This article was downloaded by: [University of Birmingham]On: 16 November 2014, At: 05:12Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

European Planning StudiesPublication details, including instructions for authors andsubscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ceps20

Book reviewsJason M. Duckworth a , Pascal De Decker b , Dr Knarf Trealuomc , Guy Baeten d e & Mandy S. Morris fa School of Geography , Oxford University , UKb University of Antwerp , Belgiumc University of Rijseld Institute for Urban and Regional Planning , University ofLeuvene School of Geography , Oxford Universityf The Open University , Milton Keynes, UKPublished online: 11 Apr 2007.

To cite this article: Jason M. Duckworth , Pascal De Decker , Dr Knarf Trealuom , Guy Baeten& Mandy S. Morris (1997) Book reviews, European Planning Studies, 5:3, 417-426, DOI:10.1080/09654319708720408

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09654319708720408

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the“Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis,our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoeveras to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Anyopinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of theauthors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracyof the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verifiedwith primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for anylosses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and otherliabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connectionwith, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Anysubstantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing,systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms

& Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

irm

ingh

am]

at 0

5:12

16

Nov

embe

r 20

14

European Planning Studies, Vol. 5, No. 3, 1997 417

Book Reviews

The Geography of FinanceDavid J. PorteousAldershot, Avebury, 1995, x+230 pp., £35.001 $59.96, ISBN 1 85972 016 3 hb

In recent years, there has been a surge of geographic research on global and regional financialmarkets. Up to now, this research has centred on the social aspects of financial markets or theposition of a financial centre as the nexus of global capital flows. At its best, this literature hasexposed the fascinating labour dynamics of financial centres; at its worst, we've been subjectedto the cliched mantra of 'global finance', 'information technology', and contrived hierarchiesof international financial centres. Although most existing contributions to this literature havecome from the field of geography, geographers have totally neglected the most fundamentalproject in the geography of finance: explaining the location of financial intermediaries.

Fortunately for economic geographers, economists such as David J. Porteous are resolvingthese unanswered questions. Porteous' book, based upon his 1993 PhD dissertation ineconomics at Yale University, is an enormous contribution to the field; perhaps thebest to date. The book is based upon the premises that banks are specialized users andcollectors of information and that information deteriorates in quantity and quality withincreasing distance between borrower and lender. From these two simple ideas, Porteousexposes a variety of insights into the agglomeration of banks, the role of banking concentrationin uneven regional development, and the rivalry between competing financial centres.Although Porteous utilizes sophisticated econometrics in his study, this book is by no meanslimited to those with quantitative proficiency. Well-written discussions and fascinating histori-cal accounts makes this volume accessible to researchers more comfortable with qualitativetechniques.

Central to Porteous' thesis is the idea that, despite the modern telecommunicationsrevolution, physical distance between borrowers and lenders is an important influence infinancial transactions. He demonstrates how even in secondary markets for securitizedmortgages—a liquid market of relatively standardized financial products—proximity betweenborrowers and lenders is an important influence on a security's yield. In markets for lessstandardized financial products, informational asymmetries create even greater spatial effects.Banks reduce the risks associated with unstandardized loans through physical and relationalproximity to the borrower, a phenomenon that is plainly evident on every High Street. Whilecritics may claim that modern telecommunications militates against the informational advan-tages of proximity, the context in which that information is best interpreted remains fixed inspecific places. Information about the price of pork belly futures is useless to Londoninvestment banks; however, in the trading pits of Chicago such information has great value.

Porteous also employs information distance-decay to clarify the growth and change offinancial centres. Central to his analysis is a financial centre's 'information hinterland','defined as the regions for which a particular core city provides the best access point for theprofitable exploitation of valuable information flows' (p. 113). The fortunes of a financialcentre depend not merely on the physical size of its informational hinterland, but also on thevalue of its information flows and the potential for profitably exploiting the information. Incase studies of Canada's and Australia's financial centres, Porteous illustrates how improve-

0965-4313/97/030417-10 © 1997 Journals Oxford Ltd

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

irm

ingh

am]

at 0

5:12

16

Nov

embe

r 20

14

418 Book Reviews

ments to the informational hinterlands of Toronto and Sydney effected their dominance overMontreal and Melbourne respectively. In the cases of both Toronto and Sydney, linkages tointernational markets through foreign bank branches and international air passenger flowswere crucial to pulling ahead of their rivals.

