Good Cities, Better Lives

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Peter Hall. 2013. Good Cities, Better Lives. Routledge. ISBN 978 0 415 84022 4

Sir Peter Hall has been writing about urban areas for over 50 years and is rightly regarded as one of the finest academics in this area. Any new book by him is going to create a wave of interest as have many of the earlier works. They seem (like London 2000 and The Containment of Urban England) to be milestones in the discussion about urban planing, design and living. Of course, one could ask why and urban book in an ecological programme but that is to underestimate Hall’s influence. He has always seen the well-planned city as something sustainable. In the Containment of Urban England he argues for a green belt and a limit to expansion. If we are to have a sufficient wildscape then it follows we need to pay extremely close attention to our cities, for that is where over 50% of us already live globally.

The central thesis of the book is laid out with typical clarity. British cities (and, by extension although not noted, many others) are not the best places to live and work; they need fixing. This fixing comes with five challenges: rebalance urban economics, enough homes, integrated planning, finite resources and better governance.

Of course, it’s not good enough to just name the key issues. Part one comprises five chapters each one tackling a challenge. Chapter one starts at a very famous place which Town and Country planning students in the UK invariably mention at some stage – Ebenezer Howard’s Garden City movement. Asking where people would go to, Howard suggested a mix of the best-of-both-worlds and urban/rural mix. This was seen as an ideal. Hall then shows what really happened with the creation of a two-nation divide between North and South, but increasingly, SE vs Rest. This might be the result of urban economics but it is neither sustainable nor equitable. Challenge number two has to do with housing. There’s not enough in the right places. Furthermore, the property that is there does not match the likely requirements of the population. To this mix we can add housing stock that is neither well designed or engineered (e.g. insulated). Essentially, we have large, draughty houses in areas where we need smaller, efficient ones! Next, comes the transport challenge – matching people and work/leisure. It might be that larger cities have poorer transport by virtue of size or maybe this is a factor of urban density (Sydney does far more poorly what Hong Kong manages excellently!). Either way, it needs to be fixed because transport is the way the city functions. By chapter four we are looking at the sustainable city. Sadly, too many cities are built with the resource needs that might have been acceptable 50 years ago but are certainly not now. Energy is far more expensive so we need better designed and insulated homes. Housing needs to be produced sustainably which might mean a choice between brownfield and greenfield sites. Large populations create large volumes of waste and although the sewerage problems of London were fixed in the 1880s, modern growth still puts a burden on the system. Finally, we come to what is perhaps the biggest of these challenges – making it happen. As with all of these chapters, the focus  on describing the issues not finding the solution (which comes later). Hall suggests that there are five possible culprits: homeowners, bankers,landowners, builders, and planners. These groups operate in ways that oppose and don’t unite and so it is no wonder that there are problems. What is needed is a system where the two forces of planning and economics are better balanced.

Part two goes on a tour! It’s looking for the best parts of the best cities to see what works. We start with Germany, chosen for the ways in which its cities have withstood  economic issues. There’s not one city but a collection that exemplify the ways forward. Cities that have upgraded their transport (mainly public transport) to encourage industries. Starting with Hamburg which is a case of considerable urban regeneration, we travel to Berlin which survived reunification and a catastrophic drop in urban income to regenerate largely via transport and tourism. Leipzig has been added to the list for its ability to re-develop using special “clusters” of economic activities identified as having the potential for expansion e.g. media and IT.  Finally, the area around Dortmund-Kassel is seen as a place for environmental regeneration and university building. From Germany, we cross to Holland which offers us sustainable building through an exemplary planning system, coordinated from the top, down. Amsterdam seems to be the chosen city, which, like the others here, has features that closely resemble English cities. In the case of Amsterdam, the dockland renovations are similar to London’s and the transit system is one we could copy.  It’s obvious that the next stop would be France where the transport system, especially around Paris and between major centres (via the rail network), has been seen as central to successful planning. It was clear the the “urban desert” around Paris needed to be fixed and the use of growth pole theory gave impetus to develop places like Toulouse and Montpelier. Looking towards sustainable solutions, Scandinavia is going to be a clear winner. Places like Copenhagen have been designed for super-connectivity  without dependence on cars and the Swedish model of environmental design is well known.  It’s not just the capitals that give us ideas. Malmö might lay claim to being the most environmentally-constructed city, an eco-city. Finally, in our tour, we come back to Germany, to Freiburg, the place that has faced every challenge noted in the text and, apparently, managed to turn every one around.

Part three brings all the lessons together in one concluding chapter. What have we learnt (simple, by looking at the examples we have seen) and how can we do it. This latter part is difficult because, as we know from planning, context is everything. We can’t transplant French railways, Swedish design, German economics etc. into the north of England and expect them to work. There’s also the point, well made, that the cases described are not perfect – every one had some flaw or worked less well than expected. However, since British cities are apparently so far behind, it makes sense to see what we can do. The “how” part does come with some ideas: develop a strong economic base using science and turn this into innovative products; encourage universities (because knowledge is the new product), get local banks, locally responsive (surely as they were in the UK in the 1960s?), give true autonomy to cities, and the power to leaders to lead etc.

This is another excellent text from Peter Hall. It is, as all his work is, provocative and compelling. It makes us think, even makes us annoyed because not every scheme mentioned is going to be successful but at least we are on the right track – the idea that we need to do something to keep urban Britain working. As a piece of writing, as a planning text and as a call for action, this book deserves to be widely read and a standard text for all planning courses.