Textbooks
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Books: Textbooks
The British documentary film movement embraced modernity wholeheartedly. The filmic works of Robert Flaherty, John Grierson, Arthur Elton, Basil Wright, Paul Rotha and Humphrey Jennings sought to capture and depict a radical period of British history, from the 1930s onwards. A radical political period, alongside economic depression, scientific and technological discovery, cultural innovation and rapid urbanisation, had created new conditions. The documentary film movement sought to contribute democratically to social reform and national renewal, by creating new communication mediums that reflected the Britain that was changing rapidly while additionally fostering a sense of national identity. The urban planning process broadly was an integral purpose to this social movement that could be captured on film, depicting industrial development, housing conditions and the pattern of land use across the country. Many of the film directors were from the political left and had forged close relationships with leading intellectual figures of the time, including W.H. Auden, J.B. Priestley, H.G. Wells and T.S. Eliot, who were also writing, as noted in Chapter Two, about changing conditions and social renewal.
The government of the day had also been persuaded of the merits of sponsoring and establishing state film units with the express purpose of documenting social and economic change. The Empire Marketing Board (EMB) Film Unit started to make short documentary films for distribution in Britain and overseas including making films on such subjects as industrial Britain, children, heavy industry workers, community development and housing needs. Within a short space of time independent film units had also been set up by the General Post Office (GPO) and some of the railway companies: the London Midland and Scottish Railway’s Night Mail of 1936, a 23-minute film of the London to Glasgow overnight mail train with a commentary by W.H. Auden and music by Benjamin Britten, is still one of the most well known and celebrated film outputs from this period.
The UK has witnessed a number of high profile and highly successful television series over the last 10 years using aerial photography. Among the most prominent have been several series entitled Coast, capturing Britain’s coastline through a series of linear geographies, and Britain from Above, which considered such diverse subjects as the UK’s infrastructure needs, urban development and natural landscape. And that is aside from the success of Google Earth, that uses aerial and satellite imagery to good effect. The success of featuring and transmitting aerial camera work to represent the changing landscape is not, however, a recent phenomenon. In 1966, the BBC discussed the possibility of making a series about Britain that, uniquely, would be filmed entirely from a helicopter. The series would use colour aerial photography to show modern Britain, how the country was changing, with an anthology of verse, prose and writing chosen or written by well-known authors of the time. The 13 programmes of Bird’s-Eye View, produced and directed by the respected documentary filmmaker Edward Mirzoeff, were eventually made and transmitted between 1969 and 1971, and include: ‘Beside the seaside’, ‘The Englishman’s home’ and ‘A land for all seasons’ by John Betjeman; ‘Eastern approach’ by Stuart Hood; and ‘Man on the move’ by Correlli Barnett. The focus for the series at this time was to record a rapidly changing Britain, with new housing estates, the motorway network, infrastructure provision such as nuclear power stations, and leisure patterns. The Bird’s-Eye View films are an important archive of a changing Britain in the 1960s.
In this chapter I explore how urban planning has been represented in a range of British media between the Second World War and the present day. I assess perceptions and representations of planning, development and of the planning profession in the immediate postwar period when planning was in its modern ascendancy. I explore the image of town planning and town planners in literature, film and television, and discuss how this image is embedded with powerful symbolism that links to a particular discourse surrounding the activity of planning in Britain. The chapter’s overall purpose is to identify the perceptions of urban planning and development since the interwar period, with the aim of working towards identifying why representations of British urban planning are stereotypical and monolithic.
The town and country planning process in Britain, through its management of development, is responsible for much of the contemporary cityscapes and landscapes that form our environment (Hall, 1992). The planning process attempts to reconcile the benefits of development with the costs they impose. Founded in its current comprehensive statutory form in 1947, according to recent government policy planning exists to promote optimal uses of land in relation to environmental management, social welfare, cultural conservation and economic development objectives. While these broad objectives are an enduring feature of the British planning system, the exact orientation of planning to these broader purposes has changed according to the various underlying socioeconomic, environmental and political objectives put forward by governments over time (Bruton, 1984;Tewdwr-Jones, 2002). Thus while the very basic principles of town and country planning remain the same as those first championed in the late 19th century by philanthropists, environmentalists and individuals concerned with healthy environments in towns and cities (cf Howard, 1898;Ward, 2002), the context in which the system operates and the expectations of what it should achieve have changed dramatically since its inception (cf Ashworth, 1954; Reade, 1987; Allmendinger and Haughton, 2007).
Urban Reflections looks at how places change, the role of planners in bringing about urban change, and the public’s attitudes to that change. Drawing on geographical, cinematic and photographic readings, the book offers a fresh incisive story of urban change, one that evokes both real and imagined perspectives of places and planning, and questions what role and purpose urban planning serves in the 21st century. It will interest urban and architectural historians, planners, geographers and all concerned with understanding urban planning and attitudes toward the contemporary city.
