Planting, planning and design: A comparative study of English colonial cities founded in India, North America, and the Caribbean, 1660--1710 (South Carolina, Pennsylvania, Jamaica).

摘要

The object of this dissertation is to undertake a comparative study of the planning, founding and initial development in the latter half of the seventeenth century of five English colonial cities: Bombay (1667), Charleston (1680), Philadelphia (1682),Calcutta (1690), and Kingston, Jamaica (1692). With the selection of these cities, located in widely different geographical and cultural conditions, and founded under different historical and political circumstances, the aim of the study is to identify and explain both common and divergent forms of their spatial and built environments. Particular attention is given to the possible extent of influence of earlier English colonial urban planning experience in Ireland; to the transfer and use of ideas and standards which emerged from the rebuilding of London after the Great Fire of 1666; to the presence (or absence) of prepared plans in the ‘planting’ or laying out of these cities; and to the spatial accommodation for the pre-existent populations at each site. From a methodological viewpoint, the research is undertaken, as far as is intellectually and historically possible, with the perspective of the planners constantly in mind.; In its conclusions, the dissertation emphasizes the importance of human agency in the planning of these cities and provides evidence to suggest that the common attitude towards the indigenous occupants of the various territories was one of consideration, though changes in this attitude took place subsequently. Band on this consideration, an explanation is offered for the comparatively different spatial organization between the ‘Atlantic’ cities and those in India. The study also provides evidence of the application of the building codes and regulations issued for the rebuilding of London in 1667. In these, and other, ways, this study aims to make a significant contribution to the presently sparse history of English colonial urban planning in the early modern period.