This book examines town and country planning policy in twentieth-century Britain as an important aspect of state activity. Tracing the origins of planning ideals and practice, Gordon Cherry charts the adoption by state, both at the central and local level, of measures to control and regulate features of Britain's urban and rural environments.

The author examines how town planning first took root as a professional activity and an academic discipline around the turn of the last century, largely as a reaction to the apparent problems of the late Victorian city. He shows, too, that...