Book Notes: Rossington's Radial Rational

Throughout history, town planning and urban design have rested on two main principles; a concern for urban form and the ideal city in architectural terms; and a search for the ideal community. Many of the human settlements that have developed as a result of the move from a nomadic existence to an agricultural one have displayed various degrees of design consideration in their layout and function. The earliest examples of these can be traced back as far as the third century BC with the ancient Mesopotamian (modern day Iraq) and Harrapan (India) civilizations.

The ideal city concept emerged in ancient Greece and was typified by the city of Athens, although like many other cities during this period it was not consciously ‘designed’ but grew in an organic nature in reaction to the acropolis. Plato, however in his dialogues on political theories and the ideal city clearly describes a consciously planned radial city known as the lost city of Atlantis. In Atlantis, the acropolis was also placed in the centre of the settlement and was surrounded by a circular wall and a series of concentric islands divided by waterways which linked into the surrounding ocean. Each concentric island had a clearly defined function (the small inner ring consisted of gardens and temples, the middle island was a military base and the outer ring predominantly agricultural land).

During this time religious beliefs influenced city design and circular cities were associated with cosmic alliance. Therefore the centre of Atlantis held great importance and is an excellent insight into the values of that society. In ancient Greek cities an urban space known as an "agora" would represent the centre of the city and in its function was the heart of the city where social life, business and politics would be discussed and debated. Where a central authority holds power it is common for a palace or temple to occupy the centre. A series of concentric roads can then cut the city up and allow the population to be situated at varying distances from this political centre on the basis of rank and status.

The Greeks themselves did not build any radial ideal cities, neither did the Romans who rejected a circular radial layout in favour of the square grid. During this time the circle and square were hailed as the most perfect geometric shapes because of the work of Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, a Roman writer, engineer and architect on the relationship between proportion and beauty. He recognised that nature’s designs were based on universal laws of proportion and symmetry and symbolized this with an image of a spread-eagled man whose extremities would touch the perimeters of these perfect circle and square figures.

During the Renaissance Leonardo da Vinci popularised this concept with his famous drawing of the Vitruvian Man, and the notion that cities should be designed accordingly with work and life taking place in an ideal space that responds to the rhythm of life. The Renaissance theorists also believed that the workings of the human body could be analogous to the workings of the universe (whereby the square symbolized material existence with lines and right angles expressing will, order and subordination and the circle represented spirituality and a continual cycle of life). As a result, the European Renaissance saw the re-emergence of the ideal city in the form of a radial plan as a diagram of humanist perfection.

In addition to this and more commonly in Renaissance times, the radial city plan was encouraged by military engineers due to its defensive capabilities. Francesco di Giorgio was the first Renaissance architect and military engineer to articulate the ways in which a radial system of streets, a bastioned periphery wall, and a public space in the centre could work together.
The use of a radial layout for the convergence of traffic had been apparent since the Middle Ages in merchant towns with a centralised market place. The widespread use of the stage-coach in the Baroque era facilitated a post-war function for the radial plan as an acceptable city diagram. Its prominence in transport terms was further elevated by the transformation of the city centre into a business district and the introduction of more rapid forms of transport such as the automobile, which emphasised the need for a more coherent system of radial traffic arteries. Due to this development in transportation and the redundancy of city defences, the walls of many previously fortified cities were pulled down and the land turned into a continuous ring road. The majority of the old approaches from the countryside into the city were rationalised into straight radial roads linking the centre to the growing suburbs.

Out of the industrial age came the re-emergence of the ideal city in the form of Ebenezer Howard’s Garden City Movement of 1898. The origins for this movement arose out of Howard’s concern for the poor quality of life in the industrial city and proposed the construction of new self sustaining satellite towns where people could enjoy the benefits of both the town and countryside. The concept of the Garden City consisted of a radial plan divided by six large tree lined boulevards traversing the city from the centre to the rim and split the city into six wards. With an emphasis on community the large public buildings such as the town hall, hospital and library set in large parklands would sit at the centre of the city in the location most accessible to the entire population. Running around the edge of the parkland was to be a wide glass arcade that would house the cities retail and leisure facilities, with the furthest city inhabitant living only 5-10 minutes walk of this ‘crystal palace’. The rings beyond this would consist mainly of residential developments of large well lit and high quality housing and have educational, religious facilities and further parkland interspersed throughout. The outer ring of development would contain the cities factories and industrial sector like the crystal palace the furthest an inhabitant would live from these would be 5-10 minutes walk. Beyond the city would be open countryside designated as green belt to stop the city expanding so that its self sufficiency could be maintained. The Garden Cities were linked to a central city through routes radiating from its centre through a series of rapid transport routes. The outlaying Garden Cities were linked to one another via electric trams by a direct road route and railway lines.

It was around the time of the Garden City Movement that Doncaster’s philanthropic colliery owners started to build housing for their workers. In 1907 Percy Houfton designed Woodlands model village for the workers of Brodsworth Colliery and was seen in its day as an exemplar piece of urban planning and was directly influenced by the Garden City Principles of tree lined boulevards and high quality housing. It was also around this time that the colliery housing at New Rossington was being built with ‘The Circle’ as its centrepiece (much of this area was constructed in the 1920s and 30s). The Circle - the most conspicuous pattern of urban grain in this area and which emerged at this time in reaction to modernist design thinking and the Garden City ideals - has a strong radial plan with a green space at its centre and a number of large residential properties, a church, public house and community hall encircling the central space. Around this inner ring are two rings of terraced residential properties before the plan merges back into a more traditional grid layout. In the corner spaces left over from the transition between square and circle are located further community buildings and the market place and the retail centre located along the circles northern axis. Although there are no references in historical texts about any influences on New Rossington’s housing layout the area does seem to embody an element of the Garden City philosophy with rings of housing around an area of greenspace and community buildings.