Garden Cities was one of the first suggested solutions to rapid urban growth. The concept appeared to be anti-urban. The Garden City was introduced in the early twentieth century by Ebeneezer Howard and was adopted by the Town Planning Association 1919. A Garden City is:
“a town designed for healthy living and industry: of a size that makes possible a full measure of social life but not larger: surrounded by a rural belt: the whole of the land being public ownership or held in trust for the community”
(Mandanipour, A, 1992 pp2).
Howard designed the famous three magnets diagram merging the town way of life with the country way of life producing a Town and Country lifestyle. Town life was good as it offered excellent social and economic opportunities, however this was at the cost of living in a ‘Victorian slum city’. The countryside although clean, spacious and picturesque, had very little to offer in the way of work, wages and social life. Howard proposed a mixture of the two by establishing a Garden City. The Garden City would be surrounded by it’s own green belt so that each one was separated from the next and would be connected by excellent transport links. Howard aimed to do this by buying land at low prices in the countryside and then encouraging industries to locate their factories in these areas to offer economic opportunities (Hall, P.1998).
Letchworth was the first Garden City founded in 1903-4 and was located 35 miles north of London. This was a result of Ebenezer Howard’s proposals. Letchworth was designed by Unwin and Parker. The industrial zone was positioned in the centre, which was predominantly pedestrianized. The residential area enjoyed local services such as schools, shops, churches and public houses (Mandanipour, A 1992).
In 1912 Unwin stated his support for satellite towns, these were towns that were to be built around cities in the suburbs, but were not self contained in that they would still work in the city. Wythenshawe in Manchester is an example of this (Hall, P, 1998)
The Housing, Town Planning Act of 1919 introduced state subsidies for housing thereby producing council estates across Britain. A new standard of working class house was introduced with better facilities and only twelve houses per acre were built, again this may be perceived as an anti-urban scheme as it disperses the development. In order to carry out this, only virgin land on the town peripheries could be developed (Cullingworth, B etal 1997). Various legislation was introduced over the following years giving the Town Planning Association more control over development particularly to respond to the problems of urban areas and to protect the rural areas. The Town and Country Planning Act of 1932 increased the control of planners to more types of land. Land became zoned for certain types of development, ie residential or industrial. In 1934 the Special Areas Act identified certain areas where economic development was to be facilitated and social improvements were to be made.
The Barlow Report of 1940 made recommendations for planning policy and concluded that:
“ the disadvantages,……constitute serious handicaps,…. and dangers to the nation’s life and development, and we are of the opinion that definite action should be taken by the government towards remedying them”
(Cullingworth, B etal 1997 pp18).
The report identified that industry should be widely dispersed so that the majority of the population would stop migrating to London and adding to the already overcrowded areas. It also encouraged the use of the wide base of resources around Britain. The Barlow report therefore promoted anti-urban themes. In 1941 the Scott report identified the need for countryside protection from urban encroachment conflicting with the Barlow report recommendations.
New Towns were built under the 1946 Act as an alternative to City overgrowth and overcrowding. The idea behind the New Towns was the:
“ creation of new built environments, i.e, by starting afresh, we would be able to create healthier societies free from the problems we face in the human settlements”
(Mandanipour, A 1992, pp27)
In twenty-four years thirty-two New Towns were designated. The new towns were positioned around London, Scotland, Ireland and Wales. The first generation of New Towns were located in areas where there were few inhabitants; the second generation were located in areas that already had a relatively high population.
Milton Keynes was the last British New Town to be made. It is the largest new town with a population of 250,000, living in an area of 49 square miles deigned as an open matrix. Milton Keynes was built on a grid style plan, employment areas were all evenly dispersed so that people could chose where to work and not be restricted to all working in the centre of the business district. The New towns added around one million people to the original population of the designated areas and created approximately half a million jobs within those areas (Mandanipour, A 1992). They did create new problems though such as economic gaps, no sense of community and a monotonous landscape. Although the aim of the New Town was to move people away from the urban areas, they were not entirely anti-urban as they simply created a new urban area, but less densely populated with better services.
The 1947 Town and Country Planning Act enabled local authorities to have control over all development thereby improving living conditions by preventing further development within overcrowded areas and preventing virgin lands from becoming overdeveloped. The process of planning permission was introduced under this act. The 1949 National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act was passed. Countryside planning was focussed upon whereby the general concept was to promote development that did not cause detriment to the countryside. The designation of National Parks was to again protect areas of natural outstanding beauty from urban development. It also aimed to maintain an area where people could escape for recreational and relaxation purposes away from inner urban area life (Rydin, Y 1998). This was a sign of the first recognition of the importance of safeguarding the countryside, it was anti-urban as it prevented the countryside from becoming urbanely developed.
