Professor Steve Ward

This article takes a long view of British planning’s connections with continental Europe, locating Brexit within historic uncertainties about the country’s international outlook, interests and position. In 1948 Churchill portrayed Britain at the intersection of three ‘great circles’: the British Empire, the wider English-speaking world (principally the USA) and Europe. This notion is drawn on to show how the strong earlier European links of British planning were seriously disrupted or severed by twentieth century wars. These drew both country and planning approach closer to its ‘distant friends’ within the other ‘great circles’.
As former imperial ties faded and the USA relationship became less special, Britain looked again to Europe but without shedding these habitual links. Even after Britain joined the European Communities in 1973, its strongest international planning connections remained with the USA and its former Empire and Dominions. In the 1990s, the EU promoted spatial planning but Britain remained largely aloof until the ‘New Labour’ governments of 1997-2010. Yet growing Euroscepticism saw this relative enthusiasm fade, with Brexit reviving uncertainties, now about whether EU approaches should be jettisoned and a more deregulated
planning system created. The article predicts (or at least hopes) that current anti-Europe thinking will itself fade.

After some wartime planning, the British New Towns were launched in 1945-6 by the post-war Labour government. The New Towns were essentially statist, top-down initiatives to relieve the problems of congested urban areas and intended as self-contained and balanced communities for work and living. This paper critically examines the experience of Stevenage, the first New Town (designated November 1946), in light of changing political, economic and social circumstances at local and national levels. Its early years were very unsuccessful in fulfilling the foundational aims of the programme. This reflected a combination of strong local opposition, excessive government impatience and clumsy management so that, before 1951, it had a very poor record of housing completions. The 1950s and 1960s were highly successful for Stevenage’s growth and, to a large extent, in meeting the foundational aims of New Towns. It was outstandingly successful in becoming self-contained as regards employment. There were however limitations in the extent to which it was a socially balanced community that was truly relieving the problems of Greater London, whence most of its new arrivals had come. Because new residents gained house tenancies in Stevenage on the basis of the main breadwinner’s job, there was soon an upper working-class/lower middle-class predominance. The unskilled working class, ethnic minorities and older people were markedly underrepresented, present in much lower proportions than in congested inner London. There was also underrepresentation of managers, higher professional groups or the self-employed, reflecting both residential choices and the branch plant nature of its manufacturing economy. Several of these aspects became more problematic during the 1970s and 1980s, as the weaknesses of inner metropolitan areas grew. There were efforts henceforth to make housing tenancies less directly related to jobs. However, in 1980 the Stevenage Development Corporation was wound up and, during its final years, initiative had already been passing to other hands. Its rental housing stock was transferred to the local council while home ownership also grew markedly during the 1970s. The shift to private initiative went further when the Conservative Government after 1979 insisted that industrial and commercial assets soon be sold to help finance the remaining New Towns in the programme. These important and continuing changes, together with wider shifts such as manufacturing job decline, rise of service employment, growing car-based mobility and growing place of women in employment had further impacts for Stevenage. They raised further questions about how far it fulfilled the original New Town conception and whether that conception was even any longer relevant. The last section shows that Stevenage, although continuing to be an attractive location for employers, is now a much less self-contained and balanced community than in earlier decades. = 

Le programme des villes nouvelles britanniques a été lancé en 1945-46 par le gouvernement travailliste sur la base de rapports publiés pendant la guerre. Ces villes nouvelles étaient de initiatives étatistes, hiérarchiques, menées afin de soulager les problèmes de surpeuplement des villes britanniques ; elles étaient censées devenir des cités autonomes et indépendantes des grandes zones urbaines.
Cet article examine l’expérience conduite à Stevenage, la première ville nouvelle (décidée en 1946) à la lumière de changements contextuels aux niveaux national et local dans les domaines politique, économique et social. Il cherche à évaluer dans quelle mesure le développement de la ville a répondu aux ambitions du projet initial dans le domaine du logement, de la mixité sociale et de l’emploi. Il vise aussi à mesurer l’impact de l’abolition de la development corporation dans les années 1980 sur l’évolution de la ville et avance un bilan au début des années 2020.

