EnP Reviewer: Development Theory

EnP Reviewer: Development Theory

By: MLPaga

Note: For Educational Purposes Only

Definition Of Sustainable Development

 

“The coming years will be a vital period to save the planet and to achieve sustainable, inclusive human development. “

António Guterres Secretary-General, United Nations

 

Sustainable development has been defined in many ways, but the most frequently quoted definition is from Our Common Future in 1987, also known as the Brundtland Report (WCED, 1987, p. 43)

 

Sustainable development is the idea that human societies must live and meet their needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. The “official” definition of sustainable development was developed for the first time in the Brundtland Report in 1987.

 

 

Specifically, sustainable development is a way of organizing society so that it can exist in the long term. This means taking into account both the imperatives present and those of the future, such as the preservation of the environment and natural resources or social and economic equity.

 

Sustainable development is defined as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” The concept of needs goes beyond simply material needs and includes values, relationships, freedom to think, act, and participate, all amounting to sustainable living, morally, and spiritually.

 

Other Definitions of Sustainable Development

• Improvement in the quality of human life within the carrying capacity of supporting ecosystems (World Wildlife Fund)

• A condition in which the ecosystem maintains its diversity and quality— and thus its capacity to support people and the rest of life—and its potential to adapt to change and provide a wide change of choices and opportunities for the future A condition in which all members of society are able to determine and meet their needs and have a large range of choices to meet their potential

• Economic growth that provides fairness and opportunity for all the world's people, not just the privileged few, without further destroying the world's finite natural resources and carrying capacity (Pronk and ul Haq 1992).

 

Key Questions:

What? …

to Sustain?

… to Develop?

 

What is to be Sustained?

Broadly Accepted Elements of Sustainability.

 

• Economic – Human Capital – Human-made Capital

• Environment – Natural Capital

• Social – Social Capital

 

What is Economic Sustainability?

• Human-made Capital – Traditional economic capital – Produced means of production

• Human Capital – Often simply refers to labor – More subtly, the ability of an individual to produce or increase income

• Knowledge

• Skills

• Health

• Values

– Activities that increase human capital

• Education

• Training

• Medical care

 

Environmental Sustainability

•Maintenance of Natural Capital – Ecosystem services that enable life

•Sources – Stocks of raw materials – Flows of renewable resources

•Sinks – Capacity to assimilate wastes

 

Environmental Sustainability: Goodland 95

1.    Output Rule: – Waste emission can’t exceed assimilative capacity of local environment

2.    Input Rule – Renewables: Harvest rates should be within regenerative rates – Non-renewables: Harvest rates should be below that rate at which renewable substitutes are developed

 

Social Sustainability

1.    Social Capital – No Consensus definition – Knowledge and rules of interaction in culture and institutions • Legal system • Government

2.    Social Sustainability general includes addressing basic needs of population • Recognitions of social issues in traditional development economics predate environmental concerns – Income distribution – Quality of life • Illiteracy • Hunger – Institutional participation – Increasing choice

 

Development Economics: Measures of Success

1.    UN Development Program – Human Development Indicator – GDP – Education – Life-expectancy

2.    Troubled Areas – Sub-saharan Africa

 

How much is to be sustained?

Quantity or Quality  or        Timeframe

 

What is to be Sustained? Sustainability Hierarchy (Marshall and Toffel)

 

• Actions are unsustainable that

– Level 4 • Reduce quality of life • Violate other values

– Level 3 • Cause species extinction • Violate human rights

– Level 2 • Significantly reduce life expectancy or basic health

– Level 1 • Endanger human survival

 

Pillars and principles of sustainable development. (Srdjan Zikic, 2018)

 

The concept has three main pillars: social, economic and ecological aspects.

 

Sustainable development is based on the following principles:

1.    Environmental quality: a lot of human activities are limited by the physical durability of the environment and it is emphasized that the consumption of natural wealth must be reduced. If we want to provide conditions for a healthy life and development for future generations, we should comply with these restrictions.

2.    Future: it is important to have the awareness of future generations and the satisfaction of their needs that we have influence on and that we are responsible for.

3.    The quality of life: apart from material, each of the human activities has a social, cultural, moral and spiritual dimension.

4.    Equity: wealth, benefits and responsibilities should be fairly distributed among countries as well as among different social groups within the society. The needs and the rights of the poor and of those who are not treated equally, regardless of the reason, should be taken into consideration recautions: this principle should be applied in the case when we are not sure how a certain act or event can have impact on environment.

