Patrick Geddes at the Scots’ College, Montpellier, France (Coll-1869)

We are very pleased to announce that the online catalogue for the Sir Patrick Geddes Archives at the University of Edinburgh is now live.

The collection represents a vital and immensely valuable resource for understanding the life and work of Patrick Geddes, who is internationally revered and acknowledged as one of the most innovative thinkers around the processes of urbanisation and urban planning. Such an understanding may potentially help to inform current debates about wellbeing and how best to cultivate it, and is of great importance to all those working in the fields of sociology, ecology, architecture and urban development.

Sir Patrick Geddes (1854-1932) was a pioneer of the environmental movement. Credited as the father of town-planning, he used biological concepts to develop a holistic view of people and where they live, seeing both as organic and how the balance and imbalance between them affected health and well-being.

Geddes encouraged people to become actively involved in transforming their communities, the best-known example of which was in Edinburgh’s Old Town, injecting green spaces into what was then cramped and overcrowded, allowing the place to breathe, allowing children much-needed play spaces.

The collection was catalogued as part of a collaborative project with the University of Strathclyde Archives, which was generously funded by the Wellcome Research Resource-fund.

You can now search the online catalogue via our Online Archives Collections Catalogue.

Elaine MacGillivray
Strategic Projects Archivist