Strategic planning in London: the past and the future

George Nicholson and Leith Penny

George Nicholson is Former Chair of the Greater London Council Planning Committee and Leith Penny is Former Development Planner, the Greater London Council.

This article is based on the Keynote Address given by Mr Nicholson at the GLC Planning and Transport Confer- ence, The County Hall, London, 31 Janu- ary 1986.

In the Egyptian desert, west of Cairo, is the site of the 6th October New Town. It is a massive enterprise: larger than Mil- ton Keynes, it is only one of a number of satellites being planned by a city which is also constructing a complete new Metro system and building new houses by the thousand. Yet Cairo is, by any economic or social indicatdr you choose, a Third World city. It is impoverished, and sub- jected to incredible pressures on housing and services. Millions of its people are unemployed. Yet it sees its future in metropolitan planning - planning of stag- gering scale and boldness given the re- sources available.

In Britain, far richer and better equip- ped in terms of professional expertise, planning is under attack. In the country whose planning system and ideas have been looked on with envy by the rest of

the world, the planning community is undergoing a crisis of confidence. In London, the system grows weaker almost daily. In docklands, the designation of an Enterprise Zone and the creation of the LDDC took control of the area’s destiny out of the hands of elected planning authorities, and now, at Canary Wharf, the Enterprise Zone concept itself has been hijacked by international property developers. At the Tillingham Hall in- quiry, it was only the work of the GLC over the preceding year which enabled a London-wide case to be presented. On the fringes of the capital, developers were waiting for 1 April, ready to pounce on Green Belt sites along the line of the M25. There will be no London-wide planning body to stand in their way - least of all the London Advisory Planning Committee.

The contrast between the two countries _ Egypt and the UK - could not be starker. They with so little, attempting so much; and we, still with so much by world standards, throwing away what we have. Why should this be? It is not as though

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we no longer have any need for planning. The transformation which has occurred

in the economic fortune of many parts of London over the past 15 years, combined with reductions in public expenditure and in many urban services, have created a real and growing human crisis. Denied the hope of permanent employment, and alienated by a growing polarization which is both social and geographic, a substan- tial minority of Londoners have no reason to believe that the established institutions of urban society are capable of providing a better future for them. The future of London as a civilized and humane environment in which to live is under threat.

The strain of the social fabric is mir- rored in the decay of the physical en- vironment. Infrastructure is ageing, and the quality of the housing stock is de- teriorating. Homelessness is increasing; as much as 700% since 1970 in the GLC area. New building and renovation are not keeping pace, and the improvements in living space which people inherited when they moved to new estates in the 1950s and 1960s are now being reversed. High prices encourage the sub-division of older properties and new houses are built to standards which would have been judged inadequate 40 years ago. Despite

‘London is the victim not of too much planning, but of too little’

all this, free-marketeers try to tell us that Londoner’s salvation lies in less planning, not more; planning is blamed for Lon- don’s massive loss of jobs and for decades of economic mismanagement; planning is blamed for bad housing; for vandalism; for urban riots; as though London’s planners had actually wanted to build .homes on the cheap, had intended Lon- doners to be denied basic community facilities, and had purposely arranged mass unemployment and inequality among working people.

This point of view will not wash.

London is the victim not of too much planning, but of too little. In terms of structures and institutions, in terms of powers and resources, London has been consistently denied the means of addres- sing its own problems. That is one side of the equation: the other is the purpose which the machinery of planning exists to fulfil; and here, too, London has suf- fered. We have to ask ourselves what sort of city we want to live in. If we do not have an answer, we will be at the mercy of the latest fashion, and the victim of whatever trend is grabbing the headlines. It happened in the 1960s with the growth of the private motor car. It happened

with housing, when architects and

system-builders persuaded us that high- rise flats had the answer to the housing problem. It is happening now as Britain’s cities are thrown open to the highest bidder.

Only a clear idea of what London should be like - a humane vision, sensi- tive to the needs and wishes of Londoners _ can save us from falling into traps like these. And that means having a plan: not just a document that sets out programmes and forecasts, but a system of planning that gives people a say, and which does not lose sight of the main objective of making London a better place to live.

