Notes and comments on the book:
Origins of Modern Urban
OF LEONARDO Benevolo
by N. FERNANDO WINFIELD REYES.
To Benevolo, modern urbanism is not born at the same time the first cities industrial but arises as a delayed reaction to attempt to correct the imbalances caused by the profound changes of the period of industrialization. Notes that even at the present time, urban knowledge applied with a delay in relation to the phenomena that seeks to control. In this regard, considers it important to review the early historical urban experience which applied to the problems of the industrial city.
Benevolo says that those experiences undertaken by the first industrial city reformers were inspired from two points of view, both technical and moralistic, seeking to correct imbalances produced social and economic in the first period of the industrial city, which places it between 1815 and 1848, despite acknowledging that the process of industrialization and transformation of the city long before it occurs from mid-eighteenth century, however, the first attempts to order the city of that period were located between the dates mentioned above.
For the various attempts to correct the problems of the industrial city can be two categories: that of the Utopians, who sought to regenerate the industrial city starting from the beginning from the creation of urban ways of living dictated by the theory but lacks a link between such attitudes with their environment and without an overall view of urban problems and on the other hand, specialists and technicians that give rise to planning legislation since the implementation of sanitary regulations, mainly due to the constant outbreaks and the unhealthiness of the working class neighborhoods.
Benevolo says that the vast majority of these initiatives coincide with a backdrop ideological approach that would find great matches with the principles of modern socialism, and later the year 1848 can be understood as a break date, since Since then loses the connection between politics and planning discipline that had characterized earlier periods of the industrial city in the West. Since then, urban take a look at the power technique constituted within the scope of a new conservative ideology. Since this is the central thesis of the book, Benevolo proposed for the present time the need for urban culture to resume contact with " political forces that tend to a similar overall transformation of society " (9). It is interesting
the definition of urban provided by volunteers from the conviction of the necessary link between urban planning and policy stating:
urbanism is a part of the policy, necessary to realize all the operational programs [...] To improve the distribution of human activity in the territory is necessary to improve economic and social relations of which depends on the activity, otherwise not sufficient to improve the economic and social relations that space are automatically corrected, but the change of spatial relationships is one way, inseparable from each other, to achieve overall balance that is the end of political action 10).
In the formation of the industrial city from the second half of the eighteenth century, population growth is the first decisive transformation as a result of the changes created by the production in the organization of work and innovative techniques. While increases, the population changes its distribution throughout the country as a result of economic changes. The changes in production generated the development of a new economic system based on the concentration of capital in the cities, first in England and later in other countries.
One of the first changes is introduced by the application of steam to the production of yarn and fabric from 1769, the old factories dispersed organization has been concentrating then in large factories in the course of the rivers and later near coal mines, by using these resources as a driving force. Technical advances make it in less than thirty years to generate a significant increase in industrial production. Benevolo says that in England
the development of industries and their concentration in large workshops attracted many families from the southern agricultural districts of the miners in the north and center, and moved from the isolated vi-housing in the countryside , the compact neighborhoods built near the factories, as well born, suddenly, new towns, and many of the old rose excessive manner (19-20).
industrial cities offered to employers of labor have always in stock and replaced, while workers will nevertheless be exploited in long hours working in the cities found a wider variety of choices and the ability to integrate according to common interests. Moreover, the requirements of the business of producing and trading forced the renovation and expansion of communication networks and new and more efficient means of transport. According to transmission and expanding commercial movement, cities were becoming more important to focus centers Decision of the economy. Together these changes altered not only the territorial distribution of the population, but also their lifestyles, land use and landscape picture.
liberal thought the time had an enormous influence on politics and government, founding a school of thought that contributed to the weakening of authoritarian initiative of the city, to abolish the old urban legal restrictions, discrediting and weakening the methods urban control of preceding eras. To this end:
The baroque urban systematization, and especially some courtly compositions the first half of the seventeenth century, sometimes anticipated, so suggestive, the spatial dimension of the modern city but remain [...] totally unrelated to the temporal dimension thereafter as determined conditions in a new environment Urban (26-7).
The contrast with the ancient city is evident. While the former remained almost unchanged in extended periods of time, which can receive a defined architectural form that would provide for future growth potential, which characterizes the emerging industrial city is the increasing speed of their transformations. Therefore and from the mid eighteenth century, no longer a paradox that:
while the architecture of your account reaches the maximum projection subtle mo-monumentality environments and its harmonization with the natural or urban landscape decreases Executive consistency and the ability to form lasting impact, with the same resources in fabric of the city (34).