5.    Comprehensiveness: all factors that affect a problem should be taken into consideration when solving complex problems [National sustainable development strategy 2007, p. 13-15].

 

Sustainable Development Goals

 

Goal 1: End poverty in all its forms everywhere

Goal 2: End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture

Goal 3: Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages

Goal 4: Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote life-long learning opportunities for all

Goal 5: Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls

Goal 6: Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all

Goal 7: Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern energy for all

Goal 8: Promote sustained, inclusive, and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment, and decent work for all

Goal 9: Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization, and foster innovation

Goal 10: Reduce inequality within and among countries

Goal 11: Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable

Goal 12: Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns

Goal 13: Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts

Goal 14: Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas, and marine resources for sustainable development

Goal 15: Protect, restore, and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss

Goal 16: Achieve peaceful and inclusive societies, rule of law, effective and capable institutions

Goal 17: Strengthen means of implementation and revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development

 

CONCEPT OF SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT (WCED 1987)

 

“Sustainable development is a dynamic process. In which the development and utilization of resources, Orientation of technological development, Institutional change And direction of investment are all in harmony and enhance both Current and future potentials to meet human needs and aspiration.”

The Five P's of Sustainable Development

In the global peace and development community, the SDGs appear in every opening speech and pop up in closing remarks around the globe. Different entities and organisations, as well as individuals identify “their goal” and pose with it for the photo opp. But what sits behind the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, and frankly – why should we care?

The 2030 Agenda requires a fundamental overhaul of approaches to peace and development in ALL countries

In September 2015, governments agreed on the “2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development”, with a set of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) at its core. The 2030 Agenda, together with the Paris Agreement under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, form the most comprehensive blueprint to date for eliminating extreme poverty, reducing inequality, and protecting the planet. The Agenda also builds on the provisions of the Addis Ababa Action Agenda of the Third International Conference on Financing for Development and the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction and is grounded in the fundamental principles and norms of all major UN declarations and conventions. The agenda is rights-based and grounded in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. For the first time, the world has a universal and integral plan of action for people, planet and prosperity, which requires all countries and stakeholder to act in concert.

Placing sustainability at the core – a new approach to due diligence

Sustainable development is development that is grounded in five dimensions, which have been expressed through the “5 P's”, or five pillars of sustainable development: people, planet, prosperity, as well as peace and partnerships. These 5 P's provide a new guidance for due diligence for any intervention to address development and societal challenges across the world. For a development intervention to be sustainable, it needs to take into account the social, economic and ecological consequences it generates and lead to conscious choices in terms of the trade offs and spin offs it creates. For a development intervention to be sustainable, decision makers involved need to consider to what extent it is developed, owned and carried forward in partnerships, including with the people who will live with the consequences of the intervention. One also needs to look at the dimension of peace and governance, analysing the wider societal context in terms of drivers of tension and conflict and effects on social cohesion and inclusion, anticipating the consequences it could generate to exacerbate or appease them. The sustainable development approach provides a new tool for due diligence to identify the most appropriate development intervention in a given context. It obliges us to ask new questions and seek answers from new sources. It needs to trigger new dialogues, bringing actors and constituencies together that would not typically talk to each other and work together.

Multi-stakeholder engagement is key

The 2030 Agenda calls for fundamental transformation in a number of ways: beyond the specific goals, which are a result of a political process and compromise, it calls for new approaches to the way we identify needs and opportunities and the partners who need to be engaged to address them. In a world where social, environmental and economic challenges spread with little respect for national boarders and where conflicts are not managed within national boundaries, governments can’t do the job alone. The Agenda calls for “Leaving no one behind”- this again requires a fundamentally different approach to identifying and addressing extreme poverty and inequality in a way that leverages the capacities of those most left behind to become agents of change, rather than beneficiaries of aid.

The UN needs to re-define its role

One key imperative that results from the integrated and universal nature of the agenda, is clearly that the United Nations System itself needs to redefine and rethink its role and function. In today’s world, there is no space for the UN to continue “business as usual”. To support implementation of the agenda, the UN system must seize its strategic position as catalyst for change. The system was set up to function in separate, specialised agencies, focusing on their area of subject matter expertise – the new agenda calls for holistic approaches, better coordination and integration, both across institutions, actors and players, as well as in terms of integrating core knowledge and approaches, pulling together the expertise from within the different parts of the system to support inter-governmental processes and distil it into concrete and coherent policy advice.

