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Munger Place, was laid out as a well-planned community at the beginning of the century. The terms geographical and architectural determinism were not used at that time but far sighted developers clearly understood these concepts and they became beneficial to the development and unity of those of us who grew up there. Almost every home had a giant porch with many wrapping around to the side. For years, from 1910 to at least 1936 a street car ran down Collett to provide transportation to shops and stores nearby. The wraparound porches facing the open street car a few feet away developed a closeness few neighborhoods had. The giant porches alone with the ample shade brought neighbors together. Munger Boulevard at that time had a wide esplanade where many would walk in the shade in the late afternoon and early evening.
In the late forties the Mongrels spent much of our time playing football on the esplanade on Munger Boulevard by the big Michell porch that had five kids in the family. The porch wrapped around to the side facing the esplanade that was about 25 feet wide. Had the esplanade not existed it would have been necessary to go to a park. Without an adjacent porch and at a distant park we would not have likely had the time to come together as a close unit. Less than 250 feet away was a small park (Munger Park) with houses facing one side and small stores facing the other side. Here a friendly rival group came together and the reason they were a close unit was again because of geographic and architectural determinism. Important to them were the adjacent stores and most significant was Blackie's Ice House.
To those of us who grew up in the neighborhood it would be hard to believe the architecture with the wide porches and the geography with the parks and boulevard was not influential toward our bonding as friends.
Zoning in the latter part of the century separated homes from commercial, porches disappeared from architectural plans and fewer large parks replaced the concept of many small parks. Even the esplanade on our boulevard became a narrow median strip. The popularity of the automobile and low cost fuel had much to do with this and today we are trying with great difficulty to bring back what the Munger brothers understood a century ago.
Geographic determinism is the theory that the human habits and characteristics of a particular culture are shaped by geographic conditions. Coined by Ellsworth Huntington, the theory looked at the rise and fall of the Roman Empire from 400-500 A.D. Much of the fall of the empire had to do with a regional drought which decreased the fertility of the land and agriculture output. The lack of food from this event strained the empire and exacerbated the political situation to the point of collapse. The theory has grown to encompass all environmental and geographic conditions and their impact on the social, political and economic forces of a society. Technology is seen as the only way to mitigate risks associated with geographic determinism.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geographic_determinism
Architectural determinism (also sometimes referred to as environmentalism) is a theory employed in urbanism, sociology and environmental psychology which claims the built environment is the chief or even sole determinant of social behaviour. A. S. Baum defines the notion thus "In its most extreme form, this position argues that the environment causes certain behaviours, denying any interaction between environment and behaviour. Architectural determinism poses the idea that people can adapt to any arrangement of space and that behaviour in a given environment is caused entirely by the characteristics of the environment."[1]
The origins of the concept may be traced in Bentham's Panopticon and Enlightenment bienfaisance as expressed in the institutional reform of prisons and hospitals. However the notion only gained generally currency and universal applicability with the rise of Behaviourism, Functionalism and the utopian social programme of the Modernist architectural movement. The term was first coined by Maurice Broady in his 1966 paper Social theory in Architectural Design [2] which also roundly criticised the authoritarian nature of this belief. Few architects have espoused the view that design can control behaviour but it has long been an assumption amongsts urbanists and architects that architecture can limit and channel behaviour in a predictable manner. This weaker, positivist view was articulated by Adolf Behne when he asserted "you can kill a man with a building just as easily as with an axe"[3]The determinist belief was a contributory factor in the numerous slum clearances of the post War industrialised world. Despite being a widely held, if not always articulated, theory the premise was not sustained by social research, for example the "Hawthorn experiments" by Mayo at Harvard found no direct correlation between work environment and output. The determinist hypothesis as an explanation of social conduct is now most often referred to in the literature as discredited, yet is still to be found as an argument for urban renewal.[4]
Notes:
- Corsini Encyclopedia of Psychology and Behavioural Science, article on Environmental Psychology, p. 510
- Arena:The Architectural Association Journal, 81, 1966 p 149-154
- quoted in Sources of architectural form,Mark Gelernter, p251.
- see Urban theory, Urban Policy [www.psi.org.uk/publications/archivepdfs/Housing/JV3.pdf]
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Architectural_determinism
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