Geddes, Patrick

Patrick Geddes (1854–1932) was a polymath who covered a remarkable number of disciplines and subjects. He was a biologist and a sociologist, an educationalist and an aesthete. Geddes is perhaps best known for making important contributions to the development of town planning, especially the Regional Planning Association of America, although his influence extended in many directions. Lewis Mumford acknowledged Patrick Geddes as “my master” and claimed that Geddes “was one of the outstanding thinkers of his generation, not alone in Great Britain, but in the world.” In Britain, Geddes's ideas were amplified further by his close collaborator, Victor Branford. Although Geddes's ideas were championed in the United States by thinkers like Mumford, until recently, Geddes merited no more than a footnote in urban studies. In the past decade, scholarly interest has revived Geddes's legacy for urban studies.