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        'This is a green world, with animals comparatively few and small, and all dependent on the leaves. By leaves we live. Some people have strange ideas that they live by money. They think energy is generated by the circulation of coins. Whereas the world is mainly a vast leaf colony, growing on and forming a leafy soil, not a mere mineral mass: and we live not by the jingling of our coins, but by the fullness of our harvests'.

        The population of Madras city increased from 3,97,552 in 1871 to 5,09,346 in 1901. The uncontrolled growth of the city population created many problems with respect to roads, sanitation, market places, drinking water and educational facilities which are the basic amenities of modern life. The Government of Madras started understanding the fact that a large population was being cramped into an altogether inadequate space. Meanwhile the slum population continued to increase in squatter settlements and in old tenements. In 1909, the Government of India decided that in the cities of Madras, Bombay and Calcutta, a beginning could be made regarding town planning legislation and the form which such a legislation should take. This question was discussed at the first All India Sanitary Conference, held in Bombay in November 1911. The urban squalor, problems of sanitation and epidemics called for new thinking and urgent solutions.

        The chief credit for launching the town planning movement in Madras city should go to Lord Pentland, who was the Governor of Madras from 1912 to 1919. It was he who invited a genius called Patrick Geddes, an eminent British town planning architect to visit Madras to advise the Municipal authorities in 1914. Lord Pentland, before coming to Madras, had been Secretary of State for Scotland and personally knew the work of Patrick Geddes in survey and town planning. Patrick Geddes arrived in Madras in November 1914. Lord Pentland requested Patrick Geddes to study the problems of the city of Madras and the major towns of Madras Presidency and to give a series of lectures on the subject to the Municipal authorities and the general public. Geddes organised town planning exhibitions in the major cities and towns of the Madras Presidency including Madras city. He can truly be called the 'father of town planning' not only in Madras city but throughout India. During his stay in Madras from 1914 to 1916, accompanied by officials of the Madras Corporation, he visited several slums then known as Paracheries, where poor untouchables lived and also several other poor quarters in Madras city. He recommended to the Madras Corporation authorities several measures that would ameliorate the living conditions without adversely disturbing the poor people. Geddes found himself in the midst of a major political upheaval and cultural revival in Madras and indeed the whole of India. Indian nationalists were debating questions on the future of India and he readily found friends among the foremost thinkers and activists and these included the scientist Jagdis Bose, art historian Ananda Coomaraswamy and Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore.

        In all the cities he visited in South India, Geddes unsparingly explained that survey was more important than good surface planning. The planner must consider the citizen's potential and evolution within his environment. Geddes had a vision of utopia where man the world over would work in sympathy with his fellow men and nature to create a better world. Geddes was excited with what he saw in India.

       He was particularly impressed by India's urban traditions, its architectural forms and the various ways in which different communities had innovated urban living. This made him impatient with colonial notions of municipal reform and his writings show him in combat and argument with the British authorities in India who were in-charge of local self-government and municipal affairs.

        In 1915 Geddes persuaded Lord Pentland to appoint an official town planning adviser and suggested the name of H V Lanchester, then one of the vice presidents of the Royal Institute of British Architects, to that office. He was among the founding members of the Town Planning Institute in London. In 1912 he had served as a consultant on the design of capital city of New Delhi. The Madras Government accordingly engaged the services of Lanchester in October 1915. He was asked to undertake a comprehensive study on the requirements of the city of Madras and lay down the future line of its growth and development in the manner commonly adopted in European cities. He was also asked to train some officials of the Government of Madras. While in India apart from preparing a plan for the city of Madras, he also worked in other Indian cities as well, both as a planner and as the architect of important buildings. His writings on planning include 'The Art of Town Planning', 'Talks on Town Planning', and 'Town Planning in Madras & Zanzibar', a book on his experience in Madras and Zanzibar whose plan also he prepared. Patrick Geddes and H V Lanchester were mainly responsible for persuading the Government of Madras to pass the historic Madras Town Planning Act, 1920. It established for the first time positive attitudes for including urban issues in public policy.

        Patrick Geddes lived a rich, full and creative life. For more than half a century, the trumpet voice of Patrick Geddes as a biologist, geographer, educator, civics activist and urban planner was heard not only in England, Europe and America, but throughout the British Empire. He was born on 2 October, 1854, at Ballater in West Aberdeenshire, Scotland. At the age of seventeen, Geddes enrolled at the University of Edinburgh. But left after one week to attend the London School of Mines and study under the tutelage of the great natural scientist, T H Huxley. A couple of years later, Geddes traveled to Paris to study. In 1879 Geddes first encountered the social theories of Frederic Le Play. The works of Le Play greatly influenced Geddes as he became aware of the effect of environmental and geographical factors on the existing social structures.

        Patrick Geddes used the theory of evolution as a basis for ethics, history, sociology and town planning. Patrick Geddes made a botanical garden for the University of Dundee. In his report on Pittencrieff Park in Dunfermline, Patrick Geddes wrote that 'City improvers, like the gardeners from whom they develop, fall into two broadly contrasted schools, which are really, just as in gardening itself, the formal and the naturalistic'. Geddes was also interested in civics, which studied the relation of individuals and the environment. Geddes's great achievement was the making of a bridge between biology and social science. His idea now seems simple: just like plants and other animals, people thrive in healthy conditions. From 1890 to 1910, he was often asked to design gardens and advise on planting. The designers of the garden cities in England recognised and respected the influence of Geddes's Theory of Survey in town planning. Patrick Geddes considered how people could improve these conditions and in so doing, created and established the modern town planning movement.

        In order to create this utopia, Geddes wanted the town planners and the people round the world to realise the significance of his three S's: Sympathy for people and the environment, synthesis of all factors relating to a case and synergy, the combined cooperative action of everyone involved. His book on 'Cities in Evolution' was published in 1915. Geddes is regarded as one of the founding fathers of the town planning profession. He was also the first British citizen to use 'Landscape Architect' as a professional title.

                Patrick Geddes was knighted in 1931. He passed away in 1932. What is truly amazing about the life and achievements of Geddes is that he had found the time amidst a crowded life marked by feverish activity to write about economics, sociology, history, art, museums, exhibitions, politics, literature, agriculture, gardening, geology, religion, philosophy, education, geography, science, astronomy, biology, planning, printing, mathematics, navigation, travel, public health, housing, music, and poetry. In every sense of the word he was a Renaissance man. It is not therefore surprising that the best tribute to him was paid by his biographer Philip Boardman:

        'Geddes was in modern times - although in different fields - what Leonardo Da Vinci had been four hundred years before: a prodigy in physical endurance, range of interests, and imaginative powers. What few persons in any field now know is that Patrick Geddes achieved one of his earliest ambitions: he became, in a sense, a second Darwin.

        Not by reason of an epoch-making pronouncement as spectacular as 'The Origin of Species'; that is self evident. It was in his feeling for nature, in his understanding and interpretation of the evolutionary drama of life that Geddes equalled, even surpassed, Charles Darwin. And Darwin was a naturalist with few peers'.