"surgical in which as much of a portion or structure as feasible is maintained," typically "an equally effective alternative to radical surgery." This medical description of conservative surgery closely parallels the beliefs linked with proto-urban planner Sir Patrick Geddes (1854-1922). Geddes was an English civil servant, architect, and urban planner. He is best known for his work on townships in Scotland that led to the creation of many modern cities there. However, he also advocated for conservation of natural beauty in city centers, which today is called sustainable urban planning. Geddes believed that human beings needed nature and should try to preserve it whenever possible. He argued that urban areas were destroying their natural surroundings and claimed that this was causing diseases such as tuberculosis and bronchitis to spread more rapidly. In response to these problems, Geddes proposed some solutions that would help people live in harmony with each other and preserve nature at the same time. One of his ideas was that cities need to be composed of several smaller neighborhoods that have access to nature. These small cities would be more efficient to run and could provide better living conditions than large metropolises. This idea of preserving natural beauty while still having large cities is what we call sustainable urban planning. It aims to create compact, livable communities that require less energy to maintain them then larger cities that contain more buildings with less space per person.