ABSTRACT
Geddes has often been claimed “a planner without politics” due to his declared detachments from power relations and imperial implications. Geddes was indeed never blunt in his support of the imperial situation, but the British Empire was nevertheless a part of him. The Empire for Geddes was first and foremost a geographical definition. He regarded it as a legitimate entity, purely a matter of geographical scale, and sometimes replaced it by similar categories such as “the English-speaking nations.” It was an obvious step on the ladder of citizenship and he encouraged civic responsibility as an imperial identity. 1 Similarly, Imperialism was incorporated into Geddes’ evolutionary scheme, forming a legitimate, albeit problematic stage in contemporary history; 2 it had a negative connotation when used as an economic term 3 or when used to describe regional metropolitanism. 4 However, the bulk of Geddes’ work was carried out in the colonies, affecting imperial spaces and shaping colonial cities: matters of great concern for the sub-discipline of postcolonial studies, in which theoretical advances are well reflected in the changing study of colonial cities, their planning and their planners. It is impossible to study Geddes and his colonial endeavors outside of this framework.
