mentioned above. The CIT commissioned another up-to-date report
on insanitry wards by Dr. Crake.38 Geddes also had to take as his
benchmark the plans that the CIT had made specifically for
Barrabazar. Albert de Bois Shrosbree, the Chief Valuer had prepared
such a report in 1916, and had found that the 'fundamental evil' in
Barrabazar was overbuilding. The tone of his recommendations was
more cautious than the 1899 report and he suggested various
solutions common to which was demolition and partial re-building
of insanitary areas and the widening and construction of streets
throughout the area. Shrosbreee urged that the matter could not be
delayed because the cost of improvement would rise prohibitively.39
In intent at least, it was no different from the earlier reports. The
Marwari Traders Association in an early testimony to the CIT had
proactively supported such proposals and had recommended more
through roads and clearance of slums to facilitate
commercialization.40 To sum up: the logic of these plans indicated
that the 'allocation' of streets, sewers and railway lines seemed the

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12 Partho Datta

only way to order the city.41 It was at this juncture that Geddes was
asked to give his opinion, and he submitted his plan in 1919.

Geddes began his investigations, literally doing a house-to-house

survey. He knew there were no short-cuts, for only by painstaking
investigations would he be able to get an accurate picture of the
problems of Barrabazar and also expand his conclusions for a wider
comparative perspective with the city as a whole.42 He knew that
extant plans followed the 'the conventional aesthetics of the
rigorously straight line of the older Paris-Berlin-American school'.43
Geddes saw no reason why a costly monotony should be the target
of planning, when local traditions offered a cheaper and more
aesthetic result.44 Even though he was dealing with only one district
of Calcutta, he effectively managed to critique the normative
standards that the CIT had set up for itself.

Geddes' report was categorical that there was more to Barrabazar

than just large blocks of insanitary and overcrowded property.
Barrabazar, he pointed out, had a distinct architectural and urban
form of its own, and it would reduce the trauma of demolition if
this character was allowed to survive, provided some changes were
made. Geddes found that Barrabazar encompassed two distinctly
different areas. Big business was situated in the south and the west
— it was here that abatement of traffic congestion and general
improvement was most needed. He had alternative plans on the full-
fledged development of this business area. The north and east he
found were primarily residential. Geddes saw it as his job to try and
preserve this character — to save housing stock and the dislocation
of residents. He also felt that the argument of the Trust that the
business quarters would 'spill' into the residential inevitably, as not
very convincing.45

Geddes also observed that the movement of goods and traffic

was across the city, west to east and vice-versa, and much less along
the river (north-south) or on roads parallel to it. This was borne out
by the organic growth of the city since the nineteenth century, which
clearly show a majority of the city's roads take a west to east
alignment.46 Instead the Trust was of course planning north-south

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Patrick Geddes and the Metropolis 13

cuts in total disregard to the needs of the local trades. The logic here
was dictated by the British mercantile establishments which were
placed along the river (still a major channel for transport) and which
disregarded Indian businesses further inland. Geddes also noticed
that in the business areas, the existing godowns were basically
domestic buildings adapted to business use — and actually afforded
less space for storing. The courtyards became dirty with constant
use, and the dust raised contributed to the unhealthiness of the living
quarters in the upper storeys. Most of the houses also had a narrow
frontage but great depth. The space behind these houses had been
overrun by the haphazard growth of stables and irregular housing
for domestic servants and the working population.47

His recommendations for Barrabazar basically fell within three

broad parameters. Firstly he insisted that street alignment be
developed along the west-east axis following the natural movement
of goods and traffic and not north-south as the CIT was planning.
Secondly while making a plea to retain the residential character of
the north-east he was keen to see the west of Barrabazar develop
into a modern business district. Thirdly, even when he realized that
demolition of insanitary property could not be avoided, he wanted
to rebuild keeping traditional urban forms in mind so that the
character of the district would remain intact.