Finally, Porteous' insights into the geography of finance reveal that a national bankingsystem consisting of both small and large banks is most efficient. This conclusion, like manythe author reaches in this text, derives from the simple observation that as the distancebetween lender and borrower increases, the costs and risks of lending increase. A financialsystem in which borrowers and lenders are as 'close' as possible—be it through physical orcultural proximity—would be efficient. Therefore, it is easy to see how a national bankingsystem consisting solely of massive firms concentrated in a single city like that of Britain,Canada, Australia, and South Africa are less efficient at serving the needs of small firms indistant locations. As Porteous argues, small locally based banks are 'closer' to small local firmsand households because of local informational externalities. Therefore, a national bankingsystem that maintains both small local banks and large national banks is most efficient.

Although the Geography of Finance is rather broad in scope, it does not lack the impact ofa more tightly focused study. Rather, by covering so much ground on several different fronts,Porteous builds a solid platform for future studies into the geography of finance and theimpact of information flow on industrial location.

Jason M. Duckworth

School of Geography

Oxford University, UK

European Housing Finance. Single Market or Mosaic?W. Bartlett and G. Bramley (Eds)University of Bristol, SAUS Publications, 1994, 282 pp., £19.95, pb, ISBN 1 873575 63 7

It must be very frustrating times for those scholars who are interested in the internationalfeatures of housing since the list of comparative publications is gradually becoming too longto read. With European Housing Finance. Single Market or Mosaic? the School of Advanced UrbanStudies of the University of Bristol adds another one to the list. This book focuses on theextent to which the globalization of international finance markets in the 1990s is beingreflected in the changing conditions of the housing finance systems of Europe. It also examinesthe likely impact of European integration on UK housing finance institutions. The articlesresult from a conference held at the School of Advanced Urban Studies early in 1993. Besidesthe very good introduction of the editors, the book contains 14 chapters in four parts clusteredaround four themes: European integration and housing finance; Financial deregulation andinstability; Developing the institutions of housing finance; Innovation in finance for socialhousing.

The chapters in Part 1 of the book examine the implications of the development of thesingle European market legislation for the market in housing finance. Three of the chaptersare dealing with the situation in the UK, a fourth one sheds some light on the Nordicsituation. C. Whitehead argues that liberalization in the UK has been influenced by theregulation of the European Community, but thi, concerns only the timing of change ratherthan the content. The process of change itself is, according to Whitehead, mainly pushedalong through the globalization of the financial submarkets and the greatly expandedtechnological possibilities. K. Kosonen portrays the housing finance systems of Scandinaviaand Iceland. She finds that because of the advanced liberalization of the financial market in

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

irm

ingh

am]

at 0

5:12

16

Nov

embe

r 20

14

Book Reviews 419

the Nordic countries, the short-run impact of EU legislation will be insignificant for thehousing finance system.

More specifically, M. Boleat studies the effects of the single market on mortgage financing.He concludes that housing finance is essentially a national market because of the higheconomic costs to enter another country. His conclusion is echoed by M. Stephens whoresearched the (so far unsuccessful) experience of British lenders abroad. Boleat especiallyemphasizes the barriers which exist in the form of differences in national legislation in therelated areas of property rights, land ownership, and tenure. In addition to differences inlanguage and in cultural expectations, the highly local nature of housing markets is the farmost important barrier: 'Housing is a location-specific commodity' (p. 3).

