Examines the replanning in the 1940s of Britain's blitzed city centres, this book traces how consensus was sought and achieved with regard to the city plans of Bristol, Coventry and Southampton and places them in the wider context of post-war reconstruction.

Many British cities were devastated by bombing during the Second World War and faced stark economic dilemmas concerning reconstruction planning and implementation after 1945. How did politicians, civil servants and local authorities manage to produce the cities we live in today? Rebuilding Britain's Blitzed Cities examines the underlying processes and pressures, especially financial and bureaucratic, which shaped postwar urbanism in Britain. Catherine Flinn integrates architectural planning with in-depth economic and political analyses of Britain's blitzed cities for the first time. She examines early reconstruction arrangements, the postwar economic apparatus and the challenges of postwar physical planning across the country, while providing insightful case studies from the cities of Hull, Exeter and Liverpool. By addressing the ideology versus the reality of reconstruction in postwar Britain, Rebuilding Britain's Blitzed Cities highlights the importance of economic and political factors for understanding the British postwar built environment.

The process of urbanisation and suburbanisation in Britain from the Victorian period to the twentieth century.

This thirteenth edition has been completely revised to take into account all the changes that have occurred in British planning, including the policies introduced by the Labour government, devolution, innovations and the European Union.

As much as any country, England bore the brunt of Germany's aggression in World War II, and was ravaged in many ways at the war's end. Celebrated historian David Kynaston has written an utterly original, and compellingly readable, account of the following six years, during which the country rebuilt itself. Kynaston's great genius is to chronicle the country's experience from bottom to top: coursing through through the book, therefore, is an astonishing variety of ordinary, contemporary voices, eloquently and passionately evincing the country's remarkable spirit. Judy Haines, a Chingford housewife, gamely endures the tribulations of rationing; Mary King, a retired schoolteacher in Birmingham, observes how well-fed the Queen looks during a royal visit; Henry St. John, a persnickety civil servant in Bristol, is oblivious to anyone's troubles but his own. Together they present a portrait of an indomitable people and Kynaston skillfully links their stories to bigger events thought the country. Their stories also jostle alongside those of more well-known figures like celebrated journalist-to-be John Arlott (making his first radio broadcast), Glenda Jackson, and Doris Lessing, newly arrived from Africa and struck by the leveling poverty of post-war Britain. Kynaston deftly weaves into his story a sophisticated narrative of how the 1945 Labour government shaped the political, economic, and social landscape for the next three decades.

Fully revised and thoroughly updated, the Second Edition of Planning and Urban Change provides an accessible yet richly detailed account of British urban planning. Stephen Ward demonstrates how urban planning can be understood through three categories: ideas - urban planning history as the development of theoretical approaches: from radical and utopian beginnings, to the `new right′ thinking of the 1980s, and recent interest in green thought and sustainability; policies - urban planning history as an intensely political process, the text explains the complicated relation between planning theory and political practice; and impacts - urban planning history as the divergence of expectation and outcome, each chapter shows how intended impacts have been modified by economic and social forces. This Second Edition features an entirely new chapter on the key policy changes that have occurred under the Major and Blair governments, together with a critical review of current policy trends.

Explores the phenomenon of the mass movement of people away from town and city centres to live in new estates and towns built since World War II. Using sociology, town-planning materials, oral history and other sources, this book examines the making of modern suburbia.