Robert Home

From barrack compounds to the single-family house: planning worker housing in colonial Natal and Northern Rhodesia

This article investigates the development of worker housing – collectively the commonest built element in the colonial landscape – and its role in shaping cultural and urban space. Two basic housing forms – the barrack (or hostel) and the single-family house – came to symbolize alternative strategies for the control of labour in colonial societies and a historical progression can be traced from one toward the other. The state had a central role in the devising of these built forms, informed by its specialist advisers in sanitation, engineering, architecture and welfare. The process was contested and negotiated with the employers of labour, notably such capitalist colonial ventures as plantation estates and mining companies, with pressures exerted by the workers for housing improvements through industrial and political action. Southern Africa was a testing ground for methods of managing African and Asian workers which survived in extreme and tenacious form into the apartheid era, and the article explores Natal and Northern Rhodesia as case studies. Natal and the port city of Durban show the evolution from the 1870s of the Indian indentured labour barrack to the African hostel and mine compound. The Copperbelt towns of Northern Rhodesia show the negotiations between the colonial protectorate and the mining companies, with African mineworker strikes influencing the shift from barrack to family housing.

Scientific survey and land settlement in British colonialism, with particular reference to land tenure reform in the Middle East 1920–50

Land surveying is part of the global transmission of technical and specialist knowledge by European colonialism, and land registration and cadastral surveying have been boosted by Hernando de Soto’s thesis that land registration offers a potential solution to world poverty and social unrest. This article investigates the dissemination of scientific survey methods across the British empire in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and the role of the Empire Surveyors Conference and Empire Survey Review in promoting cadastral survey for land settlement. A regional case study of the Middle East investigates British land tenure reform through the settlement of land rights between the two world wars; Egypt was the model, and Sir Ernest Dowson the champion, of scientific cadastral survey. Connections are explored between colonial land titling programmes and post‐colonial developments.

British colonial civic improvement in the early twentieth century: E. P. Richards in Madras, Calcutta, and Singapore

E. P. Richards’ Calcutta report of 1914 has been reprinted as a key text in planning history, but little is known of the man himself, compared with other planners active in the British colonies during the early twentieth century such as Geddes and Reade. This article seeks to rescue Richards from obscurity, and position him in the context of the new town planning movement in the first quarter of the twentieth century. A basic narrative of Richards’ career, taken mainly from his membership records and obituary at the Institute of Civil Engineers’ headquarters in London, covers his key periods with the Derwent Valley Water Board (working on the Birchinlee model village) and the Calcutta and Singapore Improvement Trusts between 1901 and 1924.

‘Culturally Unsuited to Property Rights?’: Colonial Land Laws and African Societies

Hernando de Soto, advocate of central registers of land rights, raised the possibility of Africans being culturally unsuited to property rights. This article argues that sub‐Saharan Africas high proportion of tribal/communal land (as distinguished from private and public/state land) results from a combination of geography, history, and population distribution. External colonial rule created a dual system of land tenure that restrained private property rights in the tribal/communal land areas. The research draws upon archival evidence from the colonial land tenure panel chaired by Lord Hailey (1945–50). The finding is not that Africans are inherently culturally unsuited to property ownership, but that colonialism reinforced pluralistic forms of property rights, which create particular challenges to land law reform.

Forced eviction and planning enforcement: the Dale Farm Gypsies

Purpose – Forced eviction is a topic of growing importance globally, and the purpose of this article is to investigate a much‐publicised recent case involving Gypsies and Travellers in the United Kingdom (not usually a country associated with such actions).Design/methodology/approach – After setting the context of planning enforcement law in the UK, Green Belt and other planning policies, and the status of Gypsies/Travellers as a disadvantaged minority group, the paper traces the history of the Dale Farm eviction over a 25‐year period and analyses the legal arguments put to the High Court in unsuccessful attempts to defer and over‐turn the eviction, against the context of internationally agreed guidelines.Findings – The research found that the judiciary gave full consideration to all aspects, in accordance with ECHR case law, and upheld the Green Belt and planning objections. The UK government was determined to proceed, resisting various offers of mediation, and the site was cleared even though no appropr...

Peri‐urban informal housing development in Victorian England: the contribution of freehold land societies

Self‐help housing in peri‐urban areas (usually outside municipal boundaries) is a feature, not only of rapidly urbanizing countries now in the South, but was also in Victorian England, where it was often initiated by freehold land societies, created by the Chartist movement in order to expand the franchise. These bodies bought and subdivided land for sale to their members, and laid out roads, using legal powers conferred upon the building societies. The societies made a significant contribution to housing for the urban working class, and preceded the garden city and town planning movement promoted by Liberal politicians. A case study is presented of one successful provincial society, the Ipswich and Suffolk Freehold Land Society.

