Dissertation_Dr Faisal Almubarak

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more importance on "means" and implementation as compared to the earlier ones
characterized by unrealistic idealism. The construction of these conceptional cities were to
be attained through the mass production methods made possible by modern technology.
This approach was summarized in Le Corbusier's Toward a New Architecture (1925).
Another approach took the form of extensive central government planning as
exemplified by the British and Western European experiments in new towns. By bringing
public-owned land under state planning agencies, development plans are drafted and
mechanisms for private participation are laid down. In these examples, public ownership is
the key. For instance, Stockholm's ownership of vast vacant land made possible the
development of housing as well as the public transportation system and are good examples
of comprehensive planning. While commended for providing accessibility to the elderly
and the politically underrepresentated groups such as teenagers and housewives, planned
public development has been criticized for several shortcomings including imposing
"technocratic concepts upon a passive clientele...unpopular high-rise housing, a neglect of
social facilities, and in the U.S. extensive displacement of the poor in the interests of
subsidized commercial development." 15
During the 1930s and 1940s, the controversy over the need for government
intervention to bring direct social change and to maximize socially desirable ends reached
its peak. The proponents for intervention included Karl Mannheim, Rexford Tugwell, and
Barbra Wooton who confronted free market laissezfaire supporters represented by
Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig Von Mises. For them, the debate seemingly settled on the
need for planning in a capitalist society. In a free-market democratic society, the argument
for planning has been justified on four grounds. Firstly, the economic justification is based
on the widely accepted view that markets cannot perfectly attain competitiveness (i.e. the
Pareto efficient allocation is not realized) and due to the notion .of 'market failure'. Both
classical and neoclassical economists have agreed that even perfectly competitive markets
suffer from the presence of (i) public goods, (ii) externalities (spillovers), (iii) prisoners'
dilemma situations (a case in which one's pursuit of his own self interest does not lead to
an optimal outcome for society), and (iv) distributional issues. 16
In short, modern urban planning in Europe and North America was born in response
to the industrial revolution and the squalid conditions brought by the shift from cottage
industry to the large factory mass production enlisting throngs of the working class. The