1. Sir Patrick Geddes was a Scottish biologist, sociologist, Comtean positivist, geographer, philanthropist and pioneering town planner.
47 Facts About Patrick Geddes
1. 2.
Patrick Geddes is known for his innovative thinking in the fields of urban planning and sociology.
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Patrick Geddes's works contain one of the earliest examples of the 'think globally, act locally' concept in social science.
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An energetic Francophile, Geddes was the founder in 1924 of the College des Ecossais, an international teaching establishment in Montpellier, France, and in the 1920s he bought the Chateau d'Assas to set up a centre for urban studies.
5.
The son of Janet Stevenson and soldier Alexander Geddes, Patrick Geddes was born in Ballater and the Old Parish Register for baptisms in the parish of Glenmuick Tullich and Glengairn recorded his first name as 'Peter'.
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Patrick Geddes was educated in Aberdeenshire, and at Perth Academy.
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Patrick Geddes was elected as a member of the London Positivist Society.
8.
Patrick Geddes lectured in Zoology at Edinburgh University from 1880 to 1888.
9.
From 1888 to 1918, Patrick Geddes worked as a Professor of Botany at the University of Dundee.
10.
Patrick Geddes married Anna Morton, who was the daughter of a wealthy merchant, in 1886 when he was 32 years old.
11.
In 1895, Patrick Geddes published an edition of The Evergreen magazine, with articles on nature, biology and poetics.
12.
Patrick Geddes held the Chair of Botany at University College Dundee from 1888 to 1919, and the Chair of Sociology at the University of Bombay from 1919 to 1924.
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Patrick Geddes inspired Victor Branford to form the Sociological Society in 1903 to promote his sociological views.
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Patrick Geddes was a major influence on the American urban theorist Lewis Mumford.
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Patrick Geddes was knighted in 1932, shortly before his death at the Scots College in Montpellier, France on 17 April 1932.
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Patrick Geddes was a proponent of the Comte-LePlay view of the interconnectedness of city region as a potentially autonomous unit.
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Patrick Geddes drew on Le Play's circular theory of geographical locations presenting environmental limitations and opportunities that in turn determine the nature of work.
18.
Patrick Geddes' writing demonstrates the influence of these ideas on his theories of the city.
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Patrick Geddes saw the city as a series of common interlocking patterns, "an inseparably interwoven structure", akin to a flower.
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Patrick Geddes criticised the tendency of modern scientific thinking to specialisation.
21.
Patrick Geddes distinguished two forms of human social life: 'paleotechnic' and 'neotechnic.
22.
Patrick Geddes attributed the destruction of cities via World War I not to the invasion of imperialist powers but the prevalence of paleotechnic forms of life in European society.
23.
Against a backdrop of extraordinary development of new technologies, industrialisation and urbanism, Patrick Geddes witnessed the substantial social consequences of crime, illness and poverty that developed as a result of modernisation.
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Patrick Geddes continued to use and advocate for this approach throughout his career.
25.
Patrick Geddes believed that this approach was both more economical and more humane.
26.
Patrick Geddes criticised this tradition as much for its "dreary conventionality" as for its failure to address in the long term the very problems it purport to solve.
27.
In 1892, to allow the general public an opportunity to observe these relationships, Patrick Geddes opened a "sociological laboratory" called the Outlook Tower that documented and visualized the regional landscape.
28.
In keeping with scientific process and using new technologies, Patrick Geddes developed an Index Museum to categorise his physical observations and maintained Encyclopedia Graphicato, which used a camera obscura to provide an opportunity for the general public to observe their own landscape to witness the relationships among units of society.
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Patrick Geddes used specific instruments and tools to better convey the outlook different people had of the region.
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Patrick Geddes used it as a tool for cultural and regional analysis and provided space for many thinkers to explore the idea of 'regions' which he later introduced to the field of planning.
31.
Patrick Geddes advocated the civic survey as indispensable to urban planning: his motto was "diagnosis before treatment".
32.
Patrick Geddes was particularly critical of that form of planning which relied overmuch on design and effect, neglecting to consider "the surrounding quarter and constructed without reference to local needs or potentialities".
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Patrick Geddes encouraged instead exploration and consideration of the "whole set of existing conditions", studying the "place as it stands, seeking out how it has grown to be what it is, and recognising alike its advantages, its difficulties and its defects":.
34.
In 1909, Patrick Geddes assisted in the early planning of the southern aspect of the Zoological Gardens in Edinburgh.
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Patrick Geddes developed a means for engaging with the populace of a city through a civic pageant.
36.
Patrick Geddes organised a pageant in Indore, India when he arrived in 1917.
37.
Once arriving in India, Patrick Geddes toured multiple Indian cities and was overwhelmed by Indian architecture and planning.
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Patrick Geddes was impressed by the historical piety valued in Indian planning displayed by the seamless merger of traditional temples within the urban fabric of Indian cities.
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Patrick Geddes believed that this was indicative of a city's genius loci which is often established by a visually dominant building in a city like a medieval cathedral or an antique temple in the urban fabric.
40.
Patrick Geddes lectured and worked with Indian surveyors and travelled to Bombay and Bengal where Pentland's political allies Lord Willingdon and Lord Carmichael were Governors.
41.
Patrick Geddes held a position in Sociology and Civics at Bombay University from 1919 to 1925.
42.
Patrick Geddes worked with his son-in-law, the architect Frank Mears, on a number of projects in Palestine.
43.
Patrick Geddes submitted a report on Jerusalem Actual and Possible to the Military Governor of Jerusalem in November 1919.
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Patrick Geddes' ideas had worldwide circulation: his most famous admirer was the American urban theorist Lewis Mumford who claimed that "Patrick Geddes was a global thinker in practice, a whole generation or more before the Western democracies fought a global war".
45.
Patrick Geddes influenced several British urban planners, the Indian social scientist Radhakamal Mukerjee and the Catalan architect Cebria de Montoliu as well as many other 20th-century thinkers.
46.
Patrick Geddes was keenly interested in the science of ecology, an advocate of nature conservation and strongly opposed to environmental pollution.
47.
In 2008, the Scottish Historic Building Trust was approached to imagine a future for Riddle's Court in Edinburgh's Lawnmarket, which Patrick Geddes had restored for use as a university hall of residence in 1890.