Aerial view of church and residential areas in Pinelands, Cape Town,. Image © Jean van der Meulen via Shutterstock

生态控制和田园城市：谁的乌托邦？
Ecological Control and the Garden City: Utopia for Whom?

由专筑网Zia，小R编译

19世纪，英国出版社将发行了一本由英国城市规划师撰写的书——一本标题乐观的书，即《明日：真正改革的和平之路》（To-morrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform），后来被重印为《明日的田园城市》（Garden Cities of To-morrow）。这位英国城市规划师就是埃比尼泽·霍华德，这本书也为后来的田园城市运动奠定了基础。这场运动将产生因其崇高目标而受到赞扬的绿色郊区，但也将产生只满足少数特权人士的卫星社区。

埃比尼泽·霍华德所宣传的概念非常简单，基本就是田园城市将和谐地结合农村和城市，农村的疏离和城市的拥挤将同时得到解决。在空间上，霍华德设想的田园城市是以绿地和公共公园的同心模式规划的，并与六条从中心延伸出来的放射状林荫大道相交。

At the turn of the 19th century, a British publishing house would release a book written by an English urban planner – a book with an optimistic title. The title of this book was To-morrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform, later reprinted as Garden Cities of To-morrow. The English urban planner in question was Ebenezer Howard – and this book would lay the foundations for what would later become known as the Garden City Movement. This movement would go on to produce green suburbs praised for their lofty aims, but it would also produce satellite communities that only catered to a privileged few.
The concept propagated by Ebenezer Howard was quite simple. At its most basic, a garden city would harmoniously combine the countryside with the urban town, where rural flight and urban overcrowding would be simultaneously addressed. Spatially, Howard visualized garden cities to be planned on a concentric pattern with green spaces and public parks, intersected by six radial boulevards extending from the center.


Garden City Map by Howard. Image via Wikimedia Commons, public domain

尽管霍华德的设想充满了乌托邦色彩，但在他的书出版后不久，英国就建造了一座田园城市。位于英格兰南部的莱奇沃思后来成为未来田园城市的模板，影响了附近的韦尔文和汉普斯特德的田园郊区。

然而，最初的田园城市概念由资本主义经济体系的现实所塑造。霍华德设计了莱奇沃思的合作所有权计划，这里没有房东。然而，由于该项目得到了富有的投资者的支持，所以没能实施。这种田园城市概念很快就离开了英国，在非洲大陆的殖民地领土上找到它的沃土，田园城市的元素被移植到那里，排斥、隔离和划分社会地位与身份。

Despite the utopian air of Howard’s visions, a garden city was built in the UK a short while after the publication of his book. Letchworth in Southern England would later serve as a template for future garden cities – influencing nearby Welwyn and Hampstead Garden Suburb.
The original garden city concept, however, was molded by the realities of a capitalist economic system. Howard had devised Letchworth with a cooperative ownership scheme with no landlords. As the project was backed by wealthy investors, however, this was scrapped. This molding of the garden city concept would shortly end up leaving the shores of the UK, finding its way to colonial territories in the African continent, where the elements of a garden city would be transplanted to exclude, segregate, and delineate social status.


Aerial view of Letchworth. Image via RIBA Competitions

田园城市模式在国际上的早期转化是在南非，1919年在开普敦的南郊建立了Pinelands。它以莱奇沃思花园城市为蓝本，是南非专业城市规划的首次尝试，也是历届种族隔离政府所青睐的空间规划的先导。Pinelands的道路和小径都经过精心设计，以使人们能够看到树群或Table Mountain的美景。商店可达性良好，房屋是英国本土风格，这里的设计寻求将赏心悦目的外观与舒适性和经济性相结合。

尽管如此，Pinelands还是被明确设想为一个只有白人的低密度隔离住房郊区。如果说埃比尼泽·霍华德对田园城市的设想是倡导社会改革的话，那么Pinelands的田园城市设计则纯粹是技术性的，只体现在道路布局和土地分配方面。设计居住区的英国建筑师Albert John Thompson以缺乏资金为由，反对在Pinelands开发非欧洲人居住区。

