Progressive urban planning and design have been influenced by many individuals who sought to design the ideal community. One of the most important of these was John Ruskin [1819-1900] the influential art critic and social reformer who tried to establish a community called the Guild of St. George in England in 1871. Ruskin's name is not one that springs to mind when one thinks of influential urban planners and designers. Instead, Ruskin is remembered as one of the giants of English literature in the second half of the nineteenth century.
By means of his prodigious output of books, pamphlets and lectures, as well as his efforts at practical reform, Ruskin established a tremendous reputation in Britain and abroad. Ruskin's Influence Ruskin's impact on English society can be termed truly profound. According to Kenneth Clark, For almost fifty years, to read Ruskin was accepted as proof of the possession of a soul From Wordsworth to Proust there was hardly a distinguished man of letters who did not admire him. His works, written in an eloquent, often poetic prose, were broad and inclusive, covering art, architecture and political economy. His reputation was not confined to literature; Tolstoy, Gandhi and George Bernard Shaw believed him to be one of the great social reformers of his time.
Often likened in his social views to August Compte, Ruskin's ideas were also appreciated by many eminent social philosophers such as: Carlyle, Emerson, Carpenter, and Kropotkin. Fuchs claimed that while Karl Marx did not know him personally, he had a kindly regard for him. It is also interesting to note that in Art and Socialism William Morris testified to, the hearty feeling toward Ruskin among the working-class audiences: they can see the prophet in him rather than the fantastic rhetorician, as more superfine audiences do. In 1919, Shaw underscored Ruskin's importance in this regard when he claimed that it was Ruskin's book Unto This Last [1862], rather than any work by Marx, that influenced the bulk of the British working class to support socialism and he even saw Ruskin as a prophet of Bolshevism. His wide influence extends to more recent times and such profound thinkers as Bertrand Russell and Lewis Mumford. Most observers saw his influence in more reformist terms and much of that reform had implications for architecture, town planning and urban design. According to Clark, The Influence of Ruskin's ideas on social reform has been immense. Most of the changes which he advocated free schools, free libraries, town planning, smokeless zones, green beltsare now taken for granted.
In similar tones Curtin has written that, `The garden cities of today, and the great developments of municipal low cost housing in England since the world war suggest that in this respect as in many others Ruskin's theories and reforms have proved practical.' Patrick Geddes, the Scottish biologist and one of our first modern town planners said of Ruskin, Such teaching surely equals in clear biological insight and in social wisdom anything in the entire literature of practical economics; since it clearly indicates the line of evolution towards the future city of healthy and happy artists, surrounded by imperishable treasure, from our modern city of weary and sickly drudges, immersed in germs and dust for their pains. Notwithstanding these encomiums, Ruskin usually receives, at best, only a passing mention in most histories of modern town planning. Benevolo, in his book, The History of Modern Town Planning, does not mention him at all. Indeed, today, Ruskin's reputation is at a low ebb. While he is often written about, his own books are seldom read. I was presented with evidence to this effect when, in 1994, I found myself in the same position as Kenneth Clark, who in 1963, had to slit open the sealed pages of the library edition of Ruskin's works as he prepared his Ruskin anthology.
If Ruskin's works are ignored it is due to his often convoluted, pedantic and pedagogic writing style. He was inherently incapable of putting down his views in a succinct or straightforward manner. It is this discursiveness that makes Ruskin so inaccessible to modern readers who, as a result, remain largely unaware of the importance of his role in interpreting the critical mood inherent in the Victorian period in England. Although he tried, he never succeeded in distilling his overall philosophy into one clear statement. Yet, when he was at his best, he would write on subjects as diverse as the properties of minerals and women's education, wherein one would find buried gems of wisdom and insight on subjects seemingly quite alien to the main topic under discussion. Another problem for Ruskin was that all his work was informed by a veneration for times past, particularly the simple life of the middle ages, a viewpoint that put him at odds with the prevailing mood of excitement that accompanied the scientific and technological expansion of his times. Yet there were a considerable number of people, often the young, who saw in Ruskin the message of the prophet. It was these people, who had taken the time and trouble to read his books, for whom the effect of his prose was often transforming, because, for all his discursiveness, Ruskin succeeded in conceptualizing in practical terms, the central reformist message that so gripped them, that of the romantic poets Wordsworth, Keats and Shelly. Ruskin's Urban Vision.
His conceptualization resulted in what I have called Ruskin's urban vision: a series of disparate observations and suggestions scattered throughout his writings that added a physical component to the social reforms he advocated. It was an urban vision that, en toto, comprised a comprehensive plan for a new urban built environment. It was a vision spelled out in terms of a new organic architecture and a comprehensive town planning process that would result in the creation of a beautiful urban realm for mankind. A key element in this vision was the central role for architects, town planners and designers who were called upon to help craft this new physical environment. It was a vision that did much to inspire many of the most energetic individuals who helped establish the new progressive movements in urban design, architecture and social reform that materialized at the end of the 19th century.