Part 2 deals with the effects of financial deregulations and has two contributions fromBritain and one from a Nordic country (Sweden). M. Ball's excellent chapter provides a broad,cross-national overview of moves towards financial liberalization and discusses the role offormal harmonization alongside other factors. Some reference is made to the US experienceand to the close linkage between housing and commercial property markets. Ball argues thatthere is a general trend towards financial liberalization which is not by any means solelydriven by EC harmonization, although this has given it further impetus. Other factors are atwork as well, not least the technology of financial services provision. Liberalization has led tomore competition and less rationing of mortgage finance. Ball concludes that financialliberalization in the EU could lead to poorer outcomes, rather than the better allocation ofresources that it was meant to achieve. Concerning the effects of deregulation P. Englund,dealing with the Swedish finance market, agrees with Ball. He observes that deregulation inSweden has intensified the last boom and slump on the housing market in the late 1980s.Before, these cycles could easily be grasped by analyzing demand variables (e.g. income,demographics). A last contribution in Part 2 is written by D. Dorling and focuses on oneparticular aspect of the slump phase, namely the widespread phenomenon of'negative equity'among home owners. He provides a detailed account of its spread, incidence and implications.

Part 3, dealing with the development of institutions of housing finance, introduces, apartfrom the Swedish case, case studies on Spain, Turkey and Slovakia, some more 'exotic'countries. The chapter by M. Pareja and P. Riera provides an overview of housing financepolicy in Spain. Spain has a very high rate of owner occupation (77%). The sector has beenstimulated by a variety of demand side and supply side subsidies. A new programmeintroduced in 1992 gave a further stimulus to the sector and has been designed to increase stillfurther the level of government subsidy to housing consumers. Unlike the subsidy system insome other countries, housing policy in Spain subsidizes people rather than bricks. Anotherpeculiarity of the Spanish case is related to the administrative structure of government inSpain. Housing policy is highly decentralized on a regional basis, owing to the importance ofthe regional autonomous communities in the Spanish administrative system.

Ali Tiirel provides a detailed account of the operation of the housing finance system inTurkey. Turkey provides an example of a developing country on the periphery of Europe withan underdeveloped housing system. Until recently, the main form of credit for housing financehas been through a state-owned bank and the commercial banking system has little involve-ment with housing finance. Attempts to reduce the costs of borrowing through fixing nominalinterest rates had periodically led to situations in which the real costs of credit has beennegative in times of high inflation. In addition, the system has been highly inequitable. Theproblems faced by the housing sector in eastern Europe are in many respects even more severethan in Turkey. As P. Michalovic points out in his chapter on the development of housingfinancing in Slovakia, housing policy in eastern Europe has to contend with the dual legacyof the communist period of poor housing infrastructure in addition to the different issues oftransition to a market economy, and the associated changes to ownership and tenure patterns

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

irm

ingh

am]

at 0

5:12

16

Nov

embe

r 20

14

420 Book Reviews

which that involves. In order to create new instruments of housing finance, policy makers inSlovakia have looked explicitly at methods adopted by developing western European countriessuch as Spain.

The final chapter of Part 3, written by P. Bengtsson, provides an example of the problemsof housing finance in a more developed European economy outside the EU. After a longperiod of large-scale subsidization the Swedish government is now attempting to scale downits involvement. Despite the high level of subsidy, which includes mortgage tax relief, housingallowances and low cost government loans, the proportion of owner-occupiers in Sweden isone of the lowest in western Europe (45%). There is a clear scope for a much greaterinvolvement of commercial banks and mortgage finance institutions. However, as the govern-ment has withdrawn a number of serious problems have emerged. Mortgage institutions havebecome more restrictive in their lending for new projects, housing costs for home owners haveincreased and, as elsewhere, deregulation appears to have led to increasing instability in thehousing market.

The last part, Part 4, deals with innovations in the financing of social housing. It containtwo stories from Britain and one from the Netherlands. Two of the chapters, writtenrespectively byj. Thompson and M. Pryke, look at the use of private finance to underpin theinvestment in social housing. Thompson presents what the editors call 'an inside view' ofBritish policy towards the evolution and financing of the social rental sector. A wholeprogressive institutional change has been promoted, with a large public rented sector (councilhousing) gradually supplanted by a social rented sector represented by non-profit registeredhousing associations. These diverse housing associations are working within a commonfinancial and regulatory framework. These transformations were necessary to 'raise the levelof new social housing provision and to increase efficiency'. Private finance is seen as crucialto reach these goals. Thompson shows some success, but his contribution also concludes thatsocial rented housing still requires substantial subsidy (p. 13).

