Post-War Urban Problems and the Rediscovery of Urban Poverty

Abstract

This chapter considers the period from 1945 to the mid-1960s and sets out the background from which a coherent British urban policy began to emerge in the late 1960s. Prior to this time urban issues were conceptualised and tackled in a very different manner; urban policy as defined in Chapter 1 and discussed in later chapters did not exist in a form which would be recognised today. Urban problems were largely seen in physical terms. They were to be tackled by the redevelopment of the city and by the dispersal of urban problems through the creation of new towns and the fostering of regional policy.