Doxiadis - Entopia Greeting Card

6Constantinos A. Doxiadis.Entopia greeting card, 1974. Constantinos and EmmaDoxiadis Foundation.

Grey Room 36, Summer 2009, pp. 635. 2009 Grey Room, Inc. and Massachusetts Institute of Technology 7

Planetary Home and Garden:Ekistics and Environmental-Developmental PoliticsPANAYIOTA PYLA

All these three areas [the natural, the agricultural, and the urban] takentogether will form the universal cityits home its backyard and its naturalgarden.

C.A. Doxiadis, 19671

In greeting cards sent to clients, associates, and friends in the early 1970s,the international firm Doxiadis Associates featured its founder, ConstantinosA. Doxiadisalready famous as a busy remodeler of the worldpointingat a large drawing of a methodically structured urban fabric that promisedto provide adequate housing and community facilities to people of allclasses and backgrounds.2 The image illustrated Doxiadiss vision ofentopia. Coined from the Greek en topos as a term opposite to utopia,entopia was meant to be a plausible reality for the future. It held onto themodernist optimism for the architect-planner as an agent of socioeconomicreform, while simultaneously rejecting earlier modernisms excesses ofindividualism and rationalism. Entopia also promised to accommodate theforces of industrialization and modernization while minimizing their dehu-manizing impact by reclaiming physical qualities of past settlements thathad achieved a balance between nature and society. To this end, entopiaeradicated high densities and tall structuresfor which Doxiadis hadalways professed disdainand placed high-speed roads and industrialestablishments underground, so as to keep the intrusions of mechanizationout of sight and out of mind. Entopia also reintroduced green areas in andaround the metropolis so as to nurture a harmonious coexistence betweennature and the city.

The serenity of the urban morphology extended to entopias social char-acter. The sprawling metropolis was organized as a blend of communitiesthat would obey common zoning laws. Some, such as the one on the hill tothe left on the greeting-card drawing, were old communities that would be duly preserved. Others were composed of mass-produced buildings.Certain communities were open to all religious groups, whereas others

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corresponded to distinct religious needs. A nudist community, on the right-hand side of the greeting-card image, accommodated the special interestsof its inhabitants.3 Each community was to have its own special character,but all would be integrated into a harmonious whole.4 Social problemswere to be managed away, and any expressions of diversity were supposedto coexist neatly within this overarching order. This image was in manyways a culmination of Doxiadis Associates formal and social principles asthey were promoted through the firms practice around the globe during theprevious two decades. The housing projects for Iraq (19551958); the planfor the restructuring of Homs in Syria (1959); the building of the new capi-tal city of Pakistan (1960)all manifested a preoccupation with visual order,uniformity, and regularity that was also extended to the rational ordering ofsocial life. Much like the imaginary entopia, the cities of Baghdad, Kirkuk,Homs, and Islamabad (among others) aspired to nurture harmonious com-munities through suprapolitical expert planning.5

The rendering of entopia was a rare mode of representation for Doxiadisand uncharacteristic of his group, which favored charts and diagrams tocommunicate their ideas. The greeting-card image was meant to present ageneric Mediterranean metropolis of the future (the geography was proba-bly loosely based on Athens), but the image also captured the key principlesthat guided the planning of Ecumenopolisthe global city of the future thatDoxiadis envisioned for the twenty-second century. The Mediterraneanmetropolis was, for all intents and purposes, a segment of Ecumenopolis.Arguably the most ambitious of the firms projects, the concept ofEcumenopolis crystallized in the early 1960s when Doxiadis Associates wasexperiencing mounting success, securing commissions for the design ofcomplexes, infrastructures, and urbanand regional plans around the world. Inits physical formas the joining togetherof all urban regions to ultimately createa global system of urban concentrationscovering the earthEcumenopolis wasthe culmination of Doxiadiss commit-ment to urbanization as the key tospreading socioeconomic moderniza-tion. If Le Corbusiers Ville Radieuse wasa city of nowhere in El Lissitzkys eyes,then Doxiadis was envisioning a city ofeverywhere, for all time.6

Methodologically, Ecumenopolis rep-resented the epitome of Doxiadiss mod-

Top: Doxiadis Associates. Proposalsfor Islamabad, 19651966. Master Plan. Constantinos andEmma Doxiadis Foundation.

Bottom: Doxiadis Associates.Proposals for Islamabad, 19651966. A pedestrian street in a low-and middle-income neighborhood(model). Constantinos and Emma Doxiadis Foundation.

Pyla | Planetary Home and Garden: Ekistics and Environmental-Developmental Politics 9

ernist ambition to coordinate the entire system of knowledge about thephysical environment. Since the mid-1940s, when he formulated ekisticsas an altogether new field, the science of human settlements, Doxiadisaspired to expand the scientific basis of architecture, urban design, andplanning. Derived from the Greek oikos, meaning house, Doxiadissekistics aimed to respond to the totality of human needs across cultural,geographic, and socioeconomic differences. The concept of Ecumenopolisbrought ekistics commitment to comprehensive rational planning to a newlevel. Ideologically, Ecumenopolis was the apogee of Doxiadiss optimismfor a postpolitical global society where social, economic, racial, and ethnicinequalities would be managed away by benevolent technocrats. From thebeginning of its practice as a development consultant, Doxiadis Associatesestablished its appeal to its international clients (often the governments ofyoung nations) because it promised socioeconomic modernization whilesimultaneously championing a shared ideal of national identity and pride.

But the new concept of an ecumenical city aspiredto replace altogether national affairs with an ideal oftransnational organization and action. The very termEcumenopolisyet another term invented by Doxiadiswhose neologisms were, by that time, forming theirown disciplinary lexiconhad quasi-spiritual con-notations of ecumenical unity that resounded withpostwar dreams of global cooperation.

Along with its methodological and ideologicalambitions, Ecumenopolis represented another cul-mination in Doxiadiss thought and practice: a sharperenvironmental focus. One can argue that Doxiadiswas a pioneer in environmental thought from the1940s, because the concept of ekistics, shaped dur-ing his early career as a coordinator of postwarreconstruction in Greece, sought to integrate peopleand environments in a comprehensive system. Onecould also cite, for example, his various permuta-tions of the ekistic grid that echo ideas fromPatrick Geddes to Conrad Waddington.7 However,once the concept of Ecumenopolis crystallized, the

Top: Cover of Ekistics showingthe five Ekistic elements thatdefine human settlements and reflect the totality of humanneeds, 1974. AthensTechnological OrganizationAthens Center of Ekistics.

Bottom: Doxiadis Associates.Ecumenopolis, showing cities ofhigh, medium, and low density,1975. Constantinos and EmmaDoxiadis Foundation.

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environmental considerations of ekistics went well beyond speculating onthe dehumanizing effects of urbanization-modernization and began insteadto outline specific strategies for the symbiosis of the global city with the natural world. With the concept of Ecumenopolis and, later, Ecumenokepos(global garden), Doxiadis and his enterprise began to reconceptualizeissues of environmental inter dependence on a truly global scale and to rein-vent ekistics not only as a strategy for international development but alsoas a strategy for global environmental protection.

This paper focuses on the environmental strategies implied in Doxiadissconcept of Ecumenopolis and its complex entanglement with postWorldWar II discourses of development and environmentalism. The specific pre-scriptions of Ecumenopolis regarding the scientific management of theearths land and resources, and its metaphors of nature, balance, and ecu-menism, speak to the sociopolitical implications of Doxiadiss optimism fora harmonious and balanced global city and his visions crucial role in mid-twentieth-century debates on architecture, technology, nature, and ecology.The nuances and the fluidity of the concept of Ecumenopolis-Ecumenokeposled to multiple alignments with changing modernist paradigms and allowedDoxiadiss vision to persevere, even after the demise of high-modernist opti-mism, as a response to ecological exigencies.

