ARCH 1065 History and Theory of Planning

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ARCH 1065 History and Theory of Planning

• Week Seven
• Social Economic Trends Transition Away from
  Liberal Capitalism

2
Course Mechanics Break

• No class next week (17 April)
• Theoretical essays that would ordinarily have
  been due this Friday, are due next Friday instead
  (this is already reflected in the assignment
  deadlines as listed in the Course Guide)

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Course Mechanics Missed Classes Tutorial
Sessions

• If you have missed or do miss a class or tutorial
  session
• Lecture notes and some tutorial notes are posted
  to the wiki several days after each class
• You are responsible for reading this material,
  following up with me if needed, and making
  arrangements to hand in any activities you missed
• Outside meetings, drafts, etc.
• Meetings time is set aside in most tutorial
  sessions for one-on-one support I will schedule
  outside meetings only if
• you have first tried to resolve issues during the
  tutorials, and need more intensive support, or
• you need to speak about an intrinsically private
  matter
• Drafts
• I will read and comment briefly on draft work
  posted to the wiki for your individual research
  assignment
• I will not read draft theoretical essays,
  although I will allow submissions of additional
  essays, and will count only your highest three
  grades

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Course Mechanics Wiki

• From now until 28 April
• Work on individual research
• Log in and contribute to wiki at least once
  weekly
• Individual assignment due 28 April
• Categories
• Updated to reflect students requested changes
• New Organising Research pages created under
  each category, for group discussion
• Can also ask individual students questions on
  their individual research pages or personal talk
  pages
• Contribution mark through 28 April
• Post your own draft content, notes and questions
  to the wiki
• Interact with other students to obtain assistance
  or to assist others

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Course Mechanics Individual Research

• Develop a clear outline of what would be required
  to write a comprehensive piece on your topic
• If the work seems likely to fall short of _at_1500
  words, you may need to write more than one
  article to the wiki to satisfy the requirements
  of this assignment
• If writing more than one article, choose
  closely-related topics, so that a similar
  research strategy will help you write multiple
  pieces
• If the work seems likely to exceed _at_1500 words,
  you can choose
• Write a longer piece (1500 words is a guide to
  the minimum, not maximum, requirements for the
  assignment), or
• Write sections of a longer piece, and indicate
  clearly which additional sections would be
  required for a comprehensive article on your
  topic these additional sections can then be
  added during the final, collaborative stage, by
  you or someone else
• It is better to write sections of an article
  well, than an entire article poorly
• Try to identify all perspectives in the academic
  and political debates over your topic
• Even if you disagree with a position, summarise
  the strongest possible justification for it
• You can then summarise the strongest possible
  criticisms of all positions
• If the weight of the evidence or professional
  consensus justifies it, you can conclude that one
  or more positions are clearly superior to others

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Course Mechanics Theoretical Essay Feedback

• Essays through 31 March essays marked
• If you submitted an essay by 31 March, and I have
  not returned it, speak to me ASAP
• General comments
• Write as though your reader is unfamiliar with
  the assignment and readings
• Guess whos talking??? Pay attention to voice
• Use active voice
• First person OK
• Pay attention to pronouns that could refer to
  more than one thing
• Be clear about what you think, what an author
  thinks, and what an author believes someone else
  thinks!
• Grammar run-on sentences, sentence fragments,
  unclear referents
• Structure, structure, structure!
• First paragraph should say why the topic is
  interesting/useful/important and how you plan to
  address the topic
• Group similar points together and ask yourself
  what each paragraph contributes to your argument
• Conclude by reminding your reader what you have
  argued
• Learning Skills Unit can assist with grammar,
  syntax and structure http//aps.eu.rmit.edu.au/ls
  u/index.html

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Course Mechanics Tutorials

• 2 Sessions
• 1100-1230 in this classroom
• 130-300 Bld. 8, lvl. 9, rm. 42
• Student Presentations everyone must register
  for one of these
• Begin today!
• Students present on a topic related to their
  individual research
• Depending on topic, may cover entire topic, or
  sub-section of topic that can be introduced in a
  10-15 minute presentation
• Not purely descriptive, but designed to provoke
  class discussion/debate
• Relate topic back to contemporary planning
  practice
• Conclude with questions to guide 15-20 minutes of
  class discussion
• Tutorial Imbalance
• Seeking volunteers to move from morning to
  afternoon tutorial
• If insufficient volunteers, some students from
  the morning tutorial may serve as guest
  presenters in the afternoon tutorial

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Lecture Overview

• Last week
• Introduction to the works of a few key figures in
  the early planning movement
• This week
• Discussion of social and economic trends related
  to the decline of liberal capitalism
• Next week
• Postwar Planning Theory
• Recommendation
• Commanding Heights the Battle for the World
  Economy documentary lots of copies available
  from AV section of Swanston library one copy on
  2-hour reserve
• First two programs good overview of debates
  between Hayek and Keynes
• AV 338.9 Y47

