Hexagonal Planning in Theory and Practice
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Journal ofUrban Design,Vol. 5, No. 3, 237± 265, 2000 Hexagonal Planningin Theoryand Practice ERANBEN-JOSEPH & DAVIDGORDON ABSTRACT Residentialneighbourhood designs with street patterns basedupon hexagonal blockswere proposedby several planners in theearly 20th century. Urban designerssuch asCharles Lamb, NoulanCauchon and Barry Parker demonstrated the economic advan- tagesand ef® cient landuse generatedby hexagonal plans. By 1930, hexagonal planning was aleadingtheoretical alternative to therectangular gridfor residential subdivisions, but itwas displacedby the loop and cul-de-sac modeldeveloped in Radburn, New Jersey, byClarence Stein andHenry Wright.The paper chronologically reviews the various hexagonalplanning schemes andtheir designers. It considersthe advantages and disad- vantagesof hexagons, using their designers’ own wordsand drawings. Introduction In the realmof urban design, hexagonalplanning istoday virtually an unknown phenomenon, amere oddityamong a vastarray of ideologies, theories and methods.It regularly goesunnoticed by studentsof city planning andurban history.Yet, for a period of almost30 years, between 1904and 1934, it caught the attentionof variousplanners, engineers andarchitects who saw in ita promisingpanacea for the city’splanning illsand a replacement forthe uniform rectangularstreet grid. Striving toestablish visionary and idealistic schemes for aperfect physicalenvironment that would also improve social conditions, these individualsadvocated their ideasin papers andprofessional presentations for overa quarterof acentury. Yetnone were able tobuild their planson a large scale.Why wasthis so? Was it because in reality,as on paper, hexagonslooked toofar-fetched tobe aworkablesolution? What about the theory’ssuggested cost-effectivenessand ef® cient landuse pattern;were notthey anincentive for construction? Such idealizedgeometrical schemes for city design often remained theoretical. There havebeen manymore ideal cities on paper thanon the ground.When they were built, these ideal communitieswere often short-livedin their pure state.They were overtakenby the realityof the wayin whichpeople behave under normalconditions. As Lynch (1984,p. 48)suggested, ªSettlement formis the spatialarrangement of personsdoing things,the resulting spatial¯ owsof persons,goods, and information, and the physicalfeatures which modify space in someway signi® cantto those actions, including enclosures,surfaces, chan- nels,ambience, andobjectsº . Eran Ben-Joseph,Department of Urban Studiesand Planning, Massachusetts Instituteof Technology,77 Massachusetts Ave,Cambridge, MA 02139,USA. Email: [email protected]. DavidGordon, Schoolof Urban andRegional Planning, Queen’s University,Ontario, Canada. 1357± 4809 Print/1469± 9664 Online/00/030237-29 Ó 2000 Taylor &Francis Ltd DOI:10.1080/ 13574800020006653 238 E.Ben-Joseph& D.Gordon Geometricplans emerged througha rationalprocess unrelated toideal-city concepts.While we mightview hexagonalplanning asone of thosefanciful approachesto city design, we shouldnot dismiss it entirely. The conceptual frameworkthat delineates hexagonalplanning anddesign isoutlined in this paper througha review of professionalpublications, historical precedents and archivalresearch. The articlemainly addresses hexagonal planning atthe neighbourhood andmetropolitan scale, and largely ignoresother interesting hexagonalschemes in architecture(Bijlmermeer, Amsterdam;Le Mirail,Tou- louse) ortraf® c engineering (Buchanan,1963). Hexagonal planning’ skey advo- catesand its historical context are describe chronologicallybelow. Geometricapproaches to the planning of townsand villages have many precedents in the formof ancientcities (Castagnoli, 1971). The rectangulargrid wasby farthe mostprevalent design, withexamples in China,India, Rome and Greece (Kostof,1991). Octagonal layouts were alsopopular forideal citiessuch asPalmanova,Italy (1593), and Hamina, Finland (1723)(Johnston, 1983). Wren’s proposalfor rebuilding Londonafter the GreatFire (1666)combined gridswith octagonaland hexagonal geometry, but itwas not built (Figure 1).A small portionof Woodward’s1807 hexagonal/ rectangulargrid plan forDetroit was built before the townabandoned the ideain the 1820s(Figure 2).The Edinburgh New Town(1795) and Goderich, Ontario (1829), successfully incorporateda rectangulargrid andoctagonal squares. These elegant diagramswere often the exceptionsto the rule of the rectangulargrid. The gridironplan wasmandated by ordinancesin the Spanish Lawsof the Indies, the French Bastilletowns, the UKbylawhousing estatesand the 19th-centuryNorth American land surveys. In NorthAmerica, most towns from Edmonton to Mexico City were laidout in someform of rectangulargrid (Reps, 1969).When the