Reformed ProphesiesThe idea of Ecumenopolis was first formulated in Doxiadiss 1961 internalreport, Ecumenopolis, the Settlement of the Future.8 The report, which wasdisseminated among the branches of Doxiadiss firm, proclaimed that theexpansion of cities was irreversible and that the move from megalopolis toa globally interconnected network of cities covering the entire earth wasirreversible. Influenced by postwar trends in regional planning that favoredurban industrialization, the report polemically proclaimed Doxiadiss com-mitment to urbanization as key to economic growtha commitment thathad been the basis of Doxiadis Associates practice since the 1950s. Buteven as Doxiadis called for architects and planners to take charge in plan-ning for a dramatic urban expansion, he was also eager to add a caveat: theglobal urban network needed to achieve a complete balance between itsown forces and the forces of the countryside.9

Doxiadis voiced similar concerns in many international meetings in theearly 1960s. In January 1963, when the United Nations (UN) Economic andSocial Council (ECOSOC) convened its first Committee on Housing,Building, and Planning in New York to investigate the role of shelter inadvancing growth rates in underdeveloped countries, Doxiadis was oneof the most vocal members.10 To the founder of ekistics and to many other

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invited specialists (including the American housing expert Charles Abramsand the Yugoslav architect Ernest Weissman), the establishment of thiscommittee signaled that the UN finally recognized the issue of shelter askey to socioeconomic development.11 ECOSOCs emphasis on economicalhousing and social services, local materials, and efficient urban infrastruc-ture was, to Doxiadiss ears, a long-overdue endorsement of ekistics basicgoals.12 Yet Doxiadis wanted to assign the building expert a much biggerrole than ECOSOCs agenda allowed. His speech underlined the need toimpose rational limits to building to control mans burgeoning settle-ments and to prevent the depletion of resources essential to human exis-tence.13 The comprehensive management of land, resources, andsettlement growth was now endowed with an altogether new urgency. Theissue was not simply a matter of organizing an efficient global society;rather, the building expert had to act as the guarantor of human survival.Doxiadis could not help but make one of his extravagant assertions, claim-ing that the task of building experts is more important than that of rocketscientists. Building experts were so significant for the protection ofhumanitys future, he maintained, that it was regrettable the great talentsof the contemporary age are directed principally towards the exploitationof outer space.14

Doxiadis made a similar appeal a few days later in a larger forum inGeneva, the UN Conference on the Applications of Science and Technologyfor the Benefit of Less Developed Areas. He argued that urbanization andresource depletion warranted the establishment of a new UN agency com-parable to the World Health Organization (WHO) and UN Educational,Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).15 The UN conferencesfinal report indirectly endorsed Doxiadiss position by calling for the com-prehensive advancement of urbanization strategies. The report almostmentioned Doxiadis by name, noting a Greek speakers suggestion ofEkistics as a possible name for a new science of human settlements thatwould approach the human habitat as a single problem.16 Doxiadis mighthave succeeded in introducing ekistics into UN debates, but his plea for anindependent international organization for human settlements would notbear fruit for another decade, when the International Habitat and HumanSettlements Foundation was created by the UN General Assembly in January1975. Until then, the issue of built environments was bounced between various UN branches.17 Doxiadis thus took matters in his own hands.

Delos Charter?Disappointed with the UNs foot-dragging, Doxiadis organized and fundedhis own conference on the global crisis of urbanization.18 The weeklong

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conference, the idea for which had been simmering for years in his mind,took place in July 1963 and brought together thirty-four leading scientists,architects, engineers, and administrators from twelve countries. The con-ference took place on the ship New Hellas cruising the Aegean, with Delosas the final destination. Modeled after the legendary 1933 Congrs InternationaldArchitecture Moderne (CIAM) meeting on a cruise ship that traveled fromMarseilles to Athens, Doxiadiss Delos Symposion, as he called it (hecoined the term from the Greek symposion, in order to differentiate this par-ticular meeting from a typical symposium), attempted to organize a newprofessional society that would be more diverse, and more technocratic,than the old Modern Movement congresses.19 The goal was to propose aCharter of Delos that would simultaneously replace the Athens Charterand underline the gaps in UN bureaucracy. The event was a turning pointin the history of ekistics not only because it increased its international vis-ibility but also because it reshaped its agenda. Like Doxiadiss speeches atthe UN a few months earlier, the multi-ethnic and interdisciplinary Aegeancruise pushed the debate on shelter well beyond the economics of efficiency,the aesthetics of order, the management of resources, or the engineering ofsocial reform to inaugurate an even greater cause: saving the earth.

If the participation of Sigfried Giedion and Jaqueline Tyrwhitt in thisconference underlined the link between CIAM and ekistics, the involve-ment of Buckminster Fuller, the anthropologist Margaret Mead, and theeconomist Barbara Wardglobal activists in their own right and reportedlythe stars of the cruiseboosted the meetings multidisciplinary appeal.Also invited were communications expert Marshall McLuhan, soon tobecome the director of the Center for the Study of the Extensions of Man atthe University of Toronto; geneticist and professor at Edinburgh University,Conrad Waddington; and sociologist Eiichi Isomura, professor at TokyoMetropolitan University and also director of the Japanese bureaus on plan-ning and social development. Architects and planners also had a strongpresence and included Sir Robert Matthew, who had been in charge ofnumerous British New Towns and new schools in England; MohamedMakiya, a prolific builder and architecture professor in Iraq; and the Polishhousing expert Juliusz Gorynski. This interdisciplinary encounter alsoincluded several UN officialsthe American housing expert Charles Abramsand planner Jacob Crane; the British economist David Owen; and the Canadianeconomist Steward Bates. Other international consultants included EdwardMason, Lamont University Professor at Harvard and adviser to the Agencyfor International Development. Also invited were government officials,such as Allah K. Brohi, a Pakistani diplomat; Shafik El-Sadr, undersecretaryof housing and public utilities in the United Arab Republic; and Edmund

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Bacon, executive director of the Philadelphia Planning Commission. If theinvolvement of scholars was intended to underline the intellectual com-plexity of urban problems, the presence of government officials reflectedekistics urge to ally physical planning with decision-making power.Giedion himself hailed the Delos Symposion for including more adminis-trators than had the CIAM meetings.20

Doxiadis insisted on the term symposion to echo, he contended, theinformal character of ancient Greek symposia, where discourse and debatetook place in a relaxed atmosphere of food and drink. Indeed, the pleasantatmosphere of a cruise ship sailing the Mediterranean Sea, and Doxiadissreportedly marvelous hospitality, proved instrumental in counteractingthe frustrating incongruities of the discussion. Doxiadiss terms were con-tentious topics of debate. While all participants agreed that they were citizens of a worldwide city, threatened by its own torrential expansion,Doxiadiss vision of Ecumenopolis was questioned from various direc-tions.21 Brohi was suspicious of ekistics projections, accusing plannersvanity of ignoring the uncertainty of the future.22 Mason found ekisticsanalyses of urban problems too general to actually attract the interest ofscientific minds.23 Gorynski drew attention to the political threats of asingle socioeconomic world order.24 McLuhan, however, embraced thepremise of Ecumenopolis as an interconnected global system, but he wasuneasy with ekistics attachment to physical design.25 According to McLuhansvision of an electronic age that collapsed spatial and temporal barriers uni-fying the globe, physical design would be rendered obsolete by a new kindof interconnectedness constituted by information traffic and electronic net-works. McLuhans view of global consciousness as the new human scalesounded fascinating to participants but was far removed from Doxiadissview of human scale, which was bounded by the logic of physicaldesign.26 Fuller, already a close friend of ekistics, also proposed an alterna-tive vision of Ecumenopolis, suggesting that increasing mobility was amuch stronger force for tying the world together than the kind of static settlements Doxiadis was envisioning.27 Waddington, whose own work concerned the general principles that tie a biological organism into a whole,embraced Ecumenopolis from yet another direction, arguing that ekisticsglobal planning should be conceptualized as a process of organizing all theliving material of the universe.28 Giedion, one of CIAMs old guard, stayedat the margins of the overall debate, and his endorsement was limited to praising ekistics emphasis on generalist planners. Giedion had differentreservations. His own attempt to promote a new monumentality was in complete disagreement with Doxiadiss focus on minimal and basicstructures.29

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The tensions among competing worldviews were finessed, if not resolved,thanks to the charming setting and evening partiesincluding the celebra-tion of Giedions birthday.30 In a memo to Doxiadis soon after the meeting,Jaqueline Tyrwhitt captured the social success of the eventeven as she,one of the few women participants, revealed her own gender biases: Myover-riding impression was the pleasantness and friendliness of all personalcontacts among the participants. Even the toughest and least cordial char-acters relaxed and mellowed after the first day or so. Also the wivesappeared agreeable, happy and unobtrusive.31 Indeed, Tyrwhitt liked toappear agreeable and unobtrusive herself and was often shown in pho-

Pyla | Planetary Home and Garden: Ekistics and Environmental-Developmental Politics 15

tographs as quiet, taking notes, even though she was instrumental in orga-nizing the meeting and those that followed. A pillar of Doxiadiss entireenterprise, Tyrwhitt played a key role in shaping the agenda of Delos andwas key to proposing new members for the network.32

Barbara Ward was another important participant, one who proved key toreconciling opposing views by recasting Doxiadiss objectives in more gen-eral terms in order to underline the conferences unifying cause: the expan-sion of urban problems as a grave threat to humanity.33

