Exhibitions and the Development of Modern Planning Culture by Robert Freestone & Marco Amati

Author:Robert Freestone & Marco Amati [Freestone, Robert & Amati, Marco]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781351937832
Goodreads: 33345461
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2014-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

10

Engagement and Exhibitionism in the Era of High Modernism: Otto Neurath and the Example of 1940s Bilston

Marco Amati

Introduction

In his seminal text on town planning theory in the United Kingdom, Nigel Taylor (1998) writes about early critiques of the post-war planning system and in particular the lack of consultation that accompanied many planning exercises. This was not through cynicism or arrogance towards local needs, but simply because professional judgments about the physical living environment were assumed to be apolitical and unassailable. Planning in the early post-war period was visionary but also removed from the concerns of daily citizens, being naïve both politically and sociologically.

This portrayal of planning as naïve is used by proponents of collaborative planning who propose a radical rethinking of the way planners engage with the public (Healey 1996). Furthermore this portrayal is echoed by Arnstein’s (1969) famous ladder of participation which describes a hierarchy of participation for citizens, starting at the bottom where no power is given to citizens to take decisions (manipulation) and culminating at the top with citizen control. Informing occupies one of the lower rungs of the ladder and is held to be inferior to consultation: ‘When information is provided at a late stage in planning, people have little opportunity to influence the program designed “for their benefit”. The most frequent tools used for such one-way communication are the news media, pamphlets, posters and responses to inquiries’ (Arnstein 1969: 219).

Exhibitions were crucial in Britain during the 1930s to help the public and governments understand the necessity for planning legislation. During this time, the nascent planning movement made full use of a range of different modes, including travelling, thematic, international and city exhibitions to name a few, with techniques and exhibits developed by figures such as Patrick Geddes (Freestone and Amati 2011). These events drew on a range of advances in understanding about displays, interactivity, affect, and the use of multimedia, providing a richer experience than that implied by the lowly ‘informing’ rung of Arnstein’s ladder (Henning 2008). However, by the time Arnstein came to write her critique this rich variety of exhibitionary techniques had lost favour, being largely replaced by a set of usually humdrum procedures laid out by statute as planning oriented its focus towards land use zoning and development control.

It might have been different. The work of the renowned international social scientist Otto Neurath in the 1940s stands out as both visually creative and driven by a sense of community engagement which even seems unusual from the standpoint of the run-of-the-mill exhibition of the period (Larkham and Lilley 2012). One particular exhibition benefitting from Neurath’s imagination was staged in Bilston, a community in the English Midlands, in 1946. The readiness with which Neurath’s radical ideas were accepted in this centre of re-planning activity give us pause to question what happened to the variety of exhibitionary practices that dominated planning during the early twentieth century. The aim of this chapter is to analyse the values of the Bilston exhibition and highlight its open-ended displays of information that expressly aimed to invite comment and reshape urban development.

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