Celebrating planning’s radical roots
I went along last Wednesday night to TCPA HQ in central London for an evening billed as a celebration of the radical roots of town planning…
You can watch a quick interview with TCPA chief planner Hugh Ellis explaing the idea behind the evening here.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3vgdGM3MWo]
As a planning journalist I go to a lot of evening events and, if I’m brutally honest, few leave me feeling inspired or manage to hold my interest as much as this one did.
It was a bold and refreshingly eclectic evening of history, literature, poetry and even live music. A little bit like a planning Hay Festival.
For love, life and liberty – Rediscovering the routes of a new society was described in a fairly cryptic press release thus:
“From the Diggers of the 17th century there has been a strong radical tradition of demanding new ways of living. In the post election period the TCPA wants to reconnect with our passionate past of art and literature; once indivisible from the expression of utopian communities.
“The planning system, whose original radicalism is simply breathtaking, is one powerful example of how inspired vision can turn into nightmarish procedural complexity. Its achievements are still impressive but it no longer transforms peoples’ lives and rarely, if ever, considers art and beauty as part of its business
“Our past values which were openly artistic, collectivist and cooperative are now little more than a distant memory. In essence this event is about remembering and celebrating our origins and testing their relevance for the future.
“It will explore the connections of key figures such as Ebenezer Howard and Raymond Unwin, to radical thinkers such as Edward Carpenter, William Morris and Prince Kropotkin and draw a long lineage through John Clare and the Romantics back to Winstanley and forward through the music of Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan.
“In the background the TCPA collection of early plans and literature will be on display, demonstrating the importance of art in communicating visionary futures. It will celebrate, as the early pioneers did, the power of literature, poetry and music in communicating political ideas and pose the question about whether the early imagination, radicalism and personal bravery of these extraordinary figures has relevance for the present.”
As I say it was a genuinely interesting and inspirational evening. The TCPA should take it on the road.