Paving the way for change through institutional and individual learning and reflection

Access to knowledge is pivotal for the UN system to stand by these requirements and carry out effective operations on the ground. At the same time and based on a transformative and collaborative leadership model, the UN System will need to develop a high-performing workforce that is increasingly cross-disciplinary, comfortable working across UN pillars and skilled in leveraging multi-stakeholder partnerships. Individual staff, but also institutions themselves need to engage in a continuous process to expand and upgrade their knowledge. How to ensure that UN entities are agile enough to address these challenges? That UN staff understand the fundamental mission they have dedicated themselves to and are able to draw on the knowledge across the system, regardless of the sub-entity where they sit? How to encourage learning and innovation across the system in a way that allows the UN to remain relevant amidst a multitude of new actors?

Knowledge about the WHAT and the HOW

To address these challenges, knowledge about the agenda in its breadth and depth is key. Knowledge about the agenda entails knowledge about WHAT sits behind its substantive dimensions, including the core values they are grounded in, as well as knowledge about HOW these dimensions can be brought together in terms of policies and procedures within the UN System and beyond. It also requires a profound reflection about HOW different actors need to adapt and change, leveraging innovative approaches and critically rethinking the way the UN system functions and what changes are needed.

Advocacy and awareness raising for the goals will be key to ensure the agenda is known and the political pressure to work towards it is kept up. For the agenda to really make a difference, however, knowledge and deep reflection about the changes it requires will be crucial for the UN and partners to be up to the task of seriously and profoundly addressing the biggest challenges people and the planet are facing – within our lifetime.

We believe learning has to reflect on examining the goals and their overarching principles in detail, assess specific needs of UN Country Teams and the UN System as a whole and provide spaces to lay out new pathways, reflect about ways to forge stronger partnerships, step up knowledge and capacities in the area of measurement and data collection, question strategic leadership approaches in a changed world and strengthen advocacy and communication efforts around the fundamental shifts the agenda requires.

Article by:

United Nations System Staff College

 

Three Schools of Thought in Socio-Economic Development and Poverty Alleviation

 

1.    Increase Income – Economic Growth at all Costs – ‘Development as Raising Incomes’ – Nobel Laureates Robert Solow & Simon Kuznets – Neo-Liberals Milton Friedman & Friedrich von Hayek

2.    Meet Needs – Social Development – ‘Development as Meeting Needs’ – Nobel Laureate Dag Hammarsjkold et.al.

3.    Build Capacities – Sustainable Development – ‘Development as Capacitation or Capability-Building’ – Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen

 

 

Planning Theory

 

Major Schools of Thought in Planning (M. Pulido)

1.    Planning as Social Physics – (positivist Regional Science and Regional Economics) Planning aims to discover presumed natural laws or regular occurrences in social phenomena so that these phenomena can be better predicted and managed.

2.    Planning and Social Darwinism – Planning studies human societies as biological organisms subject to the laws of natural evolution such as competition, adaptation, predation, parasitism, co-evolution, survival of the fittest, matira ang matibay, etc.

3.    Planning as Social Engineering – Planning is a State function that aims to create purposive change by directing human behavior through a combination of persuasive and coercive strategies.

4.    Instrumentalist View – Planning needs no theoretical mooring and has no inherent value apart from its being a pragmatic tool to bring about results. • Planning as Communicative Action– Planning aims to understand & describe social interaction among sectors for meaningful community discourse, harmonization of interests, and collaborative action (interpretive)

5.    Critical or Radical Planning – Planning aims to smash myths and mobilize people to radically (radix, i.e. roots) change structures of domination & subjugation in society.

6.    Systems Theory of Planning – Planning functions like a machine or computer unit that utilizes information and feedback in an iterative, cyclical, self-feeding fashion inorder to effectively describe, simulate, forecast, and project societal conditions.

 

Study of the philosophical bases (Neelakshi Rathore)

1.    Empiricism/Phenomenolism: In 1620 Sir Francis Bacon argued that everything we know about the world around us has been gained by experience. Other British philosophers Locke, Berkeley and Hume followed Bacon in their explanations, from which they extracted their entire philosophy of Empiricism. Empiricism puts its trust in the human senses and experiences. (Broadbent, 1990) Empiricism was largely a British movement opposed to rationalism. Major proponents of the theory include Locke, Berkeley and Hume.