A very early translation of the garden city model internationally was in South Africa, which in 1919 saw the establishment of Pinelands in the southern suburbs of Cape Town. Modeled closely on Letchworth Garden City, it was the first attempt at a professional town plan in South Africa – which acted as a precursor to the spatial planning favored by successive apartheid governments. The roads and paths that cut through Pinelands were carefully crafted to allow for vistas looking towards clusters of trees or Table Mountain. Shops were designed to be easy to reach without being obtrusive, and the houses were designed in an adapted English vernacular style – seeking to combine a pleasing appearance with comfort and affordability.
With all this, however, Pinelands was explicitly conceived as a whites-only, low-density segregated housing suburb. If Ebenezer Howard’s vision of a garden city was one that championed social reform, Pinelands’ garden city design was purely technical, represented only in the layout of roads and allocation of open spaces. English architect Albert John Thompson – who designed the settlement – justified his stance against developing a non-European section in Pinelands by citing a lack of funds.


Garden Cities plan of Pinelands - 1948. Image © University of Cape Town Libraries, South Africa

Pinelands的发展实际上是为南非的规划作为社会控制的媒介铺平了道路，它在一定程度上促成了强制隔离土地法规的通过，比如1927年正式建立镇区的法令。

几十年后，南非颁布了《Group Areas Act》，随着城市种族隔离制度的进一步规范，种族群体被分配到不同的住宅和商业区。Cape Flats是这一法案的结果，该地区由种族隔离的社区组成。最初的田园城市手册中规定的有序的绿化带变成了一种排斥隔离的工具，成为黑人、混血儿和白人社区之间的缓冲带。郊区的道路相互绕行，这是另一种形式的城市控制。

The development of Pinelands in effect paved the way for planning as a medium for social control in South Africa. It contributed in part to the passage of statutes that mandated segregated land use – such as the 1927 ordinance that formalized the establishment of townships.
A few decades on, the Group Areas Act was enacted in South Africa, with racial groups being assigned different residential and business areas as urban apartheid was further codified. The Cape Flats were a result of this act, an area consisting of racially segregated neighborhoods. The orderly greenbelts laid out in the original garden city handbook became a tool of exclusion, instead acting as buffer zones between Black, mixed-race, and white communities. Suburban roads circled back on each other, another form of urban control.


Browns Farms - Cape Flats, Philippi, Cape Town. Image © Johnny Miller

这种剥削性的田园城市模式被南非种族隔离政府应用于Langa和Ndabeni等镇区，并最终成为田园城市的恰当代表，既是控制非白人的一种形式，也是南非白人社区与非白人“隔绝”的媒介。

田园城市作为社会工程也在西非得到了类似的实践，塞内加尔的首都达喀尔可以说是最生动地体现了这种模式。作为法国在西非的殖民统治的中心，殖民主义的管理者们参照田园城市的模式，在达喀尔设计了所谓的城市花园，其明确的目标就是创造明显的阶级分离。

This exploitative Garden-city model was applied by the apartheid South African government in townships such as Langa and Ndabeni, and was ultimately an apt representation of the garden city both as a form of control of non-whites and medium through which South Africa’s white community would be “insulated” from non-whites.
The garden city as a social engineering project was also similarly sculpted in Western Africa, with Senegal’s capital of Dakar arguably bearing this legacy most vividly. The epicenter of French colonial rule in West Africa, colonial administrators looked to the garden city model to create what they termed as a cité-jardin in Dakar – with the unambiguous goal of creating visible class stratification.


Dakar’s quarters by the 1950s. Image © Original drawing by Tamar Soffer

进入20世纪初，殖民政府在城市中实施了隔离主义的住房计划。达喀尔的原住民被迫重新安置在新形成的Médina，殖民者刻意为他们划分网格监控。在19世纪中期，建立了Plateau，环形路与宽阔大道相互交错，这就是达喀尔的“田园城市”。它并不是完整意义上的田园城市，而是一个由自带花园和阳台的别墅、宽阔的林荫大道和丰富的植被装饰组成的居住区。

