Garden cities and the English new towns: foundations for new community planning

The postwar new towns in England were initiated by the New Towns Act of 1946, a keystone in the reconstruction of Britain after the Second World War. Further and mostly smaller new town designations were to follow during the first half of the 1960s. It was the 1965 New Towns Act, however, which brought into existence some of the largest and most famous new towns of the postwar period. Today, over 2.6 million people live in over thirty new towns in the United Kingdom. The majority of the new towns and their citizens are in England, the most populous country in the United Kingdom

Consuming communities: the neighbourhood unit and the role of retail spaces on British housing estates, 1944–1958

This article challenges perceptions about the origins and objectives of the ‘neighbourhood unit principle’ that emerged in 1944, by focusing on the location and purpose of shops. It argues that the positioning of retail spaces was central, but largely overlooked, to the socio-spatial schema that lay at the heart of the neighbourhood principle. Planners saw shops as a hub of face-to-face interaction, through which nebulous objectives like ‘community spirit’ might be engendered. However, planners did not account for the way that their need-based model of shopping might be undermined by the consumer habits of inhabitants and the changing objectives of retailers

"As if there were just the two choices": Region and Cosmopolis in Lisa Moore’s Short Fiction

Lisa Moore's two collections of short stories, Degrees of Nakedness (1995) and Open (2002), redefine regional literature, exploring the role of topography and of human connection and disconnection in identifying "home." Her stories thereby develop a view congruent with David Jordan's "postmodern regionalism" and Frank Davey's "regionality." Focusing on travel, exchange, and urbanity, and interrogating Newfoundland stereotypes, Moore draws our attention to the ways in which negotiations of regional identity and global influences, as discussed by Glenn Wilmott, are played out in the minute actions of our everyday lives

Changing Social Class Identities in Post-War Britain: Perspectives from Mass-Observation

The idea that class identities have waned in importance over recent decades is a staple feature of much contemporary social theory yet has not been systematically investigated using primary historical data. This paper re-uses qualitative data collected by Mass-Observation which asks about the social class identities of correspondents of its directives in two different points in time, 1948 and 1990. I show that there were significant changes in the way that class was narrated in these two periods. There is not simple decline of class identities, but rather a subtle reworking of the means by which class is articulated. In the earlier period Mass-Observers are ambivalent about class in ways which indicate the power of class as a form of ascriptive inscription. By 1990, Mass-Observers do not see class identities as the ascribed product of their birth and upbringing, but rather they elaborate a reflexive and individualised account of their mobility between class positions in ways which emphasise the continued importance of class identities. As well as being a contribution to debates on changing class identities, the paper highlights the value of the re-use of qualitative data as a means of examining patterns and processes of historical changeQualitative Data, Social Class, Identities

Keep Calm and Carry On: Uncovering the True Blitz Spirit

First shown by Britain’s civilian population during the Blitz, this Blitz Spirit is widely understood today as a heroic display of courage, cheerfulness, unity, and the ability to “keep calm and carry on” in the face of danger and discomfort. Drawing from radio broadcasts, photographs, propaganda posters and films, and the wartime morale reports of Mass-Observation, I seek to uncover the true Blitz Spirit and how it became an integral – if somewhat mythicized – element of Britain’s modern identity. First, I explore the emergence of the Blitz Spirit during World War II, identifying gaps between reality and propagandistic myth. I conclude that while the people of Britain did not live up to propagandistic representations of the Blitz Spirit, they lived out their own form of this spirit through their everyday existence. Characterized by grim determination rather than sustained zeal, the Blitz Spirit was merely a British manifestation of the natural human tendency to endure hardship. Then, I unravel the idea that the Blitz Spirit belongs solely to Britain by comparing the British, German, Chinese, and Japanese civilian responses to air raid tactics. Finally, I examine postwar newspaper articles related to modern catastrophes like the “July 7th bombings” and the COVID-19 Pandemic to analyze how the Blitz Spirit has become fixed in the British cultural psyche. I conclude that the Blitz Spirit of today, still used in a propagandistic manner to spark unity and resilience in the face of disaster, is nonetheless a mythicized version of a past reality

Learning from Berlin

In the specialist literature, the Berlin tenement (Berliner Mietskaserne) is considered as the epitome of speculative overuse of the residential block on the eve of the Modern period. This view misses the fact that at the turn of the 19th century, several urban districts in Berlin were built for an emerging middle class that are of outstanding urban quality. The entrepreneur Georg Haberland (Berlinische Boden- Gesellschaft) developed entire neighborhoods that contributed greatly to the history of urban development at the beginning of the 20th century – a contribution seriously underestimated. In addition to the Anglo-Saxon way of suburbanization of the middle class and the French way of urbanization of the bourgeoisie within the existing town – which are commented on extensively – the urban interventions of Haberland are a little-documented third way in the history of city expansions. In this paper, first, I address the question of the urban qualities of the Bavarian District (Bayerisches Viertel), drawing on previously unpublished historical sources. And second, I propose a thesis how to place Haberland’s undervalued contribution in the wider context of Berlins planning history and beyond. Planning urban settlements from scratch is a current and crucial topic particularly in the US and in East Asia. Corresponding current projects – often designed by European planners – can be found especially in China

The new suburban history, New Urbanism and the spaces in between

A review article of three recent books on suburbanization and suburbia in the USA: Andrew Friedman, Covert Capital: Landscapes of Denial and the Making of the US Empire in the Suburbs of Northern Virginia. Berkeley, Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2013. 416pp. £19.95 pbk. Elaine Lewinnek, The Working Man's Reward: Chicago's Early Suburbs and the Roots of American Sprawl. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. 239pp. 20 b&w illustrations. £30.99 hbk. Benjamin Ross, Dead End: Suburban Sprawl and the Rebirth of American Urbanism. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. 249pp. £20.99 hbk