Green belt policy emerged in 1955 after concerns grew regarding urban sprawl. PPG 2 stated that green belts were to prevent one town merging with another, to preserve the character of individual towns, to prevent countryside from encroachment, to assist in urban regeneration by using derelict land instead of new undeveloped land and to resist unrestricted sprawl of built-up areas. They were to be used for recreation, to retain beautiful landscapes, to improve derelict land sites, to secure a nature interest supporting the tourism economy and to retain the agricultural, forestry and other related uses economies. The concept of the green belt was widely welcomed by members of the public and local authorities. The green belt enabled local government to control policy with discretion; it safeguarded the rural residents from vast changes in their locality and again maintained an area for leisure purposes (Cullingworth, B etal 1997). This I feel is the turning point from where planning policies became predominantly concerned with the protection of undeveloped land.
“Green belts now cover one and a half million hectares of England”
(Cullingworth, B etal 1997,pp180).
The sixties saw the rise of urban and regional planning. The 1968 Town and Country Planning Act introduced structure plans and local plans that the public were to be involved in. Transport programmes and policies were introduced to make areas more accessible to people living in the countryside and suburbs.
In the seventies there was the realisation of inner city problems such as racism and urban disorder and the need for rehabilitation of the inner city areas. In 1972 the Local Government Act reorganised local government into counties and districts. The New Towns programme began to be phased out as it was taking money from the cities. The 1977 White paper specified the need to obtain investment from the private sector in industry, housing and commerce. The Inner Urban Areas Act of 1978 gave local authorities with major inner area problems the ability to develop the area economically. The Urban Programme was introduced and was the most influential source of funding for around 10,000 projects every year with increasing emphasis on economic development. There became an increasing focus on inner-city regeneration (Cullingworth, B etal 1997).
The 1980 Local Government Planning and Land Act introduced urban development corporations and enterprise zones. Thatcher replaced regional policy by urban policies that were targeted on the inner city areas that were suffering major unemployment. Heseltine introduced a market-led strategy to inner city regeneration attracting the private sector to invest. The London Docklands was an example of this (Montgomery, J 1990). As Thatcher was in power at this point, by regenerating the London Dockland area with the help of the London Dockland Development Corporation they created an enclave of owner occupied housing in a once safe Labour borough. Opposition to this was soon disregarded as the land being used was previously wasted. An increase in jobs in London also occurred due to this and other developments comprising of public and private partnership (Hall, P 1992).
The 1990 Town and Country Planning Act allowed local authorities to:
‘enforce proper maintenance of land where it is considered to affect adversely the amenity of a neighbourhood’
(Rydin, Y 1998).
The importance of conservation areas was realised under the 1990 Listed buildings and Conservation Areas Act. Conservation areas are geographically located and aim to enhance the protection of these areas by development control. The UK has 9000 conservation areas covering 1.3 million buildings. English Heritage was formed whose aim is to maintain the historic buildings and sites of Britain (Rydin, Y 1998).
The beginning of the nineties witnessed the global issue of environmental problems, the 1992 Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit was an international gathering of leaders to discuss the environment and the need to sustain it under Agenda 21. Sustainable development is the need to:
“present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”
(Cullingworth, B etal 1997pp197).
The Commission on Sustainable Development was introduced; they required national governments to prepare statements on how they were to achieve sustainable development. Local Agenda 21 is a movement at the local level to instigate these policies. Sixty percent of Britain’s council’s have an LA21 plan. Changes in public opinion due to their awareness of the need for sustainability reinforced the top-down pressure to manage land resources (Rydin, Y 1998).
Sustainability was concerned with the environment and the need to preserve it for the sake of future resources; substitute resources were to be identified to preserve our non-renewable resources. Sustainability is also concerned with the quality of life enjoyed by people today and in the future. Urban renewal and the redevelopment of inner city areas was one of the methods used to promote sustainability. Out of town retail centres became more restricted through PPG6 in 1993 which aimed to deal with the problems of the environment and the economy of the city centres caused by the out of town centres. PPG6 encouraged the redevelopment of town centres and to promote mix-use development to retain key town centre uses. It was emphasized that Town centres were a part of our national heritage and so should be preserved. The objectives of PPG6 were:
“to ensure the availability of a wide range of services to which people have easy access by a choice of means of transport….. these objectives seek to promote sustainable development and are consistent with the governments PPG13 : Transport”
(PPG6, 1996 pp3).
