Planning Europe's Capital Cities

Aspects of Nineteenth-Century Urban Development

Thomas Hall

• Editorial: Routledge
• Año: 2003
• ISBN:
  9781135829025
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Arquitectura
• Categoría: Planificación urbana y paisajismo

During the nineteenth century many of Europe's capital cities were subject to major expansion and improvement schemes. From Vienna's Ringstrasse to the boulevards of Paris, the townscapes which emerged still shape today's cities and are an inalienable part of European cultural heritage.
In Planning Europe's Capital Cities, Thomas Hall examines the planning process in fifteen of those cities and addresses the following questions: when and why did planning begin, and what problems was it meant to solve? who developed the projects, and how, and who made the decisions? what urban ideas are expressed in the projects? what were the legal consequences of the plans, and how did they actually affect subsequent urban development in the individual cities? what similarities or differences can be identified between the various schemes? how have such schemes affected the development of urban planning in general?
His detailed analysis shows us that the capital city projects of the nineteenth century were central to the evolution of modern planning and of far greater impact and importance than the urban theories and experiments of the Utopians.

1
INTRODUCTION

During the nineteenth century many capital cities and other large towns in Europe were subject to vast improvement and expansion programmes, which still affect their physical appearance today. It was during this period that many features were created—such as the avenues and boulevards in Paris or the Ringstraße in Vienna—which now seem quintessential characteristics of the cities in question.

The aim of this study is to describe and compare planning in a number of capital cities, and in particular to address the following questions.

• When and why did planning begin, and what problems was it meant to solve?
• Who developed the projects, and how, and who made the decisions?
• What urban ideas are expressed in the projects?
• What were the legal consequences of the plans, and how did they actually affect subsequent urban development in the individual cities?
• What similarities or differences can be identified between the various schemes?
• How do these projects compare with earlier planning, and how did they affect the subsequent development of urban planning in general?

Separate chapters have been devoted to most of the European towns which were, or became, national capitals during the later nineteenth century, namely Amsterdam (a capital in name only), Athens, Berlin, Brussels, Budapest, Christiania (Oslo), Copenhagen, Helsinki (Helsingfors), London, Madrid, Paris, Rome, Stockholm and Vienna. Barcelona has also been given a chapter of its own. Bern, Istanbul, Lisbon and St Petersburg have not been included, nor have any of the towns—Bucharest and Sofia for instance—which acquired capital city status with the liberation of the Balkan states towards the end of the nineteenth century. Towns which were regarded as national centres without being the capital of a sovereign state during the relevant period such as Dublin, Prague and Warsaw, and the capitals of countries which later came to be part of the Italian or German states have been excluded. Towns like Florence which became capitals for a brief period have also been disregarded.

There would obviously have been some advantages in working with a wider range of examples. The amount of time this would have required was against it, but this was not the only reason for limiting myself to the present selection. Nineteenth-century planning in the central and eastern European capital cities, with the exception of Budapest, does not seem to have been the subject of extensive research, possibly due to lack of major planning projects of the kind discussed here.

St Petersburg, which was included in the earlier German version of the present book, has been excluded for the same reason. During the eighteenth century the national government in Russia was probably more engaged in the creation of an urban environment than any of its counterparts in the other capital cities at that time, though its aim was not to furnish acceptable conditions for the populace, but to provide a splendid framework for the exercise of imperial power. Public control over urban development began to weaken as early as the 1840s, however, and it was soon to cease altogether. During the second half of the nineteenth century no attempt appears to have been made at any kind of overall planning, and building controls were weak or non-existent. This applied even to the grander areas which had previously been protected by special decrees. ‘…by 1913 all types of noxious industries were found in those parts of the city which earlier had been something of a sanctuary from the sight and smell of factory production’, as Bater puts it.¹ Nor was much done about the water supply or the sewage system. Street standards were extremely low; some streets had no paving at all.

