Model villages and other early examples of planned housing

In most cases historic urban development was a gradual process that also involved large-scale interventions. Most of the housing was the result of private initiative, but there are also many examples of speculative house building from the Middle Ages onwards. Urban development was often disorderly and non-linear. There are, however, examples of planned housing. These can include completely new settlements (villages, towns and cities), sometimes with a specific function, but also extensions or functional urban quarters (e.g. harbour with docks warehouses and housing for workers).

The term model village was first used by the Victorians to describe the new settlements created on the rural estates of the landed gentry in the 18th century. The term was transferred from the aesthetic to the functional to signify a type of often self-contained community built by industrialists to house their workers near the place of work. First to be built in England was Trowse (Newton) where in 1805 a model village was started on the edge of the Crown Point Estate which was later expanded by the owners of Coleman's Mustard Factory. The second one was Blaise Hamlet (1811) on the edge of the Blaise Estate not far from Bristol. Both should be seen as functional and decorative additions to the landscape park in the tradition of the hameau (a mock village that goes back to the ferme orné - the ornate farm). Some earlier examples can be seen in France (e.g. Hameau de Chantilly - 1774 and Hameau de La Reine - 1783) and Germany (e.g. Dörfchen Nymphenburg - 1764 and Dörfchen Schönbusch - 1789). In fact the model village Brandenbusch built for Albert Krupp near the Villa Hügel is fairly similar -although much later (1885).

Apart from these decorative spatial interventions, there was a long tradition in providing accommodation, especially in towns and cities. Convents and monasteries are a good example, although not open to the public. The beguinage has been mentioned before as a way of providing a safe living environment for unmarried woman in the medieval cities of the Low Countries. There were more of these semi-religious institutions, most notably the Gasthuis (literally Guesthouse, but more properly translated as Hospital or Hospice) and the Heilige Geest Huizen (Houses of the Holy Spirit) that were funded by church collections and were thus akin to almshouses. In the Netherlands the (protestant) almshouses were often modelled on (catholic) beguinages with terraced housing around a communal green or garden.

The City of London Freeman's Almshouses in Brixton were built to the same model as the beguinage, but more spacious. These buildings (1850-82) are still used to house retired or otherwise needy people as a form of sheltered housing.

In the 16th century attitudes to criminals changed and more emphasis was placed on preventing reoffending. For this workhouses were built in many cities (Bridewell London -1555, Spinhuis and Rasphuis Amsterdam - 1597). Also there were poorhouses which evolved into rehabilitation colonies for pauper far from the cities (Koloniën van Weldadigheid 1818).  In these reform housing colonies paupers, vagrants, prostitutes and pimps were housed to be retrained as farmers or farmhands. Apart from these large (gated) estates most charitable provisions were on a small scale as most people were left to fend for themselves.

Wortel-Kolonie was a reform housing colony where the central closed unit is still used as a prison. The whole estate was built on former heathland that was cultivated by inmates.

Most model villages were born out of necessity as during the industrial revolution many industries established themselves in rural spots with access to waterpower, raw materials or coal, but with little to no housing provision nearby. So industrialists started to provide small cottages from a paternalistic attitude. Most of the best-known model villages should be seen as a type of philanthropic housing. Dwellings companies also had social aims, but were at the same time aimed at making a profit from their developments of working class housing. By the end of the nineteenth century some city councils also started developing purpose-built housing for working class and middle class people whilst at the same time clearing slums (that were the result of unchecked development in the decades before). Examples can be found in London, Berlin, Rotterdam, Amsterdam, etcetera. Most councils don't involve themselves in this however as they wish not to interfere with private enterprise (an argument also used for privatising social housing).  

A separate category are the many colonies built to house miners and other heavy industry workers. These workers colonies initially provided no amenities only basic accommodation. Some of these colonies were built on land adjacent to existing settlements, others were built near isolated collieries. Influenced by social reformers and liberals industrialist adopted a more paternalist attitude towards their workers, creating housing in combination with leisure clubs, schools and such. This was well understood self preservation by the industrialists as this bound the workers to their employer with the added bonus of being able to prevent self organisation by claiming good working conditions. Workers colonies started to look more like model villages in a sense. Some even had a church, a community hall and leisure facilities. Many famous football clubs -Borussia Dortmund of the Ruhr Area, named after the Borussia Colliery- are examples of this. Typically model housing is mixed, but with some degree of segregation between workers, middle management and the directors and other higher personnel.

An example of commercial suburban development from the 1920s in Haringey. Street after street of houses that share the exact same floor plan but have some minor decorative differences to distinguish between streets.