The planning of land use, development and transport in London has a long history, in which the abolition of the GLC represents not a conclusion but an historical hiatus. Such are the anomalies and difficulties built into the new struc- ture which will have come into effect on April Fool’s Day 1986, and such will be the burden upon general government as it takes over the administration of six great metropolitan areas - such, above all, is the climate of opinion in almost all circles other than that occupied by the present government - that future reform is even- tually certain. So it is appropriate that a body with 20 years of experience in strategic planning for land use and trans- port should reflect on its past record. We should ask what the post-war history of

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London can tell us about the potential and limitations of metropolitan govern- ment. By taking, if we can, a longer view, we may perhaps achieve a better under- standing of the fundamental issues of how

‘strategic planning is both a feasible and a necessary part of the government of a great city’

our metropolitan life should be orga- nized. It is only on the basis of such an understanding that we can hope to con- vince the people of London, and perhaps even each other, of what the Egyptians already know: that strategic planning is both a feasible and a necessary part of the government of a great city.

Metropolitan planning: the expecta- tion. Attempts to shape and guide change in metropolitan London date from a very early stage in the capital’s development, For the past 400 years, growth and congestion in London have been seen as major problems of domestic and social policy. But though its direct ancestry goes back to the public health legislation of 100 years ago, and to social and municip- al reformers at the beginning of this century, our modern planning system had its immediate origins in the years around the second world war.

The terms in which Whitehall debate was conducted in these years were dominated by the findings of the Barlow Commission on the distribution of the industrial population, which had been published at the beginning of 1940. Origi- nally appointed to consider the decline of traditional heavy industries in the re- gions, the Commission also took into account the problems caused by uneven development nationally, including growth and congestion in the South-East. Rather than leave the industrial regions of the worn out inner cities quietly to crumble away, the Commission recom- mended the decentralization of industry and population to create better living

conditions, the promotion of a balance distribution of employment between different parts of the country, and the establishment of a national authority to secure the redevelopment of old and overcrowded towns.

The breadth of these recommendations carried particular implications for Lon- don. As the largest and most congested urban area in the country, it was the prime candidate for redevelopment on the Barlow model. Taking his cue from the Commission’s report, it was the Minister of Works, Lord Reith, who persuaded the London County Council to engage the services of the doyen of British planners, Patrick Abercrombie, to prepare a plan for the Council’s area in collaboration with the LCC’s own Chief Architect, J.H. Forshaw. It was also the Minister himself who in 1942 commis- sioned Abercrombie to prepare a further advisory plan for an area of 2600 square miles, extending outwards from the LCC boundary to a distance of some 30 miles from Charing Cross.

The two plans, published in 1943 and 1944 were in all essentials diffferent expressions of the same strategy. Their importance as benchmarks in the de- velopment of British planning can scarce- ly be overstated: it was part of Abercrom- bie’s brief in preparing the LCC plan that the result should provide guidance to central government in its consideration of the methods and Machinery to be adopted nationally in post-war planning.

‘Abercrombie’s recommended compromise meant that more than a million people would have to move out of their existing homes’

Central government provided Abercrom- bie with funds and a high-powered staff. So, as the war ended, London’s planners and central government were in more or

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less complete agreement about how the capital’s problems should be tackled.

At the centre of Abercrombie’s strategy was the idea of urban contain- ment. He argued that London’s form should be clearly defined and limited, and its encroachment on the surrounding countryside stopped by a broad Green Belt. Within the Green Belt ring there was to be a fundamental restructuring, made possible by a substantial reduction in the urban population.

London had for centuries been seen as a crowded and congested place. What was new in the post-war approach was the systematic way in which quantitative me- asures of overcrowding were used as a basis for public policy. Abercrombie’s plans contained standards of population density which expressed the relationship between the intensiveness with which land was used, and the physical character of the buildings which resulted. The setting of maximum density standards for different parts of London was supposed, according to Abercrombie, to define the essential requirements ‘for decent, com- fortable and happy living conditions’.

The London Advisory Plans, and the First London Development Plan which followed them, were based on the assumption that working-class housing should not be at a density much above 100 people per acre. They made some

‘London was to be divided into physically distinct communities’

compromises in Inner London, but even after having accepted that the ideal was unachievable, Abercrombie’s recom- mended compromise meant that more than a million people would have to move out of their existing homes if the environ- mental standards contained in the plans were to be achieved.