modernurban planning movementbegan aroundthe turnof the 20thcentury, thisgrid wasan obvious targetfor reform, since itwas regarded as monotonous, excessively paved and open tothrough traf® c (Southworth& Ben-Joseph, 1997). GardenCities andGarden Suburbs as Alternatives for Residential Neighbour- hoods (1899±1930) Ebenezer Howard’sin¯uential book Tomorrow:A PeacefulPath to RealReform (1898)contained now-famous diagrams proposing garden citiesin acircular form.Even Howardregarded these drawingsas theoretical illustrations of his concept.The designers of Letchworth(1903), the ®rstgarden city,were given a free hand.The winning design in the limited competitionfor Letchworth was prepared by RaymondUnwin andBarry Parker, two architects deeply involved in socialreform. Miller (1989)suggests that the semi-octagonaldesign of the proposedtown centre (Figure 3)seems inspired by Wren’sproposalfor the business districtof London.However, Unwin andParker’s smallhouse group- ings became farmore in¯ uential. They experimented withsmall crescents and cul-de-sacsfor inexpensive cottagesin Letchworth’sresidentialareas. Unwin andParker’s design forHampstead Garden Suburb (1907±1910) ex- tended thistheme of informallyplanned residentialareas with detailed site planning formiddle-class homes, based upon smallcrescents and cul-de-sacs. Frederick LawOlmsted, Jr, took a similarapproach for an early US garden suburb in ForestHills Garden, New York(1911). He combined smallgroups withthe graceful curvilineardesigns pioneered by hisfather in 1869at River- eaoa Hexagonal Planning Figure 1. Christopher Wren’s plan for rebuilding London, 1666. Source: Unwin (1909). 239 240 E.Ben-Joseph& D.Gordon Figure 2. Woodward’shexagonal/rectangulargrid plan forDetroit, 1807. Source: Cauchon(1927). side,near Chicago. The OlmstedBros. ® rmproduced scoresof curvilinear subdivisionsin the USA andCanada in the early 20thcentury. TheCity Beautifuland the Grid (1904±1920) One ofthe principal disadvantagesof the rectangulargrid isthe dif® culty of diagonalmovements, which make up alargeproportion of urban trips.Urban designers often attemptedto combine diagonalboulevards with a background grid,following the example ofL’Enfant’ splan forWashington, DC (1793),or CerdaÂ’s plan forthe BarcelonaEnsanche (1864). The diagonalParisian boule- vardscreated by BaronHaussmann in the late19th century were particularly in¯uential, perhaps because the Ecoledes Beaux Arts was the dominantarchitec- turalschool of the day.The classicalarchitectural and urban design idealsof the Ecolewere reintroducedto North America in the World’sColumbian Exposition atChicagoin 1893.The fair’splan, coordinated by Daniel Burnham,had a strong in¯uence upon urban design practicefor the next 20years. Its vision of immense,white neo-classicalbuildings facing naturalisticlandscapes and lagoonscreated a powerful imagewhich was widely reproduced in early photographicsouvenirs. Attemptsto recreate the fair’simage became knownas the CityBeautiful movement(Wilson, 1989). Burnham and Edward Bennett’ splansfor San Fran- cisco(1904) and Chicago (1909) combined the existingcity grids with neo-classi- calcivic centres at the focusof the new diagonalavenues. Washington, DC, revived L’Enfant’splan in 1903,and Philadelphia inserteda majordiagonal avenue, the FairmountParkway, into Penn’ s1692grid plan.However, few other citieswere able tofollow Haussmann’s lead in cuttingnew diagonalboulevards though anexisting urban fabric.They often lackedthe ®nancialresources and expropriationpowers required tomatch Paris’s programme. By 1910,the City Beautiful wasunder attackfor its impracticality and overly aesthetic approach HexagonalPlanning 241 Figure 3. HampsteadGarden Suburb’s courtsand cul-de-sacs, Unwin andParker, 1905. Source:Unwin (1909). toplanning (Olmsted,1911), although diagonal boulevards were important elements ofplans for national capitals on vacant sites, like Grif® n’s Canberra (1912)(Figure 4),and Lutyens andBaker’s New Delhi (1913)(Figure 5). In aGrandyet PrudentManner: Charles Lamb and Rudolf MuÈller, Hexagonal Plans(1904± 1910) Cityplanning anddesign became asubject ofinterest in manycircles of engineers, sociologists,artists and craftsmen. Hexagonal plans were advocated by aNew Yorkarchitect and a Viennese engineer during the ®rstdecade of the 20thcentury. The New Yorkarchitect and art historian Charles Lamb prepared ahexagonalplan in 1904.Lamb specialized in ecclesiasticaland memorial architecture,designing the MadisonSquare Archas well asthe courtof honour ofthe Hudson±Fulton Celebration in 1909.Lamb believed thatarts and crafts were anintegralpart of architecture and city planning. He frequently addressed the need tobeautify New YorkCity through sculptures, fountains and statues as well asthrough the planning anddesign of streetsand city blocks (Gilmartin,