The growing migration to the cities has to multiply the possibilities of accommodation in the available space of the old quarters, but when these are insufficient, creating vast slum on the outskirts of the city. The accommodation in both cases slightly varied within very narrow limits and a common trait were overcrowded and unsanitary conditions prevailing. The image of the city's first industrial period can be characterized by the following description of the city of Manchester provided by Frederick Engels in The situation of the working class (65-68):
... colossal buildings of six to seven floors, with its tall, narrow chimneys dominate the low cot-tages workers.
Parallel to these transformations of material, technological, economic and social, there is a growing awareness and reporting of the problems of the industrial city, generating changes in the notion of poverty, known then as a social evil can and should be avoided with the means available. This reaction will be the main engine of various attempts to reform the industrial city. For
Benevolo that defines the ideology of the urban form and the spirit of modern urbanism can be understood as follows:
modern urbanism is not just an attempt to visually represent these alternatives, translated instances transcends their organization spaces, but also a concrete stands as one of the factors that assist in building a democratic community. So lose the apparent position of remoteness from social conflicts [...] It occurs most humbly, as one of the techniques needed to define this balance, no longer pointing towards a perfect needs to be done at once, but to a series of partial modifications, to a reasonable compromise between the forces at play, which must be renewed continuously according to their reciprocating (55).
The period between the years 1815 to 1848 is, according to Benevolo, the era of the great hopes in the planning that aims to transform social inequalities, which are easily linked to technical arguments with ideological arguments, ee also characterized by the emergence of dual nature, science and moralist, of modern urbanism. Within this general framework, insert two lines of action to seek to resolve recognized problems in the industrial city: the utopias of the first half of the nineteenth century and attempts to implement them characterized by Owen, Saint-Simon, Fourier and Cabet, and the experiments under way from the healthcare field to address urban problems from the demands of industrial development.
Among the utopias of the first half of the nineteenth century points to the following:
Owen and English co-operativist movement. The central thesis of Robert Owen (1771-1858) cautions that the environmental conditions that determine the fate of individuals, which is why it is necessary to reconstruct the environment in the service of man, before thinking some other form of benefit. Thus it introduces a number of benefits in working conditions and housing for workers, and lead to postulate the universality of its system as long as work in small habitats, while recognizing the importance of starting to apply it somewhere. His ideas coincide with the birth of modern socialism, trying to encourage more labor of the working classes, that the mechanical strength. The community model is proposed by Owen from 1000 to 1200 square acres are located in different buildings with capacity for 1200 people, beyond the gardens proposed, emplazarían industries and factories.
Three of the sides of the perimeter are intended for housing, particularly for those house-das, each consisting of four houses. The fourth side is reserved for children who exceed the number of two per family or having more than three years [...] On the other side are downtown housing for the general superintendent, the priest, the teacher [... ] Outside and behind the houses around, gardens surrounded by roads (67).
For Owen unemployment is a result of a misallocation of capital into the company and applies the increase in workers' wages to make consumer goods and not just instruments of production. The implementation of these ideas takes Owen to the foundation of this model in a-spot than 30,000 acres in Indiana, which is named New Harmony. Back in England in 1832, he founded the National Equitable Labour Exchange, a movement to bring about improvements in working conditions of workers and reform the British economy. In this sense, can be considered Owen as one of the pioneers of trade unionism. There followed the founding of a community in Queenswood, Hampshire. While their economic ideals of the working class had to be translated years later with the incorporation of cooperatives in English law, spatial aspects he considered inseparable social reform were not performed. Continuity of its development plans were J. Morgan, who was to influence later in JS Buckingham, designer of the city of Victoria.
Saint-Simonian school. The consequences of industrialization began to have strong implica-tions in France in more recent times in England and 1830. Saint-Simon proposed that the new industrial occupy positions of command and vacate the ruling classes. His followers, imbued with great public spirit, come to have great political influence in the French government and can be considered supporters of a culture of large-scale performances with a moral emphasis on society in so-called public works.
