The Jerusalem that Failed? The Rebuilding of Post-War Britain

Abstract

Few areas have reflected changing intellectual fashions and political ideologies more visibly and publicly since 1945 than the attitude towards housing and planning. Britain emerged from the Second World War with a strong tide of collectivist fervour running in favour of building, quite literally, a ‘New Jerusalem’ from the rubble and squalor of the past. Within a generation unease with what was being done in the name of progress had become evident and, from 1979, was to be reinforced by a reaction against planning and state control under the influence of the ‘new liberalism’ personified by the Conservative governments of Mrs Thatcher. Housing and planning were to become battlegrounds in a debate with wide intellectual and sociological repercussions, as well as a direct impact upon housing and planning policies. Long before 1945, social reformers had sought to achieve a reshaped physical environment which they believed would cure the ills of industrial society: crime, poverty and ill-health. ‘Homes fit for Heroes’ and the slum clearance campaigns between the wars began the process. By the end of the 1930s enthusiasm for ‘planning’ and the wholesale redevelopment of Britain’s cities was growing apace.