Geddes was convinced that Barrabazar should be set up as a

modern business district and nothing less. He wanted to develop the
business locality along the west because of its proximity to the river
and shipping. For this purpose he recommended that the Mint (1831)
be shifted out, but typically for Geddes, he urged the re-use of the
ancient structure as a public school for children in this area. Geddes
was aware that large plots of land in Calcutta were controlled by
government (the largest landowner in the city) and his suggestion
was in fact a gesture towards a more creative and public use of such
land, blocked by moribund structures. The grouping of business
interests in different quarters, an 'old world survival' Geddes argued
gave Barrabazar a familiar character of its own. Far from condemning
this traditional grouping of business Geddes wanted to retain it. At
the same time he urged the adoption of modern American and

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14 Partho Datta

German methods of goods handling for Calcutta. He envisaged a

vast 'Produce Exchange' next to the railway lines of an associated
goods depot, goods being lifted vertically from wagons to
warehouses with great economy of handling. The upper story of this
building would house offices and there would even be a roof garden
for relaxation and business conversation. He wanted old residential
houses being used as godowns rebuilt as modern warehouses, with
offices and shops on the upper floors connected with ramps.
Footbridges over lanes would be built to decongest the narrow lanes.
A Barrabazar thus re-planned and concentrated would relieve the
congestion from other parts and make available once again building
stock for much needed housing.48

Geddes' penchant for conservation did not mean that he doubted

the need for more lanes and streets through Barrabazar. Business
sense also suggested that instead of widening existing streets, as the
CIT was planning to do, it was more reasonable that new
thoroughfares be opened through the back lots of the houses, which
Geddes had shown to be consisting of run-down property. Thus at
one stroke, new frontages would be opened up cheaply, lines for
sanitation would be easier to provide and the local business traffic
would also remain undisturbed. He himself suggested three
alternative west-east routes and condemned the north-south system
as, 'its origin appears to lie more in drawing-office routine than in
City Survey'.49 All CIT plans were made keeping the future needs of
motorized transport in mind yet according to Geddes the pressing
need of the hour was to improve pedestrian circulation within
Barrabazar, since the evidence of mass circulation by foot was only
too evident, as was the continuous use of human portage and hand
driven vehicles. On the value of preserving and extending lanes he
was particularly eloquent. Arguing that people like short-cuts he
wrote lyrically that:

'a lane after all is a pavement without a road beside it, and some
people value its quietness; while its narrow width and shade give
coolness also'.50

Geddes’ plans in fact show a gradation of roads — lanes for

pedestrians, streets for heavier mixed traffic, and large roads for intra-

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Patrick Geddes and the Metropolis 15

city communication. The logic behind such a move was to avoid

clogging up a single large avenue, overburdened with humans,
animals and vehicles, reducing mobility to crawling level. A simple
separation of traffic functions would enable both speed for vehicles
and faster mobility for commerce. Such a move would also help
preserve existing channels of circulation and not condemn them
unequivocally.

Despite his caution, Geddes was practical enough to realize that

some demolition was always necessary. He knew that sanitary
problems had become acute in Barrabazar and needed urgent
attention and thus Dr. Crake's survey won his sympathy. 'As a life-
long cobbler of old buildings and also with more respect than most
for the courtyard type of house I take a less severe view than his',
he wrote, 'but in a general way I am compelled to confirm and support
his criticism. His figures are well worth consulting'.51 Geddes' plans
to rebuild demolished areas included innovatively designed four-
storey blocks of houses which followed closely the traditional use
of space. The lower two storeys would be used for business purposes
while the upper two laid out like the traditional Indian courtyard
home would house residents. By raising the residential quarters to
the top floors, Geddes hoped to avoid the dirt and dust of lower floors.
The warehouses built below would be on modern lines with enough
provision for light and air.52 In these plans for the newly built four
storey houses Geddes envisaged some displacement. But it would
be balanced, he hoped, by creating adequate and in most cases better
places to stay.53 In some blocks only a few insanitary houses would
be removed, the space created would be converted into small open
areas and parks, and provide relief to the residents locally. Knowing
fully well that the creation of space for gardens would prove very
expensive in so valuable a site as Barrabazar, he urged again for the
conversion of roofs into small gardens. For women who were
reluctant to step out for lack of recreational space outside, he
suggested the ear-marking of small parks as exclusive 'purdah
gardens'.54

Writing just after the First World War, Geddes was sensitive that
large-scale demolitions would lead to losses in business and

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16 Partho Datta

dislocation of the labouring poor. He was no doubt aware about the

rumblings of discontent among the working classes in Calcutta and
its outskirts, which broke out after the War.55 Geddes realized that
it was vital for workers dependent on casual work to live close to
their place of employment. In sharp contrast to Richards, he argued
that the poor would not be able to travel from the suburbs to the
city, a luxury that only the upper classes could afford, since only
they had the means and the time to commute long distances daily.