Charles Fourier's influence in Europe and America. His proposal is based on the belief that you can achieve a more just society based on joint efforts in eight incremental periods up to universal harmony. The city hosted the sixth period is from three zones: a central area containing the main public buildings, a second zone that houses the suburbs and other important buildings-tions, while the latter allows for broad avenues and the periphery . Each home has open space at least equivalent to the area of \u200b\u200bconstruction in the first zone, increasing its share for second twice and three times more for the last part of the city. Some urban aesthetic principles we are added to the planning of the city, for example, excludes the orthogonal to the design of roads and places an emphasis on the enjoyment of the landscape created, which would have the background of the landscape setting, or a monument of architecture. Aims to prevent the construction of small houses and accurate collective rooms need a larger scale to promote the concentration of services and common relations. For the seventh will be added to the city undifferentiated unit device that you called Falansterio, requiring an area a square league of 1500 1600 people. The Falange is the attempt to remedy the mess of the emerging urban industrial cities in France and can be seen as an internalization of public space, since all parts of this large urban building are connected by streets and gallery with no open roads outdoors. In subsequent years, these proposals would have a major influence on the construction of socialist communities in France and the United States, as the case of Brook Farm and Sylvania. The
familistery Godin. Jean Baptiste Godin decided carry out the Fourier Falanterio with some modifications in 1859. The Godin familistery organized into blocks of buildings closed grouped around courtyards cover. In 1880 established a cooperative to administer the factory workers themselves and familistery and states that it was in operation until 1939, the community grew to about four families and is undoubtedly the greatest achievement of all the theoretical attempts socialism.
Cabet egalitarian tradition. Between 1830 and 1848 is a recurring memory of the 1789 Revolution in France. Etienne Cabet participated in the revolution of 1830 and was subsequently exiled to England, where he met Owen. His ideas are reflected in a utopian novel in which he describes an imaginary country, Icaria, which represents as a city order drawn on a perfect grid and integrated by two concentric rings or boulevards. Back in France, began his political program of integral communism and persuaded a group of families to undertake to North America for the foundation of their projects. After a series of failures, in 1849 the "Icarian" rebuilt on the ruins of the founding Mormon settlement of Nauvoo. Later Cabet died in 1875 most were moved to Iowa and found Icaria, but internal dissension led to the creation of a second settlement they call New Icaria, in an effort to reconstruct the environment proposed by Cabet.
should be noted that both the Fourier Falansterio as Godin familistery are like small-sized cities covered, and this city on a small scale is determined as a large building. Ra Benevolo considered that these proposals with great projects anticipate further developed in the twentieth century as the housing unit of Le Corbusier, or the proposed urban Wright's Broadacre City to use the density similar to that described by Owen or Falansterio Fourier.
be understood that these early utopian aspirations of the working classes aspired to comple-tion transformation of society, certain critical content that attacked the bases of existing society-existent, proclaiming social harmony while to shaping the social class antagonism. Therefore:
offered solutions to the problem of the modern city are abstract and schematic, as they lack a realistic assessment of the linkages between urban programs and the overall development of economic and social relations, so that facilitate illusion that the urban order and social order are identified with each other, and that the latter can be built with the pace and methods of the first (113).
Theoretical research of social reformers will be used by Howard in the garden cities and the German designers of the Siedlungen the first war, impoverishing the concept of the ideal city to make it a subordinate element of the modern metropolis: the neighborhood more or less independent satellite. But the programs and initiatives born before 1848 still exist in our culture to indicate a much more ambitious, namely, the organization of the entire urban and rural landscape on the basis of new economic and social relations (114-5) .
light of the failure of parish government in England in the late eighteenth century to provide services to the growing population, much of urban and regional infrastructure such as roads, bridges, canals and ports were made by private initiative. Was a change in the role of the state, which limits its intervention to the authorization and supervision by patents. The invention of the railroad transformed not only the English landscape from 1825, it opened the first public transport connecting Stockton and Darlington, Manchester and Birmingham and then by extending this phenomenon after France. The speed with which they were giving urban and territorial transformations made law largely had a partial character, preventing a linkage between different sectors. The growth of new urban neighborhoods characterized by overcrowding and disorder in the periphery led a series of technical and health problems, and particularly from the latter as a perceived need for health legislation which comes to be the direct forerunner of modern zoning laws. From 1832 began to take the first steps for the implementation of legislation related public health "as inseparable of the built environment, and their recent transformations " (123). Ten years later, he performed the first comprehensive reference to the hygienic conditions of the working class. Developed by doctors at the service of the British Crown, this report yielded the following conclusions: need to establish minimum requirements for housing, mandatory health services, forcing owners to ventilate and clean the house properly, not allowed for underground and local housing and the creation of public funds that would allow the inclusion of parks public sites that lacked them. Subsequently, legislation should be developed more fully in the so-called Public Health Acts. In France the first reforms in the field of urban sanitation by 1840 are given by groups concerned about the improvement of the working class neighborhoods that consider the public interest. However, it should be noted that:
The provisions of the first regulations on height, offset, etc., Interpreted to the letter by the manufacturers to obtain the maximum density allowed, and even became obsessive building of new suburbs ( 137).