2.    Kevin Lynch- Image of the City-1960 As a reaction to destructive impacts of modernism on American cities and urban life, Kevin lynch, Jane Jacobs, Christopher Alexander and some others tried to make the city legible once again. To them this could be done by restoring the social and symbolic function of the street and other public spaces. They criticized the loss of human dimension on modern cities. Thus their works derived from the view of the city dweller. Lynch saw the city as text and to read it he used scientific inquiry and empirical methods. Lynch’s way of reading is followed by Appleyard, Thiel and some others afterward. The primary insight developed in this small book is that the structure of a city exists not only in physical reality but also in the minds of its inhabitants. True to his era, Lynch emphasized such traits as efficiency and tended toward abstract principles.

Lynch gives an account of a research project, carried out in three American cities- Los Angeles, Boston and Jersey with comparisons to Florence and Venice). The project resulted in the evolution of the concept of legibility depending on the people’s ‘mental maps’. Lynch’s innovative use of graphic notation to link quite abstract ideas of urban structure with the human perceptual experience helped liberating them from the previous strictness of the physical master plan. Lynch’ work has been influential to many. Theorist of post modernity Fredric Jameson (1991) for instance refers to Lynch when he argues that the cognitive map is a means to cope with societies complexities by bridging ‘objective’ and abstract representations of space, and subjective existential experiences of ‘lived space’. Lynch can also be seen as a precursor to the influential thesis by Henri Lefebvre from 1974 that space is not just ‘out there’ as a mathematical entity or a priori category but always socially produced. Kevin Andrew Lynch (1918 Chicago, Illinois - 1984 Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts) was an American urban planner and author. His most influential books include The Image of the City (1960) and What Time is This Place? (1972).

 

3.    Gordon Cullen- Townscape-1961 In this book, Cullen argues that just as there is an art of architecture, there is an art of relationship, in which all the elements which go to the making of an environment, buildings, trees, nature, water, traffic, advertisements and so are woven together in such a way that drama is released. He believes that it is through vision that the environment is apprehended. Cullen puts to words and images some of the more intangible qualities of space that nevertheless affect how we view our surroundings. Thomas Gordon Cullen (b. 9 August 1914, Calverley - 11 August 1994, Wraysbury) was an influential English architect and urban designer who was a key motivator in the Townscape movement. He is best known for the book Townscape, first published in 1961.

4.    Edmund Bacon- Design of Cities-1967 Edmund N. Bacon relates historical examples to modern principles of urban planning. The method adopted by the author is by moving continuously back and forth by analysing the examples from the past and a corresponding implication in the present.The author chooses the samples very selectively such that the desired results are obtained from it.There is no discussion of processes but a preconcieved notion of the author that is reinforced by the contents of the book. He vividly demonstrates how the work of great architects and planners of the past can influence subsequent development and be continued by later generations also referred to as the principle of the Second man. By illuminating the historical background of urban design, the author also shows us the fundamental forces and considerations that determine the form of a great city. He also stresses the importance of designing open space as well as architectural mass and discusses the impact of space, color, and perspective on the city-dweller and that the centers of cities should and can be pleasant places in which to live, work, and relax. Edmund Norwood Bacon (May 2, 1910 – October 14, 2005) was a noted American urban planner, architect, educator and author. During his tenure as the Executive Director of the Philadelphia City Planning Commission from 1949 to 1970, his visions shaped today's Philadelphia, the city in which he was born, to the extent that he is sometimes described as "The Father of Modern Philadelphia."

5.    Christian Norberg-Schulz - Intentions in Architecture- 1968 The author, in this book, outlines of a conceptual schema which may be used to analyze the building as well as finished works addressing both the practicing architect and the architectural historian. He elucidates the nature of architectural reality from a practical viewpoint. Although the methods and theory that his book develops are uncompromisingly rigorous and tightly formed, they are everywhere related to actual building, through specific examples. He states that that purpose is not solving problems; intention is to only organise the subject matter in order to arrive at a common basis for collaboration in solving the problems; focus is on enabling us to see connections between the theory and our concrete empirical problems. The chief focus of the book is on the symbolic and linguistic. The purpose is to develop an integrated theory of architectural description and architectural but this theory derives itself from a limited number of examples.

 

Christian Norberg-Schulz (23 May 1926, Oslo – 28 March 2000, Oslo) was a Norwegian architect, architectural historian and theorist. Though Norberg-Schulz had practiced as an architect in his home country, he is well-known internationally both for his books on architectural history (in particular Italian classical architecture, especially the Baroque) and for his writings on theory. His concerns for theory can be characterised by a subtle shift from the analytical and psychological concerns of his earlier writings to the issue of phenomenology of place, being one of the first architectural theorists to bring the thinking of Martin Heidegger to the field.