Preserving and investing in existing housing stock was paramount

for Geddes. Too often, he urged, buildings are judged on superficial
grounds, 'so that dirty whitewash, broken plaster, and bad smell are
enough to evoke a cry for demolition; for these only need easy
cleansing and brightening, and economical repair'.56 He understood
the value that Indians placed on family homes only too well. Far
from deriding this attachment as old-fashioned conservatism
impeding progress, he was keen to turn it into an effective plea for
their repair and sanitation. He knew that for British planners in the
CIT, the notion of a family home was an alien concept. 'Family
homes' in the West belonged to the aristocracy and the majority of
people in cities lived in tenements and flats. He suggested that in its
own way, the Calcutta Municipality could take the 'paternal' step
towards granting loans to citizens for repairing their houses. Geddes
felt that as yet the investment in housing was too strictly seen through
the prism of financial gains and losses in the market. He wanted the
governing classes to invest in housing, so that socially at least they
could expect returns in the form of a satisfied and prosperous working
class.57 Implicit in this was an argument challenging Engels' famous
study on the condition of the English working classes. Engels had
almost suggested that the worsening housing condition would further
radicalize the workers and the goal of socialist revolution was to
'occupy' the houses of the propertied. Geddes argued against such a
view. The elites according to him lived in upper class super slums.
A far more genuine revolution would be setting new norms for more
humane and communal forms of living space.58

Geddes' ideas, unusual for their time met with scepticism and
were resisted even before his report was published. Shrosbree, the

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Patrick Geddes and the Metropolis 17

Chief Valuer, whose report on Barrabazar we have referred to earlier,

was critical of Geddes' attempts at solving the problem of 'nuisance
corners' by erecting small temples in their place. Shrosbree predicted
that this would freeze in perpetuity areas which needed reconstruction
work.59 Shrosbree's criticism showcased why Geddes' ideas were
mistrusted. Epidemics and overcrowding needed solutions on a war
footing according to official planners, whereas Geddes seemed not
only insufficiently interventionist, he was also far too sympathetic
to the community. Geddes was however accustomed to such attacks.
To the Calcutta Corporation's charge, that Geddes' scheme for small
open spaces between houses, would come to naught, since they
would rapidly turn into repositories for dumping refuse,60 he had
effective answers. Geddes argued that 'neutral' issues like that of
garbage actually hid a deep-seated antipathy for common people.
For the British administrators, Indians were inherently filthy and
prone to desecrating public places. For Geddes the problem was the
very opposite. Rubbish accumulated, he wrote, when neither the
Municipality nor the local landlord made adequate arrangements for
carting it away. Besides, planting of a few trees would indeed
maintain the sanctity of these small areas between houses and
encourage people to keep it clean.61 In other words open spaces
integrated into community life had more chance of surviving than
parks, the sanitary 'voids' that modern planners tended to prefer,
premised on the negative concept of a space that was just to be left
empty. Consequently constant policing of such spaces had become
necessary, threatening to overturn the very notion of a park made
for the people.

Helen Meller, in her important revaluation of Geddes' Barrabazar

report, has shown that he was often a victim of his own propaganda,
totally unresponsive to any point of view other than his own.62 He
was also prone to repeating his ideas irrespective of the context, some
of his pet schemes like 'purdah gardens' etc. resurfaced in all his
reports. For all his enthusiasm Geddes was perhaps too sanguine
about the rejuvenating effects of modern business organization in
Barrabazar. He misunderstood the constraints working on a colonial
economy and failed to understand the mercantilist nature of industry
in Calcutta, which eager to do business on the cheap was unlikely

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18 Partho Datta

to support his long term plans for a modern refurbished Barrabazar.

A modern produce exchange with the latest mechanical goods
handling facilities meant the redundancy of casual labour. In Chicago,
John Fairfield has pointed out that such a scheme was also proposed
by Bennett with an eye to quell labour militancy.63 One wonders if
Geddes was aware of the implications of some of his schemes for
Calcutta which had an overwhelming presence of unskilled labour.
Helen Rosenau has written that Geddes lacked architectural vision.
'The form of the image seems to have eluded Geddes' she
comments.64 But this view misrepresents Geddes and is not based
on any serious engagement with the range of his published reports.
The question of form in cities is often reduced to the profile of
monumental buildings and is a hangover from architectural history.
The assumption is that since Geddes had little to offer in terms of
the palpable built environment, therefore his ideas were not relevant
or that he had failed. Perhaps more pertinent is Françoise Choay's
comment that65:

' ... Patrick Geddes evolved the survey method at the beginning
of the 20th century. But while the method acted as a corrective
for urbanism by respecting the complexity of reality and
rejecting the apriori, it was nevertheless used by Geddes within
the context of a cultural system of values and it remained
dependent on the creative intervention of a planner.
Consequently it did not fundamentally alter the course of critical
planning'.