This ‘overspill’ population, as ‘it was called, was to be rehoused mainly on sites beyond London’s built-up area - in ex- tensions to existing towns, on London’s

outer fringes and in eight new towns located beyond the Green Belt. London was to be divided into physically distinct communities, and its mixture of different functions, jumbled together in a rich and chaotic historical pattern, was to be rationalized. Specialized activities were to be grouped together so that homes could be protected from the noise and dirt of industry, and commercial activity could be concentrated in places where the traffic and building densities which it involved could be accommodated. This new, functionally segregated urban struc- ture was to be served by a road system which would both separate and link the different elements of the overall metro- politan system, keeping different kinds of traffic separate from one another, and keeping traffic away from homes.

Summarized in so few words, the Abercrombie Plans sound vaguely inhu- man - an orderly tidying up of London in the interests of neatness and efficiency. This was not the case. The human rationale behind the plans was two-fold. Firstly, there was the basic concern with improving living conditions. Secondly, there was a vision of London as an amalgam of former, existing and poten- tial communities, and of planning as the task of ‘completing and reclaiming’ them. This was a striking ambition. There were some places within London which corres- ponded to Abercrombie’s conception of ‘community’ - long-established, socially homogenous areas with stable popula- tions. But to perceive in the great mass of London’s suburbs the basis of a highly articulated community structure required a major imaginative leap.

What the London Advisory Plans did was to summon up a vision of a city re-made, offering not only improved living conditions, but a transformation in the quality of civic and domestic life. The way in which they did this was almost equally remarkable. The Abercrombie Plans provided nothing less than a total visualization of a preferred metropolitan future, expressing in terms of physical design all the social benefits which might

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be provided by comprehensive planning of the city.

It is in retrospect extraordinary that an elderly architect should take upon him- self the task of providing a complete framework for the cultural, social and economic life of a great metropolis. But the plans of war-time and the immediate post-war years did not stand alone. They expressed the assumptions behind a far wider movement in British society. The years which produced the London Advis- ory Plans also produced the National Health Service, free education for all, and a national economic policy geared to securing full employment. The post-war consensus which supported the creation of the Welfare State also underpinned the replanning of Britain’s cities. Both the national government and Atlee’s Labour Government passed legislation which put the machinery proposed by the Barlow Commission into place, and it was in an atmosphere of bipartisan support that the LCC began to prepare its Development Plan when the 1947 Town and Country Planning Act was passed.

The work involved in preparing a statutory development plan was consider- able. Each plan was to be based on a published survey, and some authorities did not complete the process until the early 196Os, but the LCC’s Development Plan was published in 1951. The propos- als of the Initial Development Plan were framed within the context established by Abercrombie, accepting his view of the main issues and following, in general terms, his recommendations, although there were some compromises. Aber- crombie had been concerned to set the broad issues before the public; while the adopted plan had necessarily to concern itself less with propaganda and more with getting things done. Nonetheless, the 1951 Development Plan followed re- markably closely the letter as well as the spirit of Abercrombie’s advisory plans. This remained the case throughout the 1950s and the first review of the Develop- ment Plan, approved in 1961, maintained public commitment to strategies which had first been outlined 17 years earlier.

This was continuity of a high order.

What were the reasons for it and what did it signify? The approach to metropolitan planning enshrined in Abercrombie’s plans and in the LCC plans of 1951 and 1961 expressed widespread social prefer- ences about the kind of city London should become. It addressed what were seen to be the needs of the time, and for its early beneficiaries - the families re- housed in Stepney and Poplar, or living for the first time in a home with an indoor bathroom in Stevenage or Harlow - the promise of planning seemed to have been fulfilled.

However, in the course of the next

10-15 years the public’s confidence in metropolitan planning withered away, and the town planner and the highway engineer came to occupy a position in the league table of popular affection slightly below that other useful public servant, the traffic warden. Why should this have happened?

Metropoltitan planning: the experience - 1945-1960: the years of consensus. In the first years that followed the end of the war, the assumptions behind the Aber- crombie Plans held good. With the virtual collapse of the pre-war boom in house- building, the introduction of a 100% tax on development values, shortages of materials and building licences, the initia- tive in reconstruction was left firmly with the public sector. New housing was pro- vided by local authorities on an enormous scale - 10 000 new houses a year by the LCC alone, in a broad crescent stretching from Islington and Stoke Newington in the north through the East End to Green- wich and Lambeth to the south. Beyond the metropolitan area the LCC entered into agreements with other local author- ities to develop housing for Londoners, while new towns were designed to pro- vide for a population of more than half a million people.

