•  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

 
REALISATION: THE ADMINISTRATIVE MACHINE

There is the other side to physical realisation: the creation of a machine armed with powers and finance to carry the plan into execution.
It is not necessary at this stage to point out the necessity of increased legal powers: these have been discussed fully before the Barlow Commission chiefly in relation to the location of industry and the consequential population, and by the Uthwatt Committee as regards land.
It follows also that existing statutory Town Planning Schemes will here, as in the rest of the country, need drastic revisal: particularly in the areas zoned for houses and factories. There will doubtless be cases of hardship, especially where permits to build were issued before the war, which prevented completion. Many of these must now be abandoned.
It may also be necessary to establish some means of obtaining an equalisation of burdens or advantages as between local authorities. The right of each to aim at the maximum growth and to attract as much industry as they can swallow, must now be curtailed. Even certain works undertaken under ministerial sanction may prove unnecessary.
The provision of powers for planning is a national concern; but the devising of the best authority to administer those powers is the unique problem of this Metropolitan Region. There is nothing that resembles it in the rest of the country. The suggestion is made that the Region be divided up into a series of Joint Planning Committees, fully representative of the local authorities holding planning powers, and none of them too large to maintain local interest and contact. These Committees would be responsible for preparing and administering schemes, in conformity with the Master Plan. There would be a right of appeal to the Minister of Town and Country Planning from the decisions of the Joint Planning Committees. Presiding over the Committees would be a Regional Planning Board, its members nominated by the Minister. The Board would not be advisory or merely co-ordinating, but would have over-riding powers, dealing directly with planning matters and being responsible to the Minister. For certain purposes also, the Board could set up an executive arm, e.g., for the purpose of the Green Belt, or for the creation of a Regional Housing Corporation. Otherwise all the normal functions of the local authorities will be carried on by them as before. (This does not, of course, preclude the possible amalgamation of certain of the existing authorities.)
What will it cost ? This is the first question many people, from the Treasury downwards, will ask of the Plan: and although it would not be easy, it would still be possible to compute in terms of 1939 prices the total cost of the number of houses proposed, add a figure for estate development, and public services for new areas, the mileage of new roads, the acreage of open space (according to the standard recommended), public buildings, schools, shops, hospitals, etc. (the factories might be left to the industrialists to provide), and with the addition of an ample margin of safety, to arrive at a grand total figure.
But looked at in another light, it might be said that these things are to be provided anyhow; and it might be more instructive if it were possible to show whether it would cost more to provide them on the basis of a plan or haphazard and merely quantitatively. Does it cost more, for example, to group houses into communities with their shopping centres, community buildings, schools, etc., conveniently placed, or to run them up in an unbroken mass and later try to find sites for these purposes? Does a house planned internally to suit its aspect and designed externally to suit its neighbours or to conform to a standard of architectural fitness, cost more than one which does not fulfil these requirements ? The enquiry should go further afield: if the larger proposals of grouping of population and industry materialise, what is the value in saving of transport, time and energy in avoiding long journeys to work: or in the case of saving in health and capacity for living, in the rebuilt town or the new-built satellite ? Some of the advantages of the Plan will be imponderable, and might easily get omitted from the balance sheet.
But there is no gainsaying the fact that a refusal to face a slight additional first cost in purchasing land for the arterial roads constructed after the last war has resulted in the long run in the nation having to pay far more in consequential improvements - e.g., service roads and widening of carriageways - and also losing the full traffic value of the roads through the continuous building up of frontages for houses and factories.
Perhaps the most glaring innovation among the proposals of this Report is the web of express arterial roads, superimposed upon the existing road system. Here is something that might directly be charged to the Plan, especially as many of the old roads are still to be widened. It might be argued that the cost of making these new roads will be greater than a universal policy of widening old roads. Again, many factors must be taken into account, in addition to the fact that the widened old roads would never make satisfactory motorways: an assessment of the commercial value of this new type of road in providing rapid and unobstructed transport should be made: there is also the relief which they will give to the congestion upon the normal all-purpose roads. Finally, the saving of human life and reduction of accidents is to be considered, if roads can be made more safe. Who can assess in £ s. d. the precise value of a human being killed on an antiquated road?
The financial aspect is not an easy one to present: to obtain an answer depends upon the breadth or narrowness of the conception of the word economics.
Closely allied to the cost of a plan is its realisation in stages: it has frequently been pointed out that a plan as presented gives no indication of the time factor. It all appears destined to be carried out at once. Of course, however, the proposals must be subjected to a carefully graduated policy of priorities. If a date for its entire completion is to be aimed at (a rash proceeding in a democratic country and in a scheme where so much new ground is to be broken, as compared with the reconstruction of war-damaged areas) some attempt must be made to divide the components into periods. As already hinted, there may be a considerable time-lag between housing and industry located on the same new site: again, certain satellites may be more urgently wanted or more readily undertaken than others. Certain temporary expedients of transport may be necessary in the earlier periods.
No effort to allot priorities in a systematic way has been made at this stage, with the exception of the quasi-satellites described in sec. 52 and with certain of the means of transport, e.g., motorways and aerodromes.
The congenital opponents of planning can never grasp the theory of the realisation, by stages, of a complete conception. To them it is sufficient to do well whatever comes to hand, and they are by no means inclined to stint these finite operations. They refuse to think of the future, using the familiar arguments and relying on some invisible hand to weld the separate parts together. An essential feature of the periodic realisation method is that whereas each stage is complete and advantageous in itself, it leads towards a whole which is greater than the sum of its parts: and finally, the later stages must be capable of modification to meet changing conditions unforeseen at the outset.
 

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