•  Introductory
• Character of Growth of Outer London
• Indications of Structure
• Assmptions
• The Nature of the Plan
• Structure of the Plan: Zoning; the Four Rings
• Structure of the Plan:  Communications
• Structure of the Plan:  the Open Background
• The Policy Aimed At in the Detailed Movement of Population and Work - SPORADIC MOVEMENT OR OSCILLATION: SPECULATIVE BUILDING: VILLAGES - DECENTRALISATION IN AND NEAR THE REGION:APPLICATION TO EXISTING COMMUNITIES: NEW SITES: QUASI-SATELLITES - POPULATION DISPERSED OUTSIDE THE REGION - THE DECENTRALISING BOROUGHS AND THE SUBURBAN RING - INDUSTRIAL LOCATION COMPARED WITH HOUSING - DETAILED STUDIES - STANDARDS - PUBLIC SERVICES
• Realisation: Design and Amenity
• Realisation: the Administrative machine
• The Picture Aimed At

 
CHARACTER OF GROWTH OF OUTER LONDON

Between the wars, during the various abortive attempts to plan the growth of London as a whole, and in spite of the piecemeal planning, characteristic of a period unparalleled in the production of approved and interim schemes, an unbridled rush of building was proceeding in the form of a scamper over the home counties, practically uncontrolled by the so called planning control, which was at best a veneer, in the absence of powers to preserve agricultural land without incurring enormous claims for compensation.

Housing and Industry
The relationship between housing and industry was almost entirely ignored. Huge schemes of decentralised dwellings were carried out by local authorities, and vast housing estates were created by private enterprise, while unrelated trading estates, or “parks” of industry on the one hand, and isolated factories on the other hand, largely abandoning the traditional industrial sitings, wallowed in the sea of suburban housing. The lack of focal points for the new community life became tragically evident. The two opposite tendencies only produced a jumble; industry, finding housing established, followed in the hope of recruiting local labour, while elsewhere industry arrived first and houses were then dumped around the factories. On the other hand, another anomaly appeared, and there is the paradox of houses for City workers built near factories, whereas the homes of those who work in the factories were still in the built-up centre. The suburban houses were generally built to sell; the rented houses, except the municipal cottage estates, were in the older urban areas.

Housing and Transport
Here a similar dilemma raises its head; modern transport attracts people to live away from their work where houses cost less, and thus suburban spread is encouraged; but only too often the housing spread, arriving first, creates a demand for further transport; and in each case the wheel turns a full and vicious circle. The London Passenger Transport Board, now pioneer, now camp follower, plays a vigorous, if sometimes uncertain, role. It creates new suburbs and then finds itself unable to cope with the traffic: extensions in other directions aim at a further spread of the population. On routes overcrowded beyond cure, it asks the straphanger to exercise patience beyond limit.

Road Improvements
On another side of transport, the move for arterial road improvement, begun during the last war and energetically pursued, has resulted in some better radial routes, in the carrying out of the North Circular Road and the plotting of a South Circular Road, also in the wider hundred-mile projects of the North Orbital Road (partly constructed in Hertfordshire) and the South Orbital Road (still with only a paper existence). But any hope of a really comprehensive programme of road construction has hitherto always been stultified by the lack of Government assistance. The idea that money spent on wisely-planned roads will save human lives and economic waste is hot yet fully realised, and successive Ministries of Transport still beg for funds. Even when a much needed route, such as the North Circular Road or Western Avenue, is constructed, its frontages are allowed to be cluttered with factories, blocks of flats, shops and houses discharging vehicles and people at frequent intervals into the main stream of traffic, thus impeding the object of the road. Generally, it is the case that a traveller from London by road will traverse mile after mile, in and beyond the suburbs, of arterial routes which have not yet been widened enough to allow more than one lane of traffic in each direction, or what may be even worse, just room for three lanes with the perpetual struggle for supremacy to get past the car in front, before avoiding a head-on collision with somebody trying to do the same thing in the opposite direction. Fast movement is thus impossible; congestion results, and accidents abound. In the midst of these conditions of general chaos, it is something to discern that the County of London Plan 1943, with the help of the Bressey survey, recovers a road system, on which the Greater London Plan 1944 proceeds to build.

Use of Agricultural Land
One aspect of the hasty extensions of London has hitherto been neglected. If the land was available for building, little or no attention was paid to its type on an agricultural basis; the difference between the best farming land or poor farming land was outweighed by building values, and even market garden land with its often irreplaceable value as providing fresh food for Londoners, was not immune from the insistent claims of building as a better profit-maker. And if building did not always come directly to destroy the market gardens and the orchards, the indirect needs of building were only too often expressed by the removal of gravel, sand and chalk, which spelled equal destruction of agricultural values. For all this no adequate protection has been obtained through the town planning schemes in force, or in course of preparation.

The Green Belt
The great conception of a Green Belt round London, sedulously fostered by the London Society for many years and actively taken up by Raymond Unwin in his Report on Open Spaces issued by the Greater London Regional Planning Committee, began to take shape in the years following 1931; to the L.C.C. is due the credit for initiating the Green Belt Scheme in 1935, and by 1938 the Green Belt Act became law. While the aim of this legislation was chiefly recreational, it also provided for the securing and continuing, in their present state, of lands used for farming, recognising the value of thus keeping open large tracts of land for the visual solace of man, as well as safeguarding farmland from building. This first essay in the co-operative planning of the region round London was undertaken jointly by the County Councils concerned. The two million pounds voted as the share of the London County Council, together with the shares subscribed by other Councils, are already paying handsome dividends in health and happiness, besides other probable returns in terms of money.

Public Services
Such public services as water, drainage, electricity, gas, scavenging, road repairs, etc., are on the whole well provided, as would be expected in this important extra-metropolitan area, but there are many wasteful small drainage schemes which might well be combined. Services act in this region not as determinant factors in planning. but rather as followers of growth.
 

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