Dublin enjoyed a genuine golden age in urban development during the second half of the eighteenth century, and through the good offices of the Wide Streets Commissioners appointed in 1752, probably benefited from planning of a more advanced kind than any other capital city at that period. But in 1800 the Irish parliament was dissolved, which meant that Dublin lost its most important capital city function and entered upon a long period of decline in terms of planning and building, even though the Wide Streets Commissioners continued to function in a more modest way until 1851. It was not until 1922 when Dublin became the capital city of the sovereign state of Ireland, that any major new projects appeared on the agenda. For this reason Dublin has not been included among my examples. Lisbon is in a different category: the Avenida da Liberdade and the Avenida Almirante Reis certainly qualify as striking examples of large-scale planning, but in this case it has not been possible to acquire adequate material.

The inclusion of Barcelona is obviously inconsistent with the title of the book. The main reason for making this exception was not the town’s special historical role as the provincial capital of Catalonia, but the status of Ildefonso Cerdá’s remarkable extension plan for the town. It would have felt strange to write about mid-nineteenth-century planning without discussing this project.

It might be argued that the capital city function is not necessarily the best selection criterion for inclusion in a study of this kind. The situation of capital cities varies so much, and—perhaps most importantly—they also differ so greatly in size, that comparisons might seem rather meaningless. Moreover, some capitals—in the Nordic countries, for instance—can hardly qualify as large cities in European terms. But if one city from every country is to be chosen for a comparative study, the capital city nonetheless seems to be an apt choice. It is also reasonable to suppose that the capitals do have some conditions and features in common in the way they have developed, which justify their being treated as a single group.² Nor is the comparison concerned primarily with the towns as such; the emphasis is on the planning activities in the most important cities politically speaking in their respective countries, cities which in most cases were also the largest in the country as well as the leading centre for trade and industry.

It would have been interesting to have established a control group by choosing one other city for comparison with the capital in each country. However, this was not possible to realize within the frames of the present study; nor was it possible to include non-European capital cities as comparative material.

The study thus focuses on a series of major projects which appeared in the third quarter of the nineteenth century, roughly speaking between 1850 and 1880. But it would not have been reasonable to disregard the planning of Athens and Helsinki, which acquired capital city status in the first half of the century, or various activities that occurred in the other cities before 1850. Thus 1800 can be regarded as an approximate starting date for the study.

Around 1910 modern town planning can be said to have established itself. That is to say, the shaping of the urban environment was to be subject to plans binding on those owning land, produced by professional experts and based on scientifically grounded urban development ideas.³ At the same time planners were beginning to think along broader lines in order to coordinate communications, industry, the location of residential areas etc, in other words everything that today would be included in the concept of regional planning, which meant that planning was divided between the more detailed planning of the physical design of the built environment on the one hand, and structure planning paying particular attention to land use on the other. A crucial question to be addressed in this study concerns the importance of the role played by the capital city projects in this whole development. The 1880s can therefore be taken as, roughly, the closing date of the period studied as regards what was actually happening in the capital cities, while we follow the evolution of planning ideas to a slightly later date.

Nineteenth-century planning must be viewed in light of earlier events. The presentation of each city thus starts with a brief review of the town’s urban development history, while the book itself opens with a chapter entitled ‘From Hippodamus to Haussmann. Town planning in a historical perspective’, in which the primary aim is to position nineteenth-century planning in a historical context.

It should be emphasized once again that the focus here is on the major planning projects; the aim is not to address planning developments as a whole in the studied cities. The reason for the relatively summary treatment of London is just the absence of any such comprehensive projects, even though the various planning inputs taken together may well have amounted to the same volume of planning as elsewhere. In this context it may seem illogical that by far the most detailed city chapter is devoted to Paris, which also lacked an approved overall plan. But the redevelopment of Paris under the Second Empire can nonetheless be regarded as a single project, in comparison with the street improvements in London. Furthermore, this study refers primarily to public planning, conducted by municipal or national bodies. In several cases private land-owners have been responsible for the planning of extensive areas, but such undertakings have been mentioned here only in passing, when special reasons have warranted it. In London a large proportion of the planning came about under private auspices, which also explains why the biggest city has been treated in one of the shortest chapters in the book.

