Book Reviews 537

MICHAEL PACIONE, Urban Problems and Planning in the Developed World. Croorn Helm, London, 1981,320 pp.

This book combines essays by eight authors writing on what they see as major issues attaching to development and planning in eight cities within the developed world. The cities, or metro- politan regions covered are: New York, Melbourne, Tokyo, Johannesburg, Glasgow, Barcelona, Warsaw, and Leningrad. The book is intended as a companion volume to Problems and Planning in Third World Cities [Michael Pacione (Editor), Croom Helm, London, 19811 .

The purpose of this work is the discussion of planning and development with respect to a number of cities, rather than the discussion of urbanisation in the developed world per se. Although prefaced with an overview of the book’s content, no serious attempt has been made to co-relate the issues raised within the individual essays. Rather - while offering an account of development and planning in eight cities - the book leaves to the reader the task of drawing conclusions with respect to planning and urbanisation in the developed world as a whole.

Perhaps the most obvious question which arises from a reading of this book is that of the universality of the characteristics of urban development and planning concerns throughout the developed world. The authors, in discussing their individual cities, raise issues characteristic to urbanisation and planning within the developed world. However, each author lays stress on specific issues to suggest that the particular historical, socio-economic, or political contexts within which urbanisation may occur, will lend a specific character to the discussion of plan- ning or development with respect to any one city or country. For example, C.W. Carey, in an essay on the New York Metropolitan Region (NYMR), catalogues a wide range of urban ills, many of which might be considered common within the developed capitalist world. However, Carey goes on to suggest that any discussion of the NYMR must take account of the admini- strative and fiscal structures within the Region. Carey suggests that the NYMR may be seen as a

mosaic of functionally inter-related areas with each area pursuing independent aims in the absence of any region-wide fiscal or planning machinery. Thus, the fiscal crisis which assails New York may be seen in the light of inner areas suffering a range of urban ills and an eroding tax base, and outer areas enjoying relative freedom from those urban ills and a more lucrative tax base.

In an essay on Melbourne, P.W. Newton and R.J. Johnson demonstrate while the develop- ment of that city may display characteristics common within the developed world, a discussion of planning in Melbourne might be dominated by the allied issues of urban sprawl and the Australian propensity for low density residential development. Similarly, in an essay on Tokyo, M.E. Witherick relates the development of Tokyo to the phenomenal development of urbanis- ation in Japan, and suggests that the scale of urban growth will predominate in any discussion of planning in Tokyo. In an essay on Glasgow, Michael Pacione again draws on the importance of specific issues: housing and slum clearance, urban renewal, unemployment and the alternative policies for decentralisation and renewal of inner city areas. The discussion relating to the four other cities covered highlights again the specificity of development patterns and planning concerns. This is evident in the discussion on Johannesburg, where apartheid and specific historical factors give shape to the urban structure. It is evident, too, in the essay on Barcelona which centres on local regional imbalance, haphazard development, and other difficulties which arise when development is organised in the service of a ruling minority. Finally, the book concentrates on Warsaw and Leningrad, where planning and development are guided by socialist principles. However, here again particular factors would seem to lend character to planning concerns within the socialist countries. While in Warsaw the planners are concerned with the generation of development sufficient for the fulfilment of policies, in Leningrad planners are in the happier position of refining planning techniques to create a greater coordination between private and public interests.

This book offers evidence that there are general planning concerns which are common within the developed world. For example, many of the authors touch on the issues of urban sprawl, the regulation of urban growth, urban renewal and the processes of decentralisation. However, the authors have attempted to express the particularity of planning concerns relative

538 Book Reviews

to the eight cities discussed. Arguably, it is not so much the universality of urban growth characteristics or planning issues which forms the content of this book; but rather the capacity of local historical, socio-economic, or political forces to act on typical characteristics in urbanis- ation of archetypal issues in planning.

Patrick Malone School of Architecture, Plymouth Polytechnic, UK

CHRISTOPHER HOWE, Shanghai: Revolution and Development in an Asian Metropolis. Contemporary China Institute Publications, 1981,470 pp.

The eighth in a series on post-Liberation China, this book sets out to show why its authors regard Shanghai as a ‘critical’ city, due to its political significance in pre- and post-evolutionary China. Its portrayal of Shanghai as a catalyst for economic and intellectual change is a vivid one, worthy of a city of paradoxes that has been both the ‘key’ to Western colonial penetration of mah~land China in the past - via its ‘comprador culture’ - and the home of radical intellec- tual movements and innovative economic policy since Liberation.

Although the book was written before the fall of the Gang of Four and the present leader- ship’s espousal of the “New Economic Policy” and “Four Modernisations”, in explaining the past from different perspectives (historical, political, economic, spatial, and cultural- intellectual), the reasons for present policies become somewhat clearer - though not entirely explicable. The one perspective which is covered only implicitly is of course the social. In a book attempting to deal with development as well as revolution, this reflects a serious omission (albeit one that reveals my own developmental preoccupations as a social planner).

It would also have been useful to gain a broader understanding of exactly why Shanghai is an (undoubtedly) unique city, with “special status within China” and a “singular role in China’s history and economy”, by means of comparisons with other major Chinese cities. This will give an additional dimension to the assessment of Shanghai itself. The sections where this has been done --. even minimally, bearing in mind problems of documentation (e.g. Part 4: The Suburban Transformation) give a more holistic and useful background, particularly from a development planning standpoint.

Emma Hooper London School of Economics, UK

BRYN GREEN, Countryside Conservation: The Protection and Management of Amenity Ecosystems. Allen & Unwin, Resource Management Series, 1981.

Rather ruefully, Bryn Green writes in his preface that Countryside Conservation is a develop- ment of a paper he wrote in 1975. The six intervening years have seen the publication of numerous debate-provoking works on the subject of conserving the British countryside and culminated in the parliamentary orgy of the Wildlife and Countryside Bill which was finally enacted in October 198 1.

Many words, statistics and a few tears have been spilt during the great debate and even if, at the end of the day, conservationists believe that little was changed, none can claim that the subject had not been well-aired. Indeed there has been some danger of conservation over- kill. But Bryn Green has produced a book which manages to bring a fresh contribution, not SO

much because what it describes is new information but because it combines conviction with authoritative evidence backed up by years of practical experience. Having been a Regional Officer for the Nature Conservancy, he has been able to assess the situation from his own experience in the field and to speak with the assurance that brings. The individual chapters on the main semi-natural habitats of Britain, their evolution and their management requirements are masterly.