While recognizing that respect for private property was the basis of social order, the higher standard as the public interest over private. In this regard, the expropriations and the promulgation of regulations, laws and public health nature respond to epidemics that occurred over large sectors of the population. In particular, the law of eminent domain, 1841 would, years later, as legal justification for the profound changes made in the shape of the city of Paris by Hausmann under the purpose of improving the conditions of slum housing. Benevolent
notes that the year 1848 is a turning point for social and political history of European culture and modern urbanism, since even before this date, the planning had been understood as a technique to serve the community closely linked to politics. The working class becomes conscious of his situation and sees the possibilities of improving it, triggering the events of 1848 ha-brane reveal the profound differences between different social classes, the reality of class struggle and radical confrontation between bourgeois ideology and socialism socialist theorists point to the need for economic and urban planning against the ideological vacuum of the groups in power. The Communist Manifesto Marx and Engels published a month before the events of 1848 in France would serve as the basis for ideological debate over the years to the integration of the First International in 1864, giving also a critique of utopian socialism experiences .
By 1873 it is clear separation between the attempts at reform of the European political left and urbanism as a promoter of the ideals of a just and egalitarian society. As a result of this separation, town loses its ideological substrate is reduced to a technical body whose spirit begins to be a reflection of the major interventions in Paris (Hausmann), the route of the Ring in Vienna, Barcelona and extensions Florence and the changes to the metropolitan transport network in London. As a whole is defined as "the work of a new class of designers and officials, scientists, competent and satisfied with their partial responsibility" (146), falling within the scope of European neo-conservatism. The groups in power in France, England, Germany, "very soon warn potential importance of a coherent policy of public works for the political stability of their countries. Partial reforms, including those produced by the leftist opposition, can be encouraged to avoid excessive pressure on institutions to be preserved "(147).
raise new social relations are derived from the industry, in some cases, we see that the improve-ment of housing conditions of workers is in the interest of root production and the labor required. Since 1846, for example, Richardson started the construction of a settlement trades in Bessbrook, Ireland. Some relevant experience in the planning of settlements related to industrial production suggest a return to the idealization of the city, based on a model plane as opposed to order ireegularidad of existing urban centers such as the plan for City of Victoria by John S. Buckingham is outlined as follows:
The main objectives have been to unite the highest degree of order, spaciousness and safety, the maximum abundance of air and light, and the most perfect sewer system, with the comfort and the desirability "desirability of any kind, [...] the easy accessibility to all corners of the city [...] with a provision of public buildings to make them easily accessible from all quarters, surrounded by vast spaces, many avenues of entry and exit (170). Having accepted
aspects based on geometry and smooth operation, the urbanism of the period set aside the policy approaches, and theoretical approaches are reassimilated socialist utilitarian-looking for the conservatism of the mid-nineteenth century: the works Hausmann, getting all the support of the king of France, are presented as technical acts stemming from certain objective needs and avoiding any explanation of political motivations. Hausmann is the developer and technical prototype specialist available for the new ruling class, to avoid any confrontation or ideological explanation.
Finally, Benevolo reiterates the book's central idea that experiences from urban develop-ment from different theoretical-practical (Utopians, functionalist, based on prevailing legislation), it is necessary to re-establish clearly the link between the planning and technical and policy, and concludes that:
Just as the propositions techniques of the utopians could be separated from so-cial innovations and used by the reformist very paternalistic to preserve the social order threatened by revolution, and the initiatives promoted by the conservative forces, once translated into reality, could be developed in a manner contrary to the original political motivation, and then transformed into weapons to overthrow the system of conservation [...] Thus, the cités ouvrière Napoleonic British model villages and colonies of the Krupp are the first links in a chain of experiences that lead to the cité industrielle Garnier, the Berlage neighborhoods [...] At this point the facts require a new confrontation between the urban and political programs [...] Such is the task with which we are now (189). BIBLIOGRAPHY
Benevolo, Leonardo
1992 Origins of modern urbanism
Translation
Celeste Editions Floreal Mazia
Madrid
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