<計画>植民都市の建設者 --計画理念の移植者たち : 植民都市研究のためのメモ

Abstract

How the idea of planning decides the form of colonial cities? Who (What subjects or organizations) plan the city? Who build the city? What kinds of process are needed to implement the idea of the city? What is the institutional framework of building colonial cities? These questions above are subjects here. It is needless to say that these are also the fundamental issues of contemporary urban and regional planning in nature. It seems obvious colonial cities are spatial devices to dominate the people in the colony. They are spatial arrangement to mediate (connect-separate) the sovereign country and the colony. If we consider the city in general the spatial device for domination, it can be said, "All the cities are in a way colonial cities". Considerations on colonial cities lead us to consider the nature of city planning. In the early stage of colonization, facilities called factories were needed as a base of trade and replenishment on the coastal area. The base was developed to the fortified city that contains factory plus residential facilities where the political and military strategies are given the priority in this stage. Fort building technologies are the keys to compete the rivals as well as military technologies. From the end of 16th century to 17th century, The Netherlands, which had followed up Portuguese and Spain, initiated the colonial city building. We have the interesting model of "ideal port city" by Simon Stevin. The towns were gradually formed in the surrounding of the fortified city Colonizer plant (immigrate) the people to build and support the city. So-called white town and black town were formed being distinctively segregated. Segregation among various ethnic groups becomes our important subjects. We can classify the colonial cities into several patterns according to the existence of native settlements and towns. Spanish colonial cities in Latin America were constructed on the native towns completely destroyed. We have the case in Australia where only European builds the city without contact with the native aborigines. In China in the late 19th century, colony was built within the existent city. When the colonization proceed to in land, another type of town were needed like the British cantonment and hill station. The process of building colonial cities is various according to their context. The military occupation to get the native products like spices were common in the beginning, but the situation changed after Industrial Revolution because colonial societies became the huge market. As the policy of indirect rule was adopted, the economical and cultural dominance was given priority in place of direct military rule. To plant ideologies and values of sovereign societies by making a copy and a miniature of a part of them became the major strategy. The colonies turned to be experimental fields for the history of modern urban planning. New world had been regarded as a place of utopia to many religious groups. Many trials to build utopia based on the philosophy of so called "fanciful socialism" like those of St. Simon, R. Owen and C. Fourier were also carried out in the New World. On the other hand, the institutional framework and urban planning codes, which were built to deal with the urban issues, and housing problems caused by rapid urbanization after Industrial Revolution, were exported to the colonial cities. Especially, the concept of public health strongly influenced the colonial city planning.

The ideas and policies of modern urban planning were not exported one way to the colonies. Attentions should be paid that colonial experience influenced the policies and technologies of urban planning in the western countries. The fact that institutional framework for urban strategies were set up earlier in the colonies are often overlooked. The experiences in the colonies were imported to the western society as in case of "Garden city". To reflect the relation between modern urban planning and colonial experience from the end of 19th century to 20th century leads us to reconsider the nature of modem urban planning. The highlights of the colonial city planning in the former half of 20th century are planning of the three capitals in British Empire, New Delhi, Pretoria and Canberra. The relations and communications between architects and planners who took part in those projects are intimate as H. Baker were invited to design the major building in New Delhi from South Africa and W. Griffin worked India besides the works in U.S.A. and Australia. It is interesting subject here to clarify the role of professionals like architects and planners who export the basic idea of planning. The founders of the colonial cities in the early stage are military commanders or explorers and traders. There is military statesman who left their names as those of the cities like Brisbane, Darling. Bourke. and D'Urban. Stanford Ruffles who built Singapore was the statesman who influenced the policies of colonial development. Francis Light who founded George Town (Penang) as a South East Asian base of East India Company was a trader and developer whose son, William Light is famous as a builder of Adelaide. Here we have the interesting subject, Jan van Riebeeck who was the founder of Cape Town. He got on board of voe as a young surgeon to Btavia when he was 20 years old. He had been to Desima (Nagasaki) as a trader in 1642. After coming back to Amsterdam, he was designated as a founder of Cape Town in 1651 and lastly died in Batavia. From the existence of the person like Jan van Riebeeck, we can recall the network among the cities, Amsterdam, Cape Town, Colombo, Galle, Maraca, Batavia, Formosa and Nagasaki. I will, however, make a focus on the planners and architects after Industrial Revolution. I discussed the roles of planners who exported the idea of modern urban planning in this paper.