This is a web version of a public lecture I gave at the University of York in October 2012. I have inserted a few additional commentary slides to add an interpretive framework for what was predominantly a very visual talk - this was designed to raise questions about what we want this and other cities to be like and to see how, at key moments in the city’s past, social reformers have a) made plans for a better city and b) sought to assist excluded communities. Those plans and designs remain influential, both within the city and more broadly. A key argument of the lecture was that Universities should be strongly engaged in these debates, as a major part of the local economy, but also as an institution that produces ideas, research and a site where public conversations can be brokered.

1. A city for today and tomorrow?
Rowland Atkinson, Department of
Urban Studies and Planning,
University of Sheffield

2. Preamble
Use the cursor keys to click through the slides but do wait for the
‘transitions’ to get the full effect!
This is the web version of a public lecture I gave in October 2012. I
have inserted a few additional commentary slides to add an
interpretive framework for what is predominantly a very visual talk.
The talk was designed to raise questions about what we want the
city to be like and to see how, at key moments in the city’s past,
social reformers have a) made plans for a better city and b) sought to
assist excluded communities.
Those plans and designs remain influential, both within the city and
more broadly. A key argument of the lecture is that the university
should be strongly engaged in these debates, as a major part of the
local economy, but also as a place that produces ideas, research and
also as a place in which public conversations can be brokered.

3. Utopia: any imaginary place, state or society of
idealized perfection (Chambers dictionary)
But we also know that how we imagine the
future will help to influence it…

4. Overview
York is a little like a social
laboratory:
–It has been the site of
pioneering social studies
–It has also been a place in
which people have pioneered
techniques of social planning
and housing development
–These aspects of the city have
been globally influential
• In social research
• In the development of ‘ideal’ and
mixed communities

5. Lets focus on three important aspects
of the city...
1. Its relationship to progress against inequality
2. Its knowledge resources
3. Its future

6. What we owe to the dead
I

7. The Rowntree legacy
Rowntree chocolate factory began in
1862, key members of the
corporation:
– Joseph Rowntree
– Benjamin Seebohm Rowntree:
conducted extensive surveys in the
city and published the 1901 study
Poverty: A Study of Town Life
– Both were involved in the positive
treatment of workers, including the
provision of pensions
– Both were involved in programs to
improve the city through planning
and housing development

8. University
Railway
station
Minster

9. • Map from Seebohm’s study
• Note the use of colour to mark areas of social distress and poverty
• Note also the red dots which mark the location of the city’s pubs!

10. Building a new community

11. New Earswick
• A planned community,
1902-1904
• Designed to accommodate a
wide range of people –
– A mixed community, like a
rural village
– Range of services – Folk hall,
doctor, schools

12. Can you tell who lives here?
"I do not want to
establish communities
bearing the stamp of
charity but rather of
rightly ordered and self
governing communities"

13. The legacy of New Earswick
• Unwin and Parker, the architects and planners of the
garden suburb, went on to manage the creation of
Letchworth garden city, the first of its kind in the UK
• A highly successful example due to its investment in
good space standards and gardens
• Houses were designed to prevent the possibility of
socially ‘reading’ who lived there
• Has continued to influence planning ideals in the UK
and beyond for socially mixed neighbourhoods as a
more sustainable model, as with Derwenthorpe on
the next slide…

14. Derwenthorpe, Joseph Rowntree Housing Trust
• 540 new homes and a new community, planned in a similar
way to New Earswick
• A mixed community, like New Earswick
• Community heating from sustainable wood

15. New gowns in the town
II

16. The beginnings of a university…
• Plans for a university were rejected in the
mid-1940s by the University Grant Cttee
• Civic Trust reassembled with an Academic
Development Committee and two projects
that would demonstrate capacity to run such
an institution
– A Summer School of Architectural Studies
– What is now the Borthwick Institute for Archives