 

6.    Christian Norberg-Schulz – Genius Loci- 1979 In this book, the author attempts to develop a theory of understanding architecture in concrete, existential terms, following the guidelines of Heidegger. While elucidating the concept of genius loci, he explores several works spanning three decades. In his 1963 thesis, his original intention was to investigate the psychology of architecture (Norberg-Schulz, 1963). Based on the same gestalt psychological theory employed by Kevin Lynch, Norberg-Schulz (1980) explores the character of places on the ground and their meanings for people, although Lynch (1960) ignored meanings and focused on structure and identity. Norberg-Schulz uses a concept of townscape to denote skyline or image. He sees the skyline of the town and the horizontally expanded silhouette of the urban buildings as keys to the image of a place. He promotes the traditional form of towns and buildings, which he sees as the basis for bringing about a deeper symbolic understanding of places. (Memory and Place) Christian Norberg-Schulz (23 May 1926, Oslo – 28 March 2000, Oslo) was a Norwegian architect, architectural historian and theorist. Though Norberg-Schulz had practiced as an architect in his home country, he is well-known internationally both for his books on architectural history (in particular Italian classical architecture, especially the Baroque) and for his writings on theory. His concerns for theory can be characterised by a subtle shift from the analytical and psychological concerns of his earlier writings to the issue of phenomenology of place, being one of the first architectural theorists to bring the thinking of Martin Heidegger to the field.

 

Rationalism: The Empiricist position was much disputed by Renne Descartes(1597-1650) who argued that since our senses can be confused by certain illusions we really cannot trust the evidence of our senses and must search for universal truths which like Plato believe could be reached by logical thinking. It is inspired from the scientific models of Galileo and Newton. The essence of Rationalism is this: things can exist without the benefit of anyone every experiencing them. The included such concepts from arithmetic and number such as number, shape, three dimensional form and so on.

 

7.    Le Corbusier – Radiant City- 1935 In this book Le Corbusier gave his interpretation of the 20th century city. The idea was to reconceive bustling, disorderly urban life as a tidy series of urban lives — work life, home life, going out life, errand-running life — divided between compartmentalized mini-environments: highrise apartment buildings flooded with light and set in broad, open public spaces far from pedestrian-clogged sidewalks, noisy markets, clubs and restaurants separated from workplaces. Being a Rationalist the author is the greatest opponent of dispersionist planning. Showcasing an abstract nature of thinking with no notes to accompany his plan , he was presenting merely a fairy abstract- a concept of how cities ought to be. The Radiant City also marks Le Corbusier's increasing dissatisfaction with capitalism and his turn to the right-wing syndicalism of Hubert Lagardelle. Le Corbusier (October 6, 1887 – August 27, 1965), was an architect, designer, urbanist, and writer, famous for being one of the pioneers of what is now called modern architecture. His career spanned five decades, with his buildings constructed throughout Europe, India and America.

 

Positivism: Positivism assumes that there is valid knowledge (truth) only in scientific knowledge. Though the positivist approach has been a recurrent theme in the history of Western thought, the concept was developed in the modern sense in the early 19th century by the philosopher and founding sociologist, Auguste Comte. Comte argued that society operates according to its own laws, much as the physical world operates according to gravity and other laws of nature. (Wikipedia)

Pragmatism: As for the pragmatist position, that we understand things by thinking of their practical consequences: this was the work of Charles Sanders Pierce(1839-1914), of William James(1842-1910) and of John Dewey(1859-1952). This philosophy grew out of American conditions.

Neo-Rationalism: In architecture, a movement originating in Italy in the 1960s which rejected the functionalist and technological preoccupations of mainstream Modernism, advocating a rationalist approach to design based on an awareness of formal properties. It developed in the light of a reevaluation of the work of Giuseppe Terragni led by Aldo Rossi, and gained momentum through the work of Giorgio Grassi (1935–). Characterized by elemental forms and an absence of detail, the style has adherents throughout Europe and the USA.

