SOCIO-ECONOMIC BASE FOR

PLANNING

Assignment
Sociological Concepts of Le1 Corbusier and
Pattrick Geddes

Submitted by:

Afia Siddiqui
Kavya.M
Tushar Gorle
Nikhil Chaudhary
Socio-Economic base for planning

• Socio-economic base for planning studies the city. It is mainly confined to the study of urban society and
community and urban life in all its aspects.
• It studies the influence of urban environment on man, his actions, relationships, institutions and modes of
thinking, acting, behaving with others. The physical environment, the conditions that follow the socio-
cultural and physical surroundings, the circumstances that are incumbent and the consequences that
occur are all foci of attention of urban sociology.
• It deals with city life, specialization of the study of complex human situations, deals with city
organization and disorganization, cultural changes, overall development of civilization, economic
development, political and social changes.
• It also deals with problems arising in context of public housing and accommodation, planning and
zoning, building codes, slums, sanitation, sewers, garbage disposal, water supply, meter connections,
traffic regulation, school administration, seaports, airports, city courts fire stations etc. the urban
sociologists has to take data from jurisprudence criminology, medicine, hygiene and from architects,
town planners, engineers, builder, auto dealers, ministers, educators, businessmen, commercial and other
recreates.
Le Corbusier

• Charles-Édouard Jeanneret (6 October 1887 – 27 August 1965),

known as Le Corbusier was a Swiss French architect, designer,
painter, urban planner,writer, and one of the pioneers of what is now
regarded as modern architecture.
• He was born in Switzerland and became a French citizen in 1930. 
• He was dedicated to providing better living conditions for the residents
of crowded cities, Le Corbusier was influential in urban planning.
• Le Corbusier prepared the master plan for the city
of Chandigarh in India, and contributed specific designs for several
buildings there, especially the government buildings.
• Chandigarh is one of the most significant urban planning experiments
of the 20th century.
• It has become a symbol of planned urbanism.
The Chandigarh planning – by Le Corbusier

• Le Corbusier firmly believed in the concept that a city should be organised , serene , forceful , airy and
ordered.
• In all the corbusian cities , human needs were scientifically derived. According to him, a planner should
be able to dictate the planning process of a city regardless of the context , history and culture.

• He argued that ‘The human mind loses itself and becomes fatigued by such a labyrinth of possibilities , I
insist on right-angled intersections’.
• One of Le Corbusier's central design themes was strict separation of societal functions. There would be
separate zones for workplaces, residences, shopping and entertainment centers, and monuments and
government buildings.
• The logic of rigid segregation of functions is that it is far easier for a planner to shape an urban zone if it
has just one purpose. When several or many purposes must be considered, the variables that the planner
must juggle begin to challenge the mind. Le Corbusier liked to control al1 variables. He calculated the
air, heat, light, and space requirements of humans and settled on 14 square meters per person, but
reckoned that this could be reduced to ten square meters if such activities as food preparation and
laundering were communal.

• In 1949 , Le Corbusier was invited by Nehru to finalize the design and manage the construction of
 The Chandigarh planning – by Le Corbusier
• Chandigarh is one of the most significant urban
planning experiments of the 20th century. It is the
only one of the numerous urban planning schemes
of Le Corbusier to have actually been executed.

• The city was composed of sectors. Le Corbusier's

plan was based on the gridiron defined by a system
of seven types of roads, which Le Corbusier called
the 7 Vs and their expected functions around and
within the neighborhood.

• Le Corbusier favoured the comparison of city

planning to a biological entity :
1. The head – Capitol
2. The heart – City centre and work areas
3. The hands – Institutional areas and
universities
4. The limbs - Industries A typical sector in Chandigarh
plan
 Sir Patric Geddas

Sir Patrick Geddes(2 October 1854 –17 April 1932) was a Scottish
biologist, sociologist, geographer, philanthropist and pioneering town
planner.

• He is known for his innovative thinking in the fields of urban

planning and sociology.

