University College, London, by William G. Holford, Professor of Town Planning at the University of London
The Department of Town Planning at University College has always been directed by a part-time professor, which means - in the terminology peculiar to the University of London- by a practising town planner; no matter how much time he actually spends in his Department. Thus from the first the emphasis has been on the close application of academic principles and research to actual problems of town planning administration and practice. As to qualifications the College offers a Certificate in Town Planning at the end of a course of one full-time or two part-time years ; and the University of London offers Diplomas in Town Planning and Civic Architecture, and in Town Planning and Civic Engineering - the latter catering for surveyors as well as for civil engineers. This Diploma course entails a further year of study which is nominally part-time; but as it also involves practical work in London and a thesis with an element of original design and research in it, its part-time character is only relative.
In addition to those working for these qualifications, the Department takes general students studying for external examinations or for none, especially in the field of landscape design. And there are usually half-a-dozen research students studying for higher degrees such as M.A. or Ph.D., whose dissertations are in the field of town planning.The Past
The Department grew up with - or more correctly grew out of - the Bartlett School of Architecture; and until a year or two ago it had its home within the walls of that school in Gower Street. The emphasis which the Department has always placed on design, whether the object is townships, towns or regions, is a natural consequence of its architectural upbringing. So also are its urban inclinations, which persist despite the fact that Professor Sir Patrick Abercrombie, who directed the Department for ten years and retired only in 1946, may be called the father of regional planning in Britain and is Chairman of the Council for the Preservation of Rural England.
This concern with urban problems is an inevitable result also of the Department’s situation in the midst of one of the greatest urban problems in the world, namely London. As in the case of British town planning legislation, which has developed from the Housing, Town Planning, etc., Act of 1909 to the Town and Country Planning Act of 1947, the Department’s range of training - or perhaps it would be more modest to say, of appreciation - has widened during the years. Rural development schemes have been prepared - villages and farmlands planned in outline and - more recently - the administration of a typical County Planning Office has been studied. But it is generally true to say that in the past the time spent on the two complementary aspects of town and country planning has been in roughly the same proportion as the occupations of those who dwell in these islands - that is to say, four-fifths urban and one-fifth rural.
Both Professor Adshead and Professor Abercrombie regarded the training of the town planner as a training in design in the broader rather than the narrower sense. Building and civic engineering were the necessary bases, geology and urban geography were essential technical studies, the law in relation to town planning set limitations to the practice of the art, and defined the social sanctions, powers and responsibilities of the administrative side. As for the tools of the trade, they asked that their students should present their schemes with the full resources of cartography, draughtsmanship and report-writing. They also taught their students to analyse a town planning scheme into its component parts, and to criticise its content as civic or landscape design, as well as from the point of view of practical politics. But although there was a social philosophy underlying their teaching, neither of them regarded it as possible in a University Department, recruited from the technical field, to encompass advanced social studies. From statistical method to general economics, and from public administration to sociology, the student was left to find his own way through general reading and through enquiries normal to town planning surveys.
In theory, of course, the academic study of these subjects in the University, if not in University College itself, provided a source of reference and advice for post-graduate students of town planning. But in practice, as the vast majority were in offices during the day, the opportunity to take full advantage of what the University had to offer was considerably reduced. It was not, however, lost altogether. Both in the Faculty of Arts and in the Faculty of Engineering, teachers were found who took an active interest in the part-time Department of Town Planning; and they gave regular or occasional lectures, and criticisms of work done, as well as assisting individual research.
The number of students in each of the two courses between the Wars, seldom exceeded double figures; and it was therefore possible, after set lectures had been given, to gather round a drawing board or the library table, and to discuss collectively the work of each individual student. But the dilemma of the part-time student, extending his training after a full day’s work in the office or on a job, remained and grew more acute as the responsibilities of the trained planning officer increased.The Present
The present session of 1949-1950 finds the Department in temporary quarters of its own in Euston Buildings. These quarters, away from the main buildings of the College, are in an environment which exhibits every one of the defects regarded by Professor Abercrombie as typical of the unplanned centre of the County of London. It is an area of mixed uses, commercial, industrial and residential; it has no tranquillity or open space; it is far too densely occupied; and it can show several examples of traffic congestion within a stone’s throw. In fact the Department is brought face to face with the problems which it studies in a way which was certainly never intended at its academic foundation. In spite of the greatest physical obstacles, however, the Department has room to move, and it is limitations on teaching staff and the desirability of keeping each year small enough to make personal contact easy and group work practicable, that has established a maximum for the student entry.
The Department now has a three year part-time course, the first two years of which - the Preliminary and Certificate years - being combined to form a full-time course for those who have had no previous training in the subject. The College Certificate can thus be taken as a full-time course in one year, or a part-time course in two. The University Diplomas are taken after a further year’s study which remains nominally part-time. During this year all students are in practice, in the offices of local authorities or with planning consultants. But they generally require some leave from full-time duties in order to do the necessary research or survey work for their Diploma theses.
