Conclusion Reflecting on the career of a ‘technical man’

This issue of the Town Planning Review has examined key aspects of the work of Gordon Stephenson, alumnus and former Lever Professor of Civic Design at the University of Liverpool and past editor of this journal. While our research has indicated that parts of his life and career are deserving of further investigation, it is now time to begin a preliminary reflection on the significance of this body of work. A number of themes emerge from this collection of research papers: Stephenson's interest in big ideas and grand plans; the direct influence on his work of major planning figures such as Abercrombie and Le Corbusier; the stimulation of his consulting practice; his collaborative approach; his changing attitudes towards modernism and history and his long-term concern with social issues. Big ideas and grand plans First, Stephenson recognised the impact and importance of big ideas and had the ability to take a global view. As we pointed out in the introduction to these papers, his time as an intern with a New York architectural firm in 1929 introduced him to big ideas and 'can do' attitudes. Thirty years later in 1956, he returned to the notion of big ideas, writing to Clarence Stein: There are great opportunities to do the right thing in the New World and to do it fast, if only people would allow themselves a little time to think and develop a few fundamental ideas. The lack of big ideas and the acceptance of the tidal flow created by ad men and short sighted speculators is to be deplored. There are big ideas to build from, but there are few of my generation or the next who are not caught up in the stream that lands them into a whole series of backwaters.1 Stephenson also enjoyed designing grand plans. As a planner, he worked on regional plans for London and Perth and a regional perspective even slipped into his smallest city plan for Kingston. While other architects designed individual buildings, Stephenson designed university campuses, entire central business districts and new towns. Connections with important planners A second theme is the influence of the major planning luminaries of the era on his work. They were all planners with big ideas. These were certainly in evidence when Stephenson worked in the Paris studio of Le Corbusier in 1931-32. There his partly formed commitment to modernism and to socialist ideals was confirmed, but from the master he learnt too that: 'Authority must step in, patriarchal authority, the authority of a father concerned for his children' (Le Corbusier, 1967, 152). At Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1936-38 where he completed his Master's in City Planning, he was exposed to the big ideas of numerous planning figures. He maintained contact with Adams and Stein, the latter in particular becoming a friend and mentor. Back in Britain during the Second World War he worked with Patrick Abercrombie, the doyen of the interwar planning movement, and later came to know Lewis Mumford. Such contacts were important to Stephenson and a feature of his career that becomes clear in these papers is that he made a point of maintaining contact with major international planning figures both by correspondence and personal meetings during his travels. From such figures Stephenson had absorbed the fundamentals of town planning. He became noted as an expert in metropolitan planning, the redevelopment of central areas and urban renewal and campus planning. In each instance, Stein's influence can clearly be seen; at the metropolitan level, Stein's idea of a city or town centre surrounded by neighbourhood units (first proposed by Perry) and separated by open areas; and at the local level, complete separation of pedestrians and vehicles (a key aspect of Stein's Radburn layout), whether it be in a central shopping precinct, a suburb or a university campus. Such developments all responded to the automobile, which also led to the use of ring roads and freeways in planning to direct the flow of traffic. …

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