John Locke: Philosopher and City Planner

From the drafting of the Declaration of Independence to the ratification of the Constitution, the Framers drew from a range of ancient and modern political philosophers, and John Locke was among the most influential. Of Locke’s varied writings, Two Treatises of Government had a profound impact. In the First Treatise, Locke refutes the argument for the divine right of kings and dismantles the idea that political authority is divinely bestowed and inherently paternalistic. The Second Treatise expands on the principles of natural rights and government by consent, ideas that strongly influenced the Framers’ belief that legitimate government must be derived from the will of the people.

Written nearly a century before the American Revolution, Two Treatises helped shape Enlightenment thought and provided a foundation for the principles later expressed in the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson’s phrase, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.…” is a paraphrase of Locke’s statement that, “All men are naturally in a state of perfect freedom… and have by nature a power… to preserve their lives, liberties, and estates….”

Locke wrote Two Treatises while employed by Anthony Ashley Cooper, the 1^st Earl of Shaftsbury, one of England’s most influential politicians, and an advocate for parliamentary government who had challenged the authority of the nation’s kings. Locke was recruited by Shaftesbury from Oxford where he was a surgeon. The year was 1666 and it was an interesting time. It was the year of the Great Fire, which following on the Great Plague ravaged London.

To recover from the widespread destruction, Charles II held a design competition in which the city’s greatest minds submitted plans to rebuild the city. The King wanted to transform London to be safer, more efficient, and beautiful. Those who submitted plans included the famous architect Christopher Wren, the scientist Robert Hooke, and the polymath John Evelyn. Ultimately, none of their grand plans were fully implemented. Instead, London was rebuilt with improved building regulations and modest street widening while retaining most of its medieval street layout.

The significant outcome was that inspired city planning was suddenly on everyone’s mind. With England (Great Britain not yet formed) on the cusp of forging an empire, more thought was going into how to plan colonial cities than how to rebuild those in England. The next colony to be chartered was Carolina, and it became the target for many new ideas about city planning, as well as new ideas for governance.

Locke soon became the chief planner for the Carolina Colony and the designer of Charleston. A comprehensive plan that Locke and Shaftesbury called the Grand Model was completed in 1669. The document was known more formally as the Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina. With the implementation of the plan by the eight “proprietors” of the colony, led by Shaftesbury, Locke became not only the chief planner for Carolina but also the first city planner (in the modern use of the term) in the history of English-speaking North America. That remarkable distinction is, of course, overshadowed by his seminal contributions to philosophy.

In planning Carolina, Shaftesbury was primarily concerned with land allocation, governance, and the best use of his plantation. He and Locke shared an interest in the emerging field of modern science and no doubt discussed many details. However, Locke’s role as a collaborator on the project was to remain focused on vital details, including drafting the Grand Model and implementing “instructions” to be followed by the Carolina colonists.

Although Locke absorbed Shaftesbury’s parliamentary, or republican, concepts of government, he was on the verge of proposing entirely new ideas that were published in the Two Treatises several years after the politician’s death. While Shaftesbury was steeped in a rigidly hierarchical “gothic” (or feudal) view of society. He projected a class pyramid much like that described in Aristotle’s Politics on Carolinian society. Where he was progressive for his time was in framing a constitutional government that he believed would provide reciprocal benefits for all classes, and in codifying basic religious freedoms that could not be usurped by the government (as he believed had occurred in European states allied with the Catholic Church). While serfs and enslaved people would be subject to the absolute authority of their masters, they would remain free to practice their religion of choice, within an acceptable range, and they would enjoy security associated with stability. While Ashley Cooper’s worldview would soon be made obsolete by the Enlightenment, particularly his protégé’s contribution to it, exposure to that worldview undeniably accelerated Locke’s progress toward an entirely new concept of government.

Before continuing with this essay on Locke, political philosophy, and city planning there is an interesting story to tell about how Locke, the surgeon, became close to Shaftesbury, the politician. In May 1668 Shaftesbury suffered a health crisis when he vomited excessively and developed an enlarged hydatid cyst of the liver, now known to be caused by a parasite transmitted from dogs and sheep. Locke and a medical doctor operated and implanted a silver drain in an experimental surgery that saved and prolonged Shaftesbury’s life. Some of his political enemies called him “tapski” after the operation as if he had a beer tap installed. Locke’s detailed notes on the procedure and recovery are an important record of the state of medicine at the time.

Returning to Locke’s role in planning the Carolina Colony, one of the great mysteries about that role is the extent to which he willingly designed a colony with slavery at the base of its social pyramid. Two Treatises begins with an explicit condemnation of slavery, written during or only shortly after Locke’s association with Shaftesbury: “Slavery is so vile and miserable an estate of man, and so directly opposite to the generous temper and courage of our nation that it is hardly to be conceived, that an Englishman, much less a gentleman, should plead for it.”

Historians take various positions in assessing Locke on this apparent contradiction, ranging from accusations of hypocrisy to assertions of the rapid evolution of political philosophy. His full-time engagement with Shaftesbury ended in 1675, and following his mentor’s death in 1682, Locke became close to William and Mary who became joint monarchs in 1689 following the Glorious Revolution. He was appointed by them to administer affairs related to colonial trade, thereby becoming engaged with Carolina again. Recent evidence suggests that in his capacity under the new regime, he may have attempted to reverse the policies that enabled slavery in Carolina.

Locke's role as the city planner who designed Charleston first involved creating a regional plan. The capital city was to be situated within a 12,000-acre square area, with six additional 12,000-acre square areas laid out around it for settlers, and additional areas of that size for the colony’s nobility. Counties and towns would be the administrative units set up within the 12,000 grid. Riverfront lots were to be allocated such that those lots would be at least five times deeper than the width fronting the river to maximize the number of property owners with riverfront lots and prevent control of river access from falling into the hands of a few.