After this inside view we get a more sceptical outside view by M. Pryke. He highlightsdifferent kinds of risks to which social housing provision is vulnerable and describes howhousing associations attempt to manage these risks and attract private finance, concluding thatthe reliance on private finance has some costs as well as some benefits.

The Netherlands instituted a major innovation in its system of financing and subsidizingsocial housing to try to take account of anticipated inflation. The 'dynamic cost rent system'is described in a bizarre last chapter byj. Conijn. What seemed a rational, theoretically soundreform, turned out in the end to be something of a disaster, at least in terms of its publicexpenditure costs. Conijn analyzes what went wrong. The implementation of the 'dynamiccost rent system' led to a higher debt increase per dwelling than the increase of its value perperiod. This Dutch observation as well as the concerns of the other stories do conclude, as theeditors stress, that it seems clear that social rented housing cannot be provided at acceptablerents without subsidy.

This book contains a very rich collection of information. Nevertheless the generalimpression after reading it is one of ambiguity. On the one hand, there is the fact that thebook is not really comparative; rather it is a collection of papers on different topics fromdifferent countries. There is also the overwhelming number of British and (to a lesser extent)Nordic papers, giving a quantity (and often a quality) gap with the contribution of the othercountries. On the other hand, there is the presentation of a number of papers from more'exotic' countries which provide very interesting first-hand information. So, taken together andleaving the imbalance aside, we can conclude that this collection brings together an interesting'mosaic' of contributions.

Pascal De Decker

University of Antwerp, Belgium

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

irm

ingh

am]

at 0

5:12

16

Nov

embe

r 20

14

Book Reviews 421

The City Builders. Property, Politics and Planning in London and New YorkSusan S. FainsteinOxford, UK and Cambridge, US, Blackwell 1995, 312pp, £14.99, ISBN 0 631 18243 8 pb;£50.00, ISBN 0 631 18244 6 hb

This is one of these rare books which you start reviewing but continue to read becauseof its interest, while forgetting about the review for which the editor of the journal iswaiting.

Susan Fainstein is Professor of Urban Planning and Policy Development at RutgersUniversity. She started conceiving this book "at a time when property was rapidly transform-ing the character of metropolitan areas in the United States and the United Kingdom"(Preface). She finished and published it amidst the still lasting severe crisis in thereal-estate market which is haunting most metropolitan cities of the Westernhemisphere.

The book is built on a detailed analysis of the role of urban redevelopment in economicrestructuring. It examines both theoretically and (mostly) empirically the functioning ofreal-estate markets, their boom and bust cycles as well as the role of different decision-makersin real-estate development. Her analysis of different agents in the urban development processis quite detailed and involves not only real-estate developers, banks and local politicians, butlocal administrators, planners and grassroots movements as well. Is the demolition of popularneighbourhoods inevitable when the real-estate's Occam's razor emerges? What is the pricefor the preservation of cultural heritage? And what about the political economy of urbanredevelopment? These and other questions about income and wealth (re)distribution, wealthcreation and destruction, business failure and unemployment receive considerable attention inthis book.

Although theory plays its part, the people and the institutions on the urban building sites,in the banking world, on the political scene and in the neighbourhoods are the first sourcesfor the reconstruction of the development actions. Case studies in both London and New Yorkare used to make the analysis fully tangible: the redevelopment of King's Cross, Times Square,Spitalfields and Downtown Brooklyn; or new developments like Battery Park City and theDocklands.

The author also devotes considerable attention to different options for inner city develop-ment policies. In this way, her book is a useful platform for urban planning discussions inother metropolises.

