Abstract
The State introduction of certain measures aiming to the establishment of a framework regarding the technical and legislative rules is described. These measures had, to a degree, an innovating and pioneering character. The analysis of the main town planning ideas and the new planning techniques is the object of Chap. 4. Significant innovations in planning techniques were the introduction of the control of urban land uses, the control of building bulk, and the control of building daylighting. In the context of these proposals, the control of urban densities and the hygiene of residence and office accommodation in the city centres, must be considered of great importance in planning technique terms.
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Notes
- 1.
Comprehensive in the sense that the visual, social and functional aspects would be united in a complete whole, which would make out of the total development something far greater than the sum of each separate aspect (Kaldeigh et al. 1954, p. 459). The idea of comprehensive urban planning for Britain’s cities was developed by the reformers in the late 1840s and early 1850s (Hall et al. 1973, vol I, p. 99).
- 2.
According to King (1956, p. 15), a site of less than 5 acres could only be regarded as comprehensive since a multiplicity of uses and functions could hardly be performed on anything smaller, even in a small town.
- 3.
That is, in the idea of extensive clearance of an existing urban area and the rebuilding of it from the beginning.
- 4.
Thomas Sharp became widely known as the advocate of “compact” planning and of a real urban character in town planning, in opposition to the low-density garden city tradition of planning. Sharp believed that it was easier to “endow” a town with fine spaces and fine ground patterns than with fine buildings. He based this idea on the fact that questions of aesthetics entered into actual building more than into ground planning and, moreover, on the fact that architects, builders and building owners had for one reason or another been unwilling to accept the same degree of discipline in the third dimension of building as had gradually been imposed on them in the two dimensions of site planning (PRO file HLG 71/779: 28).
- 5.
Tripp (1951) was widely respected. The generous compliments to the author in its foreword by Patrick Abercrombie, dated March 1942, confirmed the full incorporation of this career policeman into the town planning movement.
- 6.
Sir William G. Holford was Professor of Town Planning at the University of London and later President of the Town Planning Institute (period 1953–1954) (Anonymous 1953, p. 2).
- 7.
The town centre of the New Town of Stevenage , although it was not a war-damaged case, is considered as a characteristic attempt which introduced one hundred per cent segregation between pedestrians and vehicles’ traffic (Vincent 1960, p. 103).
- 8.
The list of the recommended total use zones for every town were the following: zone 1: residential, zone 2: business (shop), zone 3: business (office), zone 4: business (wholesale warehouses), zone 5: educational, recreational and public buildings zone, zone 6: light industrial zone, zone 7: industrial zone, zone 8: special industrial zone. For more details, see: (MTCP 11947, p. 26).
- 9.
The range of variation might be of the following order in a town where the overall FSI had been fixed at 1.5; in shopping zones: 1.5, in office zones: 2.0, in wholesale warehouses zones: 2.0–2.5, while in educational, recreational and public buildings zones it was suggested that as in some towns the relevant zones might contain a relatively greater amount of open zones, for this reason the FSI was not considered as the suitable instrument for controlling the detailed distribution of building accommodation in this zone (MTCP 1947, pp. 38–39).
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Marmaras, E.V. (2015). Innovations in Planning Theory and Technique. In: Planning London for the Post-War Era 1945-1960. Springer Geography. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-07647-8_4
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