ABSTRACT
Departing from Peter Hall's thesis in Cities of Tomorrow, the chapter deepens existing and reconstructs the missing parts in the historical continuity of one of the major under-presented influences on urban planning – the anarchist roots of the planning movement. Authors like Ward, Woodcock and Turner in Britain, and Doglio, Magnaghi and De Carlo in Italy constitute the thread recognizing the regionalist bridge from Kropotkin and Reclus to planners Geddes and Mumford. To showcase these connections, the chapter reviews recent research in geography and planning history on Reclus and Turner, using Patrick Geddes as the connection.
Reclus and Geddes, beyond rich personal links, share a conceptual foundation of several projects. Outlook tower and Valley section emerge from mutual interest in a river basin and idea of the city-region – making the city-nature fusion an ideal of regionalist planning as presented in The Evolution of Cities. Geddes, further, resides in John Turner's holistic diagrams, urban-regional surveys and references on aided self-help housing in Indore report in Turner's pioneering research of self-aided housing in Latin America with Eduardo Neira. The influence crystalizes into Turner's housing is a verb, the maxim implying tenure, shelter and location as key vectors of housing provision.
