Planning a town and a country in a hundred and eighty pages
Calvin Hin-Long Po, Architectural Association School of Architecture, UK
Awards RIBA President's Awards for Research 2021
Category History and Theory
Behind canons of post-WW2 architects and how they redefined England鈥檚 townscape, an invisible, parallel history made this possible: the legislative apparatus that made the state the final arbiter of all development. With recent governments questioning the 1947 Town and Country Planning Act鈥檚 legacies, this paper traces modern planning powers鈥� origins further to an embryonic moment: Uthwatt Committee鈥檚 Report (1942). This paper interrogates the Report鈥檚 role as an invisible 鈥榓rchitect鈥� of the postwar English townscape
This paper interweaves two narratives: the Report鈥檚 analysis, and a walk through Hatfield, a peripatetic reading of the Report鈥檚 co-authorship over this Hertfordshire town.
Through analysing the Report鈥檚 text and context, this paper reveals how Uthwatt exceeded its original mandate to fix a technical planning mechanism (鈥榗ompensation and betterment鈥�, i.e. land value taxation). This paper deconstructs Uthwatt鈥檚 arguments for radical solutions based on 鈥渢otal war鈥� centralisation, post-Blitz urgency, failing laissez-faire markets, and post-Depression trends towards technocratic rationalism. It examines impacts of Uthwatt鈥檚 proposals: unprecedentedly extending planning controls nationwide, empowering compulsory purchase at capped prices, and critically, nationalising development rights of land. The latter fundamentally reformulated land ownership: from previously entitling landowners to develop land unless restricted by state, to having no rights to develop unless permitted. Even with today鈥檚 proposals for 鈥榝irst-principles鈥� planning reform, this remains the foundational legitimacy of all planning legislation since, demarcating the line where individual property rights end and public (or state鈥檚) interest begins.
From wartime requisitioning of private (aristocratic) property in Hatfield House, suburban house extensions, to its New Town, Hatfield鈥檚 urban fabric becomes a palimpsest of the Report鈥檚 ideas, inscribed onto planning legislation, and onto England鈥檚 town and country. This paper elucidates power relationships between legislating/governing and architecture, bureaucratic text and architectural experience, both in this paper鈥檚 own text and its calligram-based typography, visualising textual interplay on this paper鈥檚 pages.