The efforts of public agencies to pro- vide improved living conditions were the driving force behind housing develop- ment, but the rebuilding of the metropo- litan economy was largely left to the

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market. During the 195Os, manufacturing industry expanded rapidly in the London region: but it did so in the suburbs or beyond, where space was available for the genera1 engineering and motor indus- tries which dominated this period of economic expansion. In contrast, Central London’s reconstruction was slow. The level of destruction from bombing had been neither so extensive as to provide a clear opportunity for complete restruc- turing, nor so slight as to provide a margin of space capacity for major re- planning. Buildings and services which had survived were scarce resources to be conserved and the higher priority given to houses, schools and factories meant that construction work in Central London was concentrated on repair and conversion.

The new development that did occur was built alongside a road network that was little different from that of the pre-war years. Petrol rationing and a shortage of new cars meant that road traffic declined from its pre-war levels. At the same time, public transport in- creased the numbers of passengers car- ried, so that by 1948 the use of the underground trains and buses reached an all-time peak. There seemed, therefore, no urgent need to implement Abercrom- bie’s road proposals: the 1951 Develop- ment Plan contained only a modest pro- gramme of construction, and no govern- ment grants for road works were paid until the mid-1950s. Thereafter, the f6 million allocated annually represented only 40% of what the 1951 Plan required.

At first this slow progress did not seem disastrous. Car ownership in London during the 1950s rose by only a fraction of that in the country as a whole. But London was the centre of the national road network, and the chronic congestion of the streets, flooded with through as well as local traffic, discouraged more Londoners from buying cars. By the time the extent of the problem was fully realized, the opportunity of constructing a new system of arterial roads at reason- able cost had been lost. The return of affluence had led to increasing land values, and planners’ projections of fu-

ture growth in traffic also began to rise. Thus both the scale of roadworks thought to be necessary and the costs of land acquisition grew together. By the mid- 1960s it was estimated that the inner circular motorway originally proposed by Abercrombie would take up the entire national allocations of funds for new urban roads for more than six years.

Traffic growth was not the only factor which undermined the post-war planning concensus. Population growth in the South-East of England was running at rates far in excess of those which had been anticipated. Despite Abercrombie’s expectation that economic growth would be directed to less-developed parts of the UK, the attractions of the South-East’s markets and labour pool proved irresisti- ble. Constrained by its Green Belt, Lon- don itself did not expand as it had done in the 1930s; but beyond it, a new pattern of regional growth began to emerge.

Against the regional trend, Inner and Central London were losing population and manufacturing jobs. This was accord- ing to plan: jobs and people had been supposed to move together from London to new and expanded towns. But the force of regional population growth caught the system by surprise. Many of those who found homes outside London had jobs in Central London, especially in the still-growing service sector, and in some districts beyond the Green Belt as much as a quarter of the population travelled into London to work every day.

The extent and speed of growth put the national and local planning machinery on the defensive: from the mid-1950s on- wards, it was increasing the market which held the initiative as the planning system attempted to adjust itself to the economic and social forces which were now operat- ing at a regional scale. In the new and expanded towns, where growth had been anticipated, new services were either

planned or provided to accommodate the growth; but elsewhere, the strain on existing infrastructure grew. Shopping centres became more and more crowded, and traffic pressures on an antiquated road system became intense.

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By the end of the 1950s the conven- tional planning wisdom of the day was under pressure, due to the fact the assumptions upon which it had been based were proving to be mistaken. This is the first and most fundamental lesson taught us by the post-war planning ex- perience: the danger of relying too heavi- ly on shaky economic and social fore- casts. It is always risky to rely too heavily on trends. Strategic planning is necessari- ly a long drawn out process: to conduct the studies, draft the plan, pass it through the formal processes of adoption and obtain the budgetary commitments to give its proposals effect all takes time. When the point arrives at which roads or buildings are under construction, it is more than likely that circumstances will have changed in quite fundamental ways, and by then the system is locked into a programme which has an institutional

and political impetus of its own. The problem is not simply one of being

tied to a plan: the vision and values contained in a long-term plan are essen- tial if local authorities are to avoid becoming preoccupied with administra- tive expediency and cash flow. A plan can be the antidote to a pen-pushing, book- keeping attitude of mind. But unless the objectives and assumptions behind the plan are kept fresh in the mind and continually reviewed, it can fall victim to bureaucratic inertia. Given the immense technical and precedural complexity of the system, it is not surprising that the planners of the 1960s found it hard to adjust. But this was not the only difficulty they had to contend with: another was to be found in the intrinsic weaknesses of the planning system itself.