The sequential approach was also to be adopted whereby the location for town centres should be in an area where there are buildings suitable for conversion. The second preference would be a site on the edge of a centre or district and if none of these were appropriate, only then should they be located out of centre. This would also correspond with PPG13 that seeks to reduce the need to travel thereby protecting the environment and contributing towards sustainability.
The nineties also saw a move away from the original Urban Programme towards a system of bidding for inner city money in partnerships with business organisations. City Challenge and the Single Regeneration Budget comprised of various grant systems; the National Lottery became part of this. The Private Finance Initiative was introduced in 1992 that allowed the use of public sector funds for key infrastructure projects. The public sector would then receive a return from the local services built as part of the infrastructure (Rydin, Y 1998).
The new housing system introduced by PPG 3 represents another major change in policy. It emphasises the reuse of land in urban areas, these sites were to be named ‘Brownfield sites’ (Urban Task force 1999). This coincides with sustainability as it is safeguarding the countryside and environment. This urban regeneration and recycling of land can be achieved by reducing the amount of green field sites bought for development. Urban capacity studies were also introduced, these display how much more development an urban area can accommodate without adversely affecting the environment or the quality of life of residents within the area (Urban Task Force 1999).
In the year 2000 the Sustainable Development Commission was established to review it’s progress. The Labour government published the urban White Paper named: ‘Our Towns and Cities: The future: Delivering an Urban Renaissance’. The paper outlined the methods that we should all be encouraged to follow and support. These were the use of brownfield sites, migration of people back into urban areas, the need to improve the quality of life in the areas of urban poverty and unrest, enhance the economic success of our urban areas and to make urban living sustainable, affordable, practical and attractive (Cullingworth, B etal.1997).
The history of British Planning was dominated by anti-urbanism to quite a large extent until around 1950. This was because the urban areas were saturated causing health problems, social problems and economic problems. Town planning in the nineteenth century was a response to industrial, economic, urbanisation and poverty problems. The appalling living conditions endured by the working class people prompted the need for social reform (Montgomery, J etal 1990). Garden Cities and New Towns were examples of the anti-urban schemes. These schemes were not completely anti-urban concerned, they aimed to combine the good factors of urban life with the good aspects of rural life to better the quality of life which was part of the ‘Utopian’ vision.
The 1950’s – 1970’s witnessed planning becoming concerned with urban containment and suburbanisation. The outward spread of the urban areas into the countryside was prevented; this was done through the designation of Green Belts around the cities and the concentration of urban development into ‘substantial pockets’ instead of scattered developments. High-rise tower blocks were constructed in densely populated areas of the cities to accommodate this (Taylor, N 1998).
The 1980’s onwards was and is dominated by pro-protectionist issues of the environment, rural areas, historic areas and by pro-sustainability of our non-renewable resources. The focus switched from developing new land to regenerating and recycling the land already developed (brownfield sites). Schemes aimed to improve the inner cities to attract people to move back into the urban areas. The British Planning of the 1950’s was where the signs of change appeared, but policies were not then pro-urban but pro-protection, of the countryside and the heritage of Britain for the benefit of today’s generations as well as the future generations.
Town Planning is a form of social action it is about:
“intervening in the world to protect or change it in some way, to make it other than it would otherwise be without planning……the second point to note is that Town Planning is about making judgments about what best to do-that is, about how best to plan the environments we inhabit” (Taylor, N 1998, pp167-168).
References
Benevolo, L. (1967) The Origins of Modern Town Planning RKP
Cullingworth, J.B & Nadin, V. (1997) Town and Country Planning in Britain (12th
edition) London:Routledge.
Drewett, . & Thomas, R.(1973) The Containment Of Urban England. Vol. 2 The
Planning System London:Allen and Unwin
Hall, P. (1992) Urban and Regional Planning London: Routledge
Hall, P.(1998) Cities of Tomorrow Oxford: Blackwell
Mandanipour, A (1992) The Principles of Urban Design in The British New Towns.
Paper No 15 Department of Town and Country Planning.
University of Newcastle upon Tyne
Montgomery, J. & Thornley, A (eds) (1990) Radical Planning Initiatives: New
Directions for Urban Planning in the 1990s Aldershot:Gower
Rydin, Y. (1998) Urban and Environmental Planning in the UK Basingstoke:
MacMillan
Taylor, N. (1998) Urban Planning Theory since 1945 London:Sage
Urban Task force (1999) Towards an Urban Renaissance London:Spon
Wirth, L. (1938) Urbanism as a way of life. Am.J.Soc.44, pp 1-24
Planning Policy Guidance Note 3: Housing (March 2000) DETR
Planning Policy Guidance Note 6: Town Centres and Retail Developments (June
1996) DETR