Susan Fainstein examines how different real-estate projects came about in London andNew York. Did the institutional frameworks in these cities really allow planners to develop thephysical quality and the functional harmony in the areas targeted by the plans? Or didplanning purely conform with the laws of capital, privileging those projects which ex ante offerthe highest returns to private capital? From Fainstein's account it appears that local authoritiesand city governments are rather powerless in steering urban development projects towardsmore social priorities and lower and middle class needs. There are many reasons for this. Asto the planning approaches, despite recent changes towards strategic, multi-dimensionalplanning in most big cities, the effective impact of the public sector seldom breaches beyondthe spatial or land use dimensions of the planning process. As the economic crisis worsens—i.e. as capital increasingly fails to make the economy run smoothly—investment andprofitability criteria supersede all social planning objectives, such as cheap housing, neighbour-hood services, ecological quality of lower class areas, etc. The more capital fails, the morecredit it should receive, it seems. But the incapacity of local authorities to check capitalistmega-dreams or real-estate casino games (they sometimes work as an irresistible instinctivedesire to keep developing and investing going, even if the market signals are unfavourable, one

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

irm

ingh

am]

at 0

5:12

16

Nov

embe

r 20

14

422 Book Reviews

of Fainstein's interviewees explains) is not only a consequence of the planning approach andthe worsening economic situation. Ever since the proliferation of international capital after theSecond World War, local authorities "have given to capitalism what belongs to capitalism".The majority of local authorities did not feel the need to develop a vision which would helpto harmonize their agencies dealing with urban planning and to put in place a control systemthat could effectively check and steer urban development. A priori, there is no reason whylocal government structures could not form a countervailing power to the devastatinginfluence of global, capital in local development. But where this was actually the case, as inGreat Britain with the Greater London Council, the Conservative national governmentmanaged to paralyse and finally abolish the working of the Council controlled by Labour.Local development practice became increasingly the competence of semi-private developmentagencies, whose main criteria of operation are profitability and good management. In thisrespect, there is in Great-Britain a growing convergence with the free-market philosophy ofurban planning in the US. In both countries, the responsibility for social targets in planningprojects now rests almost exclusively with the grassroots movements, which through theelectoral process and neighbourhood participation structures try to include social and culturalcorrections to the Mammon planning style.

The future of urban development does not look very bright in the Anglo-Saxon world. Fora continental European who cares about the future of her own cities, there are two ways tolook upon this development. The first one is to keep the eyes closed and consider theAnglo-Saxon developments as storms which once they reach the continent will have lost mostof their violence and will be experienced as strong winds only. For aren't the Scandinavian,the Dutch, the German and the French planning systems superior to the Anglo-Saxonlaissez-faire? And isn't chaos in the Latin European cities more a matter of culture than ofcapitalist planning? But the second viewpoint is to consider the Anglo-Saxon developments aspart of the globalization of capital and to examine seriously how continental urban planningmethods can be preserved from wildcat capitalist urbanism. Obviously, this second position isfar more promising. Moreover, it is compatible with the view of regulatory superiority whichwe continental European social scientists love to foster. One can indeed appreciate one's ownplanning devices, while still seeking to learn from outside with the idea of improving ourmethods or to keep off pending disasters. Fainstein's book can be used as a platform for sucha discussion. The only problem is that continental European planners are more theoreticallyrooted and that, therefore, Susan Fainstein would have to improve the theoretical discussionof planning dynamics which she presents in her book. But apart from this shortcoming;—which is of less importance in an Anglo-Saxon debate—her book can be considered as a majorinput to a political discussion about the role of urban planning in a global society.

Dr Knarf Trealuom

University of Rijsel

Cities and Natural ProcessMichael HoughLondon and New York, Routledge, 1995, xiv + 326 pp., £14.99, ISBN 0 415 12198 1 pb;£45.00, ISBN 0 415 12168 X hb

Cities and Natural Process is a well-edited, highly readable and richly illustrated book abouturban design based upon ecological principles. "Its overall thesis is that the traditional designvalues that have shaped the physical landscape of our cities have contributed little to theirenvironmental health, or to their success as civilizing, enriching places to live in." (p. 1) Newways of looking at the physical environment of cities are hence needed. The author' s aim istwofold: providing a conceptual, philosophical framework for (redintegrating nature into

