Ordering the urban body: professional planning in early twentieth-century Britain

Hewitt, L. E. (2016) Ordering the urban body: professional planning in early twentieth-century Britain. Social History, 41(3), pp. 304-318. (doi: 10.1080/03071022.2016.1180902)

Abstract

The early twentieth century has been regarded as a crucial period in the development of planning in Britain during which the key elements of the modern profession were put in place. At the time, planners represented their practice as a progressive answer to the environmental legacies of the Victorian era, capable of contributing decisively to the social and political reform of British society. Existing histories dealing with the subject uniformly locate planning within a historical trajectory that emphasizes its links with philanthropic experiment, reformism and the growth of the welfare state. This paper scrutinizes such key propositions in order to show some of the ways that planning can be located within an alternative historical trajectory in which questions of orderliness, expert knowledge and government emerge to take priority. It examines the presence of rivalry among early professionals, the methodological commitment to civic surveying and the way planners sought to make use of the interconnections between space and social life to wield power over the environment and the private lives of urban dwellers.

• Item Type: Articles
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Hewitt, Dr Lucy
• Authors: Hewitt, L. E.
• College/School: College of Social Sciences > School of Social and Political Sciences > Urban Studies
• Journal Name: Social History
• Publisher: Taylor and Francis (Routledge)
• ISSN: 0307-1022
• ISSN (Online): 1470-1200
• Published Online: 13 June 2016
• Copyright Holders: Copyright © 2016 Taylor and Francis
• First Published: First published in Social History 41(3):304-318
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced in accordance with the copyright policy of the publisher