But the far-reaching implications of Geddes' work has eluded

these critics. Lewis Mumford has written that Geddes rejected the
'cult of the state' and central to his thought was not the planner but
the citizen.66

The Barrabazar report shows that Geddes was willing to enter

into a strategic dialogue with official planning. However those who
professed sympathy with his plans in official circles often rejected
his schemes on the ground that they were idealistic in nature.
Anticipating such a ploy, Geddes wrote in his Barrabazar report that:

'every worker who ventures upon the application of science,

beyond the traditional mechanical level on which the 'practical

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Patrick Geddes and the Metropolis 19

man' prides himself, is taken by him for 'an idealist' - a term

which often conveniently dispenses him from hearing what the
idealist has to say ...'.67

Over the years as Geddes' reputation for dissent grew, his India
reports attracted a motley group of planners. In the 1920s and 1930s
the library of the Calcutta Improvement Trust became a 'Mecca' for
young British planners who were keen to consult the complete set
of Indian reports which were kept there.68

Geddes’ hopes of attracting Indian nationalists also failed. While

the scientist Jagadis Bose (Geddes wrote his biography), Ananda
Coomaraswamy and Rabindranath Tagore became his friends and
supporters, they did not respond to his ideas on urbanism (the only
exception was the academic Radha Kamal Mukherjee). Others like
Bipin Chandra Pal despite their strident anti-colonialism were
dazzled by the prospect of an Indian metropolis founded on modern
European models. The response of Indian nationalists to alternative
models of urbanism was therefore at best quite ambivalent.

References

1
R.K. Home, 'Town Planning and Garden Cities in the British Colonial
Empire, 1910-1940', Planning Perspectives 5, No.1, Jan 1990,27.
2
This needs to be qualified. The 1857 uprising provoked a major crackdown
on cities by the British. Delhi and Lucknow had to be re-occupied and were
severely restructured to control recalcitrant populations. For some historians
military occupation began modern town planning in India. See Narayani
Gupta, Delhi Between Two Empires 1803-1931 (Delhi : Oxford University
Press, 1981), Veena Oldenburg, The Making of Colonial Lucknow 1856-
1877 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984).
3
Christian Topalov, 'From the "social question" to "urban problems":
Reformers and the working classes at the turn of the twentieth century',
International Social Science Journal, No.125, August, 1990.
4
Norma Evenson, Paris, A Century of Change 1878-1978 (New Haven and
London: Yale University Press, 1979), 22-23, 265, Douglas E. Goodfriend,
'The Tyranny of the Right-Angle: Colonial and Post-Colonial Urban

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20 Partho Datta

Development in Delhi, 1857-1957', Design, No.26, April-June, 1982, Carl

Schroske, 'The Ringstrasse, its critics and the birth of urban modernism' in
Fin de Siecle Vienna, Politics and Culture (New York: Vintage Books, 1981).
5
Norma Evenson, The Indian Metropolis, A View Toward the West (Delhi:
Oxford University Press, 1989), 124.
6
J.M. Linton Bogle, Town Planning in India (Bombay: Oxford University
Press, 1929), 8.
7
H. V. Lanchester, ‘Indian Cities and their Improvement’, Architecture
Design and Construction, 12 June, 1942, 119. Lanchester worked in India
and published a plan on Madras, Town Planning in Madras, A Review of
the Conditions and Requirements of City Improvement and Development in
the Madras Presidency (London: Constable and Company, 1918).
8
Helen Meller, Patrick Geddes, Social Evolutionist and City Planner
(London: Routledge, 1990).
9
I owe this insight to the late Professor Satyesh Chakrabarty, Calcutta.
10
Patrick Geddes, Cities in Evolution (1915, rpt. London: Williams and
Norgate, 1949), 16.
11
Douglas E. Goodfriend, 'Nagar Yoga: The Culturally Informed Town
Planning of Patrick Geddes in India 1914-24', Human Organization 38,
No.4, Winter, 1979.
12
Ram Guha, 'Patrick Geddes and Ecological Town Planning in India' (a
talk at Urban Design Research Institute, Bombay, October 5, 2001). Sekhar
Krishnan made available to me a typescript of this unpublished talk.
13
Patrick Geddes, 'The Temple Cities', The Modern Review 25, No.3, March
1919, 213.
14
Helen Meller, 'Cities and Evolution: Patrick Geddes as an international
prophet of town planning before 1914' in Anthony Sutcliffe ed. The Rise of
Modern Urban Planning 1800-1914 (London: Mansell, 1980). See also,
Ram Guha, 'Prehistory of Indian Environmentalism, Intellectual Traditions',
Economic and Political Weekly XXVII, 1-2, January 4-11, 1992.
15
Dorothea Hollins (ed.), Utopian papers, Being Addresses to The Utopians'
by Professor Patrick Geddes, S.H. Swinney, Dr. J.W. Slaughter, V. V.
Branford, Dr. Lionel Taylor, Sister Nivedita, F. W. Felkin and Rev. Joseph
Wood (London: Masters and Co.,1908), 6.
16
Robert Fishman, Urban Utopias in the Twentieth Century: Ebenezer
Howard, Frank Wright and Le Corbusier (New York: Basic Books, 1977), 6.

