John F.C. Turner
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Born in London in 1927, I was schooled in England and trained as an architect. I have worked mainly in the field of housing.
Reoriented by working with self-managing home and neighbourhood builders in Peru (1957-65), I have learnt that what matters in housing are the relationships between people, activity and place. Before leaving South America, I prepared a publication and the script of a documentary film showing how much more people can do than can be done for them, with so much less when free to decide and act for themselves. Opportunities followed to observe and interpret the same facts in other contexts, to write at Joint Center for Urban Studies in Cambridge, Mass, and then teach at MIT (1965-73), subsequently in London at the Architectural Association and the Development Planning Unit, University College (1974-83).
Between 1984 and 1988, my partner Beth and I tried to set up a "tools for community building" service; this failed but led to the preparation of Habitat International Coalition's project to the UN International Year of Shelter for the Homeless, 1987.
In 1989 we moved to Hastings, a South Coast town, where I volunteered help with what has become the Hastings (local development) Trust. The Trust now hosts Tools for Community Regeneration, which is being piloted locally as a precedent for adaptation to other contexts.
Selected Bibliography
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Turner, John F.C. "Tools for Community Regeneration, a Hastings Trust project", with Reante Ruether-Greaves.; in Knight, B. editor, Building Civil Society, current initiatives in voluntary action. Charities Aid Foundation, Kings Hill, West Malling, Kent UK, 1998.
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Turner, John F.C. "Tools for Building Community, an examination of 13 hypotheses," in Habitat International, Vol.20, No.3, 1996. Editor, Charles Choguill, Pergamon Press, Oxford.
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Turner, John F.C. "Barriers, Channels and Community Control," in David Cadman and Geoffrey Payne, editors, The Living City, towards a sustainable future, Routledge, London, 1990.
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Turner, John F.C. "Issues and Conclusions," in Turner, Bertha, editor, Building Community, a Third World Case Book, Building Communities Books and Habitat International Forum for Habitat International Coalition, Berlin and London, 1988.
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Turner, John F.C. "From Central Provision to Local Enablement, new directions for housing policies" in Glaeser, B., Learning from China: Development and environment in Third World Countries, Allen and Unwin, London, 1983.
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Turner, John F.C. "Housing in Three Dimensions, terms of reference for The Housing Question redefined," in World Development, Vol.6 No.9-10, Pergamon Press, Oxford, 1978,
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Turner, John F.C. "The Value of Housing," in John F C Turner, Housing By People, towards autonomy in building environments, Marion Boyars, London 1976 (Pantheon Books, New York, 1977).
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Turner, John F.C. "Two Ways of Planning, legislative limits and executive lines," in the Town and Country Planning Journal, Vol. 44 No. 5, London 1976.
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Turner, John F.C. "The Fits and Misfits of People's Housing (illustrated)," in the Royal Institute of Architects' Journal, Vol. No. London,1974.
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Turner, John F.C. "Housing as a Verb," in Turner, John F C and Fichter, Robert, Freedom to Build, Macmillan, New York, 1972. The Reeducation of a Professional, op. cit.
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Turner, John F.C. "The Squatter Settlement, Architecture That Works, (illustrated)," in Pidgeon, Monica and Bell, Gwen, The Architecture of Democracy, a special issue of Architectural Design, Vol.8, No.38, London 1968.
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Turner, John F.C. "Barriers and Channels for Housing in Modernizing Countries (illustrated)," in the Journal of the Amercian Institute of Planners, Washington DC, 1967.
John F.C. Turner's Talk
Sept 16 2000: Tools for Community
Builders