Today, his own works remain largely unknown in town planning circles and only dimly appreciated among architects and urban designers. It is unlikely that many modern planners or architects would acknowledge being strongly influenced by Ruskin. Yet, it is through the work of a significant number of seminal modern urbanists who had read and revered Ruskin that his influence has reached so deeply into the fields of town planning and urban design that his imprimatur can be seen upon some of their most central tenets and benchmark designs, particularly in Britain, but also in the United States and elsewhere. Included in any list of Ruskin disciples would be notable figures such as Patrick Geddes, Ebenezer Howard, and Lewis Mumford as well as the architects and town planners, Raymond Unwin, Barry Parker, and William Lethaby.
This book seeks to trace the evolution of Ruskin's comprehensive urban vision and to explain its subtle, but profound influence on the long line of progressive architects and planners and the buildings and communities they designed. This is undertaken in an attempt to understand the full extent of town planning's debt to Ruskin. However, it is not merely the need to acknowledge a past debt that motivated this study, but also a firm belief that Ruskin had something valuable to say about modern communities in their broadest sense and that this message has relevance for today's decision makers who are struggling with a broad litany of urban and societal problems such as violence, homelessness, rampant metropolitan growth, structural unemployment, poverty, environmental degradation, and wasteful consumerism. Virtually all of these are extensions of problems that were all too familiar to Ruskin and which he tried mightily to alleviate by broad exhortation as well as personal involvement and sacrifice. It was worthwhile work and it behooves us to try to appreciate its relevance for us today.
Organization of the Book
The first section of the book will focus on the formation of Ruskin's comprehensive urban vision and will begin to assess its impact on practical town planning. Accordingly, the first chapter of the book will give a broad overview of Ruskin's life and the development of his views on architecture and urban design as well as his views on social justice. The second chapter will delineate the parameters of Ruskin's urban vision as it developed in his own writings over the course of his career. The third chapter will discuss his efforts at practical town planning, urban design and community building. In particular, it will trace the development of Ruskin's frequently disparaged efforts to build a guild based society, the Guild of St. George. It will also assess the work of his followers who were involved with the development of charitable housing, garden cities, urban parks and social settlements.
The second section will assess the contributions of Ruskin's followers and the extent to which they adhered to his urban vision. In this context, the fourth chapter will assess the work of his most famous disciple, William Morris and examine the extent to which Ruskin's urban vision was modified by Morris' own contributions to town planning and urban design as well as the Arts and Crafts movement in which he played a central role. The fifth chapter will look at the contributions of Morris' lifelong friend, the architect Philip Webb. The practical implications of his views will be related to his development of a new theory of architecture and planning based upon principles laid down by both Ruskin and Morris.
The third section of the book will look at the various projects developed by followers of Ruskin, Morris and Webb in an attempt to achieve realization of their shared urban vision. Beginning with the sixth chapter, I examine the development of several Arts and Crafts communities that were of singular importance since they represented, perhaps, the closest attainment of Ruskin's urban vision. A significant number of these artistically planned and designed villages were built in England and America. The seventh chapter will discuss several innovative early state housing and garden village programs constructed around the time of World War I and that were a direct outgrowth of Arts and Crafts thinking. Distinct from the better known Garden Cities, a large number of these innovative government supported, planned housing schemes and model villages for the working classes were established by Ruskin's disciples both in England and the United States.
The fourth section of this book will try to draw some conclusions concerning the relevance of Ruskin's urban vision for contemporary society. Therefore, in the eighth chapter of this book, I offer a critical analysis of modern urban and regional planning in Britain and America and will suggest reasons for the vastly different planning systems that exist in these two countries. In particular, this chapter will assess the importance of the contribution of the Regional Planning Association of America and its campaign for an American commitment to regional ecological planning based on a network of garden cities. Chapter nine will assess several new approaches to architecture and urban design that appear to have Ruskinian overtones. Specifically, it will take a close look at one recent developmen.
Often referred to as the New Urbanism or neo-traditional neighbourhood development [TND], it is an approach that has achieved international public visibility and helped spawn a new urban design movement. Chapter ten will conclude with an assessment of the value of using Ruskin's urban vision as the basis for future innovations in town planning. It is important to note that, in practical terms, Ruskin was personally associated with a host of disparate and very small scale social and economic experiments, none of which achieved complete success. Nonetheless, I will argue here that the totality of his work and influence was profound and resonated with many reform minded people in many different situations and times and who did achieve amazing results.
While much of what he had to say is not relevant today, to a surprising degree his central argument and particularly that component of it that I have called his urban vision, remain meaningful and provide an important vantage point from which to view modern urban problems and our continuing efforts to craft livable communities in a sustainable environment. Accordingly, it is hoped that the book's overall message will encourage a new generation of social activists to enter the fray and to consider the relevance of art, architecture, town planning and urban design to their cause. Given the grave economic, political and environmental problems of our post modern, post industrial world and the strong conservative assault on the humanistic principles that underpin the modern welfare state, it would appear that a reassessment of Ruskin's unique urban vision is timely indeed.