ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that the continued advocacy of the doctrine of architectural determinism is indicative of the intellectual blindness that leads members of every profession, whether law, architecture, or medicine, to believe that their function is socially critical. The superficiality of architects' social theory can be shown quite as clearly in the detail of planning practice. The Basingstoke example which was quoted illustrates the point very clearly. The reason why the residents of the best-designed estate were the least satisfied was that their satisfaction depended only marginally upon architectural design. Architects, however, are apt to subscribe to a much more fundamental and pervasive kind of theorizing which may be labelled "architectural determinism." The classic case of architectural determinism is the neighborhood unit theory. To the doctrine of architectural determinism, Broady opposes the theoretical distinction originally promulgated by Herbert Gans between the potential and the effective environment.