Conference report: Second African urban planning conference, Lisbon 7–8 September 2017

Building upon the success of the ground-breaking First African Urban Planning Conference in Lisbon in 2013, the second was held four years later in the same city. The conference venue in the University of Lisbon was the purpose-built Institute of Geography and Spatial Planning (IGOT), an autonomous faculty since 2008. The driving force and conference organizer (as he was for the first conference) was IGOT’s Geography Professor Carlos Nunes Silva, who was warmly greeted by the delegates. He curates the on-line African Urban Planning Research Network (a valuable source for citations on the subject), and also edited a book of papers arising from the first conference. He is the chair of the International Geographical Union’s Commission on the Geography of Governance (one of some forty commissions of the IGU), under whose auspices the conference was held. The four keynote speakers set themes for the conference. First was John Gold, the in-coming editor of Planning Perspectives (joint with his wife Margaret), who represented IPHS in supporting the conference. His paper, ‘Planning history: from diffusion to transnational urbanism’ was a thoughtful general overview of the current state of the sub-discipline, and included a promotion of the forthcoming Routledge Handbook on Planning History. While not claiming to be an Africa specialist, his analysis of African content of Planning Perspectives since its inception (1986–2016) showed that Africa may be is the fastest urbanizing continent, but has contributed only 8% of the articles (35 subjects, compared with, for instance, 245 on Europe). He urged those at the conference to help remedy this under-representation in the future. This prompted a response from one delegate, appealing for reviewers of academic article submissions to show more flexibility and recognition of the obstacles facing researchers based in Africa, including lack of financial support for research and conference attendance from their institutions. Also salaries for academics inAfrica are relatively poor (the exception being southernAfrica), so thatAfrican diaspora academics based in Europe and North America may find it easier to conduct their research and present their papers than those based within the continent itself. Air travel costs are significantly cheaper from NorthAmerica andEurope than fromandwithinAfrica, towhich can be added delays in obtaining visas, internet connectivity difficulties, and the distances to be travelled insideAfrica.While these problems are not easily solved, the conference itselfwas providing amuch-needed forum for researchers to get together for a diverse and stimulating range of papers, demonstrating the growing dynamism in the field. The second keynote paper was by Susan Parnell, from the African Cities Centre at the University of CapeTown (itself an important hub for academic activity in the conference subjectmatter), on the theme of ‘Reducing risk in African cities’. She presented some of the problems facing African cities from population growth and climate change to poor governance andmany other negative factors. She summarized PLANNING PERSPECTIVES, 2018 VOL. 33, NO. 2, 293–294 https://doi.org/10.1080/02665433.2018.1437557

From cantonments to townships: Lugard’s influence upon British colonial urban governance in Africa

ABSTRACT The cantonment has been a neglected topic of planning history, yet is significant for urban landscapes and governance in both India and Africa. Drawing upon scholarship in critical comparative legal geography, path dependency and Foucault’s genealogical method, the article explores the transfer of laws and regulations for urban governance by networks of knowledge and actors, tracing a line of descent from rules for cantonments in British India, through Lugard’s Nigerian period, and his indirect rule policy to townships and local government ordinances. The influence of Lugard’s Political Memoranda and Dual Mandate books is evidenced through the work of various senior officials moving between colonies, specifically South Africa, Kenya, and Northern Rhodesia.

Deregulating planning control over Britain’s housing stock

Purpose To apply path dependence theory and analysis to the regulatory framework for private-rented housing in Britain, especially affecting houses in multiple occupation (HMOs) and addressing the increased involvement of the planning system through planning use classes, permitted development rights and Article 4 directions. Design/methodology/approach This paper identifies critical junctures in primary and secondary legislation for housing and planning and analyses individual local authority responses in planning policy documents and tribunal decisions. Findings The rise of the HMO reflects wider changes in society leading to new forms of household and inter-generational inequalities. Local authority discretion and locked-in responses have resulted in different regulatory regimes for housing and planning, recently favouring existing communities of owner-occupiers against HMO residents, seen as transient populations not committed to the neighbourhood. Research limitations/implications Potential for further research on demographics and household formation, and on reviewing planning and appeal decisions involving HMOs. Originality/value The research is apparently the first specifically addressing planning regulation of the HMO from a path dependence perspective, in the context of planning protection of the single-family dwelling house and marginalization of other forms of housing.

Transnational Aspects in the History of Lagos: Place Names and Built Forms

It may seem curious that Lagos, a city of many millions, recognised as a world metropolis, should still be known by most of its Nigerian inhabitants among themselves as Eko. This chapter aims to trace the toponymic history of Lagos over the 400 years since its original settlement, making analytical connections between place naming and built form. From Oko to Eko, from Curamo to Onim, and from Onim to Lagos – each of these name transfers represents a layer in the rich and cosmopolitan past of the city. Through multiple primary and secondary sources (written and oral histories, cartography and architectural evidence), the shifting meaning of toponyms within the urban complex can be scrutinised. Transnational and multilateral aspects of sub-Saharan Africa’s history will be highlighted, with the aim of exposing the complexities of the simultaneous usages in Lagos’s names. These constitute a fertile ground for juxtaposed memories on the part of the involved agencies, ethnic groups, and political, economic and cultural powers, memories which sometimes challenge one another, and are sometimes complementary.