Each day we considered the plight of the modern city. Each day, forcontrast, we went ashoreto Hydras coloured waterfront, to thewalled Crusaders city at Rhodes, to Priene and Delos whose ruinsshow the completeness of the old civic pattern, to Lindos, floatingbetween sky and sea, to Mykonos, where we sang and danced by thewhite quays. And against this charming background of light and clar-ity and space, these were the frightening facts that we were asked toface and which, for the first time, compelled me at least to see thecities not simply in terms of inconvenience or discomfort but in themuch grimmer terms of potential catastrophe.34

The environmental exigency indeed became the main theme of the DelosDeclaration that was published at the end of the cruise. (Doxiadiss initialhope to produce a charter outlining specific strategies proved impossiblebecause of the differences in views.) Carefully drafted by Barbara Ward soas to sidestep controversial topics, the declaration criticized the chaos incities of all continents, the inexcusable waste in development practices,the excessive funding for armaments to the detriment of housing initiatives,and the inadequacy of administrative policies and educational systems totackle these problems. The document hinted at some of Doxiadiss charac-teristic language, calling for rational and dynamic planning and a newdiscipline of human settlements, while it conflated nuclear threats andfood shortages with urban problems. The signing of the declaration during a

torchlit meeting in the ancient theater of Delos dramatized evenfurther the groups noble cause.Fuller, too, focused on shared globalthreats in his concluding remarksand presented the cross-culturalencounter at Delos as a catalyst forefforts to prevent man from elimi-nating himself from his extraordi-nary role in the universe.35

Delos meeting, 1963. Opposite,top left: a visit to Hydra; opposite,top right: Fuller and Mead; oppo-site, bottom: Fuller celebratinghis birthday; and left: Doxiadisdancing with Barbara Ward. Constantinos and EmmaDoxiadis Foundation.

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The Delos Symposion attracted international press coveragein the NewYork Times, Washington Post, Sunday Telegraph, Melbourne Age, andSddeutsche Zeitung, as well as the American Socialist newspaper WeeklyPeople, which saw it as a reaction against the Capitalist Jungle.36 Throughsystematic publicity efforts by Doxiadis Associates and the AthensTechnological Institute, the event was also covered in professional societiesand journals. The flood of publicity emphasized uncontrolled urbanizationas a global crisis that plagued both underdeveloped and developed coun-tries alike. The earths limited capacity was becoming more pronounced asthe world was realizing that the developed countries wastefulness wouldbe repeated in the third world.37 Both journalists and Delians (as Doxiadiscalled the Symposion participants) became apologists for the meeting andreiterated Doxiadiss belief that urban problems required a transculturaland interdisciplinary approach to control land use, regulate buildingsshape and scale, and manage access to nature.

Barbara Ward was most forceful in exposing cities that devour spaceas a dire environmental threat:

Most people are aware of the menace of nuclear war to the future ofmankind, and many people are aware that possibly population couldoutrun food supplies; but what I think is not generally recognized isthat the urban explosion could be, in its own way, as lethal as either.It can destroy communities more slowly but perhaps more surely thanatomic destruction, and it can starve the spirit as malnutrition starvesthe body.38

Ward condensed the multiple themes that were explored at Delos into a callfor approaching global urban problems in an ecological sense, the sense ofthe whole environment profoundly conditioning the men inside.39 Onlythree years later Ward was to write Spaceship Earth (1966), which projecteda vision of the earth as having the intimacy, loneliness, and vulnerability ofa spaceship. The metaphor grasped the gist of the new consciousness that

Right: Sigfried Giedion signingthe Delos declaration during a torchlit meeting in the ancientTheatre of Delos, 1963. Constantinos and EmmaDoxiadis Foundation.

Opposite: Doxiadis Associates.Ecumenokepos or the global garden, 1974. Constantinosand Emma Doxiadis Foundation.

Pyla | Planetary Home and Garden: Ekistics and Environmental-Developmental Politics 17

was emerging. As photographs from outer space vividly illustrated thephysical finiteness of the world, what linked peoples together was no longera drive for growth as in the old days of development but their commondependence on the same biophysical life-supports.40 Ward rapidly came tothe forefront of international debates on the environment, and through herefforts to awaken a new planetary awareness she advanced Doxiadiss ideasas the basis for managing the earths total environment.41

The Delos Symposion became an annual event. The island destinationchanged every year, and so did the composition of the group. Some of thekey actors from the first meeting were invited to many moreTyrwhitt,Fuller, Ward, Mead, Makiya, and Waddingtonwhile many others wererecruited. New members included American planner and Harvard Universityprofessor Martin Meyerson, preeminent Japanese architect Kenzo Tange,American vice president of the Ford Foundation David Bell, and NigerianWorld Health Organization official Thomas Lambo. Different themes on thecity of the future were exploredbuilding density, networks, housing, andso onthat increasingly emphasized the need to organize the globe as aninterconnected system.

Balancing ActsThrough the new debates on ordering the cosmos, Doxiadis arrived at newconcepts of Ecumenopolis. He came to see that the planetary network ofcities envisioned in his 1961 proposal was only part of the global equation.The nonurban world (what Doxiadis had earlier described as naturalareas or countryside) also constituted a networkof forests, deserts, gar-dens, rivers, and seas. In Doxiadiss first report on the subject, the coun-tryside was given a clearly utilitarian purpose as either (a) agriculturalland that would meet the worlds food production demands or (b) a recre-ational space, with forests, riversides, lakes, and mountaintops.42 Eventually,however, the countryside was reconceptualized as a comprehensiveglobal system, and its name, Ecumenokepos, signified an even more inti-mate interdependence with Ecumenopolis.

To organize and stabilize the city of the future, Doxiadiss team had toplan Ecumenopolis as well as its backyard, Ecumenokepos. The fourthDelos Symposion, in July 1966, helped crystallize this notion by underlin-ing the interdependence of the natural and man-made worlds.43 Conrad

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Waddington encouraged this direction by suggesting that the global net-work of human settlements should be conceptualized as part of the largersystem of living creatures.44 Kenzo Tange introduced another twist by sug-gesting that the entire global network could be understood as an intercon-nected nervous system.45 Doxiadis embraced these analogies to the extentthat they supported notions of the stability, health, and balance of the globe.He, too, spoke of Ecumenopolis and Ecumenokepos as an organismwhose life depended on hierarchically structured systems of settlements,circulation, and communication, echoing Waddingtons view of an organ-ism as a complex and overall organizational system. However, Doxiadissstrategies for integrating people and environments in a global system didnot quite adopt the fluidity and indeterminacy of Waddingtons notion.46

Instead, Doxiadis insisted on the assumption that by the middle of thetwenty-first century the rate of growth of the global city would decreaseto virtually zero, and from then on the global shape of Ecumenopolis wouldstabilize to form one large and static urban settlement.47 Furthermore,Doxiadis insisted on the significance of physical planning and functionaland territorial organization, which distinguished his views from those ofMarshal McLuhan and Buckminster Fuller, who saw the interconnected-ness of the globe in terms of invisible networks of information.48 (Fullerthought that the very process of urbanization Doxiadis promoted wouldbecome obsolete as cities become the launching pads for each humansblast-off into world shuttling citizenship.49) To Doxiadis (and also to hisclose collaborator John Papaioannou, who was instrumental in shaping theconcept of the global garden), however, Ecumenopolis and Ecumenokeposwere spatial concepts, pertaining to visible, physical interconnectionsaround the globe.50 This view would soon guide Doxiadiss new paths tomanagerialism.

From 1967 onward, Doxiadiss research teams developed increasinglydetailed proposals for Ecumenopolis-Ecumenokepos, with the ambition toachieve a global ecological balance. Calculations and terminologychanged when these ideas were presented at the International Conferenceon Water for Peace (Washington, DC, 1967), the Edison Electric Institute(1968), and elsewhere, but the main ideas remained.51 The global ecologi-cal balance would be achieved through the functional organization of theearths land to accommodate the competing needs of production, settle-ment, recreation, and environmental protection. The ultimate goal wasclear: In the [future] we will have built the great, universal city and gardenof man with water running in its arteries bringing life and guaranteeing itsinner balance and peace.52

The most elaborate version of Doxiadiss proposals for Ecumenopolis-

Doxiadis Associates. The TwelveGlobal Zones of Land, 1973.Numbers 15 on the figure repre-sent various wildlife habitats,6 and 7 represent land for naturaland industrial cultivation, 8 island for human recreation, and912 represent urban settlementsand industries. Constantinosand Emma Doxiadis Foundation.