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Transition from Liberal Capitalism

• Recurrent boom-and-bust economic cycles
• Social unrest and growing perception of a tension
  between ability to generate material wealth, and
  the living conditions of working poor
• Severe economic crisis in 1890s, 1920s
• Contradictory pressures for liberalisation and
  centralised management
• Critique of liberal economy as irrational
• Argument that we experience recurrent economic
  crisis, not because we cant produce material
  wealth, but because we cant distribute material
  wealth and match production to consumption
• Centrally planned economies would be rational
  because we could consciously manage production
  and consumption
• WWI initial experience of wartime centralised
  economic planning and mobilisation of civilian
  population and industry by the state
• Contradictory reactions by Hayek Keynes
• Wartime as demonstration of the ability of the
  state to manage production efficiently surely
  much more would be possible in peacetime, vs.
• Wartime demonstration of the real loss of
  personal freedoms associated with state
  management surely this loss of freedom cannot
  be justified in peacetime

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Urban Planning in the Transitional Period

• Draft and proposed comprehensive plans drawn up
  from 1890s-1920s in many cities
• Tended to provide a relatively static view of a
  desired endpoint to the planning process
• As critiques of liberalism grew, it became easier
  to believe that centralised planning would be
  necessary to achieve desired economic and social
  outcomes efficiently
• While planning movements began to attract more
  mainstream interest, formal city planning
  documents were often not adopted or, if adopted,
  were not implemented during this period
• Plans oriented to major engineering
  infrastructure projects were more likely to be
  implemented, if funding were available
• Economic and social crises exerted conflicting
  pressures
• Increasing the desire for planning, but also
• Undermining the economic means and political
  focus required for implementation waxing and
  waning of enthusiasm for planning
• In some countries, the Great Depression and, in
  others, WWII and its aftermath provided the final
  push for serious implementation of urban
  planning initiatives

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Great Depression

• Systemic nature of problems made it difficult to
  interpret individual outcomes (poverty, wealth)
  as the earned result of individual efforts
• Right to work movements
• Living wage/family wage movements
• Appealed in many ways to respectable liberal
  values, but called into question the
  individualist orientation of liberalism
• Development of mass-production industries
  (Taylorist/Fordist model), dependent on
• regular, orderly, standardised, predictable
  movement of goods along an assembly line
• interruptions from industrial unrest particularly
  devastating to these industries, and economies
  founded on them
• workforce organisation easier in factory context
  large numbers of workers brought together in
  similar lifeworlds and with similar material
  interests
• mass consumption economic crises of this time
  are often understood as crises of
  overproduction e.g., not enough people can
  afford to purchase the goods being produced
• High capital investment involved in standardised
  production dependent on consistent consumption
  to absorb goods that are now produced at a higher
  volume
• Need adequate wages to fulfil social role as
  consumers
• The role of industry, in addition to the labour
  movement, as a driving force behind state
  regulation and the provision of social welfare
  benefits is often unrecognised
• Impact of Great Depression not uniform, however
  e.g., Australia reinforced liberal economic
  management at a national level as a result, in
  spite of early strong embrace of Australian
  Settlement values, including pension schemes and
  living wage concept

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WWII

• Pushed all involved states into some form of
  emergency economic planning
• Total war state mobilisation of civilian
  populations in war effort
• Production of munitions, but also everyday
  items like food, clothing, etc. encouragement
  of sacrifice (of personal freedom, material
  goods, etc.) by everyday citizens in support of
  the war effort
• State management of industry continuum from
  outright nationalisation through to negotiated
  arrangements with industry representatives, with
  the state as primary, highest-priority consumer,
  negotiating payments and production quotas
• Need to ensure continuous, predictable, intensive
  production for war effort
• Concessions to unions to avoid industrial unrest
• Concessions to businesses (monopoly arrangements,
  predictable demand, assistance with labour
  discipline, etc.)
• Emergency planning continues in most countries
  during postwar reconstruction
• Need to rebuild infrastructure destroyed in the
  war
• Manage large-scale population shifts refugees,
  migrants, returning soldiers
• Housing (accentuated by unexpected baby boom)
• Employment need to shift female workforce out
  of industry and take other steps to ensure
  employment for returning soliders who were to be
  employed as part of the reward for their service
• Postponed industrial unrest was expected to
  erupt after the patience of union movements
  during the war
• Postponed material demands of consumers were
  also expected to erupt, after years of wartime
  deprivation

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Soviet Model

• Serious fear that the west could be at a
  competitive disadvantage from the more rational
  organisation of production in the Soviet Union
• Also, significant fear of significant industrial
  unrest, inspired by the potential for worker
  control represented by the Soviet model

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Western AlternativesKeynesian Economics,
Bretton Woods

