ABSTRACT
The market-oriented emphasis, present nowadays throughout the surveying subculture as evidenced in the pages of the Chartered Surveyor Weekly, and more broadly within the development fraternity as expressed in the Estates Times and Estates Gazette, is quite overwhelming. It would seem to preclude any ‘space’ for consideration of women’s needs, or any other social needs for that matter. Following the ‘illegal’ demolition of the famous Firestone art deco building, Leslie Ginsberg, the architect, said that ‘the greatest threat to conservation is the RICS whose members are trained to see their work as development portfolios’, but it is to the surveyors’ credit that this statement was published. A woman geographer, who was involved in research within the world of surveying, told me she was astonished at how dismissive both housing managers and general surveyors were of ‘space’. Traditional surveyors like to believe in the ‘goodness’ of the status quo and like natural explanations that justify its existence.
