Civics: as Applied Sociology/Part 1/F—Literature of Civics

No discussion of the preliminaries and fundamentals of Civics can omit some consideration of the vast and ever growing literature of cities. But how are we to utilise this? How continue it? How co-ordinate it with the needed independent and first-hand survey of city by city? And how apply this whole knowledge of past and present towards civic action?

The answer must plainly be a concrete one. Every city however small, has already a copious literature of its topography and history in the past; one, in fact, so ample that its mere bibliography may readily fill a goodly volume,[1] to which the specialist will long be adding fresh entries. This mass of literature may next be viewed as the material for a comprehensive monograph, well enriched with maps and illustrations, such as many cities can boast; and this again may be condensed into a guide-book. Guide-books have long been excellent in their descriptive and historical detail, and are becoming increasingly interpretative also, especially since Mr. Grant Allen transferred his evolutionary insight and his expository clearness from natural to civic history.

After this general and preliminary survey of geographic environment and historic development, there nowadays begins to appear the material of a complementary and contemporary volume, the Social Survey proper. Towards this, statistical materials are partly to be found amid parliamentary and municipal reports and returns, economic journals and the like, but a fresh and first-hand survey in detail is obviously necessary. In this class of literature, Mr. Booth's monumental Survey of London, followed by others, such as Mr. Rowntree's of York, have already been so widely stimulating and suggestive that it may safely be predicted that before many years the Social Survey of any given city will be as easily and naturally obtainable as is at present its guide-book; and the rationalised census of the present condition of its people, their occupation and real wages, their family budget and culture-level, should be as readily ascertainable from the one, as their antecedents understood or their monuments visited by help of the other.

But these two volumes—"The City: Past and Present,"—are not enough. Is not a third volume imaginable and possible, that of the opening Civic Future? Having taken full note of places as they were and are, of things as they have come about, and of people as they are—of their occupations, families, and institutions, their ideas and ideals—may we not to some extent discern, then patiently plan out, at length boldly suggest, something of their actual or potential development? And may not, must not, such discernment, such planning, while primarily, of course, for the immediate future, also take account of the remoter and higher issues which a city's indefinitely long life and correspondingly needed foresight and statesmanship involve? Such a volume would thus differ widely from the traditional and contemporary "literature of Utopias" in being regional instead of non-regional, indeed ir-regional and so realisable, instead of being unrealisable and unattainable altogether. The theme of such a volume would thus be to indicate the practicable alternatives, and to select and to define from these the lines of development of the legitimate Eu-topia possible in the given city, and characteristic of it; obviously, therefore, a very different thing from a vague Ou-topia, concretely realisable nowhere. Such abstract counsels of perfection as the descriptions of the ideal city, from Augustine through More or Campanella and Bacon to Morris, have been consolatory to many, to others inspiring. Still, a Utopia is one thing, a plan for our city improvement is another.

Some concrete, if still fragmentary, materials towards such a volume are, of course, to be found in all municipal offices, though scattered between the offices of the city engineer and health officer, the architect and park superintendent; while the private architect and landscape gardener, the artist, sometimes even the municipal voters and their representatives, may all have ideas of their own. But though our cities are still as a whole planless, their growth as yet little better than a mere casual accretion and agglomeration, if not a spreading blight, American and German cities are now increasingly affording examples of comprehensive design of extension and of internal improvement. As a specific example of such an attempt towards the improvement of a British city, one not indeed comprehending all aspects of its life, but detailed and reasoned so far as it goes, and expressing that continuity of past and present into future which has been above argued for, I am permitted by the courtesy of the Carnegie Dunfermline Trust to lay on the Society's library table an early copy of a recent study of practicable possibilities in a city typically suitable for consideration from the present standpoint, since presenting within a moderate and readily intelligible scale a very marked combination of historic interests, and of contemporary and growing activity, both industrial and cultural, with hopeful civic outlook.

That co-adjustment of social survey and social service which has been above argued for as the essential idea of civics as applied sociology is thus no abstract principle, but a concrete and practicable method. Yet it is one not lacking in generality of application. For what we have reached is really the conception of an Encyclopædia Civica, to which each city should contribute the Trilogy of its Past, its Present, and its Future. Better far, as life transcends books, we may see, and yet more, forsee, the growth of civic consciousness and conscience, the awakening of citizenship towards civic renascence. All this the production of such volumes would at one imply and inspire—life ever producing its appropriate expression in literature, and literature reacting upon the ennoblement of life.

Apart altogether from what may be the quality and defects of particular volumes, such as those cited as examples of each part of such a proposed civic trilogy, one as yet nowhere complete, the very conception of such a possible threefold series may be of some service. For this would present a continuous whole, at once sociological and civic—the views and the resources of the scholar and the educationist with their treasures of historic culture, of the man of action with his mastery of immediate affairs, of the thinker with his vision of the opening future, now all co-ordinated by help of the design of the artist, and thence to be gradually realised in the growing heritage of the city, the enlarging life of the citizen.

NOTE—As an example of the concrete application to a particular city, of the sociological methods and principles indicated in the above paper, Prof. Geddes exhibited an illustrated volume embodying the results of his studies and designs towards the improvement of Dunfermline, under the Trust recently established by Mr. Carnegie. This has since been published:

P. GEDDES. City Development. Park Gardens and Culture Institutes; a Report to the Carnegie Dunfermline Trust. With 138 illustrations. Edinburgh, etc.. 1904.