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Ecumenokepos was presented in the posthumously published book, Ecologyand Ekistics, which divided the earths land into twelve zones, some ofwhich were devoted to human habitation, others to cultivation, and oth-ers to wildlife.53 The part of the earths land devoted to human habitationwas to be confined to 2.5 percent (and only a small percentage of that wasfor high-density cities), and 15.5 percent of the land was to be devoted tocultivation or for sports and recreation. This left the remainder, 82 percentof the earths surface, for Ecumenokepos, parts of which would be largelyinaccessible to human beings (real wildlife), others of which could beenjoyed by nature lovers (wildlife visited), and others of which would be available for economic exploitation (wildlife invaded). These new andmore elaborate territorial divisions incorporated ideas from Doxiadiss cir-cle and Delos participants. For example, many participants in the fourthDelos symposium had emphasized that apart from the categories of culti-vation and recreation from the 1961 proposal, some natural habitatsshould be left entirely inaccessible to protect the present or future advance-ment of biological, medical, and other scientific knowledge.54 Similarly,other vocal participants, including Barbara Ward and Arnold Toynbee,advocated the preservation of various types of wilderness areas in orderto support alternative lifestyles and to maintain variety in the forth-coming planetary society.55

All in all, the resulting managerial division (with decimal-point precision!)of the earths land aimed to accommodate every type of imaginable humanneed. The need for industrial progress, for scientific advancement, foraccess to nature, and for alternative lifestyles: all were given a slice of theplanetary pie. The proposal included no references to real places and situ-ations (Which forests would fall under the categories of real wildlife? Howlong would the exploitable forests remain forests?), although the overallproposal involved the reshuffling of population, the redistribution ofresources, and even the abandonment of some habitable areas.56 Problems

in the location of national resources and imbal-ances in technological and military power or ininternational trade that could shape the range ofcontact with nature seemingly were to be left inthe hands of suprapolitical expert management.

What underlay the massive redistribution ofpeoples and resources was no longer the imper-ative of efficiency, but the loftier environmentalideal of achieving an ecological balance. In theinitial 1961 vision of Ecumenopolis, Doxiadishad initially referred to the concept of balance

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between built and natural areas to signify the maximum acceptable limitsof future development. As Doxiadis espoused popular and scientificnotions from ecological thought, he projected a range of new meanings ontothe term balance to speak of the need to ensure a balance between nature,society, and anthropos and a balance between man and food and waterresources.57 By calling for the achievement of this balance with the mini-mum of human sacrifices, he cast the protection of nature as a matter to benegotiated against the venerated standard of human needsthe satisfactionof which was presumed to require economic development.58 Ultimately, themission to guarantee the inner balance and peace of the forthcominguniversal city was strongly committed to urban growth and as such waslinked with assumptions that had justified development in precedingdecades.59 The mission to prevent resource depletion and environmentaldegradation while pursuing development did not present a conflict betweenthe protection of nature and its exploitation. Rather, to Doxiadis it revealedthe development expert as the necessary mediator of the two. The task ofthe development expert was skillfully to juggle environmental requirementswith human needs for goods and services, to orchestrate the efficient uti-lization and equitable distribution of resources.

Doxiadis Associates greeting-card sketch of entopia captured Doxiadissideas of a balance in human settlements. The ideal future settlement eradi-cated the excesses of the present, reclaiming the physical qualities of pastsettlements that had achieved a balance between nature and society. InDoxiadiss version of planetary planning, sophisticated technologies for theglobe such as those suggested by Fuller did not tackle the ecological exi-gency. The builders ecological task was not the enclosure of cities in domesor the proliferation of geoscope projects but the selective recovery of lostphysical qualities, their enlightened reorganization, and their large-scaledissemination.60 Even though he agreed with Fuller on the urgent need torefashion architecture and planning in response to new ecological threats,Doxiadis linked global solutions with advanced scientific management, notwith advanced technology.61 Effectively, the call for balanced urban settle-ments was just as much an appeal for balancing architecture itself, fordetaching it from the formal excesses of modernismextravagantly tallbuildings, narcissistic signature designs, and technophilic utopias.Doxiadiss proposal also involved radical technological interventionsforthe massive reshuffling of population, the new transportation networks,and enormous underground structures. But the resulting global settlementhad a superficially low-tech familiarity consistent with ekistics claims toprudence and realism.

All in all, the term balance and its constellation of meaningsharmony,

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moderation, equitability, and a type of orderwere in tune with the ideo-logical formations that portrayed the protection of nature as an expert man-agerial task. For a champion of moderate positions like ekistics, whichfavored the reform of rational planning rather than a radical questioning ofits morality and principles, the pursuit of balanced or appropriatedevelopment defended the validity of international development and tem-pered predictions of imminent doom with an optimism to manage it away.

The belief in the benign possibilities of centralized management and theastounding confidence that it was possible were encouraged by the newconceptual construct of systems thinkingcoming from systems manage-ment concepts of military and space programsthat augmented the ten-dency to map people and communities as coded global systems andnetworks. Doxiadis had embraced the paradigm of systems theory since his1961 report in order to conceptualize the ecumenical city as an interdepen-dent system whose unity depended on the harmonious interaction of itsparts. With the growing interest in systems management, Doxiadis empha-sized general systems theory as the basis for mapping and predicting theinteraction and evolution of settlementsand Fuller hailed this as one ofthe most essential contributions to architectural research at large.62 As engi-neers and development experts were rechristened as systems analysts whowould monitor and orchestrate the consumption of resources and theworldwide waste output, Doxiadis ekisticians were also envisioning them-selves no longer as builders but as managers of building growth. Their historical responsibility was to keep the vital interdependence of settle-ments and nature from being destabilized.

From One World to One EarthThe global urgency of appropriate management of the environment wasofficially established at the United Nations Conference on the HumanEnvironment, in which many members of the ekistics circle participated.The first of a series of UN theme conferences on critical global issues, theconference convened in Stockholm in 1972 and introduced environmentto the international agenda; it ultimately led to the creation of the UnitedNations Environment Program (UNEP).63 Initially proposed by Sweden in1968 to address the dangers of pollution in industrialized countries, theconference expanded the definition of environmental problems to includesuch issues as the rapid growth of human settlements, the degradationof soils and other resources, desertification, and tropical ecosystemmanagement, to demonstrate the transnational relevance of environmentalconcerns.64 The conference advanced the idea that the unity of humankindwas no longer based on the postwar cosmopolitan dream of One World

22 Grey Room 36

which had pushed every nation into a race for the exploitation of resourcesbut on the biophysical reality of One Earth, which carried with it a men-acing fate.65 The term human environment was supposed to signal theexpansion of environmental concerns beyond nature protection andresource conservation and to herald the inclusion of humanity as an inte-gral part of the global environment.66 The term also presaged the anthro-pocentric priorities of the conference. And the universal connotations of thehuman reflected the conferences key assumption: the homogeneity ofhumanitys position vis--vis the environment.

Barbara Ward, a key member of Doxiadiss circle, was the coauthor of theWorld Environment Report, prepared prior to the conference to providethe Stockholm delegates with a basis for their deliberations. The otherauthor of the report was Ren Dubos, the microbiologist and experimentalpathologist who was soon to become a neophyte Delian.67 Later publishedwith the title Only One Earth: The Care and Maintenance of a Small Planet,the report synthesized concerns for economic development with concernsfor environmental quality. The idea of recalibrating development for envi-ronmental protection was presented as a realistic alternative to the pas-sionate rejections of industrialization and economic growthrejections thathad been expressed by various branches of a substantial and popular envi-ronmental movement in Western industrialized countries since the mid-1960s. (At the crest of this movement in 1970, Earth Day celebrationsattracted twenty million participants in the United States alone.)68

Through its lofty ethic of conciliatory realism, which was supposed tobalance the need for development of the so-called third world with the firstworlds environmental fears, the Stockholm conference transplanted theorganizing logic of development into environmental debates. The call foruniversally recognized fundamental principles, integrated developmentplanning, and rational planning revived the belief in planning as a neu-tral, universal, and perfectible process.69 Given the powerful new motive ofsecuring human survival, collective action was naturalized as the only rem-edywhile the unequal economic and geopolitical realities affecting thedistribution patterns of food, water, and energy remained unquestioned.Human links with nature were conceptualized in terms of sanitized (andmarket-based) categories of resource availability, recreational values, orhealth standards. Shortages and inequality were supposed to be resolvedthrough the constant refinement of land distribution, zoning laws, andemission controls. The final guidelines insisted on the authority of bureau-cratized international or governmental institutions, and in the process anyalternatives that rejected capitalist priorities or favored economic decen-tralization fell out of sight.

