Historical background of British town planning system

Ranging among the most sophisticated and the most complex land use system of planning and control is the British system. Debatably, this system came into being starting from garden cities movement that culminated in Ebenezer Howard’s Garden Cities of Tomorrow (Schubert, 2014). Since then England has experimented in various planning laws that include comprehensive town plus country planning. The Housing Act 1909 and Town Planning Act 1909 have arguably been derived in the nineteenth century from their housing as well as public health statutes. In commencement with Town and Country Planning 1947, England laid its basis of the current framework. This was made possible by gaining permission for local planning including all “material development” (HISTORY. 2017). A development tax was implemented which increased the value of derivation that was received from the permission of planning. Implementation of the tax lay confirmation on the development rights being nationalized using the help of a huge fund amounting to 300 sterling million pounds. These funds were often used for compensating the landowners if necessary, with proper application however. Consecutively the planning permission granting as well as withholding was under the guidance of extensive local plans of development which on a general basis conformed to the national structure plans. Therefore, by the year 1948, land ownership only meant that the owner had the current right for continuously using it. Alongside, legislation was passed by the government that gave permission for creating new towns, countryside preservation, development of towns, as well as transportation. All the above mentioned had the effect on lands of England and Wales in a considerable amount (Wannop, 2014).

The United Kingdom’s planning system came into foundation for the management of land development and land use for the public interest. However, until 2000, the systems of England and Wales were almost identical. The structure however changed after the Welsh government was formed in 2000 (Encyclopedia Britannica. 2017). The main aim before devolution was balancing economic development for protecting the environment.

The origin for the need for the establishing the most complex land use system of planning and control is the British system stems from the incident that occurred more than 200 years ago in the city of London. The city of London in 1666 was made of medieval houses mainly of oak timber. The poorer houses had walls covered in tar to keep out rain; however, this made the houses more fire vulnerable. The city had narrow streets with crowded houses (Pacione, 2014). The day’s firefighting brigades were consisted of bucket brigades in the neighborhood which were armed with water pails plus primitive hand pumps. on September 1, 1666, in the evening, Thomas Farrinor of the king’s baker failed in accomplishing the task of extinguishing the oven in a proper manner. Around midnight the smoldering embers led to the ignition of firewood next to the oven. Although, the house burnt, Thomas along with family and servant escaped barring one assistant who became the first victim of the great fire. Consecutively, the fire took a leap across street setting fire to a stable’s fodder plus straw. From there onwards it spread on to the Thames street with warehouses further aggravating the fire. The great fire of London rendered 100,000 people homeless. The king started the plan of rebuilding the capital with bricks. However, the structure of the city was still ruined.

Influence on the town planning process that has shaped the current policies by Thomas Adams

In between the years 1947-1999, various amendments and statutes were passed by the government, alongside the ministries plus departments in charge of planning the land use and control were also promulgated with different regulations along with guidance documents. These were implemented as a response to the white and green papers as well as the commission reports that recommended changes should be made within the laws of town and planning system (Urbanplanning.library.cornell.edu. 2017). The key issues that were discussed were transportation policy effect on the land use, open space preservation, and planning and regulation relationship, public participation and so on. From the year 2000, the power to make secondary planning legislation and the national policy of planning went into the hands of Welsh Government. The National Planning policy gives the planning authorities directions, guidance and advice for the delivery of the Wales planning system. The Welsh government’s policy documents published certain policies which comprise of Planning Policy Wales, a series of Technical Advice Notes providing an extensive detail on the specific topics of planning.

Thomas Adams was born in the 1871. He lived on a dairy farm outside of Edinburgh, Scotland. During his early 20’s he himself operated a farm (Pacione, 2014). At the age of 20, Thomas Adams went to London to attend the first annual convention of the British Amateur Press Association in 1892. There he was chosen as the first President. In the 1898, he established his own publication called the Progressive Youth of Great Britain: An Amateur Monthly Journal for Young Adults. From this, he became the founding member of British Town Planning Institute, founder of the Town Planning Institute of Canada and a founding member of the American City Planning Institute, forerunner of the American Institute of Planners (Planetizen: The independent resource for people passionate about planning and related fields. 2017). Along with this, he also was a leading discusser in the discussions of 1910. Following that, in the year 1910 itself he was also given the first position of the Town Planning Inspector at the Local Government Board. After this, he on a regular basis began meeting a small group of practitioners on a regular basis. The topic of town planning was the main area of discussion. Thomas Adams was the first individual who was able to make a living by planning as well as designing the garden suburbs. By the end he ended up designing seven of them. Due to his recognition he was appointed the first president of the British town planning institute.

