England. To do otherwise would have meant a hugely expanded list. However, this does mean that the wealth of influence and seminal practice from around the world is largely unacknowledged. This has a knock-on effect in reducing the number of entries on issues where some key thinking was being undertaken internationally. Thirdly, my list shows that I am a child of the 1960s; there is a heavy preponderance of publications from the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s. But enough apologies. Such a list lends itself to analysis by date, topic, common theme or breaks in the continuum of policy development. In this article I substitute any such rigour with a few random thoughts – the first that, with hindsight or otherwise, not all the material on my list is material I admire or would turn to in a moment of personal crisis about the value of planning. I have included a couple of actions in my list – events such as the mass trespass on Kinder Scout in 1932, the occupation to try to prevent the demolition of 144 Piccadilly in 1969 or the protests to try to halt the M3 extension at Twyford Down did, I feel, mark a real change in the public’s view about aspects of planning. Perhaps my list will serve to add a little professional pride in this centenary year. It should certainly add some context to the challenges that planners face today and show what we and others sometimes forget – that we have a long history of tackling the issues that we sometimes think of as insurmountable. 1942: Maps for the National Plan | 1944: Greater London Plan | 1945: A Plan for Kingston upon Hull prepared by Edwin Lutyens & Patrick Abercrombie | 1946: New Towns Act | 1946: The Clyde Valley Report by Patrick Abercrombie | 1946: Dower Report on National Parks | 1947: Town and Country
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(1) 1944: Greater London Plan (2) 1963: Traffic In Towns (the Buchanan Report) (3) 1981: The Brixton disorders, 10-12 April 1981 (The Scarman Report) (4) 2013: The Planners, BBC Two There have been many welcome attempts to popularise planning. My father, an architect, had a copy of the Penguin edition of the 1944 County Of London Plan in his bookshelves and reports such as Colin Buchanan’s Traffic In Towns, the Scarman Report on the Brixton Riots and books like Judy Hillman’s 1971 Planning For London, Community and Privacy in 1966 and Bob Colenutt and Peter Ambrose’s The Property Machine were published in paperback. That legacy of bringing planning to a wider public is shown most recently in the BBC Two series, The Planners (later Permission Impossible).
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(5) 1933: Town And Country Planning by Patrick Abercrombie (6) 1940: Thomas Sharp, Town Planning
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Planning Act | 1948: Plan for Stevenage by Sir Frederick Gibberd | 1948: The Redevelopment of Central Areas‚ guidance by the Ministry of Town and Country Planning | 1949: National Parks & Access to the Countryside Act | 1952: Principles and Practice Of Town And Country Planning, Lewis
Many of the publications popularising planning were produced during the Second World War. These include Thomas Sharp’s Town Planning (1940) and Sir Patrick Abercrombie’s Town and Country Planning – published in its second edition in 1943 by the ‘Home University Library’. The Prefatory Note to the first edition of Town Planning highlights the apparent dichotomy of looking to the future in such a constructive way (one of the hallmarks of good planning) when one might have thought that, back then, minds would be on other things: “In a sense town and country planning is planning for living: planning for living is planning for peace: and most planning in war is planning for death.”
Keeble | 1955: Ian Nairn’s Outrage | 1955: Circ. 42/55: Green Belts | 1956: Clean Air Act | 1957: Plans for Roehampton Estate designed by Robert Matthew and Leslie Martin | 1960: The New Birmingham, Herbert Manzoni | 1960: The Image Of The City by Kevin Lynch | 1961: Jane Jacobs’ The
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Death And Life Of Great American Cities | 1961: Homes For Today & Tomorrow (the Parker Morris report)
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