Pyla | Planetary Home and Garden: Ekistics and Environmental-Developmental Politics 23

From Stockholm to Delos: Local Varieties in the Global OrderStockholms emphasis on rational action involving international policy-making was definitely palatable to the ekistics circle. The World Society forEkistics that sprung from the Delos symposia (the term world societybeing inspired by Fuller) participated in the conference as an internationalnongovernmental organization having a consultative status with the UN.70

The World Society for Ekistics underlined the significance of human settle-ments to the management of the total environment and played a key role inpushing for another UN theme conference, planned for 1976, that wouldfocus exclusively on human settlements. Doxiadis himself did not attendthe Stockholm conference because of his failing health, but he was on thepanel of expert consultants that reviewed Only One Earth. His 1968 bookEkistics: An Introduction to the Science of Human Settlements was one ofthe recommended readings for the conference, which also included suchbooks as Paul Ehrlichs How to Be a Survivor (1971), Ren Duboss ReasonAwake (1970), and Carsons Silent Spring.71 Doxiadiss comments on thedraft of Only One Earth criticized the distinction between developed anddeveloping countries for making sweeping categorizations of societiesbased only on economic criteria. Even though Doxiadis, too, embracedmodernization theorys view of cultures being on the same path of progress,except at different stages, he opposed the binary distinctions typically madeby development professionals, because these compromised the under-standing of global problems as a whole.72 Doxiadiss comments on thereport also criticized efforts to set limits on population and proposed resourcemanagement as a preferable priority. (His schemes for Ecumenopolis alwaysopted for accommodating population increase rather than limiting it.) Indoing so, Doxiadis took exception to the doomsday predictions about thepopulation problem that influenced not only the Stockholm conferencebut two other influential reports on the environment that came out in 1972:the Club of Romes Limits to Growth and the Ecologists Blueprint forSurvival.73 Doxiadiss critique foreshadowed the reactions of third worldcountries and activist organizations, which associated population controlpolicies with a new form of imperialism.

Despite his prophetic reservations, Doxiadis saw the Stockholm conferenceas a milestone in the history of ekistics because it affirmed the trianglehuman settlementsdevelopmentenvironment. Ward echoed this viewwhen she referred to the Stockholm conference as an important step inmaking the Delian dream a reality.74 Vindicated by the UNs decision totackle the problems of human settlements in their own right, Doxiadis pre-pared a series of new books that would be used as support material for the UN Conference on Human Settlements, which would take place in

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Vancouver in 1976.In July 1972, soon after Stockholm, Doxiadis hosted the tenth Delos

Symposion, which included some of the Stockholm participantsWard,Mead, Dubos, and Fuller among others. Delos Ten produced a new declara-tion that reiterated ekistics commitment to the management of the envi-ronment.75 In response to the protests that surrounded the Stockholmevents, Delos Ten gave its own spin to the UN conference by highlightingthe significance of social and cultural particularity. A newcomer to DelosTen was Ren Dubos, who argued that Stockholms most significant lessonwas that the concepts of ecology brought there by the rich nations wereunsuited for the world problems of environment.76 Duboss recommenda-tion to his fellow Delians was framed as follows:

The paradox inherent in the dual nature of mannamely the biologicaluniformity of mankind and the social diversity of human lifewas atthe heart of the questions discussed at the United Nations Conferenceon the Human Environment. A global approach is essential for deal-ing with the ecological and economic problems of the spaceship earth,which affect all of us, but each human settlement has problems of itsown which require local solutions.77

Once human unity and diversity were conceived through these categories,it seemed reasonable that if social diversity was pulling people apart,then biological uniformity was bringing them together, because all peo-ple were in the same spaceship, sharing the same life supports, and head-ing to the same destination (presumably a natural drive for progress anddevelopment). To achieve an ecological equilibrium that accounted forhuman diversity, Dubos concluded, the creation of local ecologies whichare compatible with each other, constituting sub-systems within the globalecosystem was essential.78

Doxiadis had always urged that the grand proposals for Ecumenopolisand Ecumenokepos be calibrated according to cultural particularity, to pre-vent homogenizing impositions: Our problem is universal, but the solu-tions are universal in the long run and to a certain extent only, in practicethey are local; they have to grow out of the soil and be watered by the localsprings.79 Duboss recommendations reinforced ekistics long-standingposition because they confirmed the interdependence of the local and theglobalthe micro and the macro, the house and the city, the megalopolisand Ecumenopolisnot simply as a design theory but as an ecologicaltruth. In line with this belief, the overall scheme for the globes functionalorganization had to account for varying political systems, ownership pat-terns, and the like. This is why Doxiadis qualified his final proposal for

Doxiadis Associates. TheAnthropocosmos Model. Thisversion dates from 1975. Variousversions of this model were usedby ekistics to organize knowl-edge about human settlements. Constantinos and EmmaDoxiadis Foundation.

Pyla | Planetary Home and Garden: Ekistics and Environmental-Developmental Politics 25

Ecumenopolis and Ecumenokepos by arguing that in every continent,nation and region, different percentages of land will be appropriate for thevarious zones and land uses, depending on geography, existing develop-ment, condition and value of natural environment, potential for growth,productivity and so on.80

The rational assessment of local conditions and techniques alsopromised to limit dependence on capital-intensive technological fixes.Much like the local construction methods that were used in DoxiadisAssociates projects in Iraq, Pakistan, Greece, and elsewhere, local tech-niques in resource management were to be analyzed in terms of their sci-entific validity and economic efficiency. In discussing methods for waterconservation in 1967, Doxiadis criticized large-scale plans and policies thatbulldozed diverse local and more appropriate approaches:

Considering what is being done in the whole world, we can state thatmuch more talent and financial resources are geared to such projectsas dams and desalination plants than to the small tanks, wells and irri-gation systems. Much more is spent for actual construction than fororganization and management of an effort for conservation and moreefficient use of water.81

Doxiadiss pitch for localized approaches to environmental managementwas governed by the conviction that the efficacy and appropriateness ofeach solution could ultimately be grasped by the sober objectivity of ekisticsscientific analysis. The heterogeneity of the human subject increased thedata required to map basic human needs and environmental require-ments rather than challenging these categories altogether. Local climate,

material availability, education levels,and the overall organization of thepopulation were variables that wouldcalibrate the quantification of theaverage needs for the average person in a city of a given density.82

Diversity was itself conceptualized interms of the sanitized categories of theekistics gridspopulation scale,economic desirability, technologi-cal feasibility, cultural feasibility,and the likethat were supposed toneatly circumscribe the total ecologicalsystem. Ekistics believed that inequal-ity, exclusion, and exploitation in their

26 Grey Room 36

various forms could somehow be planned away, as long as enough flexibil-ity was built into the managerial system. As Delos Ten concluded, the chal-lenging requirements of safety, variation, cultural style, access to nature,individual age, and health would be met through continuous assessment,error correcting, responsive feedback, and evaluation.83

For all his commitment to a peaceful and egalitarian future, Doxiadisemphasized the urgency of a comprehensive, coordinated system of a uni-versal city rather than questioning its teleological logic. By presupposingthe commensurability of the local with the global, ekistics assumed thatvoices of diversity could neatly coexist with the overall of the managerialscheme to achieve the earths inner balance and peace.84 Doxiadis and hissupporters like Mead, Fuller, and Ward perceived ethnic, racial, and genderstruggles through the prism of a cosmopolitan idealism that rendered poli-tics obsolete. By emphasizing the big picture, the new environmental causeas it was formulated by ekistics overlooked the economic and political pri-orities it was promoting. The limits of human exploitation might well havebecome increasingly narrow in Doxiadiss progressively elaborate land-redistribution schemes, but they were still based on the dream of a humansociety testing nature to its limits. In the meantime, competitive industrial-ism and the ideology of production, which were at the root of the environ-mental degradation that both Stockholm and Delos lamented, remainedintact. Also intact was the primacy of the expert as the key figure in the syn-chronization of local and global solutions.

Only One HomeConceptualized as a holistic entity, the planet was shrinking. Ward andDubos called for the care and maintenance of a small planet and replacedthe image of a unified world market with an image of the globe as a singlehome. Even more powerful than the metaphor of the earth as a spaceship,the warm and familiar image of the earth as humanitys home underscoredthe shared environmental fate. Dubos repeated this idea at Delos Ten:

As we enter the global phase of social evolution, it becomes obviousthat each one of us has two countrieshis own and the planet earth.We cannot feel at home on earth if we do not continue to love and cul-tivate our own garden. And conversely, we can hardly feel comfort-able in our garden if we do not care for the planet earth as ourcollective home.85

The ideas of smallness, oneness, danger, and resilience were all wrappedinto the linguistic sign of the home. Its unquestionable preciousness madeloyalty to the planet a moral obligation. The home could avert imminent

Pyla | Planetary Home and Garden: Ekistics and Environmental-Developmental Politics 27

threats as long as the universal family remained united. The chairman ofthe U.S. delegation to Stockholm, Russell E. Train, called on the economistand the ecologist to jointly tackle the problems of the house of man.86 Inthe meantime, Ekistics reminded its readers that like ecology and econom-ics, ekistics comes from the same Greek root word for home: Ecology,economics, ecolibrium [sic], and ekistics all come from the same Greek rootword for home. Implicit in the derivation is the notion of integrating mansnest-building activitieshis settlementswith the natural environment.87

If ecology (knowledge of the home) and economics (management of thehome) had to reconceptualize their tasks to manage the global household,so should ekistics.88 Ekistics centrality to environmental debates wasrooted in its etymology. QED!