 

8.    Aldo Rossi- Architecture of the City-1984 In his study, Rossi framed his area of studies on the city by looking at the city through two systems of study. The first one viewed the city as a product of the generative functional systems of its architecture and urban spaces, while the second one consider city as a spatial structure, which system belongs more to architecture and geography. Rossi’s concern throughout the book is to study architecture for its own sake without reference to outside disciplines, nor even to the history of architecture although the use of historical examples is fundamental to his method. So Rossi deals with urban facts as they are themselves, the actual physical objects of which cities are made, with their individuality and their evolution. (Broadbent, 1990) Rossi also supports Claude Levi-Strauss’ theory of structural anthropology (1972) that considers the city as an object of nature and a subject of culture, and will be able to achieve a balance between natural and artificial elements. In this book, Rossi criticizes the lack of understanding of the city in current architectural practice. He argued that a city must be studied and valued as something constructed over time; of particular interest are urban artifacts that withstand the passage of time. Rossi held that the city remembers its past (our "collective memory"), and that we use that memory through monuments; that is, monuments give structure to the city. (Wikipedia)

 

In part a protest against functionalism and the Modern Movement, in part an attempt to restore the craft of architecture to its position as the only valid object of architectural study, and in part an analysis of the rules and forms of the city's construction. Aldo Rossi (May 3, 1931 – September 4, 1997) was an Italian architect and designer who accomplished the unusual feat of achieving international recognition in four distinct areas: theory, drawing, architecture and product design.

 

9.    Rob Krier- Urban Space-1979 A Neo- Rationalist, he has always taken the historic repertoire seriously. For him, continuity and aestheticism are ways of reviving what he regards as the art of architecture that lost its way in modernism. The aim of the book ‘Urban Space’ is to search how the traditional understanding of urban space has been lost within the modern cities. By explaining the terms of urban space and its structure, he has examined whether the concept of urban space retains some validity in contemporary town planning and on what grounds. Krier’s analysis is followed by a history-with particular reference to Le Corbusier-of how there has been an erosion of urban space in 20th century town planning. Rob Krier (born 1938 in Grevenmacher) is a Luxembourgian sculptor, architect, urban designer and theorist. He is former professor of architecture at Vienna University of Technology, Austria. Since 1993, he has been in partnership with architect Christopher Kohl in a joint office based in Berlin, Germany.

 

Neo-Empiricists: It's a school of philosophy that combines empiricism – the idea that observational evidence is indispensable for knowledge of the world – with a version of rationalism incorporating mathematical and logic-linguistic constructs and deductions in epistemology.

 

10.  Kevin Lynch – Good City Form-1984 Good City Form is both a summation and an extension of Lynch’s vision, initiated in Image of the City, a high point from which he views cities past and possible. The study is carried out by a thoughtful inquiry into the history of urban form and its resultant theory of urban design. The analysis deals with the idea of perception of the city form rather than the political or economic factors that shaped it, in order to make utilitarian cities. His study is responsive to human context in that he looks at connections between human values and the physical forms of cities examining how such values lead to the notion of a "good city form". The author sets requirements for a normative theory of city form reviewing earlier physical images of what utopian communities might be and helps us place city forms into one or another of three theoretic constructs: cosmic or ceremonial centers, the machine city, and the city as an organism. His performance dimensions (e.g. access, fit, vitality) are broad enough to be interpreted and reinterpreted for specific contexts and sites. His definition of what urban design should be discusses three aspects of cities: human activity, process and control, and physical form. In words of the author, the ‘cosmic model’, the form of a settlement, is a means of linking human beings to the vast forces and a way of stabilizing the order and the harmony of the cosmos.” Connections existed between gods, men, rites and city plans through history. The model upholds schema of seeing the same patterns reproduced in all levels of the cosmos from the largest scale of the universe to the smallest scale of the city plan. These beliefs were reinforced by the forms. The ‘practical model’, refers to city as a machine of inter-related parts that move and move each other. It is a factual functional tool, being simple the assembly of its parts. The ‘organic model’, refers to the notion that the city is considered a self-regulating organism, an autonomous individual of differentiated parts. It does have differentiated parts but these parts are in close contact with each other, they work together .Form and function is indissolubly linked. The method creates an understanding of basic metaphors of cities and the possible physical interventions. Kevin Andrew Lynch (1918 Chicago, Illinois - 1984 Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts) was an American urban planner and author. His most influential books include The Image of the City (1960) and What Time is This Place? (1972).