From 1900 onwards the model village, the paternalistic factory housing, Lebensreform and the ideas of the Garden City Movement are fused into the development of special mixed neighbourhoods and housing developments that are often seen as exemplary for the Garden City Movement. In England these are typically low density, whilst in continental Europe they can also include flats and communal gardens. The low density neighbourhoods also form the staple of urban sprawl along urban railways, so in England it is often difficult to distinguish between garden villages and commercial suburban housing. Purely commercial developments always tend to be more samely, however, with little variation in floor plan and outside appearance.

Against the wall: urban improvement and art

On my way to friends I cycle through a nice 1960s estate on a spacious layout with low-rise blocks of flats and above and below housing in long rows. The dwellings are tiny and this social rented housing slowly became the place where problem tenants were moved to. Such a concentrations of people with socioeconomic and/or mental problems always leads to more problems...

The first kneejerk reaction was to tear down the buildings. That would only move the problem as cheap rental accommodation would no longer be available and the current residents would have to be moved into more expensive rented accommodation and have their rents subsidised. (Why do politicians insist on pumping around money in that way?) In 2008 the crisis meant that restructuring plans were delayed and the decision was taken in 2010 to refurbish the flats. As part of these efforts these murals appeared quite suddenly at the end of 2016. People complain a lot about graffiti, but these spray-painted murals seem to go down well -as I understood from passersby as I was taking pictures.

Urban planning, how a German preoccupation became common practice

It is often said that what sets the Germans apart as a people is that they like everything nicely planned and neatly organised. This is certainly true, but the same can be said of Scandinavian and Dutch people. It is no surprise to most that modern urban planning originated in Germany. Camillo Sitte starts his treatise on town planning with an historic overview beginning with Ancient Greece. This is hardly relevant; the oldest cities in the Germanic lands go back to Celtic and Roman military fortress and city foundations. In most cases the lines of the regular Roman fortress are difficult to recognise in the present city (e.g. Mainz, Cologne, Trier and Utrecht); in rare cases the crossing main streets can still be understood from the plan (e.g. Vienna, Maastricht and Regensburg). Apart from some relics little remains. In that sense the history of present cities starts after the Roman Era.

Yet the cities we see today don't look anything like those medieval cities as these were constructed mostly of wood as some charming relics in German cities still show. Most of what we can see today wandering around our cities dates from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, often with a ring of developments from after 1900 around. Especially in bombed-out cities few historic buildings remain. Amongst the historic cities there are cities that were planned as an entire entity (e.g. Freudenstadt, Mannheim, Ludwigslust, Ludwigsburg, Karlsruhe, Elburg and Willemstad). Some of the so-called new cities were expansions of an existing town (e.g. Hanau, Harlem, Krefeld and Dusseldorf). These typically had a regular street plan as a variation on a grid; the northward expansion of Antwerp is also a good example. Sometimes the choice for a regular street plan was based on classicist theory (Elburg and Karlsruhe), but mostly it was seen as a practical way of parcelling land. Especially in the 18th and 19th centuries urban expansion in the German realm took the shape of a regular pattern forced on the situation. The expansion of Vienna, Pest, Munich (Maxvorstadt) and Berlin (Friedrichstadt and Dorotheenstadt) are good examples of this.

These planned urban extensions often had strict rules concerning the building line, building height, type of roof, material and style of facade, as architecture was seen as the vehicle for quality. The ideal was after all to create a beautiful district to enhance the city as a whole and bring fame to the ruler who had initiated it. In the Dutch Republic there was no absolute ruler, so cities were run by an elite of bankers, guilds and merchants. These advocated private enterprise, but still laid down some rules for planned new urban districts -the famed Canal Belt of Amsterdam is a good example. Medieval cities already had several directives in place concerned with type of use, access and sanitation (to prevent the spread of disease and fire), so there is a long history of setting building rules and designating use.

The big change came with industrialisation. In England cities grew unchecked into large conurbations without much structure. The resulting transport problems are felt to this day in places like Greater Manchester and Greater London. Industrialisation in mainland Europe started first in Wallonia (Belgium) and spread from there to the Ruhr Area, the Campine and beyond. At first industrial expansion and private house building for the new workers went hand in hand. Speculative house building quickly lead to bad living conditions that were recognised as detrimental to the productivity of workers. This lead to company-lead housing projects that took the shape of workers colonies near the factory or works. These colonies were often rather haphazard in layout and made most of the land available. Most consist of little more than one or more streets -often cul-de-sacs- with housing on either side.

The first big improvement took place in Mulhouse with the creation of large housing quarters on a regular plan with the pioneering Mulhouse Quadrangle. This house type was rapidly taken up by industrialists building workers colonies for their collieries and factories in Belgium (Beringen-Mijn, Genk-Zwartberg, Genk-Waterschei, Overpelt-Lommel and Olen), Germany (Neukirchen-Vleun, Repelen, Essen, Mulhouse and Gelsenkirchen) and the Netherlands (Budel, Heerlen and Landgraaf). Especially in Germany colonies were planned as regular entities combining housing and certain amenities and facilities (Seraing, Alfredshof, Nordbahndorfl, Kolonie Eickel), but industrialist in neighbouring countries quickly followed suit.