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

irm

ingh

am]

at 0

5:12

16

Nov

embe

r 20

14

Book Reviews 423

urban design and presenting concrete examples of how nature and city are (or can be) broughttogether in urban planning schemes throughout the (western) world. This review willcomment mainly on the first issue. This is somewhat doing injustice do the book, since themajor part of it is concerned with planning practice and not with planning theory. Urbanplanners are offered a wide range of original, refreshing and often surprising planning insightsfor bringing natural processes back to the urban landscape, or at least to the surface of theurban landscape, since natural processes, such as bringing in potable water and getting outsewage water, are hidden away in the urban built environment and hence often go unnoticedby average city dwellers. Those who are interested in urban planning devices to reconcilenatural processes with the urban environment will undoubtedly find Hough's concreteexamples inspiring as they show an alternative, promising direction in urban design. Theauthor's theoretical stance, however, is less unproblematic, as we will see later.

The first chapter deals with urban ecology as a basis for shaping cities. It starts off withthe interesting observation that "p]n a world increasingly concerned with the problems of adeteriorating environment, be they energy, pollution, vanishing plants, animals, natural orproductive landscapes, there remains a marked propensity to bypass the environment mostpeople live in—the city itself'(p. 5). Nature and urban planning have often been conceived ofas two separate things, the former being studied by natural sciences and the latter beingdominated by disciplines that have little to do with natural science or ecological values. Theauthor thinks it necessary to link both realms, to rediscover nature in the city, since city andcountry have become alienated. "The urban environment serves to isolate us from anawareness of the natural and human processes that support life" (p. 15). Since naturalprocesses, such as the supply of water, food, and electricity or the management of waste areno longer visible to urban dwellers, they do not feel responsible for them. The author isseeking a design language which re-integrates ecology within the urban landscape.

Chapters 2 to 6 are dedicated to this task: they deal with the question of how to give water,plants, wildlife, farming and climate their deserved place in the city. It would take us too farto review all of them, so we will have a short look at water as an urban process (which is inmy opinion the best chapter to show what the author is aiming at). After briefly discussing thenatural hydrological cycle, the attention shifts to the urban hydrological cycle, which iscreating a new hydrological environment. The natural cycle is short-circuited by waterdiversions, artificial storage in reservoirs and urban piped supply systems. Disposal involvesthe problem of removing it from where it has been used to where it comes from: rivers, lakesand oceans via urban drainage systems (p. 39). A new urban culture has been built upon thegeneralized unlimited access to potable water. It has, for instance, pushed the criteria for'cleanness' beyond astonishing levels. "Today, the consumption of water for domestic pur-poses is estimated, on average, in North America to be 1135 litres per person per day. Thelargest consumer of water is the bathroom at 350-400 litres per day per person. It takes 90litres to take a bath, 45 litres to do the dishes, 23 litres to flush the WC. It goes without sayingthat these levels of water consumption cause serious problems, both in terms of supply andsewerage. In order to make people aware of these problems, the task "... is to create a newdesign symbolism for water ... that reflects the hydrological processes of the city; an urbandesign language that re-establishes its identity with life processes" (p. 81). A vernacularlandscape has to be established which does not conceal the life processes that support the city.Several examples showing how this can be done are presented in the book: such as likecascades which aerate effluent from a community of more than 200 people injarne (Sweden),or sculptured stormwater flows in a German housing development, etc. These and otherurban design principles will bring nature's processes closer to everyday life.

The main virtue of this book is that it tries to reconnect natural processes with urbanprocesses. The city-nature relationship has indeed been neglected and under-explored in the

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

irm

ingh

am]