• Both were responses to the experiences of the
  interwar period the desire to minimise economic
  competition between states as a potential
  provocation for war
• Keynesian Economics
• Proposed initially in response to WWI experience
• Notion that state could intervene to flatten
  the troughs and peaks of the business cycle
• Public employment, pensions and other measures
  can increase consumption, and thereby support
  production, during downturns
• Higher taxation during upturns will dampen boom,
  and also provide income to pay off debts
• Public debt is not intrinsically a problem, as
  long as the economy can be managed to sustain
  long-term growth
• Ideas gain increasing currency in the post-WWII
  period, although selectively appropriated
• Bretton Woods
• International conference 1944 rules and
  institutions governing international financial
  system, exchange rates
• Nations responsible for adopting a monetary
  policy that would peg currencies to US, which
  would itself be convertible with gold
  compromise between 19th C gold standard and
  what was perceived as destabilising experiments
  with floating currency
• Set up IMF (to assist with temporary balance of
  payments issues) and International Bank of
  Reconstruction Development (now part of World
  Bank)
• Intended to provide a more predictable
  environment for international exchange

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Cultural Dimensions of the Postwar Period

• Orientation to growth
• Actually culturally continuous (and arguably
  definitive of capitalism)
• Mediated in this period, however, in an
  historically-unique way through state planning
• Consumption
• Often explained in terms of the materialism of
  the consumers (e.g., arguments about the desire
  to keep up with the Joneses, etc.)
• Release after wartime deprivation
• Driven by changes to the structure of industry,
  as well dependence on steady consumption and on
  the turnover to new variations on established
  consumer goods as markets saturate
• Domesticity
• Return of female workers to home (dilemmas when
  gender relations are no longer doxic may
  partially explain intensity of postwar private
  sphere)
• Unexpected baby boom need for rapid creation of
  low-cost housing often resulted in dormitory
  suburbs and standardised housing design for rapid
  construction
• Rising tendency to work for large-scale employers
  and success of living wage movement strong
  separation of workplace from home, male from
  female world
• Carry over of concern with efficiency rise of
  home economics

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Cultural Dimensions of the Postwar Period

• Faith in progress forward-directedness of the
  period
• Psychological desire to look forward, to build
  or rebuild after the destruction of the war
• Apparent success in managing nature both
  economic and environmental
• Scientific (particularly medical) breakthroughs
• Creation of full employment economy in part
  through large-scale public works projects, many
  of which involved significant interventions into
  the natural environment (draining wetlands,
  building hydroelectric facilities, etc.)
• Rising wages, relatively low industrial unrest,
  development of social pension schemes and other
  safety nets
• Orientation to engineering and applied scientific
  knowledge expectation that this type of
  expertise could resolve a wider and wider range
  of social problems.

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Unexpected Planning ChallengesAutomobiles
Sprawl

• Rapid rise as a result of a push-pull dynamic
• Release of individual consumption
• Rising personal wages
• Industry need for mass market consumption
• Separation of industry from dormitory suburbs
• Rapid creation of new suburbs isolated from
  traditional public transport infrastructure
• Public works boosted by commitment to full
  employment economy road building projects
  enabling automobile transport, which then
  encourage further road building, which makes
  automobiles more useful, etc.

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Unexpected Planning Challenges the Baby Boom

• Pre-War, Several Waves of Population Crisis
• Falling fertility rates worldwide trend related
  to industrialisation
• Concerns very similar to those currently
  expressed how will the economy support an
  increasingly ageing population (the shift in the
  age profile that occurred from the late 19th
  early 20th centuries in many countries was more
  drastic than the one currently anticipated)
• Expectation was that fertility rates would
  continue to fall provided a rational core for
  earlier tendency for urban plans to be more
  static than postwar plans
• Baby boom population increase stress on housing
  stock and social infrastructure, particularly
  when combined with changing family structure
• Ideal of nuclear family parents and children,
  rather than extended, multi-generational family
• Stark separation of work from home
• Nuclear family model as ideal never
  represented all families, but did heavily
  influence policy and planning (as well as
  regulatory interventions into families that did
  not conform to the ideal)

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Last Weeks Activity Postwar Planning
Challenges, Tools, Problems

• Automobiles
• Baby boom
• Focus on physical planning, rather than community
• Focus on planning for automobile, rather than
  public transport sprawl
• Migration and displacement
• Housing demand migrants, returning soldiers,
  new families
• Suburbanisation design for private domesticity
• Large-scale urban reconstructions slum
  clearance, freeway construction, post-war
  reconstruction demolition of heritage areas
• High unemployment large-scale public works
  projects
• Postwar reconstruction
• Engineering infrastructure/social hygiene
  projects
• Control of nature via large-scale engineering
  schemes
• Control of economy via Keynesian economics
• Growth as goal of efficient design

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Next Week Preview

• Postwar Planning Theory