Alice Coleman
| Alice Mary Coleman | |
|---|---|
| Born | June 8, 1923 |
| Occupation | Geographer |
Alice Mary Coleman (born June 8, 1923) is emeritus professor of geography at King's College London. She is noted for directing the 1960s Second Land Use Survey of Britain and for analyses of land use planning and urban design which have influenced the design of residential developments since the 1980s.
After qualifying as a teacher Coleman studied for a BA at Birkbeck College and an MA from University College London.
After working as a secondary school teacher Coleman became a lecturer at the geography department of King's College London, eventually becoming professor in 1987 after other posts in Canada and Japan. She retired in 1996 and is now emeritus professor.
In the 1960s Coleman took on the role of director of the Second Land Use Survey of Britain. This was the first comprehensive attempt to map the use of land since Dudley Stamp's survey of the 1930s. Around 120 sheets each covering 200 km2 were published.
Coleman's findings on the Land Use Survey led to an attack on the effectiveness of the planning system within the UK, which she considered responsible for much degraded land in the rural/urban fringe (Coleman 1976).
As head of the Land Use Research Unit at King's in the 1980s, Coleman built on the work of architect Oscar Newman on the concept of defensible space. The unit studied indications of 'social malaise' (litter, vandalism, graffiti etc.) on post-war social housing developments in the inner London boroughs of Southwark and Tower Hamlets (visiting all 4,050 multi-storey blocks in these boroughs), and the Blackbird Leys estate in Oxford. These measures were correlated with various design features such as number of storeys, number of flats in a block etc.
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