Locke’s planning framework anticipated that most people would live in well-designed towns. Informal settlements were prohibited to prevent what today would be called urban sprawl. Compact, orderly development was considered more efficient following principles that today are those of Smart Growth. Each planned town was “to be laid out into large, straight and regular streets, and sufficient room left for a wharf if it be upon a navigable river.” Smaller towns in the colonies (populated by yeoman farmers) were to be well-planned like the larger cities with street grids that were “straight, broad and regular.”

The 12,000-acre grid was to be oriented to the cardinal compass points (north, south, east, and west) or as close as possible. During the process of laying out all such boundaries, surveyors were advised to “reserve convenient highways from the colony town to the plantations … beyond it, and from one colony town to another.”

In the instructions of May 1671, which provided a list of twenty design specifications, Locke referenced an attached “model” layout for Charleston and future towns. That attachment, presumably a detailed drawing, has never been found. However, the framework is clear from the written instructions. Once again, he emphasized that streets should be “large, convenient and regular,” forming a linear grid of mostly equal-sized blocks. Principal streets were to be eighty feet wide, and “back streets” or alleys associated with them were to be forty feet. Secondary street width was set at sixty feet, with back streets of thirty feet. The street grid would form squares of six hundred feet on each side. Locke was influenced in drafting these specifications by the effort to widen and standardize London’s streets after the Great Fire of 1666.

Lots associated with principal streets were standardized at 75 feet by 280 feet, while those for secondary streets were 60 feet by 285 feet. In a block of the larger lots, there would be a total of sixteen lots, or eight per block face (i.e., those facing the same street). In a block of the smaller lots, there would be a total of twenty lots, or ten per block face. Noblemen would each have a five-acre town lot. That size of lot would not fit evenly within the standard street grid, so it seems likely that Locke’s lost “model” showed how those lots would have been accommodated within the city grid.

Where there was river frontage, Locke wrote that “nobody shall build a house within eighty feet of the low water mark, but it shall constantly be left for a wharf for the public use of the town.” The intent was to prevent overdevelopment that would impede access and create health and safety issues. Once again, the precedent for this concern was set in the regulations that followed the Great Fire of 1666. The City of London established a forty-foot buffer along much of the Thames in which construction was prohibited.

Locke provided for a large common of two hundred acres. It would be used initially to plant family gardens. Once sufficient produce was available from outlying farms, the common would be used for raising cattle. Then, after a period of twenty-one years, residents of Charleston would be free to determine future uses of the common, such as “exercise of the people, enlargement, or any other conveniences of the said town as occasion shall require.” Freeholders entitled to a home lot in Charleston were also entitled to an “out lot” for their family garden. The total acreage of the home lot and the out lot was limited to five percent of the total land grant to which the freeholder was entitled. So, if their land grant from the Lords Proprietors was 100 acres, their house lot and out lot combined could not exceed five acres.

To prevent land speculation, those owning and living in a house in Charleston were permitted to build additional houses but were required to build within twelve months of taking possession of a lot. Furthermore, any such additional houses had to be substantial structures of at least thirty feet in length, sixteen feet in width, and two stories in height (“besides garrets”).

In practice, Locke’s design specifications were followed less and less as the city grew. The regular grid devolved into irregular blocks, some of which were non-rectangular, bounded by oddly angled and curved streets. Street widths also varied greatly, with forty-foot widths becoming common and others ranging from sixty feet to twenty-five feet. Today, the visual effect of the narrower streets, which are often lined with high walls, is often that of an unplanned Medieval city rather than the modern planned city foreseen in Locke’s model. The effect, however, can be charming and intriguing. Curving and angular streets present little surprises to the visitor, adding to the sense of Charleston being a special city from another time.

Charlestonians today refer to the Grand Modell (preferring the archaic spelling with “ll”) not in the sense used by Locke, but simply as the old planned area of the city (now an elite and touristy neighborhood) south of Broad Street. While the area south of Tradd Street between Meeting Street and Lenwood Boulevard, in particular, retains some of the elements of the original plan, the idea that there is a plan of historical significance is flimsy at best.

Where Locke’s work as a city planner eventually succeeded was in influencing Oglethorpe and the Georgia Trustees. Benjamin Martyn, secretary to the Trustees, wrote “We are indebted to the Lord Shaftsbury, and that truly wise man Mr. Locke, for the excellent laws which they drew up for the first settlement of Carolina.” Oglethorpe wrote a lengthier assessment of the Grand Model, which began as follows: “This colony had a very promising beginning. There were a great number of laws, or constitutions agreed to by the Lords Proprietors, which gave a general toleration to the tender consciences, and contained many other wholesome regulations. These had been drawn up by the great lawyer and famous politician the Earl of Shaftesbury, with the assistance of Mr. Locke the philosopher….”

In drafting the plan for Savannah and its hinterlands, Oglethorpe drew heavily from Locke’s work, while rejecting Shaftesbury’s “gothic” social hierarchy in favor of what he called “agrarian equality.” With Carolina pressuring the Georgia Trustees to permit slavery, he wrote : “…if we allow slaves we act against the very principles by which we associated together, which was to relieve the distressed. Whereas, now we should occasion the misery of thousands in Africa, by setting men upon using arts to buy and bring into perpetual slavery the poor people who now live free there.”

Thomas D. Wilson, M.S., AICP is the author of The Ashley Cooper Plan: The Founding of Carolina and the Origins of Southern Political Culture, University of North Carolina Press, 2015. This article encapsulates material from that book.