1940-1975: the break-up of the consensus.

In the 1960s the policies embodied in Abercrombie’s London Plans, and the machinery created by the 1947 Town and Country Planning Act, were having to respond to pressures with which they had never been designed to deal. The most visible manifestation of these pressures were to be seen in Central London. In 1959 Macmillan’s Conservative Govern-

ment restored the free market in land, and in doing so greatly increased the profits to be made from office building. During the decade that followed, tall office blocks began to alter the skyline of both the City and the West End. In a few places, such as the Barbican and the precincts of St Paul’s Cathedral, local authorities were able to achieve schemes of comprehensive redevelopment in accordance with a plan. But in many more, developers were successful in ex- ploiting the opportunities which the weakened system of controls provided. Denied the opportunity to undertake development themselves (because of the crippling burden of compensation which is now involved) public authorities were reliant upon developers to provide the finance which they lacked themselves.

‘it was in the planning of London’s roads that the system faced its severest test’

The developers had the expertise as well as the money to make the best of the boom years. Attempts to ensure the inclusion of features or facilities which did not contribute to the profitability of a scheme were met with threats of with- drawal of funds and with stiff opposition in the adversarial and legalistic setting of public inquiries.

However, it was in the planning of London’s roads that the system faced it severest test. During the 1960s the fore- casts for future road use rose ever- upwards. Following the publication of the Buchanan Report (Traffic in Towns) in 1963, the growth of road traffic became the dominant planning issue of the day. It was widely thought that if the demand for road space was not met, then London would choke itself to death: the image in widest use at the time was that of a beating heart whose arteries were gra- dually being blocked up. But it was also clear that if this demand was to be met then the costs - environmental as well as economic - would have to be faced. If

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society wanted both accessibility and environmental quality, then the balance had to be struck, and the financial im- plications accepted.

These were matters which central gov- ernment alone could determine: the scale of expenditure was beyond the means even of as large an authority as the LCC. From the late-1950s onwards, national government was under pressure from local authorities to face up to the issue of cost, and the balance between cars and environmental quality, on which any consistent policy would have to be based. In the event, the decisions remained unmade. Central government neither admitted to the conflicts which were created by mass private transport, nor would it pay for their resolution. In the absence of a national policy, local gov- ernment could do little more than move congestion around, mitigating its worst effects through traffic management and local improvements. The result was that in the 1960s major development propos- als came forward in Central London to be dealt with by a planning system that was unable to offer firm ideas about how they might be integrated into the future road network.

During the 1960s it was not only the powers and finance available for plan- ning, but also the institutions of planning themselves, which were increasingly re- vealed as inadequate for the task in hand. The government of the metropolitan area was split between the LCC (covering most of Inner London) and a surrounding patchwork of country and urban district councils. Frictions between the LCC and the suburban authorities over housing and land, and the intractable difficulties involved in developing the capital’s in- frastructure, represented long-standing obstacles to rational management of the metropolitan area. Reform of both the planning machinery and the local govern- ment system were needed.

The Royal Commission on Local Gov- ernment in Greater London (The Her- bert Commission) had recommended in 1960 the creation of a single authority for Greater London with responsibility for

preparing an overall plan for the whole metropolitan area. The proposal was attractive to a Conservative government, as it offered the prospect of an end to Labour’s domination of the LCC, with its inner-city electorate. The reform of the planning system, however, was less a political than a managerial issue. A plan- ning advisory group appointed by central government in 1963 found that the admi- nistrative procedures and technical re- quirements of existing legislation placed an insupportable burden on planning authorities. It was, therefore, a reformed system of London government and plan- ning which confronted the issues pre- sented by metropolitan change in the late-1960s. A new London-wide author- ity, the GLC, became responsible for a range of services which were of signifi- cance to the metropolis as a whole, among them strategic planning, trans- portation of research: and one of its first tasks was the preparation of a new Development Plan for Greater London

