•  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

 
THE NATURE OF THE PLAN

The Plan for this London Region, based upon these assumptions and prepared in close accord with the County of London Plan, must of necessity consist of general ideas rather than of detailed proposals. Compared with the County of London and the City Plans, it is extensive in place of intensive in nature and in general its characteristic will be receptive and developing, instead of decentralising and replanning. Again, these two central plans are broadly based upon the requirements of two individual authorities: with, of course, due reference to their neighbours and to the constituent bodies of which they are composed - e.g., the Metropolitan Boroughs. The Regional Plan is built up out of a number of Counties, County Boroughs and County Districts, many of them of municipal status and of the size and importance of distinct towns. The Regional Plan is not the sum of the wishes and proposals of these individual authorities, however much they may be conceived on planned lines.
We have received, it is true, and given the closest attention to the “appreciations of the future” which many of these authorities have given us: they were of immeasurable importance in illuminating our first steps in the exploration of the area. It is always much more satisfactory for the planner to be offered positive ideas by the locality, than be left entirely free to make up his mind. There are imponderables of import which even a perfectly prepared scientific survey may not register. This is particularly the case where large tracts of country are involved and, to agricultural considerations, are added amenity and even sentiment: for these reasons it may be well to neglect even a potential means of “opening up for development” in order to keep a certain reserve character of value to the whole of Greater London.
For the same reason there may be some disappointment in those young or growing communities for whom the idea of decentralisation has opened up vistas of industry and population - the laudable and natural ambition of an energetic local authority which feels itself able to cope with a huge increase and direct it through local channels into the full flood of national prosperity .We have observed also in certain quarters a tendency to imagine that the moment war ceases London will resume her process of absorbing a disproportionate amount of national development (which may represent an increase in one area balanced by a corresponding decrease elsewhere, though not necessarily a literal transference). For these people Barlow might never have reported, nor the birth-rate cast its diminishing shadow before. At one period of our researches it might have been possible to add up the confident predictions of enterprising authorities to a greatly increased Metropolitan population. There must, therefore, inevitably be some disappointments: there may also be, at first, some surprise at the recommended abandonment of the vast schemes of unrelated house-building, which were in full career in every direction round London. The familiar argument that where there is so serious a shortage of housing accommodation in the country at large, any houses, of any size, built anywhere (and sometimes anyhow) are a contribution to be thankfully received, and no questions asked, must no longer count. Nor should the subsequent grumbles by Civic and Preservation Societies at the way in which the houses have been provided - their straggling, lack of coherence, low grade design; total absence of grouping-be taken as an unrelated comment. This Plan proposes a totally different conception of the gigantic central rebuilding and decentralised new-building programme with which London as a whole will be faced: an effort which will require the co-operation of all building organisations, financial and technical, to achieve. There are also mistakes to be corrected: in some cases industrial locations without due consideration of all the factors; in others, loose and staggered units of related, but uncoordinated activities: again, proposals for development of land (on quite proper lines) without due consideration of its agricultural value: and most frequent of all, vast areas of housing which have neither unity nor defined boundary. We have been sparing of our proposals for total instant demolition; though in some cases we have made use of the Uthwatt suggestion for allotting a period of “life.” We have, of course, been attracted by unofficial schemes which proposed wholesale demolishment of communities, old or new, which interfered with the symmetry of their pattern: again, we admire the boldness of another organisation which proposes as a first step towards national reconstruction the demolishment of 400,000 recently built houses. Our notions are more modest: we have damped down, we have curtailed, what appears on full investigation to be wrong, even where money has been sunk in preliminary services for opening up - and it will be found that these curtailments affect works by local authorities, statutory undertakers and private enterprise. But wherever possible we have shown how it is still feasible to rescue and to integrate what we considered was going wrong.
These and more constructive detailed studies have been made strictly as samples, in order to illustrate our general proposals. There has been neither the time nor staff to make detailed recommendations throughout the Region: nor would it be appropriate or fitting to usurp the labours of local initiative. It may indeed be said that nearly every town or community in the Region requires some degree of central replanning: if it be a congested central borough it needs a complete overhaul of its present housing and industrial state: if it has suffered destruction, it is not only a policy of decentralisation that is wanted, but immediate plans of rebuilding to the new standard: if it be an “outer” borough which is to receive additional decentralised population and industry, it will need a thorough examination of its central business, shopping and civic centres; many of these outer towns have grown in the last 25 years through vast suburban accretions while remaining at heart antiquated country towns, their shopping centre enlarged by continuous ribboning along the main traffic street or intensive rebuilding on their present sites without any regard to the extra traffic they are engendering: even those places which have not greatly increased and which may wish to preserve their civic integrity, have had their dignified main street turned into a traffic route which at weekends may rise to so frenzied a pitch as to slaughter and maim their inhabitants and shake their venerable buildings to pieces; external regional relief must be accompanied by detailed central replanning which recognises that a shopping precinct should not be a traffic artery.
On the other hand, in taking a broad and selective outlook, it is not enough, of course, to point to X acres of land within a certain circumference of London which at a density of Y persons could house and occupy the whole population of Greater London at an amazingly low density. There are large areas which in the interest of London as a whole should be kept as reserves of open country: nor are transport and other facilities equally present. Sites available for absolutely new towns are surprisingly limited. If the experiment of real and radical decentralisation is to be attempted by the creation of a number of new towns and the increase of certain existing centres, every possible care must be taken that the sites and centres contain in them the seeds of success. The need for artificial stimulus is a sign of weakness after the stage of civic infancy has been passed. Conditions which are likely to ensure success in the creation or enlargement of towns have been most carefully studied from all angles: the size of the communities; their relation to and separation from each other; their connection to supplies of raw materials and markets; their attractions to people to live there and to industrialists or business - men to work there; their suitability for certain trades and occupations; their balance between different trades and male and female labour; their means of transport, by air no less than by other means; the topographic suitability of their sites, etc. The complexities are immense, but it is the province of town and country planning to attempt to assess the value of the many factors involved and to arrive at a balanced judgment.
 

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