The survey of cities.

  • Geddes, Patrick, 1854-1932.
Date:
1908
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The survey of cities. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    3 \%\ -1 MAY 08 , _ THE SURVEY Ojy CITIES. The problem before the student of Cities is obviously of the greatest complexity. Amid such vast and varied centres, such a crowded phantasmagoria of life, how shall we agree upon any orderly methods of observation and description, such as that required in each and every department of science? How shall we compare our observations and generalise them ? And if we here or there reach some penetration of analysis, some generality of view, some depth of insight, how are we even to communicate our ideas to each other in adequately scientific terms ? Yet how many are interested in the observation of their own and other cities ? How many must have speculated on the resemblances and differences among these, or at least discussed their respective qualities and defects ? How many, too, and in all countries, are awakening to deal with the practical tasks of Citizenship, ever increasingly pressing as these are? Never since the golden times of cities has there been so much interest, so much goodwill as now; it is the right moment, therefore, and surely in a Sociological Society and Journal, if anywhere, to raise the question: How best can we set about the study of Cities ? How organise if possible, in each, in all, at any rate here and there among ourselves to begin with, some such common understanding as to the methods required to make observations at all, and to compare and gene- ralise them ? As regards the description of Cities there are vast materials in literature; travellers and geographers, archaeologists and historians, artists and art-critics, are all available to us. From Herodotus to Gibbon, from Pausanias to Schliemann and Arthur Evans, or from John Ray to Ruskin, indeed to the latest writers, there is no lack of help towards visualising cities, whether past or present, nor even of entering into their life, be this buried or no. The present unparalleled wealth of illustrated monographs, the activity of the daily Press, the availability of Murray and Baedeker, are alike bringing the consciousness of our own city and of other cities more and more fully into being. It is surely time, therefore, for Sociologists—that is for all who care for the advance of science into the social world—to be taking counsel as to the ways and means of bringing an increasing order into all this growing accumulation of knowledge. We are not entitled as yet to postulate any but the very simplest and common elements of knowledge, much less of accepted belief or doctrine; our experiences of cities are still too