If, for Dubos and Train, the displacement of the home into the globeevoked the preciousness and finiteness of the earth, the symbolism waseven greater for Doxiadis. What better metaphor to capture ekistics aspira-tion to construct a postpolitical global society that eradicated military, polit-ical, and social conflict in the name of a better future! Doxiadiss neologism,Ecumenopolis, already presaged this interpretive leap by conflating thehome (oikos) with the globe (oicumene). Ecumenokepos (global garden)transported home and garden to the global dimension.

As a spatial metaphor, the globe as home reinforced the validity ofekisticsthe science (or the art and science) of planning and designingthe home.89 Because it blurred the boundaries between ekistics, ecology,and economics, the home metaphor allowed the conflation of physicaldesign/planning with household management. In one of the last proclama-tions in his career, Doxiadis described the management of natural resourcesby referring to the design [of] goals for nature.90 The metamorphosis of thearchitect/planner into environmental managerfor which Doxiadis hadfought for three decadeswas finally taking hold.

The concept of a shared planetary home, like the idea of earths bal-ance, served a double purpose: to underline the moral imperative to protectthe environment and to rejuvenate the need for global management. Theirony is that, as Mark Wigley points out, the metaphor of the planetaryhome exposes, rather than conceals, the shortcomings of efforts to recon-cile sociocultural discontinuities into a contrived unity. Far from tran-scending issues of discrimination, conflict, and power, domestic space hasits own intense politicsof control, privilege and exclusionalready wellillustrated in the historiography of modern architecture.91 Even if Stockholmdelegates aspired to an image of a happy planetary family, the strongprotests of the Chinese delegation inside the hall, the protests of non-governmental organizations outside, the conspicuous absence of the USSR

28 Grey Room 36

and East European countries, and, overall, the bitter debates about colo-nialism, Vietnam, whaling, and nuclear weapons testing were reminders ofthe struggles within the home.92 They exposed the pitfalls of the techno-cratic rationale of development that was nonetheless being transplantedinto the new environmental cause.

As the UN reinforced the moralism of management (and the 19731974oil crisis confirmed resource fears), ekistics became more entangled withthe UNs global cause. The 1976 UN Conference on Settlements, later renamedthe Conference on Habitat, was in many ways the long-awaited vindicationof ekistics. Even though the conference did not take place until a year afterhis death, Doxiadis had a strong presence with the four red books he pre-pared as background material for the conference.93 Seventy members fromthe World Society for Ekistics participated in the conference, emphasizingthe pioneering contributions of ekistics in both the domains of human set-tlements and environment.94 Fuller, the president of the World Society for Ekistics, presented Doxiadiss red books at the plenary session of theHabitat conference with an emotional speech, after which the secretary gen-eral referred to Doxiadis as the father of human settlements and suggestedthat the conference be dedicated to him.95

Human UnsettlementsStarting with the Delos conferences, the last decade of Doxiadiss practicewas marked by the globalization of ekistics discourse as it attracted theattention of even more global visionaries from Ward to Dubos, as well asarchitectural thinkers from Tange to Fuller, all of whom contemplated theiraffinities with Doxiadiss thought and used the journal Ekistics as a majorforum for advancing their ideas. Throughout the 1960s into the early 1970s,schools of architecture were teaching ekistics; libraries were circulating notonly the journal but even Doxiadis Associates newsletters and reports;highly regarded publishers were printing Doxiadiss books; and, moreimportant to Doxiadis, the UN recognized ekistics and appropriated hisown terminology (human settlements), thus fulfilling at least some of hisdreams. In the meantime, ekistics was ascending to new levels of abstrac-tion and managerial generalization. Doxiadis tried to hold onto ekisticsspecificity by maintaining the categories of physical design and planninginsisting on land percentages, settlement patterns, and density ratios toexplain his grand proposalsonly to make his ideas sound increasingly outof date. Doxiadis Associates projects in Greece tried to contemplate a newaesthetic and reconceptualize ekistics specificity, but these experimentsdid not go far enough. Fuller was already suggesting that the idea of humansettlements and urbanization would become obsolete and began to speak

Pyla | Planetary Home and Garden: Ekistics and Environmental-Developmental Politics 29

about human unsettlements as a more realistic vision of the future.96

Dubos also kept a distancehe did not return to another Delos conferenceafter his initial participation. He was not convinced of the centrality ofekistics to the global environmental cause.97

The 1976 Conference on Human Settlements that was the peak ofekistics international success also signaled its end. Doxiadis had passedaway the year before, and the Delos conferences had come to a close. TheWorld Society for Ekistics maintained the interdisciplinary network, and thejournal Ekistics still exists today, with members of the old guard on its advi-sory board (Panayis Psomopoulos, Gwen Bell, Richard Meier). The journalscirculation is limited, and the Ecumenopolis-like maps that stubbornlyappear in its pages seemed, until recently, like relics of a bygone era. Yet, asa new round of globalization is taking hold and as sustainable develop-ment is fast becoming the favorite catchphrase in architectural (and other)circles, Doxiadiss vision of Ecumenopolis is becoming ever more current.

To examine Doxiadiss enterprise is to consider the complex relation-ships between environment and development from historys critical angle.98

To reflect on the presumptions of ekistics management and the politics ofits optimism is to contemplate the entanglement of environmentalism withmodernization and development discourses when the belief structure ofglobalization was taking hold; it is not to look for pseudohistorical cyclesbut to increase the vigilance of theoretical reflection on architectural dis-course and broader cultural transformations.

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NotesThe author wishes to thank the Constantinos A. Doxiadis Archives and in particular GiotaPavlidou for their valuable assistance in accessing and sorting out the archival data. Sincerethanks also to Panayis Psomopoulos for offering a vivid picture of Doxiadiss life andendeavors through interviews. The source for the figures for this essay is the ConstantinosA. Doxiadis Archives.

1. C.A. Doxiadis, Water and Human Environment (paper presented at the InternationalConference on Water for Peace, Washington, DC, 23 May 1967), F4, articles-papers 2878,Constantinos A. Doxiadis Archives, Athens. The archives are hereinafter cited as DoxiadisArchives.

2. Doxiadis was described like this in an illustrated article on him in Life magazine.Busy Remodeler of the World, Life, 7 October 1966. Doxiadis was also the recipient of theAspen Award in 1966. For a more extensive overview of Doxiadis Associates activities andfame at the time, see Christopher Rand, The Ekistic World, The New Yorker, 11 May 1963,4987.

3. C.A. Doxiadis, Entopia [a short description that accompanies a rendering of entopiaprinted on Doxiadis Associates greeting cards] (Doxiadis Associates, 1974). See also C.A.Doxiadis, Between Dystopia and Utopia (London: Faber and Faber, 1966).

4. C.A. Doxiadis, Entopia.5. For the role of Doxiadis Associates in national planning, see Panayiota Pyla,

Baghdads Urban Restructuring, 1958: Aesthetics and Politics of Nation-Building, inModernism and the Middle East: Architecture and Politics in the Twentieth Century, ed.Sandy Isenstadt and Kishwar Rizvi (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2008): 97115.

6. El Lissitzky made this comment on Le Corbusiers plans for the reconstruction ofMoscow (1930), which Le Corbusier soon retitled the Ville Radieuse, or Radiant City. ForEl Lissitzkys reactions to Le Corbusiers ideas see Jean-Louis Cohen, Le Corbusier and theMystique of the USSR (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), 109.

7. Jaqueline Tyrwhitt, The Ekistics Grid, Architectural Association Journal 87 (SeptemberOctober 1965): 12.

8. C.A. Doxiadis, Ecumenopolis, the Settlement of the Future, R-ERES 18 (AthensTechnological Organization, 23 June 1961). This document was reissued practically unchangedas C.A. Doxiadis, Ecumenopolis, the Settlement of the Future, Athens Centre of EkisticsPublication Series, Research Report No. 1 (Athens Centre of Ekistics, 1967). Following cita-tions are to the 1967 version.

9. Doxiadis, Ecumenopolis, the Settlement of the Future, 165. See also C.A. Doxiadis,The Future of the City, Newsweek International, March 1968, 4.

10. First Meeting of the United Nations Committee on Housing, Building and Planning,Ekistics 15, no. 90, (May 1963): 251253.