Stephen V Ward looks back at how zoning played an integral part in the British planning system that began to emerge in the early 20th century, why it failed to live up to hopes invested in it, and why, despite continuing efforts, it became moribund and was replaced by a discretionary approach

Clément Orillard and Stephen  V Ward look at the track record of the UK and France in marketing their new town planning expertise internationally and consider key differences in approach.

Professional visits allowed specialist groups such as urban planners to learn about Soviet thinking, practice and life. This paper examines the communication and learning which occurred during two specific visits in 1936 and 1957/8. The paper shows the visual nature of planning assisted non-verbal communication and learning. It also highlights the impacts of different political contexts and the forms of visit, particularly between one-off trips (1936) and reciprocal exchange arrangements (1957/8). In 1936 the bold and comprehensive Soviet approach to planning was admired, bolstering domestic British arguments for a stronger planning system. By 1957/8, however, the balance had shifted so that the visit to the USSR served more sumbolic, quasi-diplomatic and touristic functions. Despite a relatively warm and informal encounter, British planners now found less in the USSR to admire professionally though Soviet planners were eager to investigate and apply British planning achievements.

In light of the burgeoning academic interest in policy mobilities and policy tourism, this paper offers a critical insight into international planning study tours. Countering the contemporary focus of much of the research on these topics, this paper draws on archival research to explore the international study tours of the UK's Town and Country Planning Association (TCPA) between 1947 and 1961. In doing this, the paper makes two wider arguments; first, that there remains significant mileage in bringing together the policy mobilities literature with the work on past exchanges and visits by architects, engineers and planners and, second, that greater awareness and appreciation of past examples of comparison and learning might allow contemporary studies to be situated in their longer historical trajectories.

This paper examines the work of Gordon Stephenson between January 1942 and December 1947 when he worked for the British central planning ministry. Using public and his own personal archives, it shows how, as part of a small, very talented team, he played a key role in developing a new expertise of planning to address the great challenges of the post-war years. The paper discusses his work formulating new planning standards for residential and commercial densities, daylighting and community development. He also played a significant role in Patrick Abercrombie's Greater London Plan team and led the small group that subsequently planned what became the first New Town at Stevenage. The paper shows that, at this time, Stephenson saw the planner as a rational, technical expert rather than as a consciously political actor.

This article examines the impact of Soviet communism on the British planning movement, especially from the 1930s-1960s. It is a very specific case study of international knowledge flows. The broad question of whether these resulted from a consciously rational learning process or were a more culturally constructed exercise in"imaginative geography" informs the empirical investigation. This focuses on the evolving political context for Anglo-Soviet planning contacts, the shifting motivations for seeking Soviet knowledge and the evolving balance of resultant relationships. The important role of a"friendship organisation" , the Society for Cultural Relations with the USSR, is examined. From 1955, the British Council created a new basis for contact that was less sympathetic to Soviet ideals. Many specific instances of planning connections are identified, especially visits in the 1930s and during the"Khrushchev thaw" in the 1950s. Overall, predominantly Utopian 1930s' views of Soviet urban planning changed towards more critical and negative views. Throughout, however, even the most sympathetic architects and planners retained some critical detachment and never proposed direct copying of Soviet planning models. The main impact for British planning was as a vast case study of the virtues of a bold, comprehensive and state-led approach.

This article reviews salient characteristics of planning historiography, primarily since 1990 but noting earlier tendencies, and identifies the principal networks which have fostered this work. Some key recent tendencies are explored, including (an incomplete) Anglophone dominance, tempered by recognition of international connectivities in both subject and approach. Several distinct genres of planning history research are considered, namely: organisations; biographies; urban settlements, individual and collective; national and global regions; and specific types of planned intervention. A critical section considers some limitations of planning history, arising from its empiricism, its subjectivisation of planning itself and bias towards modern Western planning. Among future trends identified are: a continuing geographical widening; integration with aspects of practice; and a dependence on mainstream journals connecting with planning history.