Showing posts with label Centenary. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Centenary. Show all posts

Friday, 26 May 2023

Professor Alice Coleman - RIP

'Bad design does not determine anything, but it increases the odds against which people have to struggle to maintain civilised standards'

Alice Coleman


I recently heard that Alice Coleman had sadly passed away just short of her 100th birthday.

We had prepared a celebration of her work with the help of Peter Vujakovic. It was published in the Summer 2023 issue of GA Magazine.


GA Magazine is received three times a year by GA members.

There will be further comment later, but the piece can be seen below. Alice leaves a tremendous legacy of work and did a great deal to support and further the cause of the GA in several respects. I have a copy of the handbook for the Land Use Survey she coordinated. 

She was a teacher, as well as working at King's College, London - with which the GA has had many close connections over the years.


Update

Telegraph obituary. 

Reading

Utopia on Trial - available from the Internet Archive. 

Update August 2023

Here's an image of Alice with a former GA President: W G V Balchin.

He was the guest speaker at the GA Thanet Branch in 1996

Alice wrote Balchin's Obituary for the GA.

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Tuesday, 7 March 2023

Alice Coleman's Centenary

There is a separate post for Alice Coleman on the blog.

This year marks the centenary of her birth.

See later update.

Image source: https://hummedia.manchester.ac.uk/institutes/mui/sius2014/LorettaLees_SIUS.pdf

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1468-2427.12047

In an article in 'The Guardian' in 2019, Lynsey Hanley (author of the excellent 'Estates') talks about Alice's contributions to improving people's lives and campaigning against concrete tower blocks. 

I am reminded here of some classic schools' TV programmes from the 1980s set in Glasgow - part of the 'Geography Casebook' and looking at the problems of the city's redevelopment, with Kitty Murphy describing how it used to be in the tenements they replaced with the streets "so warm and good".


https://theconversation.com/tower-block-boom-how-high-rise-apartments-became-the-height-of-luxury-56178

Source:

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/feb/28/delicate-sense-of-terror-what-does-concrete-do-to-our-mental-health 

More to come as the Centenary gets nearer.

UPDATE

Sadly we heard of Alice's passing in May this year, just before her 100th birthday. 

A celebration of her work is in the Summer 2023 issue of GA Magazine.


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Tuesday, 10 November 2020

Alice Coleman

Upated February 2023

Alice Coleman has been a great supporter of the GA throughout her long life and particularly associated with the Isle of Thanet GA Branch.
She is now aged 99 and an Emerita Professor of Geography from King's College, London, according to her Wikipedia entry.  There is also another GA link with King's College.

Alice is particularly noted for directing the 1960s Second Land Use Survey of Britain and for analyses of land use planning and urban design which have influenced the design of residential developments since the 1980s.

The 2nd Land Use Survey of Britain followed on from that led by Dudley Stamp, but was more detailed in its approach.

As I have previously reported from the Thanet Branch Centenary document: (PDF download from this link)

"In late 1955, Alice Coleman, of King’s College London came to the now defunct Medway Towns branch of the Geographical Association to speak about the then unexplored aspects of the Moon. Marjorie Woodward at the time was the Secretary of the branch. Both had been educated at Clarendon House Grammar School (Photo 2 in Appendix A) for Girls and both Marjorie and Alice had their roots in the Isle of Thanet. After a geographical discussion, each promised one another that if ever either of them should return to live there, they would form a branch of the Geographical Association. After the meeting of these 2 ladies, the birth of the Isle of Thanet Geographical Association was quite sudden. A pilot committee was set up in November 1955 where it was decided that the new GA Branch would be open to all who were interested in the post-war developing world. Students would be particularly welcome and take part in the increasingly popular fieldwork with excursions to a wider area and that a magazine would be published."
After many meetings of the committee consisting of Alice Coleman and Marjorie Woodward, George Wooster and Ken Girkin of Chatham House Grammar School, Peggy Hopkins of Clarendon House Grammar School, Ken Maggs, then in the Army, and Alan Kay of Margate, the first meeting of the Branch took place at Charles Dickens School in Broadstairs on 30th January 1956. A classroom had been booked but so many people arrived at the meeting that chairs had to be hastily removed to the Assembly Hall for the meeting to convene. Friends were quickly co-opted as committee members to help with the collection of the subscriptions; 80 signed on as members on that first night. Despite the inclement snowy weather, a triumphant Committee celebrated next day at the “Little Vienna” café on Broadstairs Jetty.

She was President from 1955 onwards and her name is scattered throughout the Branch history for the next 60 years!
She attended the 1993 Centenary weekend of the GA as well. I have looked through the batch of photos that Sheila Jones sent on but can't see her shown there.

I purchased a copy of the 2nd Land Use Survey Handbook, which Alice Coleman wrote along with Ken Maggs from the Thanet Association.

The full story is told in the Thanet Centenary document:

In 1975, Alice Coleman won an award: "Woman in a Man's World", which is an award of its time, but very well deserved - hopefully there was some champagne involved.

Alice is an urban geographer, and I was very interested to see that she was also the subject of an article by one of the urbanists I most admire: Jane Jacobs, and that she actually popularised the idea of defensible space in urban planning in the UK.

What a service to the Association, and a life well lived.

References

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Coleman

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1468-2427.12047 - Jane Jacobs article on defensible space.

“The Geographical Association.” Geography, vol. 60, no. 2, 1975, pp. 146–152. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40568383. Accessed 8 Nov. 2020. - her award mentioned in the Annual report for 1975

Updated section

This will be Alice Coleman's centenary year which will hopefully be marked in some way.

This article from Create Streets talks about her work with Margaret Thatcher to influence housing policy in the 1980s. (PDF download)

There are some images here (licensed) and here (Shutterstock) showing her at work.

Further research articles:

https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9sw3c9vf - details on her urban research
Her books can still be located:



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