 

Structuralists: A theoretical paradigm that emphasizes that elements of culture must be understood in terms of their relationship to a larger, overarching system or structure. Structuralism is "the belief that phenomena of human life are not intelligible except through their interrelations. These relations constitute a structure, and behind local variations in the surface phenomena there are constant laws of abstract culture". Structuralism as a movement in architecture and urban planning evolved around the middle of the 20th century. It was a reaction to CIAM-Functionalism (Rationalism), which had led to a lifeless expression of urban planning that ignored the identity of the inhabitants and urban forms.

 

11.  Child’s Conception of Space – Jean Piaget-1948 Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget(1869-1980)studies the development of intelligence in children. Piaget has sometimes labeled his position constructivism, to capture the sense in which the child must make and remake the basic concepts and logical thought-forms that constitute his intelligence. Piaget prefers to say that the child is inventing rather than discovering his idea. This distinction separates him both from empiricism and apriorism. The ideas in question do not preexist out there in the world, only awaiting their discovery by the child; each child must invent them for himself. By the same token, since the ideas have no priori external existence, they cannot be discovered by simple exposure; rather, they must be constructed or invented by the child. The nature of space, whether an innate idea, the outcome of experience in the external world, or an operational construction has long been a source of philosophical and speculative psychological discussion. This book deals with the development of the child's notions about space. Piaget acknowledges debates about the nature of space, whether it is an empirical concept derived from perception or from images, whether it is innate to thought or consciousness, or whether it is operational in character, and so on while resorting to experimental psychology, since only the actual data of mental evolution can reveal the true factors operative in the development of the notion of space. The author has linked spatial thinking with changing child perception through time. He talks about Euclidean and topological concepts and their relationship with Child’s space. Analysis shows that child’s space, which is essentially of an active and operational character, invariably begins with the simple topological type long before it progresses into projective or Euclidean. Book is divided into three parts: Topological Space, Projective Space and the transition from projective to Euclidean space. Various experiments were undertaken as part of this book.

 

12.  Lewis Mumford- The City in History-1961 Mumford thought of himself not as a specialist but as a generalist, one who sought to make connections among various academic disciplines in order to discern a larger purpose in human endeavors. This, combined with his belief that society could be improved through rational and ecologically sound planning, marks him as a committed modernist. Lewis Mumford's massive historical study brings together a wide array of evidence--from the earliest group habitats to medieval towns to the modern centers of commerce (as well as dozens of black-and-white illustrations)--to show how the urban form has changed throughout human civilization. His tone is ultimately somewhat pessimistic: Mumford was deeply concerned with what he viewed as the dehumanizing aspects of the metropolitan trend, which he deemed "a world of professional illusionists and their credulous victims." (In another typically unrestrained criticism, he dubbed the Pentagon a Bronze Age monument to humanity's basest impulses, as well as an "effete and worthless baroque conceit.") Mumford hoped for a rediscovery of urban principles that emphasized humanity's organic relationship to its environment. Lewis Mumford (October 19, 1895 – January 26, 1990) was an American historian and philosopher of technology and science. Particularly noted for his study of cities and urban architecture, he had a tremendously broad career as a writer that also included a period as an influential literary critic. Mumford was influenced by the work of Scottish theorist Sir Patrick Geddes.

13.  Edmund Leach- Levi Strauss-1989 Lévi-Strauss is distinguished among the intellectuals of his own country as the leading exponent of "Structuralism," a word which has come to be used as if it denoted a whole new philosophy of life on the analogy of "Marxism" or "Existentialism." He synthesizes the thoughts of one of the twentieth century's greatest anthropologists and provides a thoughtful introduction to the theory and practice of structuralism. Leach organizes his work not by chronology but by theme, exploring three important topics in Lévi-Strauss's work: human beings and their symbols, the structure of myth, and kinship theory. Sir Edmund Ronald Leach (7 November 1910 – 6 January 1989) was a British social anthropologist.

 

Generalists

 

The Fall of Public Man – Richard Sennet-1992 The Fall of Public Man examines the imbalance between private and public experience, and the decline of involvement in political life in recent decades. Tracing the changing nature of urban society from the eighteenth century to the world we now live in, Richard Sennett discusses the causes of our social withdrawal and asks what can bring us to reconnect with our communities. His landmark study of the imbalance of modern civilization provides a fascinating perspective on the relationship between public life and the cult of the individual. Characteristically nuanced exploration into concepts of conflation of private and public identities, effects of urban population density, acts of presentation versus acts of representation, and other topics, Richard Sennett (1976) argues that the public realm now has become a mere formality and that the private life has become interoriorized, leading to confusion between intimate life and public life. Sennett is a sociologist with the ability to study the bigger picture without getting lost in a statistical labyrinth. Here he takes a selection of detailed observations scattered through the centuries, probing deeply into the social relations of one particular era or location at a time, and brings them into a wider ideological frame.