• He introduced the concept of "region" to architecture and planning

and coined the term "conurbation".

• Geddes was the founder of the College des Ecossaise(Scots

College) an international teaching establishment in Montpellier,
France.

• He studied at the Royal College of Mines in London under Thomas

Henry Huxley between 1874 and 1878, and lectured in Zoology at
Edinburgh University from 1880 to 1888.
 Sir Patric Geddas
Patrick Geddes explained an organism’s relationship to its environment as follows:
• The environment acts, through function, upon the organism and conversely the organism acts, through
function, upon the environment.“(Cities in Evolution, 1915)

• This can be understood as a place acting through climatic and geographic processes upon people and thus
shaping them. At the same time people act, through economic processes such as farming and construction,
on a place and thus shape it. Thus both place and folk are linked and through work are in constant
transition.

The Gedessian Triad

• Patrick Geddes was influenced by social theorists such as Herbert Spencer (1820–
1903) and French theorist Frederic Le Play (1806–1882) and expanded upon
earlier theoretical developments that lead to the concept of regional planning.

• He adopted Spencer's theory that the concept of biological evolution could be

applied to explain the evolution of society, and drew on Le Play's analysis of the
key units of society as constituting Lieu, Travail, Famille(Place, Work, Family)
but changing the last from "family" to "folk". In this theory, the family is viewed
as the central "biological unit of human society "from which all else develops.
 CONURBATION

• The term "conurbation" was coined in 1915 by Patrick Geddes in his book Cities In Evolution.
• Internationally, the term "urban agglomeration" is often used to convey a similar meaning to "conurbation".

• He drew attention to the ability of the (then) new technology of electric power and motorised transport to
allow cities to spread and agglomerate together, and gave as examples "Midland ton" in England, the Ruhr in
Germany, Ramstad in the Netherlands, New York-Boston in the United States, the Greater Tokyo Area and
Taiheiyō Belt in Japan and NCR of Delhi in India.

• Conurbation is a region comprising a number of cities, large towns, and other urban areas that, through
population growth and physical expansion, have merged to form one continuous urban and industrially
developed area.

• In most cases, a conurbation is a polycentric urban agglomeration, in which transportation has developed to
link areas to create a single urban labour market or travel to work area.

• The term is used in North America, a metropolitan area can be defined by the Census Bureau or it may consist
of a central city and its suburbs, while a conurbation consists of adjacent metropolitan areas that are
connected with one another by urbanization.
THE VALLEY SECTION

• In 1909, Geddes assisted in the early planning of

the southern aspect of the Zoological Gardens in
Edinburgh. This work was formative in his
development of a regional planning model called
the "Valley Section“

• This model illustrated the complex interactions

among biogeography, geomorphology and
human systems and attempted to demonstrate
how "natural occupations" such as hunting,
mining, or fishing are supported by physical
geographies that in turn determine patterns of
human settlement. The point of this model was
to make clear the complex and interrelated
relationships between humans and their
environment, and to encourage regional
planning models that would be responsive to
these conditions
 TEL AVIV PLANNING
The Geddes Plan for Tel Aviv was the first master city plan for Tel Aviv.
• It was designed in 1925-1929 by the Scottish city planner Sir N Patrick
Geddes.
• This program designed the centre of Tel Aviv and the area now known as
"Old North".
• Tel Aviv turned out to be the only example of one of Geddes’ plans being
built largely as he envisaged and is a good example of an early planned city.
• Geddes, as biologist and sociologist was engaged to design a plan for the
new city of Tel Aviv to be built adjacent to the ancient port town of Jaffa.
• The principles he employed for the city were strikingly similar to what we
now know as New Urbanism ideas of planning -an emphasis was placed on
pedestrians as opposed to motor car traffic, a sense of community and civic
life was encouraged through the use of town squares and abundant planting
of greenery provided significant focus on a minimal environmental footprint.
• Private automobile traffic was minimised and the city was envisaged on a
pedestrian-scale.
• This neighborhood identity has been crucial in the success of Tel Aviv as a
city.