During the course of World War II, many cities in Britain and Japan were badly damaged by enemy bombers. The destruction caused terrible suffering, but also triggered hopes for a better future. Haphazard urban development in the past had bequeathed an unhappy legacy. Cities were disfigured by poor transport systems, overcrowding, lack of amenity and ugliness. Yet there was no need to repeat such mistakes. A new emphasis on rationality and aesthetics could produce very different results. The cities of the future might be places of airiness and light, of efficiency and joy, of work but also satisfying leisure. The key requirement was that reconstruction needed to be planned, because it was only the planners who had the imagination and skills to see how change should be engineered. This book is a systematic attempt to trace, in detail and comparatively, how the dreams of a better urban future fared in the harsh reality of the post-war world. It deals with the planners themselves and their ideas, but places planning in context, and so also discusses how other important players - politicians, vested interests and the public at large - participated in the rebuilding process.
Moreover, it ranges across a broad span of individual case studies, embracing conurbations like Tokyo and London, as well as smaller places like Portsmouth and Maebashi.
- ISBN10 1860205909
- ISBN13 9781860205903
- Publish Date 30 June 2002
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country GB
- Imprint University of Luton Press
- Format Paperback
- Pages 120
- Language English