From the Journal of the American Planning Association,
Autumn 1995, Volume 61, Number 94.
On a Human Scale: A Life in Urban Design
Gordon Stephenson.
Fremantle Arts Centre Press,
South Fremantle, Australia, 1992. 260pp. $30.00.
No one can be really knowledgeable about the strengths and weaknesses of
twentieth century regional planning and urban design without taking account
of the ideas and work of Gordon Stephenson. One of the great pioneers and
professional practitioners, his background, education, and career tell us
a lot about post-World War II planning and practice. What is a pity, however,
is that Stephenson; now 86 years old; is more a man of action than
a historian. The complexity and range of the problems he faced and the detail
of his achievements; and failings; still remain to be disclosed
by some future biographer or historian. But at least in this brief memoir
a start has been made. Knowledgeable associates and friends have helped
him to bring together a variety of fragmentary materials; part autobiographical;
and part; extracts from some of [his] papers and reports;
disclosing his views and efforts to enhance the built environment, the lives
of its residents, and the profession of urban design in three continents.
The first professional in his immediate family, Stephenson won several fellowships
in the late 1920's and early 1930s: first to the Liverpool Institute, later
to the School of Architecture of Liverpool University, then traveling fellowships
that enabled him to visit France, Italy, Greece, the Soviet Union, and the
United States. He was fortunate, too, in his personal encounters which led
to lasting friendships or professional associations. He was close to classmate
William G. Holford, one of the most notable British planners of the postwar
period. In France, Stephenson got to know historian Marcel Poete. With unremitting
persistence he also gained admission to Le Corbusier's studio. While visiting
the Soviet Union, Stephenson explored big development projects and new towns,
met and became friends with Soviet planners and European planners employed
there like Hans Blumenfeld. In the United States he served during 1929 in
the office of Wallace Harrison, working on drawings for Rockefeller Center.
Seven years later in Cambridge, Massachusetts, he spent time at MIT in the
second year of the establishment of Frederick J. Adams' graduate program
in planning, returning to England in 1938.
Despite the dearth of jobs in the 1930's, Stephenson got a position at Liverpool
University teaching architecture and introducing the ideas of Le Corbusier,
Ernest May, and Gropius. He participated as an early member of the MARS
(Modern Architectural Research) group, then affiliated with CIAM (Congres
Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne), and taught at the Architectural
Association in 1939. He also worked with Holford on the Team Valley Trading
Estate which was part of the British defense production program before the
start of World War II.
These experiences served Stephenson in good stead when he joined Holford
and others as part of Lord Reith's Reconstruction Group. His assignment
was to develop a new planning technique for the postwar period: one that
was to veer in a quite different, more positive direction ";from the
zoning and laying out of suburbs which had constituted prewar planning";
(59). Stephenson spent the next six years of his professional life developing
the subject; first with Holford and later with R. Terry Kennedy; before
he left to pursue the same aim in the academic world and in practice. By
the time he left, he had become Chief Planing Officer for the development
of technical planning methods and for technical advice on and criticism
of local and regional plans in Britain.
Stephenson had attracted to his team key planners from Britain and abroad,
and the service had become the professional arm of the newly created Ministry
of Town and Country Planning. During those years, he was at the center of
some of the most important developments in civic planning. These included
his leading role in the preparation of the path-breaking manual on the rebuilding
of bombed cities, The Redevelopment of Central Areas (Ministry of Housing
and Local Government, 1947); assisting Patrick Abercrombie in planing for
the four rings of greater London surrounding the County of London, The Greater
London Plan, 1944 (Ministry of Housing and Local Government, 1945); and
preparing the 1946 draft Master Plan for Stevenage, the British New Town.
He did all this while providing advice and technical assistance for the
other branches of the Ministry and for other central government departments
and for local governments.
In 1948, Stephenson left the Ministry to become Professor of Urban Design
at the University of Liverpool. After spending three months visiting graduate
programs in United States universities, he innovated a two-year professional
training program in urban design; the first and most advanced of its
kind in Great Britain. He also revitalized and served as editor of the Town
Planning Review, a significant research journal of the University of Liverpool,
Department of Civic Design, which had languished in the period from 1933
to 1947.
Still later in the mid; 1950's, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
(MIT) chose him to succeed Frederick J. Adams as Head of the Department
of City and Regional Planning. Delighted with the prospect, he resigned
his chair in Liverpool, and arranged to spend a year in Australia advising
on the preparation of Perth's metropolitan plan before taking on this new
role at MIT. Fate ruled otherwise, however. This was the lamentable McCarthy
period, and Stephenson was denied a visa without explanation despite vigorous
support from his British associates and MIT officials. Meanwhile, friends
in Canada (Jacqueline Tyrwhitt, Tony Adamson, and Humphry Carver) persuaded
the University of Toronto to forego advertising and appoint Stephenson as
Foundation Professor of Town and Regional Planning. For the next five years,
Stephenson not only led this program, but served as an influential advisor
for Halifax, Ottawa, Kingston, and of course, Toronto. Stephenson's friends
in Australia pressed him to return permanently as consultant architect and
Professor of Architecture, which he agreed to do in 1960. Since then he
pursued his professional career as an advisor on planning and design in
Camberra, Sidney, and Perth as well as his special vocation of university
planning. In this role, he has served the Universities of Toronto and British
Columbia in Canada, University College in Dublin, Nanyang University in
Singapore as well as the Universities of Western Australia, Adelaide, Flinders,
James Cook, and Murdoch in Australia.
Like Lewis Mumford and Patrick Geddes, Stephenson is an ardent humanist.
Sensitive to the problems of cities, one of his deepest concerns was to
produce plans; subject to amendment and correction; that would serve
the needs of people of different backgrounds and in different stages of
the life cycle. Allergic to verbosity and pomposity, he was most at ease
studying sites, preparing plans, collaborating with gifted colleagues, teaching
students, and solving problems. Administration bored him and his reports
about people and encounters are terse and often uninformative. There are
handsome plans but no vigorous analyses of ideas in this volume. We learn
precious little about the conflicts between the technical specialists and
the administrative staff of the Ministry; or the views of the technical
staff about the explosive resistance to change in Stevanage; or his frank
assessments of many of the extraordinary people he encountered (Le Corbusier,
Lewis Mumford, Clarence Stein, Patrick Abercrombie, and Dame Evelyn Sharp; to
cite only a few); or even a hint of the wounds he endured or the reasons
for his success in the course of his efforts to encourage people to cope
with the challenge of transforming their environment. Instead, this memoir
manifests proverbial British reserve and modesty, and illustrates the probity,
determinism, and admirable professional skills that underlie some of the
most memorable accomplishments of British planning over the past half century.
Lloyd Rodwin, AICP
Rodwin is a Senior Lecturer and Ford International Professor, Emeritus,
in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT. He is a former head
of the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning (1969-1973) and president
of the Regional Science Association. His books include The British New Towns
Policy (Harvard University Press, 1956), Nations and Cities, (Houghton-Mifflin,
1970), Cities and City Planning (Plenum, 1981), and, with co-editor Donald
A. Schon, Reexamining the Development Experience (Brookings Institution
and Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, 1994).
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