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I
History
PA R T
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1
Paradigms lost and found 
dilemmas of the 
Anglo-American city
7
SYNOPSIS
In this first chapter, we examine four aspects of
British and American city design, and in so doing we
introduce several concepts that will be elaborated in
subsequent chapters. First, we try to answer the ques-
tions that are often posed by practicing architects and
planners about the value of history. ‘Why bother
with history?’ they ask. ‘How are the events and ideas
of a hundred years ago relevant to my work today?’
To help evaluate these questions, we discuss in the
second section some of the ideologies and attitudes
that have shaped our cities today – the founding
assumptions of modernist architecture and planning
as they were theorized and practiced in the middle
decades of the twentieth century. The buildings cre-
ated from these ideas spawned a legacy of unforeseen
urban problems, and by the late 1960s and 1970s,
the lack of success of modernist design generated
anti-modernist reactions. These coalesced around
reawakened interest in traditional forms of urbanism,
such as the street and the square, which had been
explicitly rejected by modernist theory and practice.
The third section examines aspects of these reac-
tionary movements. We discuss some of the reasons
for this reversal in attitudes, a theme that will be con-
sistent throughout the book, and we look at some of
the work that resulted from this more consciously
historical perspective. In the final section of this
opening chapter we confront one of the ironies of our
period. At the very time of the revival and renewed
ascendancy of traditional urbanism, revolutions in
information technology and media have created a
whole series of virtual worlds, communities and
electronic places that threaten to render the public
spaces of our towns and cities obsolete. Where does
this leave the urban designer today? Is an urbanism
based around a revived representation of traditional
public space still relevant?