The present limit of numbers is 24 in any year, full-time and part-time students combined. So that the total population of the Department, excluding general and higher degree students, is about 72. The Preliminary Year can be taken by full-time students in the Bartlett School of Architecture or the Faculty of Engineering, by permission of the heads of their departments. It is also attended by outside students with professional qualifications who have taken no course in town planning before and have not had sufficient office experience to warrant their sitting for the Certificate Examination as part-time students.
In common with all Universities, the Department is experiencing what has been called “the post-war bulge”; but behind this, and almost certainly outlasting it, is a permanent increase of entrants due to the demand for trained staff on the part of the counties and the county boroughs.
It is significant that a third of the entrants over the past two sessions have been men and women already placed in posts which carry some measure of planning responsibility. All are post-graduate, or with professional qualifications of graduate standard. And nearly all have a planning post to take up, or return to, after gaining their academic diplomas. The present stage of training in the Department is therefore one of transition. While it remains essentially post-graduate, it is changing from a purely evening school into a department which offers full-time as well as part-time courses. It is also changing from being predominantly a form of further education for architects, to being an all-round academic course for professional town planners-no matter whether these are also architects, engineers, surveyors or landscape architects. (As a matter , of interest, of those who gained academic diplomas in 1949, eight were in Town Planning and Civic Engineering and thirteen in Town Planning and Civic Architecture).
The detailed curriculum is at present under revision; but broadly speaking the three courses have the following characteristics:1) The Preliminary Course is introductory; it discusses the objects and scope of planning, has lecture courses in history and theory, entails reading in history, criticism, and general appreciation of the subject, and requires the making of a survey and a report, and a piece of historical analysis of town growth and of building or landscape composition.
2) The Certificate Course is mainly technical. There are four principal lecture courses and several special lecture courses - not all compulsory in individual cases. The programme is intended to illustrate what the planner needs to know about a fairly wide variety of subjects: surveying, photogrammetry, estate management, civic engineering, housing, agriculture, education, traffic, and of course the preparation of surveys and proposals.
3) The Diploma Year places the accent on administration and method. The lecture courses are on law and practice; office procedure and methods of planning control are discussed; and actual cases of applications for permission to develop - with subsequent appeal procedure - are brought into the drawing office. The whole year is formed into a working group for the purpose of making a detailed survey and plan for an area within the County of London. This involves co-operation with the Metropolitan Borough concerned and with the Planning Office of the London County Council. The proposals, when they have been discussed, voted on, and finally presented by the Group, are then exhibited, and are open to criticism or debate by local committees or interested bodies. To complete his course, each student submits a thesis, whose main outlines have been settled some months before, and which must contain some genuine research if it is to be accepted. Theses are marked as being suitable for publication or not, and an Abstract is published of those which offer an interesting contribution to town planning history, theory or technique.
The Future
By comparison with the undergraduate courses of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or of the University of Durham, the present programme at University College, London, may appear somewhat restricted. In fact the limitations are self-imposed; for they are the result of three principles which the Department is unwilling to abandon. The first is that the training should be post-graduate, and should include research in a real sense; the second is that an academic course may possibly make a man expert in a limited field, it cannot make him a specialist in many. Therefore, the Department should cover those aspects of town planning best suited to it - namely the urban range - and leave the study of agricultural and purely rural problems to other institutions.
The third principle is that as town planning is a social process, demanding a cultural background and wide sympathies in those who practise it, the Department must educate and not simply hand out a text-book technology . This means that the individual capacity of each student must be drawn out, and that everyone must be made aware of the parts that others will play in the planning process.
For the time being these limitations are welcome; and if they lead to an improvement in the quality rather than the quantity of training, that may not be a bad thing either. Until the post-war situation in the Universities shows signs of becoming stable, until the Planning Act is a little older, and before the Schuster Committee has reported, the Department would not be wise to attempt any considerable expansion, even if its call on qualified and experienced teaching staff enabled it to do so - which is far from being the case.
Nevertheless there are directions in which it may move in the near future, although for the moment they must be described as possible rather than agreed policies.
One hope is that the research and survey work of the Department, particularly in the part-time Diploma course, may prove to be of sufficient value to the local planning authorities, to warrant their agreement to a partial secondment of any junior members of their staffs who take it. That is to say, that time spent on the survey might come out of office hours. More important still, there may be increased support from both local and central government in future, for post-graduate research grants or scholarships in town planning, which would enable a local government officer who has already undergone a long training or apprenticeship, to support himself (and his wife if need be) while completing his training in planning.
Another future development that may be expected is the establishment of a course leading to a Certificate or Diploma in the non-technical or social field, which would not necessarily carry with it - as the present Town Planning Diploma does - exemption from the qualifying examination for membership of the Town Planning Institute. There are many related fields, notably geography, economics, public administration and law, in which a small proportion of graduates would like to take up the planning side, rather than immediately become practitioners or teachers. And there can be little doubt that this would eventually be of great advantage to the planning profession.
If such a broadening of outlook comes about, University College is able and willing to play its part, not only in the Department of Town Planning and in the Faculties of Law and Engineering, but by means of a general post-graduate course as well. The University of London has an even wider reach, for it can call on the London School of Economics and the College of Estate Management to contribute to a course in Planning Administration.