(GLDP). The new GLC began its work in an

increasingly unsettled climate. Not only did it have to contend with changes to the planning system while half-way through the GLDP process, but the emphasis of strategic thinking was also in the process of shifting: from planned decentralization on the Abercrombie model, to the grow- ing need to stablize, or at least slow down the rate of decline in London’s popula- tion and employment. Between 1965 and 1975, London lost more than 750 000 jobs. Many were office jobs decentralized from Central London, but many more were in manufacturing and port-related authorities, which had not been relocated but which had disappeared altogether. The new and expanded towns enjoyed high levels of employment and the be- nefits of new investment in their indus- tries, infrastructure and housing, but the large numbers of skilled workers and young couples which they attracted shifted the social balance of London’s remaining population. London retained its professionals, its managers and others able to afford the increasing costs of

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family life in the capital. At the other end of the economic spectrum, there also remained the people who were tied to low-paid jobs in transport, catering and in public service, a significant proportion of which were recent immigrants from Asia and the Caribbean. Lack of skills, racial discrimination and lack of mobility within the housing and employment mar- kets were aspects of disadvantage which were particularly concentrated in areas of Inner London.

The extent to which the GLC was capable of addressing the emerging crisis of the inner areas was limited. Although a strategic housing authority, it shared its housing responsibilities with 33 boroughs, each with its own programme. The combination of resistance in the outer boroughs to the perceived ‘threat’ of new working-class housing, and a more understandable desire on the part of each borough to be seen to be meeting its own needs, blunted the strategic edge of the GLC’s housing policies and the conse- quence was high-density rehousing in In- ner London. By the late-1960s high density no longer necessarily meant high rise, but the results were still cramped and often unpopular houses for working people.

The roads proposals of the GLDP also suffered at the hands of shifting priori- ties. The Draft Plan, published in 1969, proposed a road system of three major orbital routes, but the subsequent con- troversy over the notorious inner ring road, the ‘Motorway Box’, led a new GLC administration and then a Labour Government to abandon both the inner orbital and the southern parts of the intermediate and outer orbital routes.

After an immensely long and pro- tracted inquiry, redrafting and prolonged consideration by the Secretary of State, the GLDP was finally approved in 1976. However, the first genuinely London- wide plan since Abercrombie’s Greater London Plan appeared in a fundamental- ly changed climate of opinion. Public and political attitudes towards the environ- ment, and towards planning itself, had become more complex. The conse- quences of major redevelopment pro-

jects, and of those few examples of urban motorway building which London had experienced, had affected many lives. For those most intimately affected, who had lived on the sites of these new elements in the urban fabric or who still lived in their shadow, the effects were largely detrimental. Such changes helped to create a preparedness among the public to question the basis of environ- mental and transport planning. ‘Watch- dog’ bodies grew in number: the forma- tion of the Civic Trust, the Conservation Society and Friends of the Earth, as well as a host of local amenity groups, re- flected increasing public concern and decreasing confidence in the effectiveness of government planning, whether nation- al or local, to solve environmental prob- lems. In a series of major public inquiries into the proposed widening of the Arch- way Road, and most notably in the long-debated attempt to secure the future of Covent Garden, planners and planned came into direct conflict. From the late- 196Os, planning issues became increasing- ly political.

It cannot seriously be argued that it was the institutional weaknesses of the planning system alone which were re- sponsible for this change in attitudes. There are numerous examples of publicly-sponsored developments of the 1960s and 1970s which, quite apart from their specifically architectural failings, show a sad inability to reflect the human scale and values which should be the touchstone of all good planning. The

‘public reaction has sensitized planners to the qualities people value in both new and old environments’

effects of such failures on public attitudes have been both good and bad. On the positive side, public reaction has sensi- tized planners to’ the qualities people value in both new and old environments. The quality of planning today is far higher as a result. In negative terms, the failures of the past are sufficiently numer-

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ous to have convinced a large number of people that it is the very existence of town planning which is responsible for the malaise of modern cities. They point to the disasters and near disasters of the past - to Brixton as it was envisaged by the planners of 15 or 20 years ago, for example - to support the argument that the key to a lively, varied and liveable urban environment lies not in planning but in allowing people to ‘do their own thing’.

