•  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

 
INDICATIONS OF STRUCTURE

In surveying the main features of the growth of Outer London, is any structure discernible in the apparently amorphous sprawl? One can discover old communities that still, in spite of accretions, retain their focal points, such as St. Albans, Watford, Guildford, Kingston, Gravesend, Brentwood and others.
One can find old communities that still remain more or less unchanged, as Hertford, Denham, Dorking or Epping. There are communities entirely new, as Letchworth, Welwyn Garden City and Becontree. There are others entirely overwhelmed, like Wembley, and finally there are vast areas of inchoate, incoherent housing, such as can be found to the south of Harrow, to the north of Hayes in Middlesex, to the south of the Kingston By-Pass, or around Hornchurch.
Looked at in a more general way, there emerges a certain tendency towards concentric rings, which can be measured in terms of housing density. The central overcrowded urban mass of London is not confined within, but in places laps over, the L.C.C. boundary . Outside this mass are the fully developed suburbs, some within the County of London, but more without, containing on the whole tolerable densities. Next comes a zone with sufficient openness to have enabled attempts to be made to create a Green Belt, a zone in which the communities still maintain some semblance of distinct individuality. Lastly, there is the outer zone in which communities old and new are still seen against an agricultural background.
This faint indication of structure calls for a decision. Is the structure to be maintained, revivified and strengthened in its present form ? Are the dry bones of the valley once more to receive the call to stand and live ? Or, on the other hand, is the skeleton to receive modification and alteration ? Or finally, is the shape so hopeless that only breaking up will meet the case?
The picture of London is well summed up in para. 352 of the Barlow Report:
“The obvious attractions which Greater London possesses as a market, a centre of potential labour, a distributing centre, and as an area in which electrical power is universally available, inevitably tend to attract many consumers’ industries to locate themselves in or near to it. The extra employment provided by the new factories further adds to the importance of the area as a market. Thus higher industrial activity and purchasing power are induced. The magnetic pull on industry is strengthened; and, as respects the industrial population, wide opportunities of employment add to the attractive power which London naturally exerts through the advantages which it possesses as a Capital city. So the process of growth continues - market and population acting and reacting upon one another to build up an ever greater collection of people and industries. Nothing succeeds like success”.
What we now find before us is the combined result of two opposing trends. There has been an exodus of London workers from the centre, people moving out in a process of voluntary decentralisation of homes, if not of work, and at the same time the pull of London has caused an immigration from various parts of the country .The Regional fringe has formed the meeting place of these two groups, who have there perforce formed uneasy settlements together. The records are in the Census Tables from 1921 onwards. Slough is an excellent example. Here the old inhabitants meet immigrants mainly from Durham and South Wales.
 

forward