Improvements in agriculture lead to more land being cultivated with higher yield and less people needed to do the work. This also lead to a growth in urban populations. Better sanitation meant lower rates of child deaths and greater longevity for workers in general. Also the middle class expanded. All these people needed to be housed. This was mainly seen as a technical issue in the 19th century. Sometimes public health was also taken into account. An early example of this is the 1854 Singelplan (Perimeter Moat Plan) for Rotterdam, combining the need to adjust the drainage situation for development (by creating more surface water), ensuring water flow in otherwise stagnant canals and making sure polluted water would be diverted around the city. The plea Sitte makes in his book for a return to town planning on artistic principles was basically an attempt by architects to take back control from the engineers that were now mostly involved with urban expansion. The result was the birth of a new profession: the urban planner.

On the left the sketch (1913) and the final plan (1914) for Rotterdam - Blijdorp by Burgdorffer shows artistic urban design. The building plan for Hellerau (on the right) with 5 functional categories is a good examples of the German approach.

German historian Gerhard Fehl distinguishes three movements: Stadtplanung (town planning), Siedlungsbau (housing estate development) and Stadtbaukunst (urban design). Reinhard Baumeister (1833-1917) and Josefh Stübben (1845-1936) saw urban planning as a kind of social and hygienic politics that was termed Stadtplanung. Both advocated a flexible General Plan with prescribed building lines to better cope with changing future demands. Problems should be resolved via technical means. The urban expansion plan was at the heart of this type of urban planning.

Others advocated the integration of social and psychological sciences with spatial planning. The result of this Siedlungsbau would be a living environment that worked as an educational machine. A merely technical approach wouldn't suffice for people like von Mangoldt, Eberstadt, Goecke and Messel as they saw urban planning as a way of creating better people through a better living environment and better housing. Some company housing falls in this category as it integrated housing, schools, shops, communal facilities, community spaces, social clubs and recreational facilities.

The last strain of urban planning in Germany around 1900 was town planning as an aesthetic and educational strategy. This variant was very influential in both Germany and the surrounding countries. It is this type of town planning that Unwin refers to in his book (although he shows many examples of flexible expansion planning in his book taken from Der Städtebau by Stübben). Camillo Sitte, Karl Henrici and Cornelius Gurlitt are saw urban planning as an art form -hence  Stadtbaukunst- that could solve the problems of cultural decay and alienation. Their main focus lay with designing public space (an relied on engineers to make the city as a whole work). This rather singular focus that disregarded the city as a whole lead to fierce criticism from for instance Albert Erich Brinckmann, an art historian.

All these planners had one thing in common: a clear focus on shaping change, managing renewal and realising improvements to better the lives of residents. In idealistic idea like that of Ebenezer Howard and his Garden Cities of To-morrow were quickly absorbed in the existing practice and became integrated in Siedlungsbau, with the aesthetic aspects of Stadtbaukunst added. This aesthetic wasn't merely focussed on the romantic and informal but also would lend itself to design exercises in New Objectivity (Siedlung Törten, Siedlung Dammerstock and Tuindorp De Burgh) and Early Modernism (Gartenstadt Falkenberg, Onkel Toms Hüttte, Batadorp, Betondorp, La Cité Moderne and Tuinwijk Kapelleveld). The strong undercurrent of civil engineering always remained. It was this practical mix that conquered mainland Europe as it provided very realistic way of managing urban expansion for (local) governments, professional specialists and residents alike.

The General Plan for the town of Heerlen from 1936 showing the existing built-up area, the existing and planned infrastructure and the designated use of other areas set aside for industrial use, housing or nature (the valleys of the Geleen and Caumer brooks).

After 1933 functionalist modernists break away from rationalists and traditionalists. This functionalism would later become international modernism. This in turn resulted in a counter movement: postmodernism. All these "isms" use a general plan, zoning and a restrictive or relaxed type of use planning. The main differences are to be found in the organisation of infrastructure, the (absent) relation between placement of buildings and infrastructure, the scale of the (design) intervention, relationship to existing context and the preferred mode of transport as central to the layout and the experience of the urban landscape.

Winter waning: white weekend

I woke up to a white world this weekend, with a light dusting of snow covering the city. There have been days with snow before this winter, but this is probably the last expression of winter cold as temperatures are set to rise.

The crocuses I planted last autumn are showing already (left). For the rest the evergreen plants are peeking through the snow with the ivy (middle) almost completely covered and the ferns (right) standing proud of the carpet of white.