11. UN reports admitted that progress in housing had remained inadequate in relation toother fields of development and argued that housing had to be acknowledged as an integralpart of other areas of growth so as to foster a balanced social and economic development.ECOSOC, Committee on Housing, Building and Planning, Report of the Secretary General,UN document symbol E/C.6/2, 17 December 1962.

12. ECOSOC, Report of the Secretary General.13. ECOSOC, Committee on Housing, Building, and Planning, Summary Record of Third

Pyla | Planetary Home and Garden: Ekistics and Environmental-Developmental Politics 31

Meeting Held Tuesday 22 January 1963, UN document symbol E/C.6/SR3.14. ECOSOC, Summary Record of Third Meeting.15. Report on the United Nations Conference on the Application of Science and

Technology for the Benefit of Less Developed Areas, UN document symbol E/CONF.39/1,vol. 5, 179180.

16. Report on the United Nations Conference on the Applications of Science andTechnology, 180.

17. Doxiadis believed that the UN resisted the creation of an independent body on humansettlements not to offend other agenciesa view that was also shared by other UN housingexperts. C.A. Doxiadis, Ekistics: An Introduction to the Science of Human Settlements (NewYork: Oxford University Press, 1968), 422423.

18. Doxiadis, Ekistics, 423.19. Many of the symposion participants, including the prominent CIAM member Sigfried

Giedion, emphasized the parallels between the 1933 CIAM and the Delos Symposion. TheEkistics issue on the Delos Symposion included in its appendix the CIAM Charter of Athenswith the subtitle, Outcome of a Similar Effort. Ekistics 16, no. 95 (October 1963): 263266.

20. Sigfried Giedion, quoted in The Declaration of Delos, Statements and Comments,Ekistics 16, no. 95 (October 1963): 254. Tyrwhitt, on the other hand, felt that the group wastoo heavy on administrators: The creative spirits among the group were all out-weighedand out-numbered by the investigators and administrators. Jaqueline Tyrwhitt, PersonalImpression of Delos Symposion, Graduate School of Ekistics Memo, 19 July 1963, file 17761,Doxiadis Archives.

21. Doxiadiss reasons for insisting on the term symposion are captured in C.A. Doxiadis,Comments on the Delos Symposion, Ekistics 16, no. 95 (October 1963): 204. The skepti-cism of the invited participants is evident from the comments that each participant made tothe journal Ekistics. See The Declaration of Delos, Statements and Comments, 252254.

22. Allah K. Brohi, Contributory Papers, Ekistics 16, no. 95 (October 1963): 257258.23. Edward Mason, quoted in The Delians, Ekistics 16, no. 95 (October 1963): 228.24. Juliusz Gorynski, Contributory Papers, Ekistics 16, no. 95 (October 1963): 259.25. Marshall McLuhans contribution emphasized how electronic technology expanded

the brain to embrace the globe and reduced the planet to the scale of a village. MarshallMcLuhan, Contributory Papers, Ekistics 16, no. 95 (October 1963): 257.

26. McLuhan, Contributory Papers, 257. For more on McLuhans specific objections seeMark Wigley, Network Fever, Grey Room 4 (Summer 2001): 82122.

27. Fuller, quoted in The Delians, 224.28. Waddington, quoted in The Delos Symposion, Ekistics 16, no. 95 (October 1963): 205.29. Giedion, who was General Secretary of CIAM from its foundation to its dissolution,

tried along with Jos Luis Sert to reorient the postwar CIAM agenda toward a new monu-mentality as a means to fulfill more than functional requirements. See, for example, thepolemical Nine Points on Monumentality written in 1943 by Giedion in collaboration withFernand Lger and Sert that stressed the need of architecture to express the collective aspi-rations of people. Siegfried Giedion, Fernand Lger, and Jos Luis Sert, Nine Points onMonumentality, in Architecture Culture 19431968: A Documentary Anthology, ed. JoanOckman (New York: Rizzoli, 1993). In contrast, Doxiadis defied the monumental aspects ofarchitecture in favor of peoples basic needs. Both of them, however, called on architec-ture to address multiple aspirations and argued that the postwar changes in the economic

32 Grey Room 36

structure of nations could form the basis of a new community life.30. The Delos Symposion in Pictures, Ekistics 16, no. 95 (October 1963): 211217.31. Jaqueline Tyrwhitt, Personal Impression of Delos Symposion.32. The important role of Tyrwhitt was confirmed by Panayis Psomopoulos, interview by

author, 27 July 2005, Athens. Architect and planner Panayis Psomopoulos was one of theclosest collaborators with Doxiadis. He played an active role in Delos symposia and heldhigh positions in many branches of Doxiadisiss enterprise. To this day, Psomopoulos is thesecretary general and treasurer of the World Society for Ekistics (a position he held since itsestablishment in 1965), and since Doxiadiss death in 1975 he has been president of theAthens Center of Ekistics.

33. The British economist Barbara Ward (19151981), also known as Lady Jackson, wasassistant editor of the Economist from 1940 to 1950. She became a close associate ofDoxiadis in the late 1950s, and she also collaborated with other international housingexperts (e.g., she went to Ankara with Charles Abrams in 1964). In 1968, she was appointedSchweitzer Professor of International Economic Development at Columbia University, andin 1973 she became president of the International Institute of Environmental Affairs.

34. Barbara Ward, Catastrophe in Our Cities, Ekistics 16, no. 95 (October 1963): 240.Wards article was originally published in The Sunday Telegraph, 11 August 1963.

35. Buckminster Fuller, quoted in The Delos Symposion, 205.36. City Planners vs. Capitalist Jungle, Weekly People, 17 August 1963; A Cruise Party

Ponders the Menace of the City, Washington Post, 21 July 1963; Party on Cities Asks WorldDrive, New York Times, 2 July 1963; Mankind Menaced by Chaos of the Cities, LondonTimes, 17 July 1963; Sddeutsche Zeitung, 28 August 1963; excerpts of these articles werereprinted in Ekistics 16, no. 95 (October 1963): 235241.

37. Barbara Ward made this point as she summarized the urban crisis: To the cata-strophic growth in urban population must be added in the developed countries an equallyrapid growth in the number of automobiles men try to stuff into the cities with them. Onecan only surmise that as income grows in under-developed countries, the same pressureswill develop there. Barbara Ward, Notes on the Urban Problem, Ekistics 18, no. 107(October 1964): 198202.

38. Barbara Ward, The Menace of Urban Explosion, The Listener, 14 November 1963,785786. In this article, Ward summarized the conclusions of the first Delos symposium.

39. Ward, The Menace of Urban Explosion, 786.40. Wolfgang Sachs, One World, in The Development Dictionary: A Guide to Knowledge

as Power, ed. Wolfgang Sachs (London: Zed Books, 1992), 108.41. Barbara Ward, Urban Growth towards the Jungle of the Asphalt, Oikonomikos

Taxydromos, 20 July 1967.42. Doxiadis, Ecumenopolis, the Settlement of the Future, 157. 43. Delos Four was initially titled The Preservation of Human and Natural Beauty, but in

the midst of the conference the title was changed to The Preservation of Quality to underlinethat man is an aspect of nature and the preservation of beauty needs no division into naturaland manmade. Need for Preservation of Quality, Ekistics 22, no. 131 (October 1965): 288.

44. Conrad H. Waddington, Biology and the Human Environment (lecture, InternationalSeminar on Ekistics, Athens, 6 July 1965), document series B, no. 5, file 2615, Doxiadis Archives.

45. Kenzo Tange, Kenzo Tange, Ekistics 22, no. 131 (October 1966): 248250, 258259,274275.

Pyla | Planetary Home and Garden: Ekistics and Environmental-Developmental Politics 33

46. The influence of Waddingtons notion on other architectural and interdisciplinarycommunities at the time, and especially his influence on Fuller, is discussed in ReinholdMartin, Crystal Balls, Any 17 (1997): 3539. For the larger significance of this version oforganicism to mid-twentieth-century scientific thought, see Donna Haraway, Crystals,Fabrics, and Fields: Metaphors of Organicism in Twentieth-Century Developmental Biology(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976).

47. C.A. Doxiadis, Ecumenopolis (lecture, International Seminar on Ekistics, Athens,12 July 1965), document series B, no. 8, file 2615, Doxiadis Archives, p. 2.

48. C.A. Doxiadis, From Megalopolis to Ecumenopolis: A Short Outline (lecture,Ekistics Research Discussions, Athens, 5 July 1967), document series B, no. 4, file 2501,Doxiadis Archives.

49. Buckminster Fuller, Letter to Doxiadis, Main Currents in Modern Thought 25, no. 4(MarchApril 1969): 8797. McLuhan had a similar reaction and would later dismissDoxiadis and his group as bricks and mortar people. Marshall McLuhan to Tom andDorothy Easterbrook, 1 August 1972, in Letters of Marshall McLuhan, ed. Matie Molinaro,Corinne McLuhan, and William Toye (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1987), 454.