But the sad truth is that the forces which shape modern London are not the aggregate action of small businessmen, private housholders, delicatessen owners or street theatre performers who popu- late the pages of polemical attacks on planning. Instead, they are property de- velopers and major corporations whose object is profit, and public agencies whose duty it is to manage the city within tight budgets. The scale of operations at which these city-shaping agencies work is such that human scale and sensitivity in redevelopment are always under threat. Clearly, the existence of a town planning system might not be sufficient in itself to safeguard these values: without the right policies, the system is capable of inflicting damage as well as doing good, but it is certain that town planning is the only medium whereby humanity, diversity and a civic dimension in development can be achieved in contemporary Britain. An example of this is Covent Garden - an achievement which would have been unthinkable without the existence of a planning system.

Thus it is argued that the experience of the past 40 years is not one of failure: on the contrary. it is undeniable that London is a better place to live in than it was 40 years ago. In post-war London the hope of a better city has been consistently frustrated by:

0 denial of the resources to plan, which led to the great wasted opportunity for reconstruction in the 1950s and left local authorities to pick up the crumbs that fell from the developers’ table;

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0 denial of the powers to plan, which left the GLC unable to fulfil its role as a strategic housing authority;

0 a system of law which, unique to Western Europe, gave all the rights to the developers and all the obliga- tions to the local authority, present- ing any community-sponsored pro- posal with an obstacle-course of in- quiry, appeal and compensation, all in the name of the ‘sacred rights’ of private property.

In the face of these obstacles, it is perhaps surprising that the GLC was able to achieve as much as it did. Even a passing acquaintance with the inherent weaknesses of the British planning sys- tem is enough to give life to the argue- ment that local authorities are intrinsical- ly unable to achieve results. In France, FR Germany, and even in Egypt, the

daily experience of urban life is of metro- politan government able and willing to plan and achieve major undertakings in the community’s interest. In London, and elsewhere in England, the problems of local government are, overwhelmingly, of central government’s making.

It is a nonsense to use the shortcomings of an underpowered and inadequately resourced system as an excuse to sweep away democratic institututions which ar- ticulate the needs and wishes of citizens, either in an area of the city like Dock- lands or across the city as a whole. It is a nonsense to expect local authorities to plan positively and consistently, and to achieve results, when the central funds, the regional guidance and policy advice which should form the context and basis for metropolitan planning emerges from Whitehall in fits and starts, with one ministry frequently unaware of what another is doing and all of them, seemingly, out of step with the Treasury.

The re-establishment of metropolitan government, and the renaissance of London-wide planning, are not only de- sirable but inevitable. But it would be a tragic waste of a great opportunity if any new system of London-wide planning were to duplicate the failings of old.

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There should be a system publicly- accountable metropolitan planning, but it must have sufficient power for concerted action when facing the most pressing social and economic problems. Other- wise, as the experience of the past 20 years clearly shows, the result can only be a disappointment.

Restructuring metropolitan planning. If any metropolitan authority had at any time over the past 10 years asked central government what it should have been doing in terms of strategic planning, the answer would have been ‘as little as possible’. It is not a surprise then, that metropolitan authorities have looked again at their own roles and examined how, from their own resources, they might achieve the rational and equitable development of cities and their regions.

In the past five years, the GLC has been undertaking just such an examina- tion, and the result suggests a significant transformation in the character of metro- politan planning, which is certainly not unique to London. It is an approach which is in some respects more defensive in character than its predecessors, and not so dependent on the uncertainties of long-range forecasting. But is is nonethe- less a basis on which planners can build.

The change has its origins in the mounting pressures which have come to bear upon the weakened fabric of the city: the incursions of developers, the

‘Abercrombie’s plans reflected a philosophy of urban life - a “whole city” concept’

closure of factories and reductions in public services. Strategic planning has responded by increasing the emphasis placed upon the role of local authorities as intermediaries between communities and those market forces which threatened local environments, homes or jobs. New instruments have been fashioned to effect the specific interven- tions which were beyond the scope of

CITIES May 1986

traditional land-use planning, targeting particular areas, social or ethnic groups or sectors of the local economy which are under greatest pressure. These are aspects of an emergent mode of metro- politan planning which is more selective, localized and necessarily limited in its objectives than in the past. Nonetheless, it articulates the responses of communi- ties under stress and attempts to reconcile them with overall metropolitan priorities.