at 0

5:12

16

Nov

embe

r 20

14

424 Book Reviews

past; nature and city have too often been conceived of as mutually exclusive. In that sense,dedicating a book to this issue is more than worth the effort. But the problem is that theauthor is not trying to get rid of the nature-society or the rural-urban dichotomy altogether.While rightly defining these separations as artificial and problematic, even as lying at the heartof the current urban environmental crisis, the author, in the end, upholds the distinctionbetween nature and city as two separate conceptual realms. He still makes a separationbetween on the one hand nature which is presented as harmless, doing good to humankind,and on the other hand society, which is doing harm to nature and consequently to itself. Theauthor regularly refers to 'original', 'native' or 'pre-industrial' landscapes which are theninvaded by cities which 'disturb' the natural process. We rely, the book says, too much ontechnology to create urban landscapes while ignoring the 'real' nature of the places we live in.Urban dwellers have lost 'rural' skills, like the production, handling and use of food. Thequestions which immediately come to mind, then, are: why are pre-industrial landscapes soclose to nature in comparison with industrial landscapes ? What is so unreal about the urbannature we have created in comparison with the real nature? Are rural people, even includingfarmers nowadays, so close to the food process? Most rural people go to the supermarket tobuy food just as urban dwellers do. Many industries, if not all of them, are ultimately dealingwith transforming nature (cotton, coal, food, iron, etc.) into commodities. It is only at first sightthat industrial estates are far removed from nature. It is only at first sight that the urbanenvironment is far removed from nature, since each bit of the city, be it a part of an officeblock, street or car, is ultimately composed of stone, iron, glass, or other 'purely' naturalelements. While the author rightly observes that we have to absolve the city-nature divide, heoccasionally slips into the gap he is trying to bridge. Furthermore, it remains to be seenwhether the enhanced visibility of natural processes the city by means of new designsymbolisms will make people aware of the fact that they have to consume and pollute less.Using urban design as a tool for 'environmental education' might be too ambitious.

Nonetheless, this publication is an important step forward in rethinking the links betweennature and city, if only because it directs our attention to an under-exposed issue in a highlyaccessible manner. It is probably not a book to read cover to cover since it mainly exploresconcrete cases of urban design, but it will surely be helpful for both planning practitioners andtheorists to clarify their plans and planning concepts.

Guy Baeten

Institute for Urban and Regional Planning

University of Leuven and School of Geography

Oxford University

The Home: Words, Interpretations, Meanings and EnvironmentsDavid N. Benjamin (Ed.)Aldershot, Avebury, UK, 1995, 310 pp., £45.00, ISBN 1 85628888 9 hb

The notion of 'home' is rather slippery. In modern Western cultures 'home' can simul-taneously mean a dwelling, place of birth, country or nation. It is the subject of diverseacademic disciplines and professional bodies. This book, the published result of a symposiumheld in Norway in 1992 titled 'The Ancient Home and the Modern Internationalized Home',conveys a wide range of approaches with 15 papers from archaeology, place-name research,urban studies, geography, environment-behaviour studies, architecture and anthropology.The editor, David N. Benjamin, has divided the papers into four main sections: 'Home:Toward a Definition of the Concept'; 'Home as Cultural Interpretation Tool'; 'Home as

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

irm

ingh

am]

at 0

5:12

16

Nov

embe

r 20

14

Book Reviews 425

Reflection of Societal Contention and Change'; and 'Home and House: Lessons from thePast for the Present'. With my cultural geography background influenced by feminist andpost-structuralist theories, my initial interest in this collection was for the differences intheoretical, epistemological and methodological approaches, although, sadly, I did not findany paper particularly challenging. So rather than merely follow the book's main themes Ishall draw out what I consider to be the most promising issues as well as some of myreservations.

The meanings 'home' might suggest is directly addressed in Part One although a majorityof papers also do this. A linguistic heritage of 'home' related place-names (e.g. hem, heim) inScandinavian prehistory is examined by Stephan Brink who argues they are associated withabstract ambiguities rather than attachments to concrete objects such as dwellings. Otherauthors, such as Roderick Lawrence, view 'home' as exciting precisely because of itscomplexity, ambiguity and contextuality, arguing that whilst 'home' cannot be reduced tomere dwelling, it is not dissociated from it. This ambiguity is taken to task by Amos Rapoportwho argues for conceptual clarity and precision, especially in environment-behaviour studies,and that the term be ditched in favour of 'house' or 'dwelling'. I am reticent about this, as Iam about Rapoport's argument to efface 'home' in favour of a scientific 'system of settings'or his desire to split the tangible from the non-tangible. Unlike myself and several authors inthe volume, Rapoport dislikes ambiguity, but I do agree with his point that the term 'home'should be approached with caution in cross-cultural studies (and historical studies) when'home' might be inappropriate and imposed.