I would also like to add a few words about what this book does not set out to do. It would certainly have been interesting to compare the design of the buildings—both residential housing and public buildings—in the different capital cities, and public buildings are of course an important part of the capital city image.⁴ But this would have meant entering another vast subject area, and would have made the study totally unwieldy.

Some readers may also miss an account of the urbanization process as such during the nineteenth century, or a section on the capital city as a phenomenon.⁵ Both these themes have some relevance to the main issues addressed in the book, but they are too complex to handle briefly in any meaningful way. Local transport—first horse-drawn omnibuses, then horse-trams followed by steam and at the turn of the century electric trams—made life in the big cities more comfortable, at any rate for those who could afford to use the new facilities. But of these, the electric trams were the first to alter the conditions for planning in any more radical way. For this reason I have not included local transport developments in this book. I have also largely disregarded the suburban growth which appeared towards the end of the period studied, which also meant ignoring the impact of the railways on urban development patterns beyond the inner cities.

It has thus been my ambition to concentrate on the planning of what in the nineteenth century were the capital cities proper—areas which today largely represent the central or inner city districts—and to refer to related subjects and problems only when the context so motivates. One further point: it was first towards the end of the period considered here that active intervention in working-class housing came to be regarded as one of planning’s central tasks; for much of the century planning and housing questions were divorced from one another. In the present survey the latter thus occupy a minor role.

The prime sources for this study have consisted of various scholarly works and printed original sources, supplemented as far as possible by on-site observations and by discussions with colleagues in the respective cities. The state of research varies very much from one town to another, and for each one a first footnote provides a survey of the literature.⁶ In several cities the investigation of nineteenthcentury planning seems to have passed through much the same stages. Following a few very preliminary works a basic study is published, charting the main lines of the development. Several more publications then appear, repeating the substance of the basic study more or less closely, including mistakes, and without very much further source research. Finally, a more extensive and comprehensive study is published, using the entire source material. The full story is reconsidered on a great many points. This stage has been reached in the case of, for instance Athens (PapageorgiouVenetas, 1994), Paris (Pinkney, 1958 and other later works), Vienna (Mollik, Reining and Wurzer, 1980) and, perhaps, Stockholm (Selling, 1970). On Madrid such a work has been produced (by Javier Frechilla Camoiras) but has not so far been published. But in most cities such a basic work still remains to be written.

‘Source-steered’ research has long been regarded as a particularly dubious variety of scholarly study, and those who employ this approach have frequently been placed lowest in the special purgatory for scholars. Nonetheless I willingly confess that the following descriptions have to no small extent been steered by the sources. Ideally, perhaps, the descriptions of every capital city should have been organized according to a uniform model, and should have included the same kind of information. That this was not feasible depended not only on variations in the quality and state of the source material, and on the different opportunities for obtaining information, but also on the simple fact that no town is like any other. In Helsinki the formative period occurred during the 1810s, in Paris during the 1850s and 1860s, and in Rome during the 1870s and 1880s. In some of the capital cities the population ran into tens of thousands, in others into millions. In some cases planning activities were primarily concerned with street improvements, in others largely with extending the existing town. Sometimes the national government involved itself by making substantial resources available, in other cases more ‘liberal’ non-interventionist ideas left it to individual actors to do what they considered best in their own interests. I thus hope I will be excused for allowing the diversity of the source material, and of the capital cities themselves, to determine the shape of my exposition.