 

Sennett believes the public sphere has been in deep crisis for quite some time, that the public and private need be clearly distinguished for healthy social relations to exist, that personality is a narcissistic construct that threatens public discourse, that public space in our cities should be rich with interaction as it once was, that we endlessly seek the intimate in public interactions. The book includes an analysis on the social relations that brought about cosmopolitanism, the rise of the bourgeoisie, clothing and its evolving role in identity, myriad observations on the impact of urban planning on social interactions and a lot more. Richard Sennett (born Chicago, 1 January 1943) is the Centennial Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics and University Professor of the Humanities at New York University. Sennett is probably best known for his studies of social ties in cities, and the effects of urban living on individuals in the modern world.

 

14.  Henry Glassie- Folk Housing in middle Virginia-1975 Henry Glassie presents a revolutionary and carefully constructed methodology for looking at houses and interpreting from them the people who built and used them. Glassie believes that all relevant historical evidence - unwritten as well as written - must be taken into account before historical truth can be found. He is convinced that any study of man's past must make use of nonverbal and verbal evidence, since written history - the story of man as recorded by the intellectual elite - does not tell us much about the everyday life, thoughts, and fears of the ordinary people of the past. Such people have always been in the majority, however, and a way has to be found to include them in any valid history. In Folk Housing in Middle Virginia Glassie admirably sets forth such a way. The author charges that the builders of the folk houses in this study shared common ideas about how to build houses, and that the common ideas could be manipulated according to specific wants or needs. He also discusses the move from a community mindset to one that is more individualistic. Glassie builds a strong argument for the use of artifacts in historical research, but there are few other types of evidence offered and this is a distinct weakness of the study. Henry H. Glassie III (born 24 March 1941) is a folklorist and emeritus College Professor of Folklore at Indiana University Bloomington. With specializations in folk art, folklife,vernacular architecture and material culture, Glassie has written nearly twenty books on folklore of the areas of Ireland, Turkey, Bangladesh, and the United States.

 

Neo Modernists

 

15.  Jon Lang- Urban Design, the American experience-1994 The author, in this book, places social and environmental concerns within the context of American history. It returns the focus of urban design to the creation of a better world. It evaluates the efforts of designers who apply knowledge about the environment and people to the creation of livable, enjoyable, and even inspiring built worlds. Urban Design: The American Experience emphasizes that urban design must take a user-oriented approach to achieve a higher quality of life in human settlements. One becomes aware of a neo-Modernist approach that builds on the successes and failures of Rationalism and Empiricism, the two major streams of Modernist thought in architecture and urban design. One also gains an understanding of how the environment is experienced by people, and the implications of this experiencing for architectural and urban design. Jon Lang is Emeritus Professor of Architecture at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia where he is associated primarily with the Master in Urban Development and Design Program [MUDD].

 

Resources:

M.M. Shah. (2008). Sustainable Development. Retrieved July7, 2020, from https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/earth-and-planetary-sciences/sustainable-development

Maria Ana Pulido, CE, EnP. (nd). Development Theory.

Neelakshi Rathore. On Question of Method: Urban theory and their schools of thought

Retrieved July7, 2020, from https://www.academia.edu/5989293/On_Question_of_Method_Urban_theory_and_their_schools_of_thought

Srdjan Zikic. (2018). A modern concept of sustainable development. Progress in Economic Sciences No. 5 (2018). p-ISSN 2300-4088 e-ISSN 2391-5951.

Sustainable Development: What is it? Why does it matter? Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Retrieved July 7, 2020, from https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/engineering-systems-division/esd-123j-systems-perspectives-on-industrial-ecology-spring-2006/lecture-notes/lec4.pdf

Sustainable Development – What Is It? Definition, History, Evolution, Importance And Examples. Youmatter. Retrieved July 7, 2020, from https://youmatter.world/en/definition/definitions-sustainable-development-sustainability/#:~:text=Sustainable%20development%20is%20the%20idea,the%20Brundtland%20Report%20in%201987.

UN System Staff College. Sustainable Development - What is there to know and why should we care?  Retrieved July 13, 2020, from https://www.unssc.org/news-and-insights/blog/sustainable-development-what-there-know-and-why-should-we-care/