Also of interest are power relations, the production of knowledges and the theoreticalperspectives of researchers. Several authors argue against singular 'truths' (e.g. no 'true'reconstruction of a past dwelling let alone a past 'home'). The most interesting of these is fromRuth Tringham, who is challenging traditional archaeology with post-processual and feministtheories. Considering the micro-stratigraphy and 'use-life' of individual buildings as well asaxes of identity such as gender and age, Tringham recognizes multiple, contingent narrativesclaiming an interpretive relevance for 'home' in prehistory. Whilst this is a radical departurewithin archaeology my worries concern Rapoport's cautionary note about imposed ideaswhich I would take further: Tringham's narrative whilst disavowing 'truths' is limited by theconventions of what she considers 'home', reproducing and transposing hegemonic modernWestern 'norms' such as family, marriage, husbands and wives and their concomitant 'norms'of heterosexuality onto prehistoric 'homes'. Interpretation is a necessary part of historicalstudy, a process exposed where there are no written records, but even studies with anabundance of written or pictorial sources have their silences. Not all social groups enjoy equalaccess in the production of records, let alone the built environment itself.

The notion of power relations occurs notably in contributions by J. Douglas Porteous,David Stea, and Marjorie Bulos and Waheed Chaker. Porteous examines 'topocide' and'domicide' (the destruction of places/communities and homes/housing) by architectural,planning, business and bureaucratic decision-making, and is interested in who does what towhom, how they do it and to what effect (p. 153). This connects to Stea's paper in whichAnglo-American environmental psychology is critiqued for its insensitivity to the limitations onpeople's choices regarding homes, particularly the socio-political economy of a country, andfor being culturally insular. Stea, like many other authors, however, mourns the loss oftraditional housing and communities, writing uncritically about the gendered spaces ofMexican homes. Bulos and Chaker, on the other hand, explicitly acknowledge the historicallygendered spaces of home and work in Western cultures, arguing that the increasing occur-rence of 'home-working' have significant effects on the ways in which people organize theirhomework spaces and their feelings of 'homefulness' and that women continue to be viewedas responsible for strategies to preserve 'home'.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

irm

ingh

am]

at 0

5:12

16

Nov

embe

r 20

14

426 Book Reviews

I am, however, troubled by the ease with which several authors assume an 'essence' ofhome as well as an uncritical acceptance of the ways in which space reproduces meanings inrelation to axes of identity such as gender. The editor argues for a deepening of 'our'understanding of not only the 'essence' of home but that 'for Norwegians' the home isconnected to 'essential family values' including 'good motherhood' (p. 298)! Lawrence, too,sees 'home' as a fundamental human concept (p. 54)—an assumption echoed by BrorWestman in his cross-cultural study of movement and journey; and byjuhani Pallasmaa whowrites of 'biologically motivated behavioural remnants' (p. 134) and mourns, uncritically, thenotion of a lost emotional base in architecture—the loss of an 'authentic architecture' (p. 145).What on earth is 'authentic architecture'?

What architecture and planning might learn from the past is taken up in Part Four which,according to the editor, is supposed to help environmental designers and researchers 'manifestand study future setdements' with an eye to pressing contemporary environmental andecological issues including mass emigration, forced deportation and wilful place destruction (p.10). Whilst Tomas Wikstrom stresses the need to take into account the diverse effects ofhousing modernization on individuals when they are forcefully relocated, the other two papersexamine, respectively, the lessons of scale (community, privacy, etc.) to be learned from'traditional' housing designs in Denmark (Jorn Orum-Nielsen), and the suggestion by Eje Arenthat practical reconstructions of prehistoric buildings can teach people about a 'global'relationship with nature. These last two studies, like many of the papers, seem naive anddistanced from the critical engagements of recent social science and environmental theories,not least those informed by feminist and post-colonialist perspectives. But I would recommendthe book for advanced undergraduate and first year post-graduate study as a stimulatingexploration into current research on 'home'.

Mandy S. Morris

The Open University

Milton Keynes, UK

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

irm

ingh

am]

at 0

5:12

16

Nov

embe

r 20

14