That I have been working on the book for several years has also inevitably meant that horizons have shifted in the course of the voyage. Thus the descriptive chapters in the book could be suitably regarded as a series of essays on a common theme, each one with its own individual design. Nevertheless, as I hope the second part of the book will show, certain general patterns—or what could be called middle-range theories—in planning and urban development do emerge from the material, and this seems to me to be a satisfactory outcome for a study of this kind. My descriptions are a series of case studies in which the conditions are so diverse that it would hardly have been meaningful to suggest or to test more general laws or models.

During recent decades a great many works have been published on planning in various cities during the nineteenth century. These have generally been in the form of monographs. Very little, on the other hand, has been written on nineteenth-century urban planning in a comparative perspective. A work which aroused considerable attention at the time of its publication, and which has been translated into several languages, is Leonardo Benevolo’s Le origini dell’urbanistica moderna (1963).⁷ However, this work focuses on utopian projects and on attempts to found ‘model cities’; bigcity planning is only addressed at a fairly superficial level. Françoise Choay’s The Modern City: Planning in the Nineteenth Century (1969) is an interesting but on several counts questionable attempt to systematize perspectives on nineteenth-century town planning. A major breakthrough for planning historical research, on the other hand, came with Anthony Sutcliffe’s Towards the Planned City: Germany, Britain, the United States and France, 1780–1914 (1981b). The focus of interest in Sutcliffe’s book is town planning as an administrative phenomenon, i.e. the evolution of legislation, an administrative apparatus and a professional group responsible for planning. Less attention is paid to the plans and their design. I should like to emphasize here that Sutcliffe’s book—and indeed his other writings as well—have been a vital source of inspiration for the present study.

When the German version of the present book was published I had not yet come across the slightly earlier Stadterweiterungen 1800–1875: Von den Anfängen des modernen Städtebaues in Deutschland (1983) edited by Gerhard Fehl and Juan Rodriguez-Lores. If I have understood the main thesis of their book correctly, it is that an earlier planning tradition stemming from the royal courts and imbued with a sense of social responsibility and high aesthetic standards, was losing ground at the beginning of the nineteenth century. It was to be followed by a period of speculation and chaos, in which weak authorities were content to try to impose a superficial veil of order over a chaotic real world. Only towards the end of the century did a type of planning evolve which was once again capable of producing order of a more solid kind. All through this process, the conditions of land ownership had played a decisive part. By and large this is also my own picture of developments in the same period. This first book was followed by another, in two volumes, in 1985, namely Städtebaureform 1865–1900: Von Licht, Luft und Ordnung in der Stadt der Gründerzeit which also up to a point addresses the same issues as are taken up here, albeit mainly during the period after the major capital city projects.⁸

Not until the English version of my own book was virtually finished did I become aware of Walter Kieß’s Urbanismus im Industriezeitalter: Von der klassizistischen Stadt zur Garden City (1991). This book—which provides the most exhaustive documentation and analysis hitherto of nineteenth-century urban development, including capital city planning—would have supplied me with valuable reference material. Recently Gerhard Fehl and Juan Rodriguez-Lores have published Stadt-Umbau: Die planmäβige Erneuerung europäischer Grostβädte zwischen Wiener Kongreβ und Weimarer Republik (1995) in their impressive Stadt Planung Geschichte series, covering in part the same material as I do here. Whereas their earlier volumes primarily address urban extensions, the focus this time is on improvement and redevelopment projects.

Two alternatives seemed possible to me when it came to the organization of the book. One was to present each town on its own, and to gather the comparative aspects together in a concluding section. The second was to compare the towns thematically, without any previous monographic description. Both alternatives have their disadvantages. But the first variant proved the most manageable; it also means that anyone seeking information about a particular city will find their way about more easily. On the other hand it has been impossible to avoid some repetition. It should also be noted that the sources acknowledged in the city chapters are not generally repeated in the comparative sections, except in the case of a direct quotation. All quotations in languages other than English have been translated in the text.

Anyone trying to conduct international comparative studies of twentieth-century planning will be confronted by a mass of plans of various kinds, whose designations are difficult to translate, since terms that sound similar can im...