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Patrick Geddes and the Metropolis 21
17
Jaqueline Tyrwhitt ed. Patrick Geddes in India (London: Lund Humphries,
1947), 24. This is an important anthology of extracts from his Indian reports.
18
Jaqueline Tyrwhitt, Patrick Geddes in India, 41.
19
Here it was C.M.Vil1iers-Stuart's Gardens of the Great Mughals (1913),
a pioneering feminist reading of the nurturing tradition of women in towns
that had a great influence on Geddes, Helen Meller, Patrick Geddes, Social
Evolutionist and City Planner, 219.
20
Most famously in his report on Indore city. See Patrick Geddes, Town
Planning: A Report to the Durbar of Indore, 2 Vols, (Indore: Holkar Printing
Press, 1918).
21
Geddes did not homegenize the community, nor did he romanticise it as
a perpetual bulwark against the state. Planning for Geddes was a creative
way to raise the standards of civic life in general. For a view of how modern
sanitation adjudicates and destroys communities, see Dipesh Chakrabarty,
'Open Space/Public Space: Garbage, Modernity and India', South Asia XIV,
I, 1991. But also see Nita Kumar's riposte, 'Culture and Filth', The India
Magazine 17, November 1997.
22
Douglas E. Goodfriend, 'Nagar Yoga', 344.
23
Anthony King, 'Exporting Planning: The colonial and the neo-colonial
experience' in Gordon Cherry (ed.), Shaping an Urban World (London:
Mansell, 1980).
24
Anthony King, 'Exporting planning', 210.
25
H. Beverly, Report on the Census of the Town and Suburbs of Calcutta.
Taken on the 17th February 1881 (Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Press, 1881),
22, 46.
26
T.Smith, ‘Daily Life of a Sahib in Calcutta’, Calcutta Review 12, No.24,
1849.
27
Quoted in Norma Evenson, The Indian Metropolis, 130.
28
Frank G. Clemow, M.D., and W.C. Hossack, M.D., Report upon the
Sanitary Condition of Ward VII (Burra Bazar) Calcutta (Calcutta:
Municipality, 1899).
29
John R Kellett, The Impact of Railways on Victorian Cities (London:
Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969), 2; Anthony Wohl, The Eternal Slum
(London, Edward Arnold, 1977), 39.
30
Helen Meller, Patrick Geddes, Social Evolutionist and City Planner, 236;