Thomas Adams has the utmost believed in the Housing and Town Planning Act of 1909 of England and Wales. He believed that this act would help in the establishment of the planning process all across the country. In accordance to the act, he advised councils but soon realized none of the members of those councils had any will to expand or the urban planning cause (Nolen, 2014). On July 11 in 1913 a meeting was set in London for the meeting of a provisional committee. Among the membership list being drawn, the town Planning institute sent them an invitation to join them, following a meeting which took place on 21^st November 1913 which was chaired by Thomas Adams a council election took place in December for the very first time and Thomas Adams on 13^th March 1914 became their president. The head of the Canada commission was Sifton. He was a Manitoba businessman as well as a politician. His wide open policies of immigration had led to the overpopulation of Prairies. He was making efforts in dealing with the effect the one million immigrants were having on Canada between the years of 1896 and 1914. By the end of 1910, most of population of Canada started to reside in the urban centers of the city (Cip-icu.ca. 2017). The commissions were trying to formulate ways of coping with the housing market which has become wildly speculative. The city’s commission also was lacking in building regulations for the development of the land. Amidst this situation, Thomas Adams was called by the Canada commission to Canada. Thomas Adams contributed to the commission his ideas which included the establishing of the environmental standards ideas of the Garden city and along with that the idea of England of the control of the local government. After this, he was appointed as the advocate for the department of provincial municipal affairs and of the local planning.

Thomas Adams took the plans for the building of various other new communities. These new communities included Corner Brook in Newfoundland, Temiskaming in western Quebec and, most importantly, the Richmond district of Halifax (Hall, 2014). Adams was appointed with the task of replanning Richmond. Richmond has undergone a devastating situation due to the explosion of the ship of munitions on the Halifax Harbor in the year 1917. This explosion had been one of the most disastrous implications of World War I. the situation under which Thomas Adams was given the task of replanning of Richmond was a situation of emergency and the pressure of war. Due to this Thomas Adams could acquire powers that were extraordinary for a bureaucrat. In such a situation, he ruled out the interests of the locals and drew up a town and housing plan for the city that conformed to the hilly nature of Richmond. Along with that he put diagonals that led to the break of the pattern of the street’s grid. This was one Canadian tradition which was particularly disliked by Thomas Adams. In his later years his design of Lindenlea in Ottawa a vision of the urban planning model and housing design all through the United Kingdom and Wales came to an unfortunate end due to its taking over by others. In his last years he moved to New York where he built their local regional plan as well (Rtpi.org.uk. 2017). Then he became the private practitioner for both the Great Britain as well as the U.S. His ideologies as well as his designs and his concepts were very farfetched and broad minded. His ideas had a huge impact on the future practitioner of the country as well. He had ideas on the wasteful use of natural resources, the premature subdivision of the follies, and the requirement of planning the concordant of roads with the help of topography. These ideas are still true in time and are being implemented in the town and planning process of England in the present time as well.

Ebenezer Howard was born in the year 1852. His background of formal education was very limited. He moved to America at the age of twenty one and in Nebraska he realized his true calling which was not to be a farmer. In Chicago he made us of his shorthand knowledge and got appointed as a reporter for newspapers as well as courts (Coppockand Gebbett, 2016). He came back to England in 1876 and started working for a company that produced official reports for the parliament. He spent all his life doing this. He was an avid reader and had strong views on matters of social issues, which he addressed in his book in 1898. The book was named To-Morrow: A peaceful path to real reform. Within the book he printed the proposal of creating new towns that were limited in size, were previously planned and permanently surrounded by an agricultural and belt.

His idea attracted a lot of attention along with financial backing. This initiated Letch worth which was a venture which he wished would turn into a mass movement. His movement was sustained by this second book which was launched in 1902 (Bailey and Bryson, 2015). However, the launch of the second towns, Welwyn Garden City’s launch was not possible until the end of World War I. the second book came with a printed design that described his vision of the Garden City, its physical characteristics, and the idea of creating a cluster of the garden city with the increase in the population. He was not a designer but his verbal explanations along with the drawings painted a picture of his beliefs on the layout of the garden city. In the later years his radial pattern was also favored by many authors. Howard emphasized on permanent girdle’s importance for open as well as agricultural land around town. In no time the British planning doctrine accepted the idea and developed its dogma. The most interesting application of the idea can be seen in the plan of Greater London in 1944 and the New Towns Act of 1946. This act enabled creating a ring of new towns past the greenbelt of London (Meyer et al. 2015). His ideas on the creation of the Welwyn Garden City and Letch worth garden city had a huge amount of impact on the town and planning process of England and Wales. It shaped the very beginning of the planning process. His ideas had an impact of a lot of architects and town planners. His movements helped in the production of over 30 communities. His ideas became the pool of inspiration of many architects like Frederick Law Olmsted II and Clarence Perry.

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Hall, P., 2014. Cities of tomorrow: an intellectual history of urban planning and design since 1880. John Wiley & Sons.

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Bailey, A.R. and Bryson, J.R., 2015. A Quaker experiment in town planning: George Cadbury and the construction of Bournville model village. Quaker Studies, 11(1), p.6.

Meyer, S.R., Beard, K., Cronan, C.S. and Lilieholm, R.J., 2015. An analysis of spatio-temporal landscape patterns for protected areas in northern New England: 1900–2010. Landscape Ecology, 30(7), pp.1291-1305.

Wannop, U.A., 2014. The regional imperative: Regional planning and governance in Britain, Europe and the United States. Routledge.

Schubert, D., 2014. Transatlantic Crossings of Planning Ideas: The Neighborhood Unit in the USA, UK, and Germany. In Transnationalism and the German city (pp. 141-158). Palgrave Macmillan US.