"A city is more than a place in space; it is a drama in time"

"A city is more than a place in space; it is a drama in time" - This statement by the Scottish polymath, Patrick Geddes, applies very aptly to Derry~Londonderry. His ideas and theories have been playing a part recently in my thinking about Learning Cities/Regions as my local council, here in Northern Ireland, begins its journey to become a UNESCO Learning Region.

The council area is part of a catchment area/basin of a river which debouches into the northern Atlantic; the other half of the basin is in another member state of the EU, ie the Republic of Ireland; there is thus an international border which has become contentious issue as part of the Brexit negotiations. At the present moment it is fairly porous border, people and goods cross it without restriction in both directions for work, education, recreation, health and other services, etc. There are also formal Cross-Border bodies; cross-border links from strong to weak. The City itself has a long history and place in history of these Isles. Its walls have protected the city at times of siege, walked along as part of contentious commemorations, over-looked world famous tragedies. Today, they are an attraction for tourists from all over the world.

Geddes would have been amazed at the level and amount of data about the Council’s area which was available not only for the preparation of both the recent Community Planning process which led to the Strategic Growth Plan and also used in the local Spatial Development Plan. But, as Geddes emphasises:- 

“Each is but a beginning, a preparatory study of the city, a draft towards its improvement and extension (but) … beyond these, we have to realize and keep in view the spirit and individuality of our city, its personality and character, and to enhance and express this, if we would not further efface or repress it.” For example, while clearly valuing the survey, exhibition, and plan-drafting components of plan-making, Geddes points to the importance of ‘what’s next’:  

Another of Geddes’s important ideas which can be seen in the implantation of the Council’s Plans is that of “Think Global, Act Local”. It can already be seen in the inclusion of the Plan of the ‘Circular Economy’ as part of its remit for the achievement of sustainable development not only locally but in Northern Ireland. The Council’s Plans extend this idea by stressing the resilience of the region not only in terms of the physical effects of, for example, climate change but also in the resilience of the Community within its area by stressing the need to build a united community, based on equality of opportunity, the desirability of good relations and reconciliation. The work done in this has already been helping communities in other parts of the world.

The time also seems right to cultivate a neo-civics, led by a new cadre of pragmatic eutopians. These are all cues – or clues – for re-engaging with Geddes today, and seeking to draw his ideas forward into our own time. This might include a reframing of his ‘thinking machines’ work, to more consciously integrate feeling and intuiting, to transcend the mechanical to embrace the organic -. One way of reframing the “thinking machine” is perhaps to think of ‘cities learning’ as well as ‘learning cities’. Cities/regions could be thought of as a kind of ‘neural network’ comprised of not just individual citizens, but communities, organizations, institutions, networks all being a part of the whole, each learning and the whole learning. His motto was ‘Vivendo Discimus” –‘by living we learn’.  

Geddes was the first one to advance the idea that both city and environment should evolve close together. The city is not a closed and autonomous organism but is located inside an environment taking and dissipating energy. A still early and incipient form of the later called concept of ecology focused on the conservation of nature. 

Hugh MacDiarmid, the poet, a generation younger than Patrick Geddes, wrote of Geddes in “The Company I’ve Kept” in these terms: ‘his constant effort was to help people to think for themselves, and to think round the whole circle, not in scraps and bits. He knew that watertight compartments are useful only to a sinking ship, and traversed all the boundaries of separate subjects.” – a statement which all in PASCAL would certainly endorse wholeheartedly.