达喀尔的Plateau为殖民时期的贵族创造一个著名的居住区，在城市隔离的背景下为殖民官员提供有吸引力的区域。这里亲近自然，这也是埃比尼泽·霍华德最初的田园城市提案的一个关键设计原则，专门运用在殖民时期的侨民群体内。

Early into the twentieth century, the colonial government imposed segregationist housing schemes in the city. Dakar’s indigenous inhabitants were forced to resettle in the newly formed quarter of Médina, its grid deliberately arranged for colonial surveillance over the area. In the mid-1900s, the Plateau was established, with several roundabouts elaborately arranged in star-like intersections of wide avenues. The latter was Dakar’s cité-jardin. It was not a garden city in the full sense, but rather was a settlement comprising of villas with gardens and verandas, wide tree-lined avenues, and a decorative abundance of vegetation.
Dakar’s Plateau quarter was designed to create a prestigious settlement for the colonial bourgeoise – attractive areas for colonial officials against a backdrop of urban segregation. Easy access to nature – a key principle of Ebenezer Howard’s original garden city proposal, was limited to the colonial expatriates.


Dakar's Plateau area featuring wide boulevards - from the Ousmane Sembène film "Mandabi". Image Courtesy of Janus Films

在英国常见的带有花园的平房建筑群被移植到了达喀尔——这是一种带有私人花园的宽敞别墅的形式。欧洲城市精英所坚持的将自然作为消费对象的做法，在殖民时期的达喀尔得到了实现。在那里，绿色空间作为特定人群的休闲和娱乐空间。

城市花园项目实际上是试图控制达喀尔的城市和生态特征，为吸引理想的外籍家庭移民的殖民目标服务。达喀尔城市花园的宽敞住宅，拥有大面积的菜园，并由佣人提供服务，是殖民主义权力的实际体现，而达喀尔的原住民不得不居住在规划不善的Médina地区。

The housing model common in the UK of a bungalow-compound complex with a cultivated garden was transplanted to Dakar, taking the form of spacious villas with private gardens. The practice of nature as an object for consumption, adhered to by European urban elites, found its way to colonial Dakar, where green spaces would serve as spaces of leisure and pleasure.

The cite-jardin project was in effect an attempt at controlling Dakar’s urban and ecological character, serving the colonial goal of attracting the ideal expatriate family to emigrate. The expansive homes in Dakar’s cite-jardin, housing large kitchen gardens and served by domestic servants, were a physical manifestation of colonial authority, as Dakar’s indigenous residents were obligated to adapt to the poorly-planned settlement of Médina.


Dakar's Plateau area featuring tree lined roads - from the Ousmane Sembène film "Black Girl". Image Courtesy of Janus Films

即使是霍华德的早期田园城市模式，也可以说是一个本质上并不自由的模式。在某种程度上，它是一种由中产和上层阶级宣传的对工人阶级和居住点的居高临下的描述产物。因此，这种模式自然会产生世界上的Plateaus和Pineland——为社会的一部分人提供的乌托邦社区。

田园城市可能在当代的一些圈子里被浪漫化，并被誉为使城市更宜居的途径，但它是一个不可能脱离其起源的概念——它导致产生了世界上并不需要的隔离式居住模式。

Even Howard’s early garden city model is one that can be said is not inherently liberating. It was a product, in a way, of condescending depictions of working-class people and settlements, propagated by the middle and upper classes. It is natural then, that this model would produce the Plateaus and Pinelands' of the world – utopian communities for a select segment of society.
The garden city might be romanticized in some contemporary circles and hailed as an avenue for making cities more liveable, but it is a concept that is impossible to disentangle from its origins – and one that can easily lead to the segregated settlements the world can do without.


Road in Pinelands, Cape Town. Image © Flickr User Danie van der Merwe licensed under the (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) license


Welwyn Garden City memorial garden. Image via Wikimedia Commons, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0


Cathédrale Notre Dame des Victoires in Dakar's Plateau area. Image © David Perghaud via Unsplash


Church in Pinelands, Cape Town. Image © Flickr User Danie van der Merwe licensed under the (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) license


Thatched house in Pinelands, Cape Town. Image © Flickr User Danie van der Merwe licensed under the (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) license