50. C.A. Doxiadis and John G. Papaioannou, Ecumenopolis: The Inevitable City of theFuture (New York: Norton and Company, 1974).

51. For example, C.A. Doxiadis, Energy and Human Settlements (lecture, Conferenceon Energy, Economics, and the Environment, Edison Electric Institute, Chicago, 31 January1968), articles-papers 2918, Dioxadis Archives; C.A. Doxiadis, The Future of the City (draftprepared for Newsweek International, March 1968), file 17705, Doxiadis Archives, pp. 14.

52. Doxiadis, Water and Human Environment, H3.53. C.A. Doxiadis, Ecology and Ekistics (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1977).54. [Untitled summary of Delos Four], Ekistics 22, no. 131 (October 1966): 286.55. [Untitled summary of Delos Four], 286.56. Doxiadis, Water and Human Environment, A1H3.57. Doxiadis, Energy and Human Settlements.58. Doxiadis, Energy and Human Settlements. Ivan Illich referred to the human needs

discourse to describe how the allegedly global demand for goods and services justified inter-national development. Ivan Illich, Needs, in The Development Dictionary, ed. Sachs, 88101.

59. Doxiadis, Water and Human Environment, H3.60. Here I draw on Reinhold Martins analysis of Fullers photomontages. Martin,

Crystal Balls.61. For Fullers negotiations between architecture and ecology, see Mark Wigley,

Planetary Home Boy, Any 17 (1997): 1623.62. Buckminster Fuller, Why Am I Interested in Ekistics, Ekistics 22, no. 131 (October

1965): 180181. In this article, Fuller described the alignment of advanced architecturalresearch with general systems theory as one of ekistics most valuable contributions.Doxiadis also explicitly drew the connections between Ecumenopolis and a systemsapproach in a 1967 article, C.A. Doxiadis, Energy and the New Civilization: A SystemsApproach to the Cities, DA Review 3 no. 29 (May 1967): 14.

63. The Biosphere Conference, an intergovernmental conference of experts on rationaluse and conservation of the biosphere held in Paris in 1968, was an earlier international con-ference that aimed to assess the problems of the global environment, but it focused mainly onthe scientific aspects of environmental problems, and did not have as wide a political impact.

34 Grey Room 36

64. See John McCormick, Reclaiming Paradise: The Global Environmental Movement(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989), 9192.

65. Sachs, One World, 108.66. As Ward observed, Before Stockholm, people usually saw the environment as some-

thing totally divorced from humanity. . . . Stockholm recorded a fundamental shift in theemphasis of our environmental thinking. Erik Eckholm, Down to Earth (New York: W.W.Norton 1982), xii.

67. Ren Dubos (19011983) was a French-born American biologist. His books, Man Adapting(1965) and So Human an Animal (1968), for which he won the Pulitzer Prize, warned thathumanity and nature may be damaged in adjusting to an extremely polluted environment.

68. Public attention to earths vulnerability was exponentially increasing in the 1970s, aswas media coverage on environmental issues in the United States and many European coun-tries. See, for example, The Ravaged Environment, Newsweek, 26 January 1970. Debates inscientific circles also attracted public interest, taking the debate in diverse directions. See,for example, Rachel Carson, Silent Spring (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1962); Paul Ehrlich,The Population Bomb (New York: Ballantine Books, 1968); and E.F. Schumacher, Small IsBeautiful (New York: Harper and Row, 1974).

69. United Nations, Yearbook of the United Nations 1972 (New York: Office of PublicInformation, United Nations, 1972), 319; and United Nations Conference on the HumanEnvironment, Information Letter no. 2, Doxiadis Archives.

70. The World Society for Ekistics (WSE) was conceived at the 1965 Delos Symposion. Thesociety was inaugurated in 1967, and its members included Margaret Mead (who was theofficial representative of WSE at the UN conference), Buckminster Fuller, Jean Gottman,Eiichi Isorura, Sir Robert Matthew, Juliusz Gorynski, Barbara Ward, and Panayis Psomopoulos.

71. United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, Information Letter no. 2.72. For an overview of the connections between Doxiadiss thought and modernization

theory, see Panayiota Pyla, Hassan Fathy Revisited: Postwar Discourses on Science,Development, and Vernacular Architecture, Journal of Architectural Education 60, no. 3(February 2007): 2839. For a more general discussion of this theory, see Nils Gilman,Mandarins of the Future (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003).

73. Donella Meadows et al., The Limits to Growth: A Report for the Club of Romes Projecton the Predicament of Mankind (New York: Universe Books, 1972); Edward Goldsmith etal., Blueprint for Survival (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1972).

74. Barbara Ward, Exercising Stewardship over Global Resources, Ekistics 34, no. 203(October 1972), 235.

75. Declaration of Delos Ten, Ekistics 34, no. 203 (October 1972): 230233. The decla-ration resounded with many Stockholm themes.

76. Dubos, quoted in Ward, Exercising Stewardship, 235.77. Ren Dubos, Man and Nature (speech presented at Delos Ten, Athens, July 1972).

The speech was reprinted in Ekistics 34, no. 203 (October 1972): 236239.78. Dubos, quoted in Ward, Exercising Stewardship, 236.79. Doxiadis, Water and the Human Environment, G3.80. Doxiadis, Ecology and Ekistics, 27.81. Doxiadis, Water and Human Environment, G1G2.82. Doxiadis, Water and Human Environment, G1G2.83. Declaration of Delos Ten, 230233.

Pyla | Planetary Home and Garden: Ekistics and Environmental-Developmental Politics 35

84. Doxiadis, Water and Human Environment, H3.85. Ren Dubos, Man and Nature, 236239.86. All about Stockholm, World Environment Newsletter, August 1972, 40.87. Ekistics 200, Ekistics 34, no. 200 (July 1972): 2.88. The term ecology, coined by the German zoologist Ernst Haeckel in 1873, has its ety-

mological sources in the Greek oikos (house) and logos (knowledge). Economics comesfrom oikos and nomos (law).

89. This interpretation draws on Mark Wigleys argument that the perception of the globeas a home had a particular significance to architecture because it led to the conceptualiza-tion of the globe as a colossal domestic space and introduced new alignments between ecol-ogy and architecture. See Mark Wigley, Recycling Recycling, in Eco-Tech: Architecture ofthe In-Between, ed. Amerigo Marras (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1999), 4748.

90. C.A. Doxiadis, Action For Human Settlements (New York: W.W. Norton, 1976), 123.91. Wigley, Recycling Recycling.92. Nongovernmental organizations exposed, among other things, the ecocidal activi-

ties of the United States in Asia. China capitalized on the plunder, aggression, and war bythe colonialists, imperialists, and neocolonialists. The USSR and East European countriesboycotted the event to protest the fact that the German Democratic Republic (East Germany)was not invited. For the positions of nongovernmental groups that opposed governmentpolicies on environment, see Mary Jean Haley, ed., Open Options: A Guide to StockholmsAlternative Environmental Conferences (Stockholm: N.p., 1972), 3. Chinas reactions werereported in Stockholm Conference Eco, no. 14 (June 1972): 1. For more details on the reac-tion of the Chinese delegation, see McCormick, 99100.

93. These four books were C.A. Doxiadis, Anthropopolis: City for Human Development(New York: W.W. Norton, 1975); Doxiadis and Papaioannou, Ecumenopolis: The InevitableCity of the Future; C.A. Doxiadis, Building Entopia (New York: W.W. Norton, 1976); andDoxiadis, Action for Human Settlements.

94. Gwen Bell and Jaqueline Tyrwhitt prepared a package of material outlining the con-nection between ekistics and the UN conference in Vancouver. Margaret Mead, Habitat:Building a Global Constituency, Habitat International 3, nos. 34 (1978): 283286. Meadsarticle, which reflected on the impact of the Habitat conference, emphasized the pioneeringrole Doxiadis played in demanding a UN body in its own right to deal with the crisis ofhuman settlements.

95. Transcript of Bucky Fuller at Habitat, file 7313, Doxiadis Archives; and PanayisPsomopoulos, interview by author, June 2000, Athens.

96. Fuller argued that humanity was moving from tied down agricultural, mining, orseaport communities toward a world society. Fuller took this idea further to argue that theconception of human settlements as nationalistically bound and immobile was obsolete.This integrated world society was reflected in the phrase human unsettlements. BuckminsterFuller, Accommodating Human Unsettlement, Town Planning Review 49 (January 1978):5160.

97. Duboss skepticism was reflected in his overall comments at Delos Ten in 1972. SeeWard, Exercising Stewardship.

98. See Panayiota Pyla, Counter-Histories of Sustainability, Volume 18 (December2008): 1416.