Planning London

James Simmie

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781135371296
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Urban Planning & Landscaping

An introduction to the problems and practices of planning in London. The authors address the question of what contributions the land-use planning system has made and could make to resolving decrepit public transport, congestion, noise, dirt, crime, poverty, begging, homelessness. They analyse these conflicts in terms of history, jobs, housing, transport and the quality of the environment - and considers future options.

CHAPTER ONE

Planning and London

James Simmie

Introduction

Planning London is an introduction to British city planning. It uses London as the case study of land-use problems and the politics and policies involved in searching for solutions to them. While London is not an average or representative British city, being the capital city both in the sense of the seat of government and the major British concentration of economic power, and also in being by far the largest city in Britain, it does contain a full range of planning problems and issues which can be found in varying degrees in most of Britain’s other large conurbations. It is for this reason that concentrating on London as a case study serves not only to introduce students to planning in that city alone but also to the range of planning issues that are likely to confront planners in other large cities.

Chapter 1 of the book first of all outlines the basic purposes, principles and administrative structures of the British planning system in general and the parts which have applied in the case of London. Having defined planning in this way, it then goes on to examine the various geographical definitions of London. It coneludes by stressing the complex interconnectedness of the planning issues and problems confronting politicians and planners in a city such as London. Despite the importance of considering the interconnections of different land uses, it is also essential to have an individual grasp of the nature and characteristics of some of the key urban functions. For this reason, Chapters 2, 3 and 4 outline three of the most important aspects of any city. These are employment, housing and transport. Developing land-use planning policies to arrange and accommodate these and other city functions is a question of both politics and planning. Chapters 5, 6 and 7 therefore deal with these twin aspects of planning for London. Finally, Chapters 8 and 9 evaluate the past effects and future of planning of in London. These revolve around its special characteristics as not just another large city but as a “world city”. The special nature of such cities combines with all the other land-use issues confronting large cities to make planning for London an extremely complex collection of both general and particular problems. The final chapter sums up the experience of tackling these problems in the recent past and looks forward to how they may be tackled in the immediate future.

Before describing and analyzing these issues with specific reference to London, for those completely new to the study of British planning and urban analysis it is necessary to summarize some of the basic elements of the planning system and to define London in geographic terms as the empirical focus of the rest of the book. In what follows, planning is defined in terms of its general purposes and principles, and the administrative structures through which the system is operated are outlined. Alternative geographical definitions of London are described and the significance of different definitions for planning purposes is explained.

What is planning?

Purposes

Turning first to the definition of planning, it may be thought of either as a means to greater ends, along with other public and private policies, or as an end in itself. In the minds of the originators of the British planning system, the broader definition of the purposes of planning was uppermost. Later, as the system became established and bureaucratized, a narrower definition of its basic purpose has been developed.

At first, the coalition government drawn from all parties during the Second World War was receptive to the idea of planning for two main reasons. The first of these was the recent experience of the economic collapse and depression during the late 1920s and early 1930s. This, combined with wartime production needs, gave rise to ideas for and an acceptance of the need for economic planning. The second reason was the need to provide a morale-boosting vision of post-war society. Ideas for economic and land-use planning were developed, along with other aspects of a “Welfare State”, as part of this vision.

The ideas for the purposes of the land-use planning part of this vision were developed by elites inside and outside Parliament. According to Hall et al. (1973), these elites followed a unitary model of society in which social stability and harmony were of prime concern. These views failed to recognize the inherent conflicts of interests both between different elites and between them and the rest of the population, which have dogged land-use planning in Britain ever since the Second World War.

These basic conflicts rest on the differences of interest between manufacturing industry and agriculture, often expressed as a difference between town and country, and between these and the mass of the working population. During the war there was some co-operation between manufacturing and agriculture because of their importance to the war effort. There was some acceptance by their elites that better conditions should be promised to the working masses.

The underlying purposes of this initial vision have changed over time. Some indication of these changes is expressed in the planning law that is the statutory basis of land-use planning in Britain. They have been analyzed by McAuslan (1980) in terms of the ideologies of planning law. McAuslan has identified three main ideologies which, at different times, have formed the underlying bases of British planning since the war. They are:

• – the protection of private property
• – the advancement of the public interest
• – the promotion of public participation.

The protection of private property has the longest history and is most dominant. It is fundamental to British society. It defines the acceptable boundaries of public involvement in private property and markets. It also ensures that, in the long run, the coexistence between the public interest and private property will always end up being on terms dictated by the interests of private property.

Looking at the main periods of planning history in Britain, the ideology of private property has been clearly dominant before the Second World War and since 1979. The bearers of this dominant or influential ideology have also been in conflict with attempts to override it during the 1947–68 and 1969–78 periods of British planning history.

The ideology of the public interest in planning developed during the second half of the nineteenth century. It was expressed in terms of regulations over urban conditions, particularly with respect to public health provisions such as clean water supplies and systems of sewers. It was broadened during the war years to include planning and the whole idea of the Welfare State, which was set out in the famous Beveridge Report (1942) Social Insurance and Allied Services. The concept of the public interest received its strongest expression during the immediate post-war period and up to about 1968. The governing elites incorporated elements of both private-property and public-interest ideologies in planning legislation and policies during this time.

In Britain the ideology of participation stands in opposition to the first two ideologies. This is because it forms the basis of claims for all members of the public to be involved in planning decision-making. This runs directly counter to the elitist tradition that decisions are made by major property owners, governing elites and experts.

In British planning, the high point of public participation came during the 1969 to 1979 period. It received its strongest official expression in the Skeffington Report (1969) of the Committee on Public Participation in Planning. Since 1979 it has been intentionally whittled away by an authoritarian central government.

It may be that the public-interest purposes of planning will come to the fore again with the political acceptance of environmental concerns and the currently vague concept of “sustainable development”. The driving force behind such a change could be similar to that behind the movement for public health regulations during the nineteenth century. The main difference being that, in the late twentieth century, the capacity to pollute the environment and endanger public health is on a global rather than a local scale.

Principles

The operational principles behind the administrative regulations developed to implement the shifting general purposes of planning have themselves changed through time. The first post-war Town and Country Planning Act in 1947 expropriated all the future urban private property rights of owners to change the existing uses of their buildings or to construct new ones at will. The major, and often elite, land users - agriculture, forestry, statutory undertakers, the Crown and the military – were exempt from these provisions. From that time, private property owners wishing to carry out urban development had to obtain planning permission from the relevant local planning authority (LPA). Development was defined broadly as “the carrying out of building, engineering, mining or other operations i...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Dedication
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations and acronyms
• 1 Planning and London
• 2 Industry and employment in London
• 3 Housing
• 4 Transport
• 5 Politics and planning in London
• 6 Land-use planning since 1947
• 7 Effectiveness and outcomes of land-use planning in Greater London
• 8 Planning implications of London’s world-city characteristics
• 9 London 1994: retrospect and prospect
• Index