This is not the only avenue open to the future of metropolitan planning, nor are the present GLC and MCCs the only kind of planning authority capable of follow- ing this path. But now, and in the forseeable future, the only credible ve- hicle for addressing the problems of urban areas is strong metropolitan gov- ernment. To create and finance new agencies of regeneration, muster the skills and expertise to deal with problems of ever-growing complexity, and act posi- tively on the scale which current cir- cumstances demand, are the attributes presently required of metropolitan gov- ernment. Not one of the London boroughs, and only a handful of the metropolitan boroughs, will have any- thing approaching the resources and geographical spread to cope with such a role. Nor will joint committees command the money or the will to do so.

Still less will joint committees, or boroughs whose artificial boundaries de- fine no real civic entity, be able to restore that overall vision of the metropolis as a social organism which was the inspiration behind the post-war plans. Flawed though they were, Abercrombie’s plans reflected a phiiosphy of urban life - a ‘whole city’ concept - without which planning becomes merely a bureaucratic, managerial routine.

British planning has a tradition of concern with the totality of cities, and with the wider human values which ren- der city life tolerable. It poses alterna- tives to the many forces which work towards the degradation of the urban environment. The reductive pressures are many: the bureaucratic reductionism which seeks administrative convenience

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and budgetary rectitude, the political reductionism which cares only for its own constituency, and the economic reduc- tionism which regards the locality as a commodity to be speculated in, brought and sold. British planning’s concerns with land use, the asthetic and human qualities of the environment, social well-being and, more recently, ecological quality represent the official opposition to these pressures. Such are the characteristics which justify planning’s claim to be more than an expensive form of public estate management. They define the common good in whose name the pressures of economic, political or administrative expediency are resisted.

This a tradition which is too valuable to be lost, and nor, despite abolition and the government’s present attacks upon it, will it be lost. A general election is not more that two years away. The Labour Party’s NEC is planning the new powers and new policies which are needed. Not that the future of British planning is the exclusive property of the Labour Party: other parties and other organizations outside the mainstream of political debate - The Nuffield Foundation, the professional institutions, the pressure groups - are addresing themselves to the same ques- tions. Reform is inevitable, and it will come sooner or later.

What are London’s needs for the fu- ture and what do we want to happen, and how can we make it happen? The needs are two-fold. First, there are the issues of planning policy: we should have clear ideas on housing, transport, docks, em- ployment and equality to meet the needs of Londoners now and in the future. In London we already have the basis for such policies in the GLDP alterations, and we are continuing to develop this basis as we analyse the response to public consultation on the future of London government. But if history shows us anything, it is that planning policy in London cannot be developed in a vacuum. Unless there is a regional policy

which will establish the overall pattern of growth and development in the South- East, unless we have a national policy for ports, for transport, for industrial regen- eration, we will be drafting plans with our right hands tied behind our backs.

These are the policy needs, but we also need to address the structurul issues of metropolitan planning. Without the means, we cannot hope to achieve the ends, and the powers and resources available to planning have never been adequate to the task. There are many dimensions to the problem: how much we can afford to pay, who will pay, who will benefit. No planning system can be ex- pected to function effectively when it has to work within a legal context such as the one we have in England. Land law is clearly one of the key issues in thinking about the future of planning in London. Planning authorities which are hamstrung in their efforts to buy, sell or develop land are denied the single most effective weapons in the armoury of planning.

Finally, there is the question of who will take the responsibility, and who will be accountable. In the past the planning of London has been fatally divided among a mish-mash of different tiers and departments of government. One minis- try has been responsible for land, another for transport, yet another for industry. Strategic responsibility for these and other planning matters has been the subject of a continuing tug-of-war be- tween central and local government, with central government pulling hardest. It is difficult to imagine how such a system can produce clear and consistent results. A well defined division of responsibility, perhaps between regional matters de- cided at a national level, and metropoli- tan issues determined by the metropolis itself, would do much to save time, energy and money.

Questions of policy and structure have to be addressed, but first it is necessary to establish a framework for further discus- sion in the months ahead.

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