17. Summer School of Architecture
• Ran in King’s Manor from
1949
• From 1952 was formalised the
Institute for Architectural
Studies
• When the university was
created in 1962 this became
the Institure for Advanced
Architecural Study
• Critical to the development of
national approaches to
building preservation
techniques and historic
conservation
Borthwick Institute
• First housed in St
Anthony’s Hall, 1950
• Accommodated the
Minster’s diocesan records

18. York Summer School of
Architectural Study
• Held annually since 1949
• Organized by the Academic Developmnt Committee
of York Civic Trust
• Students lived in a ‘collegiate building’
• York was seen to have buildings of all ages and
constructional materials
• Ran courses on Protection and Repair of Historic
Buildings
• Foundation of York Institute of Architectural Study,
1953, which then ran the summer school
– From Singleton, W. (1954) Studies in Architectural
History, York: St Anthony’s Press.

20. ‘It is a strange thing that the great City of
York, with its ancient tradition of learning and
culture, should have been so long without a
university’
Foreword to: Derbyshire, A. University of
York: Development Plan 1962-1972

21. Planning for the ethos of the
university
• The campus was designed so that no destination was
more than 10 minutes away
• Design was to be for university halls, nor fully
autonomous colleges – but a combination of these
approaches
• In 1963 the first 200 students began their courses, mostly
arts and social sciences because of the time taken to build
the buildings for the natural sciences
• A 14 acre lake was created to help drain the site
• IN 1972 there were 2,550 students, now there are 15,000
students (11,000 undergrads, 4,400 postgrads)
• Space structures social relations – centralised timetabling
was used to create ‘random encounters’ on the campus

23. These next few slides show images of the
university in the 1960s and the same views
today to show how the campus has changed

30. What is a university for?
‘many wish to live in or near a
beautiful city, as they have spent
their lives in suburbia or
industrial towns, and this is a
desire which may well be borne
in mind by those who maintain
that new academic institutions
should be related to the ‘real’ life
of an urban environment’,
Speech by Lord James of Rusholme, first
VC of University of York to the
Manchester Statistical Society

32. The quality of ‘memorableness’

33. The city to come…
III

34. These next set of slides are designed to get you thinking
about what a future ‘utopian’ city of York might be.
I have taken contemporary pictures of the city from the
very same perspective as the wonderful sketches used
in J. B. Morrell’s book The City of Our Dreams (1954)
to highlight visions of the future city from sixty years
ago – the contrasts are interesting!
• What do you think of these ideas?
• What would make the city a better place today?
• Can York continue to inspire planners and reformers
today?

46. Proposed extension of municipal offices with
riverside promenade, from 1948 plan

47. 1948 City Plan: Inner ring road

49. Architects proposal for modernist housing, Walmgate
Bar, Yorkshire Evening Press, 1972

50. Castle Gate

51. Towards a city beautiful
• 1909 Burnham plan
for Chicago
– Economic
development
– Civic pride
– Role of design
• The point here is the
need to link public
and private sectors to
achieve progress

52. York City Beautiful, 2010

53. Other utopian aspects:
• The Retreat and Tuke Centre
• Edible York
• Transition Town
• Joseph Rowntree Foundation
• Civic Trust
• York Festival 1951
• Georgian Society
• Institute for Advanced Architectural Studies

54. Restating the relationship of the
university to the city, and to return
to the question of progress and
inequality….
• York Lab: Social studies of the city
• York School: Review of all social studies of
the city, 1899 to date
• York Inequalities study: Linking Rowntree
surveys to more recent records
• A Department of Geography

55. Conclusion
• York has been at the heart of critical debates about
poverty, social inequality and the ways in which we
might plan to combat these social evils
• Research at the university remains relevant to and
engaged with these debates, in York and more widely -
the creation of a discrete campus facilitates such work but
perhaps also militates against local participation, we need
to work hard to ensure we engage with these questions
• Exciting visions of a future York continue to be discussed
though the traction of these ideas has often proved
limited, concerted action will be required to realise the
idea of a civic park, to take just one example

56. Find out more:
www.york.ac.uk/sociology/curb
rowland.atkinson@york.ac.uk