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22 Partho Datta

Lewis Mumford, 'The Disciple's Rebellion, A Memoir of Patrick Geddes',

Encounter XXVII, 3, September, 1966, 11.
31
Patrick Geddes Papers, University of Edinburgh, Ms 10576.
32
Helen Meller, Patrick Geddes, Social Evolutionist and City Planner, f.n.37,
231.
33
Ram Guha has raised the question if Geddes' penchant for the 'middle or
human scale' proved to be a limitation. See Ram Guha, 'Patrick Geddes and
Ecological Town Planning'.
34
E.P. Richards, Calcutta Improvement Trust: Report by Request of the
Trust on the Condition, Improvement and Town Planning of the City of
Calcutta and Contiguous Areas (Hertfordshire: Jennings and Bewley, 1914).
35
P.J. Smith, 'Planning as environmental improvement: Slum clearance in
Victorian Edinburgh' in Anthony Sutcliffe (ed.) The Rise of Modern Urban
Planning, 1800-1914 (London: Mansell, 1980), 101, and Françoise Choay,
The Modern City, Planning in the Nineteenth Century (London: Studio Vista,
1970), 15-16.
36
Though he rebelled against his mentor, Lewis Mumford, 'The Disciple's
Rebellion, A Memoir of Patrick Geddes'. For the Geddessian approach to
the American city as exemplified in Mumford's life-work see the excellent
account by Ram Guha, 'Lewis Mumford: The Forgotten American
Environmentalist: An Essay in Rehabilitation', Culture Nature Socialism 2,
3,1991.
37
Lewis Mumford, City in History, Its Origins, Its Transformations and its
Prospects (London: Seeker and Warburg, 1961), 427, 438.
38
H.M. Crake, Report on Sanitary Condition of Northern portion of City of
Calcutta (Calcutta: CIT, 1911).
39
Albert de Bois Shrosbree, Calcutta Improvement Trust. Note on
Barrabazar Improvements (Calcutta: CIT, Estates and Valuation Department,
1916), 5, 14.
40
CIT Annual Report, 1912-13 (Calcutta: C1T, 1913), 27-28.
41
M.Christine Boyer, Dreaming the Rational City: The Myth of American
City Planning (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1983, 1994), 288.
42
Patrick Geddes, Barra Bazar Improvement, A Report (Calcutta:
Corporation Press, 1919), 27-28.

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Patrick Geddes and the Metropolis 23
43
Patrick Geddes, Barra Bazar Improvement, 5.
44
Patrick Geddes, Barra Bazar Improvement, 5.
45
Patrick Geddes, Barra Bazar Improvement, 6.
46
Samita Gupta, 'Theory and Practice of town planning in Calcutta, 1817-
1912', Indian Economic and Social History Review XXX, 1, Jan-Mar 1993,
35.
47
Patrick Geddes, Barra Bazar Improvement, 6-7, 10-11, 13.
48
Patrick Geddes, Barra Bazar Improvement, 16, 18-19.
49
Patrick Geddes, Barra Bazar Improvement, 8, 11.
50
Patrick Geddes, Barra Bazar Improvement, 12.
51
Patrick Geddes, Barra Bazar Improvement, 22.
52
Patrick Geddes, Barra Bazar Improvement, 14.
53
Patrick Geddes, Barra Bazar Improvement, 15, 19, 33.
54
Patrick Geddes, Barra Bazar Improvement, 20-22.
55
For details see, Partho Datta, 'Strikes in the Greater Calcutta Region,
1918-24', Indian Economic and Social History Review 30, 1, 1993.
56
Patrick Geddes, Barra Bazar Improvement, 33.
57
Patrick Geddes, Barra Bazar Improvement, 29-30, 34.
58
Lewis Mumford, City in History, 464-465. According to Mumford, Geddes
described the downward movement of building and housing in the modern
city as: 'Slum, semi-slum and super slum, to this has come the Evolution of
Cities'.
59
Albert de Bois Shrosbree, Calcutta Improvement Trust: Note on
Barrabazar Improvements, 6.
60
Report on the Municipal Administration of Calcutta, 1919-20 (Calcutta:
Corporation Press, 1920), 18.
61
Patrick Geddes, Barra Bazar Improvement, 32.
62
Helen Meller, Patrick Geddes, Social Evolutionist and City Planner, 283.
63
John D. Fairfield, The Mysteries of the Great City, The Politics of Urban
Design, 1877-1917 (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1993), 121.

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24 Partho Datta

64
Helen Rosenau, The Ideal City, Its Architectural Evolution (London: Studio
Vista, 1974), 150.
65
Francoise Choay, The Modern City, Planning in the 19th Century, 109.
66
Lewis Mumford, 'Introduction', Jaqueline Tyrwhitt, Patrick Geddes in
India, 12.
67
Patrick Geddes, Barra Bazar Improvement, 35.
68
Helen Meller, Patrick Geddes, Social Evolutionist and City Planner, 203.
For another sympathetic reading of Geddes' Barrabazar Report, see Martin
Beattie, 'Sir Patrick Geddes and Barra Bazar: competing visions,
ambivalence and contradiction', The Journal of Architecture 9, 2004.
Grateful thanks to Indrani Chatterjee who drew my attention to this essay.

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