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4 results

  • 4 - The Politics of Partnership

  • Alistair Kefford, Universiteit Leiden
  • Book:
    The Life and Death of the Shopping City
    Published online:
    31 March 2022
    Print publication:
    07 April 2022, pp 163-199

  • Summary

    This chapter examines the politics and the practice of partnership in the urban renewal era. This public-private dynamic was the central political relationship which drove urban transformation; it was codified and mandated explicitly within planning legislation and central policy diktats and pursued energetically by many individual local authorities eager to remake the image and economy of their towns. I show how this hybrid, mixed economy of planning was situated within the wider political economy of post-war Britain, tracking the political influence and connections of the property and construction sectors as well as the attitudes and policy positions of both the Conservative and Labour Parties. I also trace the operation and impact of partnership-based urban renewal on the ground in various cities, focusing in particular on Manchester, Liverpool and Nottingham. Local authorities had a range of motivations for working with the commercial development sector and their experiences were not uniform. The chapter shows that some cities managed to navigate the new terrain of public-private developmentalism more successfully than others, but I also stress the basic asymmetries involved in these relationships, particularly for those places that were struggling most economically.

The Life and Death of the Shopping City
  • Public Planning and Private Redevelopment in Britain since 1945
  • Alistair Kefford
  • Published online:
    31 March 2022
    Print publication:
    07 April 2022
  • How have British cities changed in the years since the Second World War? And what drove this transformation? This innovative new history traces the development of the post-war British city, from the 1940s era of reconstruction, through the rise and fall of modernist urban renewal, up to the present-day crisis of high street retailing and central area economies. Alistair Kefford shows how planners, property developers, councils and retailers worked together to create the modern shopping city, remaking the physical fabric, economy and experience of cities around this retail-driven developmental model. This book also offers a wider social history of mass affluence, showing how cities were transformed to meet the perceived demands of a society of shoppers, and why this effort was felt to be so urgent in an era of urban deindustrialisation. By bringing the story of the shopping city right up to its present-day crisis and collapse, Kefford makes clear how the historical trajectories traced in this book continue powerfully to shape urban Britain today.

  • 15 - Land, property and planning

  • from Part III - Construction
  • Edited by Martin Daunton, University of Cambridge
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Urban History of Britain
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    25 January 2001, pp 467-494

  • Summary

    This chapter deals with the overall shape and form of cities and property development. These are brought together through a study of late Victorian and Edwardian land reform, which had important implications both for control of urban development through town planning and for property relations. Urbanisation in the late nineteenth century focused more on existing centres, leading to the growth of major cities, but those cities were themselves less concentrated in form. The passage from rural to urban land uses takes place within a framework of ownership which has its own effects on development outcomes. There is both an economics and politics of 'mass' production and consumption, both were certainly in process of formation in interwar Britain. Whereas green belts and new towns were to become the best-known features to result from wartime planning, the greater innovatory challenges lay within the city itself.

  • 16 - The evolution of Britain’s urban built environment

  • from Part III - Construction
  • Edited by Martin Daunton, University of Cambridge
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Urban History of Britain
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    25 January 2001, pp 495-524

  • Summary

    During the nineteenth century a long-run trend towards increasing functional and geographical specialisation of non-residential property emerged, and accelerated during the twentieth century, creating the functionally segregated built environments of modern urban centres. This chapter examines the evolution of commercial and industrial premises from around 1840 to the 1950s, together with associated changes in the property investment and development sectors and the building industry. Over the century to 1914 the diversity and specialisation of Britain's urban built environment had increased enormously, though the pace of change was to accelerate further after the First World War. The interwar period saw important changes in the character of Britain's commercial property sector. The development of motorised transport encouraged both an intensification of specialisation within urban centres and the suburbanisation of residential and industrial buildings. The onset of the Second World War led to a virtual halt in property market activity and a severe fall in commercial property values, particularly in London.